Deathlands 078: Sky Raider Page 3

  Returning to his throne, Baron Tregart sat heavily and cast a furtive gaze at the chair alongside. His wife, Hannah, was dying of the black cough, and now this. For a moment the old man thought his heart would break from the weight of his sorrow, then he inhaled slow and sat upright. A baron could never show weakness to his people, his father had always warned. Nor grant favors to an enemy. If he followed those two rules, his ville would prosper.

  But it had been a lie. Thunder ville was dying. Food was so scarce that the women couldn’t produce enough milk for their babies, and many of them “accidentally” dropped newborn infants on to stones to save the poor things from the endless days of painful starvation until sweet death finally set them free.

  The crops were dying, and the stores of predark cans all gone. Many of his people were eating cactus from the desert, or the little green lizards that came out at night. One lad had even somehow caught a stingwing and eaten it alive. He died soon afterward, but the act itself had been incredible. Stingwings moved faster than arrows. That a starving child caught one alive was seen by many as an omen. The question was whether it was a good omen because he caught the food, or a bad one because he died afterward. Some had tried hunting, but any portable wildlife was too far outside the small ville for the starving, weak hunters to carry back. Even in pieces. And the scavs would have quickly devoured the carcass left behind.

  A breeze shifted the smoke from the pyre and the baron flinched slightly from the smell of his burning son. Edmund had been on a scav run in the distance ruins, and miraculously found a cache of predark canned goods. The cans that bulged from internal pressure they didn’t touch, experience teaching them that those were deadly to eat for man, beast and mutie. But there had been many more in good condition, fifty cans of food! Fifty! A bounty beyond imagination.

  The cans had all been mixed with clean water, and then boiled for the length of a new candle to kill any rust-formed poisons. When done, the contents would have made enough soup for the whole ville. In this time of famine it was a godsend, his son hailed as a savior by the famished people.

  “Then you tried to steal some!” Baron Tregart roared, standing and shaking a fist at the trembling prisoner. “You stole soup and spilled the rest! All of it!”

  “Mercy!” a thief cried, raising his bloody hands.

  A sec man alongside the prisoner thrust down his longblaster, the wooden stock ramming into the man’s face, the bones audibly cracking. His chains rattling, the criminal fell to his knees, a thin arm thrown across his face as protection. Blood flowed down his cheek and dribbled onto his filthy clothing. The other thief burst into hysterical tears, a mad laughter mixing with the sobs into an unnerving noise.

  “Make soup of them!” a thin woman screamed from the crowd. “Cook the fools over the young baron!”

  Others in the crowd took up the cry, and Baron Tregart frowned until they raggedly ceased. Had they come to that at last? To eat their own dead to stay alive?

  Once more, the baron stared in open hatred at the cringing thieves. He wasn’t a brutal ruler, and might have forgiven them taking the food, but they had clubbed a sec man to do it. The sec man on guard that night was his own son, standing in for a childhood friend who was too weak to be near the food, the smell of the cooking soup making him too dizzy to stand.

  All through last night, Edmund had burned with fever, the ville healer doing what she could, but even her herbs and poultices had been consumed during the famine. His daughter had cut her wrist and tried to feed her dying brother some of her own blood to give him strength. But in his delirium, the man refused. By dawn, Edmund was dead.

  The child had foretold of this, Baron Tregart remembered bitterly. Food would destroy the ville. He had thought the doomie was talking about poisoned food, but apparently not. Just starvation. The one enemy the sec men couldn’t stop with a million blasters.

  “Captain Zane?” the baron said, turning to the side.

  Looking up at the throne, Zane Dolbert gave a salute. “Yes, Baron?” he asked in a deep baritone.

  “After the funeral, kill Edmund’s dogs,” Baron Tregart said softly.

  “Baron?” the sec chief whispered in shock.

  “You heard me, Zane,” the baron repeated more forcefully. “Kill the guard dogs. There is no other food.”

  “I…” Zane swallowed, and tried again. “Most of my men will refuse.”

  “You will not kill them?” the baron began in a low voice, his eyes flashing with the force that had made him baron in the time of chaos.

