“That so, my lord?” Fenton asked, looking hard at the teenager.
“The spring was too wet this year for a good crop of corn,” Dunbar said formally.
With that, the sergeant visibly relaxed and turned to wave at the other sec men on the wall. “Spring corn!” he yelled through cupped hands, and the guards lowered their weapons.
Surprised, the companions exchanged glances. Coded phrases? Triple-smart. Whoever ruled the ville clearly knew what they were doing.
Turning, Fenton started back to the ville. “So, how did you folks escape from the Boneyard?” he asked, slowing his pace to match that of the others. “The place burn down, or did you sneak a wad of that fragging moss into his shine?”
“We attack, ace everybody,” Jak said simply, his hands crossed on the pommel of the saddle.
“Rightâ¦you use a nuke, or just stare 'em to death?” Fenton chuckled.
In reply, Jak merely shrugged, feeling no great need to convince the other man of the truth.
“No, that's what actually happened,” Dunbar stated forcibly. “They took out Big Joe and his whole crew.” He started to mention the cargo of blasters and brass, but at a glance from Doc, the teenager changed his mind. The weapons belonged to these folks now, fair and square, and thus were really not the business of his ville. If his mother wanted some, she would have to barter for them just like anybody else.
“Well, nuke me running! Big Joe is on the last train?” Fenton laughed. “Shitfire, what are you, part wendigo?”
“Are those creatures real, sir?” Doc rumbled. “Or just a local myth you use to scare Big Joe and the slavers?”
“Ask them,” the sergeant muttered, jerking a thumb toward a large patch of sand lined with hundreds of low mounds of dark earth.
Shocked at the proximity of a graveyard to the ville, Mildred started to ask why the graves were across the river, but then realized the common sense of the matter. It wasn't sanitary to bury decomposing corpses inside the wall near the fresh water supply, and if interred too far away, the local animals would only dig up the bodies for food. In the Deathlands, sometimes even the dead needed protection.
As the sergeant and Dunbar stopped before the massive gate, Mildred braked the van to a halt right alongside, the rest of the companions clustering behind. Just in case of trouble, the first thing the locals would encounter would be J.B. and the Atchisson. The ammo drum was only half-full, but the autoblaster could discharge all fifteen of the remaining shotgun cartridges
in only a few seconds. Anybody left standing after that thundering maelstrom of hot lead would be easy pickings.
Softly, there came the sound of a gasoline engine from inside the ville, and slowly the imposing barrier rumbled aside to reveal tracks set deep into the bedrock. A dozen sec men were waiting for them, armed with blasters and crossbows.
“At ease, ya gleebs!” the sergeant gruffly commanded. “These outlanders have aced Big Joe and brought back Lord Dunbar alive and well!”
“Son of a bitch, it is Dunbar!” a sec woman gasped, lowering her scattergun. “Three cheers for the outlanders!”
As Dunbar strode into the ville, the guards quickly holstered their weapons and began to wildly cheer. Driving along after the teenager and sergeant, Mildred tried to keep a safe distance from them without falling too far behind. Once before the companions had been hailed as the conquering heroes at a ville, and the next day they were imprisoned in a torture chamber run by an insane eunuch who specialized in skinning people alive.
“We spot any fat bastards holding pliers, and I'm taking him out purely as a precaution,” J.B. said.
“Most wise,” Doc agreed, trying not to scratch under his shirt. The bandages around his chest had been washed daily, but lacking Mildred's usual collection of ointments and tinctures, the wound was slow to heal and itched like crazy.
Behind the companions, the gasoline engine started again, and the heavy portal cycled back into place.
Burly sec men used sledgehammers to drive home massive steel bolts and firmly lock the gate closed.
“If we want out of here fast, that's going to be a problem,” Krysty murmured over the sputtering engine of the motorcycle.
“More for them than us,” Ryan replied, forcing himself not to glance at the sheet of patched canvas covering the Gatling gun nestled in the sidecar.
It was an ordinary enough ville, the huts, shacks, homes and buildings constructed of anything available, a wild mix of adobe bricks, wooden planks, cinder blocks and occasionally even some aluminum siding. There were very few glass windows, but a lot of wooden shutters, and every roof was covered by sheet metal or plastic sheeting to keep out the acid rain. The entire ville seemed old and worn, but everything was clean, which was a pleasant change from most of the villes the companions visited.
