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  OUT IN THE DEPTHS of the woods, only four miles from where Ryan and his friends waited, Nathan Freeman also heard the noise of the ville's bell chiming out the first hour after noon. He wondered where Ryan was and what had happened to the old man and the beautiful girl with hair like summer wheat. A little earlier he'd detected the sound of horses moving on the old Oxbow Road.

  The tall young man adjusted the Smith & Wesson Model 39 at his hip and began to walk toward the sweeping bend of the river.

  BARON HARVEY HAD BEEN assisted into the saddle of his huge stallion while ville servants tucked the silver-and-maroon cloak about his crooked shoulders. The pair of matched Colts were settled snugly on both sides of his belt. His thinning hair was protected from the baking sun by a feathered cap of crimson velvet.

  He sat atop his mount, beaming happily and vacuously around his demesne. The pack of crossbred Rottweilers and Dobermans was behind him, moving excitedly, muzzles thrust into the warm air, sniffing. Now that the hunt was close, they made little noise. Their handlers moved among them, occasionally striking out with short-hafted whips to keep them under control.

  The tranks the baron had gulped down after his meal, swilling them into his gullet with brandy, kept him afloat in a cherry-red cheery cloud of gentle warmth and happiness.

  His son was dead and vanished. His bitch-wife would soon have jolted herself into the grave. There was a pretty little doll with the longest legs waiting in the guardhouse.

  And his prodigal brother would soon be ragged flesh and gnawed bones.

  "Life is so good," he said to himself. The bell chimed once, and he gave the signal for the hunting party to move out.

  "So good, good, good, good," he chanted.

  "TIME," SAID THE SEC OFFICER, looking toward the distant bell tower.

  "Yeah," Ryan said, leading the others off among the trees.

  Chapter Thirty

  RYAN CAWDOR FELT fiercely exultant. There was going to be some chilling done, and that was something he was good at. Maybe the thing he was best at. He had three people he could trust with his life, running free in a country that he knew well. And there was a stout blade sheathed in his belt.

  He'd read in an old book once—or it might have been in a crumbling vid: If you're goin' down, take some of the bastards with yer.

  Ryan was a realist, and he knew that long before sundown they would probably all be mangled corpses, dragged behind horses, ready to be shown to the people of the ville.

  "So die all traitors." Something like that.

  But right now they were sprinting along a narrow trail, beeches and sycamores on either side, the sound of their feet softened by the carpet of dead leaves. Ryan led the way, followed by Krysty, flaming hair tied back to avoid its catching on branches. Jak came third, his white mane similarly clutched in a length of twine. J.B. jogged easily at the rear. Despite his slight build and age, the Armorer kept himself honed to a critical edge of fitness.

  They'd only had a few minutes for a council of war. There had been two simple possibilities: split up or stay together. They had all agreed that their only, razor-slim hope was to keep together.

  Ryan remembered the area called the Oxbow Loop. The river was known locally as the Sorrow, on account of the number of times it flooded and took away livestock and homes. And folks.

  It was true that nobody could hope to try to get across the Sorrow. She ran at this time of year like a ravaging animal, her course studded with jagged granite boulders that turned the brown flood to scudding foam. With a long, fixed rope from bank to bank, it might be worth the gamble. Set against dying it might be worth it. But without a rope it was a fine way of chilling yourself.

  Across the neck of the Oxbow was a strip of trail less than a quarter mile long, with an expanse of stunted bushes and low scrub. With mounted men keeping watch there it would be death to try to cross it.

  Krysty had suggested they could hide until dark and then break out. Ryan had shaken his head. They could escape the dogs by going for the trees, but they'd get trapped, and the men would follow the barking of the hounds and pick them off.

  "Easier'n fish in a can," he said.

  "What looking for?" Jak panted after they'd gone a half mile into the dense, prickling woods.

  "Place to fight and kill us some hounds. Mebbe bring in a sec man or two. Then get us a couple of blasters. Then…?" Ryan hesitated a moment. "Then we'll see what happens."

  They heard the pack arrive with Baron Harvey Caw-dor a little after two hours past noon.