  “No! Of course, not that, my lord,” Zane decried, vehemently shaking his head. “If you order it, Baron, I’ll ace the dogs myself. But my men will not eat them. The dogs are looked upon as fellow sec men. They stood by our sides against muties and coldhearts, and even the machines that came in from the high desert. The animals are buried in the Iron Yard with the sec men who have died in battle.”

  “Then let them refuse, and there will be more soup for the ville folk,” Baron Tregart said softly. “But save half of the broth. Your men will eat when they get hungry enough.”

  “That won’t be necessary, Father!” a voice called out loudly from the rear of the crowd.

  As the people quickly moved aside, a young woman strode forward to stop at the bottom of the stairs leading to the dais. She would have been beautiful, but her cold eyes ruined the effect of her flawless skin and sensuous mouth. A cascade of long blond hair fell to her waist, bound by a rawhide net into a thick ponytail. As she opened her ancient leather jacket, a gunbelt was exposed with a shiny blaster riding at her hip.

  The baron blinked at the sight. A blaster? Where had Sandra found a blaster?

  “You’re late, Daughter,” he said in stern disapproval. Sandra Tregart looked at the raging bonfire across the courtyard for only a moment, then faced her father once more.

  “There was business to do,” she replied curtly, loosening the blue scarf around her neck.

  “What kind of business is more important than this?” the baron demanded, gesturing at the crackling pyre.

  “See for yourself!” she shouted. Pulling off a glove, she put two fingers into her mouth and shrilly whistled.

  Suddenly there was a commotion at the back of the crowd, and people began to gasp, then cheer as a line of men marched into view carrying bundles and baskets.

  “I have gotten us twenty dead horses, one mule and fourteen dogs,” Sandra Tregart shouted. “All butchered and ready to be cooked into jerky. Plus, a hundred pounds of flour, fifty pounds of dried vegetables, thirty of rice, twenty loaves of bread, ten cans of fruit, and enough corn seed to plant half our cropland!”

  Food! The cry went through the crowd like a shotgun blast, some of the wrinklies falling to their knees and openly weeping in relief. Baron Tregart could only gape at the sight of the baskets being placed at the foot of the dais. Food, endless food, spread in front of him, the salty smell of the fresh meat driving a knife of hunger into his empty belly.

  Sandra took a small round of bread from a basket and tossed it to her father. He made the catch and stared at the golden-brown crust cradled in his bony hand as if it were the first bread ever made in the history of the world.

  “There are also twenty bottles of shine,” she said brusquely, as if throwing challenge at her father. “I claim all of it for myself, and the Angel. Agreed?”

  “Yes, yes, of course, whatever you want!” Baron Tregart panted, waving the trivial matter aside, the other hand still holding the wondrous bread. “Zane! Get ten strong men and gather all of the wood you can find!” the baron ordered. “Build a cooking fire on the other side of the ville. Far away from here.”

  Looking at the towering flames of the pyre, the sec chief frowned. “Upwind from here, you mean, Baron,” he corrected.

  Slowly placing the round of bread into his lap, Baron Tregart nodded in assent. “Yes, good thinking. Use an entire horse, and twenty pounds of vegetables for soup. Then get five women to start making bread. Use half of the flour, the rest goes into the armory for safekeeping.”

  “Have the guards make sure that everybody drinks a bowl of thin broth before getting any meat,” Sandra commanded sharply. “Or else they’ll just vomit it back up. Whip the first person to get sick, and the rest will eat slower. That is all the food there is. We make it last, or we die this winterfall.”

  “Yes, my lady,” Zane muttered, the sec chief placing a fist to his heart.

  Both the baron and Sandra raised an eyebrow at that. Such a salute was reserved only for the baron and his wife. Sandra held the sec man’s gaze for a long moment, then regally nodded. Turning, Zane started shouting orders, and people rushed to obey. The line of men picked up the baskets from the dais and started marching around the blockhouse. An old woman burst into tears of happiness, and from somewhere a man started to sing a working song.

  “So it appears you are finally in charge, dear Daughter,” Baron Tregart said slowly, leaning back in his throne. “Your brother still burns, and he has already been replaced.”

