James Axler - Homeward Bound

"Now I'm here."

"The older servants prayed to you. We flogged and branded them and still they believed that one day you'd come back and save them all from... Harvey and from me. They call me the Lady of Pain, you know, Ryan. Me! This time tomorrow Harvey will return from the hunt. You and your friends will die in a fine public ceremony. Soon Harvey will die, and Jabez and I will run the Shens. And there will be no more shadows!"

Her voice soared like an eagle as she ranted at the bound man at her feet. She kicked out at him in a vicious temper, her feet cracking into his ribs, leaving deep purple bruises.

As quickly as it had come, the anger left her, the wild swinging of moods that was typical of a jolt junkie. She stood panting, her face growing blank. "There, brother-in-law, you made me... Relatives shouldn't anger each other."

"Goodbye, sister-in-law," he managed.

"I came to see you," she said, pausing near the door, "to see if you might be of use. You could have killed Harvey. That would have been pleasant, wouldn't it? All the double-poor stupes that live on our lands would have flocked to worship at the shrine. Ryan, the miracle baron of Front Royal. You could have had me as well, brother-in-law."

"Why not?" he asked. Behind her the last of the lamps was guttering out, making her shadow dance, shift and vanish.

Rachel smiled. "No, Ryan. Not now. You should have been the baron. You and I could... once... Not now. I know men, Ryan. I know you. You might agree, to save your skin, then break my neck without a single backward glance. No. You aren't weak enough."

She pulled at the door handle, pausing a moment in the brightly lit opening to glance back at him. Then the door slammed shut, and Ryan was left alone in silence and in darkness.

The blood congealed on the tips of his fingers, around the nails and on the grazes around his throat from the tearing of the rough iron chain.

As the night wore on, Ryan managed to slip into an uncomfortable slumber, waking often from the pain of his position. He wondered how the others were bearing up, thinking specially of Krysty Wroth.

Ryan also wondered about Lori and Doc Tanner.

"By the three Kennedy's!" Doctor Theophilus Tanner exclaimed, tripping over the gnarled root of an ancient live oak. It had rained, briefly but fiercely, and the ground had become soggy and treacherous. The low clouds veiled the moon, making it difficult to see more than ten feet ahead.

"You okay, Doc?" Lori asked, helping him to his feet and wiping ineffectually at the smears of mud on his black coat.

"Yeah. Just this path doesn't run straight for more than twenty yards at a time."

Nate Freeman looked back over his shoulder, face a pale blur ahead of them. "Want to get nearer than this to the ville 'fore sunup. We're close to Shersville here, and they might have patrols out, watching for me to head home."

The clouds parted, and the moon broke through, bathing the region in a bright silver glow. Doc looked around him, admiring the beauty of the forest, the rain glistening off the boles of the endless ranks of trees.

"How far?" he asked the young man.

"Sunup or the ville?"

"The dawn's early light."

"Two hours."

"The ville?"

"Three. If we don't all keep falling over our feet like clumsy old stupes."

"You'll watch your mouth or..." Lori threatened crossly. But Doc patted her arm.

"No, my dear heart. Nathan is right. I must take more care."

"Should have fetched the fast blasters." The girl sighed.

"Safer in the wag," Freeman argued. "You go through your plan to try and get in the ville then that mini-Uzi and the gray rifle'd have you in the moat 'fore you could say, 'Blessed Ryan spare us.' Know what I mean?"

Doc was thinking about the plan as they walked briskly through the Shens. Part of it had been his, but he kept forgetting bits of it. He was to be a traveling quack who was calling at the ville to treat any minor ailments and to draw teeth. But he'd lost his bag of tools. He could remember all of that. But Nathan hadn't liked the idea.

He'd wanted to wait and see, to try to sneak some news from those in Shersville who were still loyal to him. But even the young man had admitted that there had to be a real risk that Ryan's cover had been blown inside the ville. Doc had asked how long he thought Ryan would live once Harvey knew who he was.

Nathan had replied by simply snapping his fingers once.

So, that was why Doc and Lori were going in. For news. And if that turned out bad, for a try at a rescue.

"How?" Doc mumbled to himself. And after a little while he realized he didn't have an answer to that question.

The swordstick helped the old man over some of the rougher parts of the trail, and Lori was always at his elbow with encouragement.

"Path here goes through a swamp, so step careful. Mud's near bottomless on both sides. And we're closest we come to my home village. Fast and careful and quiet's the way."

Ironically it was Nathan Freeman who nearly brought disaster upon them all. He had looked back to make sure that his two companions had safely negotiated a tumbled willow tree that was rotting across the path, when his own foot slipped and he crashed to the ground. In falling he clutched at a low branch of a stunted elm tree, which broke in his grasp with a loud report that sounded like a Magnum going off.

"That you, Beau?" called a voice. It was a thin, whining sort of a voice, like a querulous old man asking when his supper would be ready.

Nathan drew his blaster from his belt, a double-action Smith & Wesson Model 39 handgun. Dropping into a crouch, he waved to Doc and Lori to take cover behind him.

"Beau? You fallen in the fucking water 'gain? I'm not pulling yer out if n..."

"Hi, there, Tom," Nathan said, straightening up, holding the pistol on the hunched little figure that had appeared out of the rags of mist that hung over the muddy water. "Thought I knew your voice, my trusted old friend."

Doc and Lori also stood up, seeing that the other villager was paralyzed with fear. The old man was literally shaking in his boots at the sudden appearance of the man he'd betrayed.

"Ramjet! Nathan, is?.. I didn't know you was going't'come back. Me an' Beau..."

"Here," Nathan said quietly, beckoning to Tom. "Come here."

The little villager stumbled toward Freeman, wringing his hands like an abject penitent. "Didn't mean trouble, Nate, you know that. Hell, we bin friends longer than most. I taught you to shoot an' told..."

"Shut up, Tom," Freeman said. "Kneel down here, in front of me."

"I'll get my breeches fouled in the dirt, Nate. You know what Becky's like if'n I get muddied up. I'll just stand."

"Kneel. That's good. Now get your mouth open real wide, Tom."

"What for? I don't... Urrgh..."

Doc looked away, knowing what was going to happen. Lori also guessed, and she clapped her hands together delightedly, eyes sparkling in the moonlight. "Yeah," she said. "Do it, Nate."

The little villager knelt in the slime, hands together, looking up at Nathan Freeman. The muzzle of the heavy automatic pistol was jammed in his mouth between his broken and stained teeth. His eyes were as wide as saucers, and he was moaning to himself.

"Close your lips, Tom. Suck on it, real good, like it was mother's milk. Good. So long, Tom."

The gun bucked, the sharp edge of the foresight cutting open the man's mouth. The explosion was muffled, sounding no louder than a man slapping a mosquito off his wrist. Out of the corner of his eye, Doc saw a hunk of bone burst out of the back of the scrawny villager's skull, landing with a plopping noise in the water on either side of the trail. A fine spray glittered in the moonlight for a second, like a ballooning fountain of fireflies, mushrooming from the hole in the head. The dappled mess of blood and brain tissue pattered in the dirt. The body jerked violently backward, legs kicking in the air, the mouth hanging open.