  There was a moment of silence, with only cicadas and a few mosquitoes. Then, the second the pack caught the trail of the runaways, there was the spine-freezing sound of hunting dogs in full cry: a belling, endless wailing that rose and fell but never ceased.

  "Best draw the blades," J.B. suggested quietly. "Be needing 'em soon."

  "Guts or throat with hunting dog," Jak said.

  "Take out a hamstring," Ryan added.

  "Any place we could make a stand?" Krysty asked.

  "Places I knew as a kid. No good for this. There's a small redoubt where some of the ville's gas is stored. Always double-locked. In any case, you get inside it and they got you."

  The sound of the dogs was already beginning to close in on them with frightening speed.

  "Water fuck "em," Jak said, looking to their left where there was a narrow stream meandering gently between low, muddied banks.

  "Not these bastards. Mutie bred. Take the scent out of the air as well as the ground."

  "When hounds are on a trail, you can distract them with blood. Any blood'll turn them," J.B. suggested.

  Ryan nodded, gripping the hilt of his knife. "Yeah. That's my thinking."

  The Oxbow Loop was a wilderness of tall trees and stunted bushes with patches of deep swamp and tangling willows. There were a few clearings where the sun lanced through with a startling brightness that made you blink at it—and acres of leprous earth where only spear grass grew. Streams divided and subdivided the land. No birds ever seemed to fly above the Oxbow Loop, and no creatures scurried there. Even as a child, Ryan had known it as an eerie place, tainted with death. Renegades had been driven there to die for several generations, and there were handed-down tales of runaway slaves being hunted to their lonely and fearful deaths in the Oxbow Loop during the Civil War.

  Ryan led the others at a fast pace, moving to where he'd once had a hiding place, a den where he would come when the bullying of Harvey became too much to bear. Nobody ever found it. Nobody ever tracked him into the wilderness by the Sorrow. He knew that the wind and the rain would have torn down his woven brushwood secret, but the place was good for a stand.

  The dogs would split up into smaller hunting units, and the terrain would make it impossible for them to maintain close contact. The biggest and strongest animals would be in the lead, the rest strung out behind them.

  Not far from the gas store, where a smaller stream looped in a near-circle, was a steep bank with several stately live oaks nearby, places a man with a knife could turn and dodge and protect his back against a charging dog.

  They were nearly there. The howling was very close, so close that they could distinguish the echoing sound of individual animals. One, in particular, was racing ahead, seeming less than a hundred paces from them.

  Jak looked at Ryan. "Can hear horse. Sec man?"

  "Could be. Wanna go for him?"

  The albino boy, face streaked with gray mud, hair plaited with dirt, nodded. "Get blaster. Be help. You take dogs."

  Ryan patted him on the shoulder, watching the lad as he vanished into the undergrowth, wriggling through invisible gaps. Raised in the bayous of Louisiana, this was like home to Jak.

  "I'll take the first one. J.B., you gut the second. Krysty, pick up what's left. Make it quick and ugly. Put 'em down and put 'em out."

  They stood in a loose semicircle, backs against the earth bank, tall trees on either side to give some measure of protection on their flanks.

 
"Fireblast!" Ryan exclaimed as the pack leader burst over a rotting stump of a decayed walnut tree.

  The fragmented sunlight dappled the animal's sleek coat like scattered gold. The crossbreed frothed at the muzzle, teeth bared. Its eyes glowed like embers and it howled as it sighted its prey, far louder than the baying sound as it had tracked them down.

  "Mine," Ryan said, taking a half step forward. He didn't have time to say more.

  The dog was enormous, its sides streaked with innumerable old scars. Its muzzle was long and narrow, the jaws wide. The top of its lean head came higher than a man's waist, and its weight must have been close to 120 pounds.

  Dogs like that were trained to go either for the throat or for the genitals. Ryan had seen sec dogs bred to take an intruder's arm and hold him. Not the Cawdor pack. They were trained only to hunt and to kill.

  It went for his groin.

  Ryan half turned, protecting his testicles from the foaming teeth. He used the dagger almost like a hammer, ramming it with all his power at the side of the animal's muscular neck.