  The woman said nothing, her thoughts dark and private.

  “Shall I jump onto the funeral pyre next?” the baron asked, lifting the round of bread and shaking it at her. “Or do you wish that pleasure for yourself, Baron?”

  “I do not want to rule,” Sandra said slowly. “I never have. You know what I desire.”

  “Bah, foolish dreams.” The baron snarled. Unable to restrain himself any longer, the old man chewed off a small piece of the bread. The first swallow was without taste, and the baron had to command himself to stop to let the yawning pit of his belly accept the food before swallowing any more. His gut roiled at the invasion, then finally settled down, and he tried another small piece, and then another.

  As his hunger slackened, the baron found he could now taste the bread. By the blood of his fathers, it was delicious! Sweetened with something, honey perhaps, or maybe a pinch of predark sugar. Food fit for a baron’s table, and not the sort of thing that was traded away for a few live rounds of ammunition.

  “All this food. There’s too much. It is the wealth of an entire ville,” the baron said, masticating each bite to make the food last. “Jeffers would never give so much for what we had to offer in trade.”

  Taking a round of bread from the basket, Sandra pulled out a knife and cut off a slice. “Oh, but he did,” she said with a private smile.

  Scowling, the baron lowered his repast. “Did you bed him for this wealth? Did you trade your honor to save the ville?”

  “There are blasters, too, Father,” she said, tossing the bread back into the basket. Reaching into a pocket of her leather jacket, Sandra pulled out a wad of gray cloth. Walking up the stairs, she placed it on the arm of the throne with a muffled thud.

  Taking one more bite of the bread in his hand, the baron placed it aside and chewed thoughtfully as he folded back the oily cloth to expose a wheelgun. The metal was unblemished, without any sign of rust, and the barrel shone with a blue tint like winter ice. Now, Sandra pulled out a fat leather pouch and laid it next to the blaster. With trembling fingers, the baron pulled open the top and saw it was filled with lead shot and a clear plastic jar of black powder.

  “So, you did it,” the baron accused in a hollow voice.

  “Yes,” she replied simply.

  “So that mule you mentioned, it was Digger’s,” he ventured.

  Over by the stone well, a group of laughing sec men tossed a rope over a bare tree branch normally used for hanging outlanders, and hauled the dead mule into the air. Even before its hooves left the ground, a child slid a plastic basin underneath and big woman started skinning the beast with a sharp knife.

  Smiling slightly, Sandra shrugged. “He didn’t need it anymore.”

  So the trader was aced, eh? he thought.

  “Were there any survivors?” the baron asked hopefully. “I know about the power of the Angel, but surely you could not have…I mean, an entire ville?”

  She laughed, and he received his answer.

  “It was them or us, dear Father.” Sandra chuckled. “There was no other way. One ville died, so another could live.”

  “But you took all of their food.”

  “All that I could find,” she corrected, clenching her teeth. “Some of it was…inaccessible.”

  Slumping in his throne, the old baron tried to come to grips with the idea of jacking the dead. More, Jeffers had been a friend. Long ago, the two villes had fought together in the Mutie Wars. Was that bond of honor to be broken over loaves of bread?

  For a time there was only the sound of the funeral pyre and the happy singing of the butcher doing her messy task. As the meat came away from the bones of the animal, children took the huge wet slabs and awkwardly carried them around the blockhouse to the cooking fire. Staying close by the littles, armed sec men guarded the food and carefully stayed between it and the starving crowd who watched the preparations with near madness in their gaunt faces.

  Hitching up his loose pants, a burly sec man approached the dais and clumsily saluted, his right hand not quite touching his temple. “Baron?” he asked hesitantly.

  Sandra frowned at the man, but the baron turned to look upon the man with patience. Gedore was a new sec man, recruited just before the crops failed. He was strong and obedient, but lacking in any imagination. A grunt, as the baron’s grandfather would have said. Just a blaster with feet.

  “Yes, what is it?” Baron Tregart asked.