The alarm bell had stopped clanging, and the air was redolent with the aromas of wood smoke, baking bread, uncured leather, boiling laundry, tobacco and horse dungâthe smells of civilization. The street itself was smooth bedrock, the dense granite only slightly scuffed from generations of shuffling feet.
Through the gaps between the larger structures, Ryan kept getting glimpses of a squat stone building in the distance. He recognized the structure as a former National Guard Armory and naturally assumed that was the home of the local baron. After skydark, a lot of villes had formed around the fortified buildings as they were designed to keep out rioting mobs and came fully stocked with food, medicine, wags, fuel and most
important of all, military blasters. The supplies would be used up by now, but the buildings remained.
Within minutes, word spread through the ville, and soon a jubilant crowd lined the street. Some of the people were only half-dressed, as if rudely woken from sleep. Wearing a bloody apron, a large man was brandishing a hatchet and the dismembered leg of a pig. Resembling a ghost, a small woman was covered with flour, a small child hiding behind her skirts. A wrinklie was smoking a corncob pipe, and a sec man stood with a razor in his hand, half of his face covered with foamy soap. In the sea of happy faces were young and old, healthy and sick, sec men and ville people, but everybody whooped at the sight of Dunbar as if he had risen from the grave, the only person in history to ever hop off the last train west.
“Never before have we been so royally welcomed,” Doc muttered, feeling like a triumphant caesar returning from his victory in Ethiopia.
“Smiles not make 'em friends,” Jak replied, nudging his horse with his knees to keep it moving. The animal didn't seem to like the noise and attention, and the teen was beginning to agree. He could feel something wrong in the ville; not a trap exactlyâit was more like the calm acceptance of an unpleasant fact. Unwanted, but inevitable. Slipping a hand inside his deerskin jacket, the teen loosened his blaster in his shoulder holster.
Moving along the main street, Dunbar, the companions, cargo van, bikes and horses made a nice little parade, with a constant cry of “spring corn” heralding their advance. However, Ryan began to notice a few somber faces among the passing crowd. It was mostly
the older people. They didn't seem angry, but sad, and many of them turned away to avoid looking at Dunbar as the teen strode past.
Situated on a corner was a large tavern, the second-floor balcony lined with gaudy sluts, one hand held demurely over their cleavage, the other steadily waving. But once the parade was past, the women sagged as if aging years in a moment and scuffled back inside to close the doors and bring down the shutters.
“Nice ville, eh, Alberta?” Ryan asked.
“Sure thing, Adam,” Krysty replied calmly, letting him know that she had also picked up on the bad vibes. But it wasn't necessary. Her hair was slowly moving into tight curls as preparation for battle.
Reaching the center of the ville, Dunbar paused as the crowd parted to reveal a boy just into his teens. He was wearing a uniform very similar to the sec men, but of much better quality and scrupulously clean. The boy wore a blaster on his hip and was surrounded by a cadre of armed sec men, their faces as immobile as the bedrock under the ville. At the sight of them, Ryan and Krysty eased to a stop and turned off their engines. A few seconds later, the van arrived and Mildred did the same.
“Brother!” Dunbar cried, and started to rush forward, when the sec men closed protectively around the boy. “What are you doing? What's wrong?”
“Please keep your distance, sir,” Fenton advised, holding up a restraining hand. “Things have changed since you were taken prisoner.”
“Don't be a feeb!” Dunbar snarled. “I am the older
brother, I will be baron someday! Edgar, don't you recognize me anymore?”
“Sir?” the sergeant asked, his voice strained.
“Let him pass,” the boy ordered, and the guards reluctantly parted.
Starting to walk forward, Dunbar stopped and looked upon his younger brother anew. He had never heard such command in his voice before, and Eddie was much taller than the teen recalled, more muscular. There were cuts on his face as if Eddieâ¦Edgar was shaving these days, and that wild mane of long hair that not even their mother could get the stubborn boy to trim was now only a military buzz.
