James Axler - Homeward Bound

Ryan felt the short hairs rising on the back of his neck — the familiar warning of imminent danger. Sitting close to the young man, he was aware of Nathan's whole body tensing and stiffening. His mouth hung open, and the breath hissed through the man's teeth.

"We've..."

"I heard it," Ryan interrupted.

"The horse? The bastard's gone to the ville."

There was a cold horror in Nathan's voice and blank, shocked face.

"Couple of hours after midnight. Listened. Didn't hear anything more."

Freeman stood up, uncoiling with an easy grace. "You heard it! By all the gods, Ryan! Didn't you feel it? Didn't you see it !"

Ryan also stood, hardly noticing in the sudden, dreadful tension that Nathan had admitted he was indeed part mutie. And he had called him "Ryan." He knew him.

And, in turn, Ryan realized his own guess was correct. He knew who Nathan Freeman was!

"Morgan's son," he said softly. "You're the son of my brother. Your mother was Guenema. I'm your uncle, lad."

"Hell," Nate said. "I guess I knew that all along, Uncle Ryan." His expression changed. "But now's not the time. Gotta move, and fast."

"We been betrayed?"

"Tom. Wants to be sec chief of Shersville. Guess he'll get his way now." The words tumbled over one another in the young man's haste to explain.

"When will they come, Nate?"

The water was covering their conversation from the villager standing a few paces behind them.

"They're here."

"What? Fireblast! We have..."

Nathan Freeman laid a hand on his arm. "Too late. Now I'm concentrating I can hear 'em. Load of sec men, on all sides. They'll take you, even in a firefight. Listen, I can make it through the woods. Get to the old man and the straw-head girl. To your wag. Other blasters there?"

"Yeah. Couple."

"I know paths and ways. I'll do what I can, Ryan. Don't fight. Harvey and Rachel aren't muties. Won't expect you. Won't think it's you, mebbe. Play Floyd Thursby. Stick to your story. Could get away. Watch Rachel. More, watch Jabez. Warn others. Me and the other two'll do what we can, when we can."

Ryan's fighting brain was racing. He still hadn't heard any sound of a sec patrol closing in on them, but he'd seen enough of mutie skills in his life to know that his nephew was probably telling the truth. There'd been a blind listener up in the high plains who could hear a kerchief of satin fall on soft earth at two hundred yards.

"Yeah," Ryan said. "Don't charge in after us. If'n we can fool 'em, we could get away free. Foolish to lose lives for nothing. Wait and listen, Nate. That's the best."

Then Ryan heard them — horse-mounted sec men, clattering along the main blacktop through Shersville. He knew they'd be good mounts. Front Royal had always been famed for the quality of its horses. Right back to the time before the long winter.

"Gotta go," Nathan whispered. "Just meet the man I dreamed of for twenty fucking years. And we gotta part."

"Watch your back, Nate," Ryan said, quickly shaking hands with his nephew. The grip was brief but firm.

The young man leaped at the river, balancing for a moment on a large flat stone near the center, then hopped to another, smaller stone. With a splash, he reached the opposite bank. Pausing for a second and waving a hand to Ryan, he then disappeared into the dense screen of bushes.

Ryan turned away to make his way back to Shersville, where the sec men were already in control.

For a moment Ryan's head whirled, and he felt himself transported back to his fifteenth year, battling for his life in a blood-slippery passageway in the stone heart of the ville. The uniforms of the sec men were unaltered: maroon jerkins, with breeches tucked into high boots. They wore helmets that hugged the skull, and some wore goggles. They were armed with the same M-16 assault rifles that Ryan also remembered well enough from his childhood — trusty weapons that had served the barony well over the years since the endless chilling.

Krysty, Jak and J.B. stood in a group outside the barn, surrounded by at least thirty of the guards. The old man, Tom, preened himself nearby. He was grinning broadly, chest out like a little pigeon, bursting with pride at his own achievement.

The leader of the sec guards was a sergeant, tall and with shoulders nearly as broad as the doors on the barn. He saw Ryan coming toward him and grinned.

"Hurry up, One Eye. That's four plucked and two to go."

"Where's Nathan Freeman?" Tom yelped.

"Who? "Ryan said.

"You know, you bastard!" screeched the venomous little villager. "Make him tell," he whined to the sergeant.

The sec man spit in the mud, not bothering to hide his contempt. "Baron says you get to be sec chief of this dung heap until someone better comes along. So zip up that mouth of yours or I'll shut it. I decide what happens."

"And what's that, Sergeant?" Ryan asked. "We're travelers who only arrived in the Shens a day ago. We hoped to move on."

"Came in a wag?"

"Yes."

"Where? Where's the wag?"

"Ran dry way back north. Dumped it. No chance of gas around here?"

The big sec officer laughed. "Not for the likes of you scum. Baron controls all gas for fifty miles around."

"Why are you here with this army?" J.B. asked.

"Old runt said you was armed and dangerous. Said there was two more of you. Old man and pretty little girl. True?"

Krysty stepped forward and smiled at the sergeant. "Do we look dangerous? Our two friends have gone to try to make their way back to the wag. But we fear they might be lost in the forest."

"Don't waste all that fucking charm, sister," the sec man said, the smile vanishing. "Got my cock and balls blown off by an old anti-pers mine ten years back. Don't fuck a lot now. We'll get moving." He shouted an order to the patrol, standing stone-faced in a maroon circle. They snapped to attention and began to shepherd Ryan and his companions toward the road, where they saw a couple of horse-drawn wagons with barred sides and roof, obviously built to accommodate prisoners.

As he passed Tom, Ryan whispered to the old man. "One night you'll feel cold steel in your groin."

The villager turned as white as a sheet and tottered, hand going to his heart.

Ryan smiled at him as they were led into the wagons. The three men were put in the first cart, Krysty in the second one.

The sky threatened rain. The air felt cool and damp and the breath of the horses hung about them like fog. They could see mist filling the hollows on the other side of the wide valley, leaving only the tips of the trees emerging from the pale blue haze.

The sergeant was at the head of the convoy, followed by a dozen mounted sec men. Then came the cart with the men, and a dozen more troopers, followed by the wagon with Krysty, and another dozen horsemen at the rear.

Oddly there had been no attempt made to disarm them. Ryan had seen the eyes of the sergeant home in on the butt of the SIG-Sauer, but it remained in its holster. He guessed they would lose their arms when they reached the ville.

For Ryan it was a journey deeper into his own past.

Every rattling turn of the wheels brought him closer to the ville. Every now and again he'd recognize some bridge or building or turn of the road. Once a massive wild boar thundered across the trail, making half the horses rear and whinny, throwing a couple of the sec men. Its eyes were vicious rubies, and Ryan saw fresh blood on its curved tusks.

They also passed more signs of the tyranny of Baron Cawdor and his family. Eight corpses. One in chains at a crossroads gibbet, not a shred of flesh remaining on the dry bones. Three on makeshift gallows, one a woman. Three crucified, two of them children, whose frail little bodies looked no more than six years of age. And the charred remnants of a corpse, smoldering in glowing metal links at the center of a heap of ashes.