  In the last fraction of a torn second, the hound tried to avoid the blow, but it was too far committed to its attack. The knife opened up its throat, blood jetting sideways, soaking the dry earth fifteen feet away. The howl died, and the animal jerked and kicked, hooked on the blade like a gaffed salmon. Ryan used the impetus of the rush to push it away, withdrawing the knife, feeling hot blood spurting over his wrist. His thrust had been so deadly that it had penetrated into the chest cavity, and as the dog fell there was blood and air frothing from the cut.

  The black beast stumbled forward, muzzle striking the dirt, its hind legs scrabbling to give it purchase to turn and go again at the man. But Ryan was quicker.

  He stooped and hamstrung the dog, crippling it, leaving it a whining, helpless thing. It snapped feebly at him as he moved back, but it was no longer a threat.

  Even as he straightened, Ryan saw the second, third and fourth hounds come leaping into the small clearing.

  J.B. stood straight and calm, waiting until the last second before ducking and turning, hand faster than the eye could follow. He opened up the dog's belly, spilling its guts in bloody loops, stepping away from the crazed animal as it bit and tore at its own stomach.

  Krysty faced a smaller, leaner dog, a sinewy bitch that jumped incredibly high, going for the woman's exposed throat. Krysty's reflexes were breathtaking. She stooped, knife held point up, and stabbed the dog through the center of the breastbone, ripping its heart in rags of pumping muscle. The creature tried to twist in the air, teeth meeting with an audible click, but it was dying even before it hit the earth.

  Three of the four were down and done in less time than it took to draw a deep breath.

  The last of the dogs was a grizzled veteran, seamed along the flanks, one eye staring blankly ahead of it. It hesitated between the three potential victims for its slavering teeth. Krysty was off-balance, and Ryan saw the dog turn to her. He shouted, trying to distract it, drawing its attention to where he stood above the corpse of the chilled pack leader.

  It came in on a crabbing, sidling attack, keeping its belly low to the earth, head to one side, watching Ryan through its good eye. In the brief pause Ryan could hear more dogs coming toward them. And the clatter of hooves. Someone was shouting in an enraged, hoarse voice.

  "Watch it!" J.B. called out.

  The warning wasn't necessary. This animal wasn't like those in the first trio. This was a wily campaigner that saw three of its pack dead or dying and a man with a long silver tooth in its hand. It came in, feinting to spring, then snapped at Ryan's knee. He only just dropped his guard low enough, cutting the dog along its shoulder.

  But it was lightning fast, biting at Ryan's knife hand despite its own wound. The teeth missed, but the muzzle rapped him across the knuckles.

  Making him drop the blade.

  "Gaia!" Krysty yelled, quickly reversing her own knife to throw it at the dog, but the animal was too close to Ryan to take the risk.

  The dog jumped for the throat, jaws gaping, its foul breath making Ryan gag. Its sightless eye rolled skyward, the other fixed on the man's face with a demonic intent. There wasn't time to dodge.

  As it jumped, he braced himself for the charge, grabbing at the raking front paws, gripping one in his right hand and one in his left. A Tex-Mex puma hunter from down south, near Lubbock, had told him this trick during one long night of drinking.

  Ryan had never had the chance to try it before now.

  And he was only going to get one chance to try it. Or the crossbred black dog would rip his face off.

  With all of his power, Ryan wrenched the animal's forelegs apart. There was a ghastly sound like splitting a hickory log with a long-handled ax. The hound's rib cage was burst apart by the savagery of the man's attack, rup-turing its heart and lungs in a single devastating moment. Its head snapped back, and its good eye glazed. The body shuddered as life departed, and Ryan was able to drop the lifeless corpse into the dirt at his feet.

  "Nice," J.B. said admiringly. "Very nice."

  "Thanks, friend." He stooped to pick up the fallen dagger and grip it ready for the next wave of attacking dogs.

  "Getting real close," Krysty said, stooping to clean her own blade in the dry earth by her boots. "If they all come together, we'll go down."

  It was undeniably true.

  Over the years Ryan had seen a few vids from before the long winters and read some books as well. One or two were adventure stories, where the hero always seemed to have a plan. Right at that moment, Ryan didn't have any real plan at all.

  Kill as many of the dogs as possible. Even take a few sec men along to the chilling. Live for an hour or so before buying the farm yourself.

  Wasn't much of a plan.