  Gedore gestured to the chained men shivering near the funeral pyre. They kept casting furtive glances at the flames as if expecting to be tossed upon the conflagration at any moment. Plainly written on the faces of the sec men holding the chains of the two prisoners was their opinion that they would have heartily approved of such a command from their chief, or baron.

  “What about the thieves?” Gedore asked.

  Stroking the round of bread for a moment, Baron Tregart scowled at the two men in open hatred, his face contorting into a feral mask of fury. Releasing the bread, the old baron grabbed the blaster on the table and started loading the chambers.

  “Bring them closer,” Baron Tregart whispered hoarsely, both hands busy with powder and shot. “I shall do this myself. Myself!”

  “No, Father,” Lady Tregart interrupted, stepping in front of the elderly man.

  Snapping up his head, the baron stared at her as his hands continued their work. After fifty years of being a baron, the man could load a weapon in the dark while drunk.

  “They killed the son of the baron,” he reminded her, closing the cylinder with a satisfying click. “The punishment is death.”

  “And why should we waste precious ammo on scum such as these?” Sandra asked soothingly, then smiled at the chained men. She could see a flicker of hope come into their faces.

  “No,” the woman continued. “Don’t shoot them, Father, and there shall be no burning today to mar the funeral of my brother.”

  “Thank you, lady!” one of the prisoners cried, dropping to his hands and raising both hands.

  “Gedore!” Sandra said loudly, motioning him closer.

  The big sec man rested a boot on the dais and leaned inward. She could see the folds of loose flesh around his neck and guessed he had been giving some of his rations away. A lover, perhaps? That would end today.

  “Yes, ma’am?” Gedore asked.

  “Cripple them, and throw them alive to the dogs,” Sandra said calmly, savoring the panic that grew in their eyes. Fools, did you think to ace a Tregart and live to tell the tale? “I see no reason to waste all of the meat. Today marks the passing of my brother, and the salvation of the ville! Everybody eats their fill!”

  Her eyes sparkling with amusement, Sandra grinned at the stunned prisoners. “Even the dogs,” she added softly.

  “No!” a prisoner screamed, shaking all over. “Mercy, mistress! Chill us, please! It was an accident! An accident! I swear!”

  A guard cuffed the man silent, while the other prisoner slumped his shoulders and began to softly weep, his tears falling unnoticed onto the dusty ground.

  “Take them away,” Sandra commanded with a flip of her hand. “Oh…and, Gedore?”

  The sec man had already started across the courtyard, so he stopped to look over a shoulder. “Ma’am?” he responded.

  “If I find them with cut throats, you will be next. They go into the pens alive.”

  Turning slightly pale, Gedore nodded, and started directing the other guards to herd the shuffling along the street toward the dog pen near the front gate. As if sensing the coming meal, the dogs began to howl in eager anticipation.

  “Justice must be swift,” the woman recited, “if it is to be fair.”

  Looking up from the bread and the blaster in his lap, Baron Tregart tilted his head at the beautiful young woman.

  “So you do remember the stories I used to tell you and Edmund at bedtime,” he muttered.

  “Yes, I remember,” she said, facing the bonfire. The figure on top of the woodpile was reduced to only bones at this time, and as she watched even those crumbled away and the tongues of red fire lapped at the darkening sky. It was done. Edmund was gone.

  “Now, there is only you, Daughter,” Hugh Tregart said softly.

  “That was all you ever had, old man,” she whispered with a snarl. “Except that you were too drunk to notice before.”

  But the desert wind carried away her dark words and nobody heard.

  * * *

  Chapter Three

  Sucking in a lungful of warm air, Ryan struggled awake and looked around the mat-trans chamber. So soon after the first jump, the second one had hit them like a gren. He dimly remembered their arriving, and then nothing.

  Shaking his head, the one-eyed man rose onto his hands and knees, shook his head to try to clear his mind. Fireblast! He had to get sharp. Had to make nuking sure they weren’t in the same redoubt again. Repeat jumps were rare, but they had happened before. Brushing back his wild mane of hair, Ryan focused his eye and grunted in relief at the sight of the chamber walls. They were a lime green with horizontal red stripes. It was a redoubt they had never been to before.