“It is good to see you again, brother,” Edgar stated, placing both hands behind his back. “But after living with the bonemen for three years, my guards are naturally a little uneasy about having you rush toward me followed by a group of armed outlanders.”
A low murmur swept through the crowd at that, and the companions forced themselves to not reach for a blaster. Six against fifty were bad odds, even with their new weapons. Besides, something important was happening, but they didn't know what it was yet or who to support. But there was a definite feel of blood in the air, the calm before the storm.
“Outlanders? Edgar, these are the people who rescued me and aced Big Joe!” Dunbar snapped, getting a sinking feeling in his stomach. “Brother, whereâ¦where is the baron?”
“Our mother died two winters ago from the black cough,” Edgar said in a gentle tone, then the iron returned to his demeanor. “Two winters! You were gone,
and the ville needed somebody to be in charge, so I assumed command.”
Still straddling the motorcycle, Ryan didn't move or make a sound at the pronouncement. But Krysty men tally fought to keep her hair under control. This was why some of the ville people had looked so tense! Two brothers, one throne, it was a classic formula for disaster.
Unfortunately, standing in the open like this, there was very little that Krysty and the others could do at the moment. She and Doc each had a rapid-fire, but tucked into the gun boot of her bike and his horse, the weapons might as well be on the moon for all the good they offered. If the blood hit the fan, everything would depend upon J.B. and the Atchisson.
Sitting behind the wheel of the van, Mildred did some thing with her hands out of sight below the window, and J.B. gently thumbed off the safety of the deadly autoblaster.
“Two wintersâ¦?” Dunbar whispered, looking toward the royal castle. “Is she buried outside the wall?”
“Safely burned, like every baron before her. The ashes thrown to the solstice winds.”
“Thank heavens for that,” Dunbar said in relief.
“No, thank me!” Edgar snarled, advancing close to look up at his brother. His voice was thin, but held the iron ring of authority. “It was done on my command. I am the baron here, not you. Make no mistake about that!”
“But I am the elder brother,” Dunbar declared, a hand going to his hip where a blaster should have been
holstered. His fingers touched only cloth, and frustration fueled his rage. “I am the elder brother!”
“Is that a challenge for the throne?” Edgar asked softly.
Was it? Suddenly, Dunbar realized what a challenge would mean: it might split the ville apart, create yet another civil war like the one that had claimed his father and left his mother to rule the ville alone. He had always been assigned the role of heir to the throne, but did the teenager even want the authority? That simple question had never been asked before. His mind swirled with conflicting emotions, and Dunbar struggled to find a moment of clarity somewhere between truth and duty.
“There is no challenge. I obey my liege lord in all things,” Dunbar said in the ritual oath of allegiance, kneeling before his brother and bowing his head. “Through fire and blood, I stand on the wall and serve the Rock. All hail Baron Edgar Cranston!”
A palpable silence filled the ville, and even the desert breeze seemed to stand still. Nothing moved, and nobody spoke. Their muscles tightening, the companions braced for combat.
Then the uniformed boy stepped forward to rest a hand on his brother's shoulder. “Rise, Lord Dunbar, chief sec man of Delta ville!” the baron commanded.
Just for a split second, the companions thought a bomb had exploded when the mixed crowd of sec men and ville people roared their approval. The noise was deafening, and several minutes passed before anybody could even hope of being heard.
“Thank you, my lord!” Dunbar replied, standing to give an awkward salute. It was his first.
“Sorry about the demotion back to sergeant,” Baron Cranston said, making a conciliatory gesture. “But my brother is of royal blood.”
“Not a problem, Baron,” Fenton said with a rueful smile. “I kind of guessed that would happen when I saw the young lord alive at the front gate.”
“You were the chief? But you said nothing when I called you sergeant,” Dunbar said accusingly.
“Yeah, hadn't heard that in years.” The man chuckled, hitching up his gun belt. “Damn near made me drop the brass about everything. But it only seemed proper that the bad news about the baron should come from kin.” He shrugged. “So I lied.”
“Balls on the wall are brass in a blaster,” Dunbar said, quoting his father. “Baron, do I have your permission to make this man a lieutenant and my second in command?” He grinned. “I will need his help. After being gone for so many years, I don't even know where the sec men hide their secret stash of predark shine anymore.”