  Half a dozen of the pack appeared, muzzles foaming, red-eyed, on the edge of the clearing. They were hesitating, cautious, as they scented and then saw the dead dogs. Ryan, Krysty and the Armorer faced them, knives blood-slick and ready, knowing it wouldn't be easy to hold off so many of the killer animals at once.

  "Back-to-back," Ryan said. "Don't let 'em get in behind us." He paused a moment. "For as long as we bastard can."

  The dogs sniffed uncertainly at the trampled ground, edging closer to their prey. The open space reeked with spilled blood, and it quietened the animals, their howling sinking to low growls. In the woods beyond them, the noise of horsemen and shouting came nearer.

  Ryan licked his lips, tasting his own sweat. It wasn't going to be long now. He was conscious, not for the first time in the past few hours, that he had fled the ville of Front Royal to save his life. Now, within a day or so of his return, after twenty years, he was going to lose it.

  A whip cracked, and it seemed to trigger the crossbreeds. Like greyhounds loosed from the slips, they charged simultaneously. Ryan braced himself for the shock of the attack.

  The burst of automatic gunfire scattered the dogs in a heap of kicking, biting, mewing flesh. Ryan's keen ear heard about a dozen rounds, continuous fire. Only one animal escaped the burst, and it turned tail and ran back toward the huntsmen.

  "Thanks, Jak," J.B. shouted, grinning at Ryan and the woman. "One of the M-16s. Once you've heard it, you never forget."

  The fourteen-year-old albino boy appeared like a ghost from the thick brush. He held the smoking rifle in his right hand, and his lips were parted in a broad smile.

  "Found this in hand of dead sec man. Didn't want no more."

  "Thanks, Jak," Ryan said. "Now they know we've got a blaster, it's a different game. They'll hold the dogs back and press us in toward the river. Trap us there. Spare ammo?"

  "No. Bitch, ain't it?"

  Krysty pulled at Ryan's sleeve. "I can hear them, lover. You're right. Calling the hounds in. I can hear your brother 'screaming for sec men to come in after us. No takers. Not with half a mag left in the blaster."

  "Without the dogs, we could…" Ryan checked himself. "No. They'd… Fireblast! Best we
got. Follow me."

  "Where?" J.B. asked.

  "Gas store," he threw back over his shoulder as he ran toward the northeast, farther into the Oxbow Loop.

  "KILLED HOW MANY?"

  "A dozen of the bravest dogs, Baron Cawdor. Some with knives, others with Trooper Rogers's stolen blaster."

  "And he's chilled by the twisting, turning, whoreson Ryan?"

  "Throat opened, my lord," the sergeant said. He'd known things were going wrong ever since that mumbling dotard had turned up and broken off his rotting tooth. Then the embarrassment of the puppy being splashed all over the main hall of the ville. Now it was going from bad to much, much worse. A dozen hounds butchered. The best of the pack. And signs that the baron was about to slip over the edge into one of his trank-fueled rages.

  "They can't get through to the ville?"

  "No, my lord. Every yard across the neck of the land is patrolled. Not even a water rattler could slip by. No, my lord, your brother and his friends are still in the Loop."

  "His traitor friends, Sergeant," Harvey said, smiling his crooked smile. Sweat was pouring off his lardy face in rivulets, drenching the ornate cloak.

  "Traitors, indeed, Baron," the sec officer agreed. "We got the dogs leashed. Only place they can be is near the gas store, close by the Sorrow's banks."

  "What if they get in there?"

  "Then they never get out. We'll have 'em like flies in a bottle. Shall we all lead on after the dogs, my lord?"

  "Lead on, bleed on, read on, weed on, bleed on and on."

  The sergeant turned away, face schooled to impassivity from years of working for Baron Harvey Cawdor.

  THE GAS STORE was a squat, ugly building isolated at the end of a narrow trail that cut off the main road away from the ville. It dated from before the holocaust, but nobody had ever known what its use had been. An old woman once told Ryan that she'd heard from her gran that it had been used for taking and storing ice from the Sorrow, before the turbulent river had been called by that name and before the nuking had upset some of the shifting rocks underpinning the Shens, making the Sorrow the untamed terror it now was.