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  “And then?” Krysty prompted. The bay seemed perfectly normal, but the counters were almost off the scale.

  “And then the sec men shovel dirt over you,” the blonde replied. “They used to feed the bodies to the crabs, but then the women started having bad babies for some reason, so the baron made them stop.”

  “Crabs eat corpse, then you eat crabs?” Jak asked, shifting his backpack.

  “Sure. Why?”

  “That reason,” he replied succinctly.

  “Heavy metal poisoning,” Mildred explained with a sigh. Strontium, thulium, cobalt, the list of lethal isotopes was nearly endless. Most likely, the bay had been hit by a Russian MIRV, a warhead containing not a single, massive, thermonuclear bomb, but a dozen tactical nukes. However, she knew better than to raise the possibility to the others. They simply did not care. A nuke was a nuke, end of discussion.

  “Are you a whitecoat?” Liana asked sharply, her eyes narrowing in suspicion.

  “Healer, just a healer,” Mildred replied, sensing possible danger.

  After a while Liana nodded in acceptance and continued walking, her legs moving fast as she tried to keep abreast of Doc with his long stride.

  The masked sun was in the afternoon sky by the time the companions started to run across traces of the ville—repairs done to the dirt road from the summer rains, farmland already harvested for the coming winter, acres of tree stumps with the splintery stumps giv ing mute testimony to the backbreaking task of using a stone ax, and a crude bridge spanning a dry ravine that was probably a raging torrent in the spring.

  Finding a relatively secluded area, masked from the surrounding hills by a copse of maple trees, Ryan and Mildred divested themselves of their larger metal items, the spare blasters and brass going to Jak, the Steyr to Krysty, and the med kit to Doc. Double-checking each other for anything metallic, Ryan and Mildred then rubbed some loose dirt into their hair and clothing to enhance the idea that they had walked to Anchor from the far end of the known world.

  “Okay, we part company here,” Ryan said, hefting a loaded crossbow. The weight was awkward, so he shifted the grip until it properly balanced. A small detail like that could easily get them aced if the local sec men were any good at their jobs. “Whether we get a boat, or not, we’ll meet you at the grotto that Liana told us about.”

  “We’ll be there,” J.B. replied earnestly, stashing away the possessions. “And if you’re not back by midnight, we’ll come looking for you.”

  “Damn well better.”

  “Watch out for the Wendigo!” the blonde warned again, knowing that she was repeating herself, but feeling it was necessary. She had once seen the terrible thing in action, and her new friends had not. It was not a sight the woman would ever forget.

  “The Wendigo?” Krysty asked with a scowl.

  “Unless I am mistaken, that comes from a Canadian myth about an unstoppable monster,” Doc replied. “A trapper went mad from hunger, ate a friend and the Indian gods cursed him forever.”

  “Unstoppable monster.” Jak nodded. “Good name war wag.”

  “Hopefully it is just advertising, and not an accurate description,” Mildred said, double-checking her clothing one last time. The rag boots were surprisingly comfortable, but the physician knew that would cease at the first touch of moisture. Rain puddles were now to be avoided like landmines.

  As the companions slipped into the bushes, Jak waited until they were past before following along behind, a leafy branch in his pale hands erasing any trace of their passage.

  “The Trader used to do something similar with sage bushes,” Ryan commented. “Said he learned it from the Sioux when he was a kid.” The one-eyed man almost smiled. “Seems kind of funny thinking of the Trader that way, learning things, instead of teaching others.”

  “Even the great Socrates had a teacher as a child,” Mildred replied. One of her professors had said that civilization was merely the accumulated wisdom of everybody who had ever lived. Smart words. With all of her heart, the physician hoped that in the future people would be smart enough to never allow another skydark. The universe rarely gave anybody a second chance.

  When the others were completely out of sight, Ryan and Mildred stolidly returned to the main road, then walked back toward the lake for a mile, before turning and starting for the ville again. Along the way, the man and woman sharply watched the trees and hillsides for any signs of perimeter guards, sentries or outriders, but saw only songbirds, stingwings and an abundance of squirrels. Whatever else was wrong with the island, at least food was plentiful, which was a nice change from the vast sterile deserts of the western Deathlands.

  A few miles later the ville rose into view. Situated on the side of a cliff, the walls were composed of irregularly shaped stones, joined with a blue material that was probably river clay. Sec men and women armed with crossbows walked along the top of the structure, and a guard tower rose high above the ville, the pillbox on top bristled with wooden spears like a frightened porcupine.

  “Protection from the kraken?” Mildred asked out of the corner of her mouth.

  Adjusting his eyepatch, Ryan merely nodded in agreement. Perhaps the bastard lake muties really were as large as Liana had informed them. If so, that could put a real crimp in their plans to reach the mainland in a fishing boat. The journey would be tough enough without dodging a hungry mutie larger than a predark warehouse.

  The front gate of the ville was made of interlocking logs, the bark stripped off and the smooth bare wood studded with wooden spikes and shiny pieces of volcanic glass. Only the hinges were metal. Then Ryan looked again. Correction, two of the six hinges were metal, the rest were carved from stone.

  Unlike every other ville Ryan and Mildred had ever encountered, the front gate was wide open, with no guards in sight. However, there was another log wall just past the gate, neatly blocking any view of the ville. That was standard in most villes. The second wall was a shatter zone, designed to break the charge of any invaders and to give the ville sec men an excellent place to shoot at the enemy from relative safety.

  Strolling closer, Ryan could hear the sounds of ville life, raised voices, a dog barking, laughter and cursing, a drunk was singing, a newborn crying, and there was the steady, never-ending chopping of wood.

  When they were only a few yards away, a muttered curse came from off to one side and a sec man scrambled out of a brick kiosk, holding a large crossbow. Each brick in the kiosk was a different color, showing they had been salvaged from several ruins, and there was a firing slit in the side, subtle movements on the other side showing the gatekeeper was not alone.

  “Hold it there, outlanders!” the sec man commanded, swinging up his weapon until it wasn’t exactly pointing in their direction, but close enough to be used if desired.

  The guard looked dangerous, but Mildred internally sighed at the sight of the large black man, his skin even darker than her own. Once more, Liana was right. She was just regular folks here.

  The huge sec man was dressed in thick furs, with a stone-throwing ax hanging from a thong at his side. The leather-wrapped handle was old and worn, the stone blade nicked in several places, but polished to a mirror sheen. It was clearly a deadly weapon that saw a lot of constant use.

  “Sure thing,” Ryan said in an even tone, his own crossbow pointing at the ground, but with an arrow notched and ready.

  “What’s your biz in Anchor?” the sec man demanded, a finger resting on the trigger of his weapon.

  “Just here to buy a boat,” Ryan replied, trying to appear anxious.

  “Buy a boat?” That seemed to confuse the man. “What for? They’re easy enough to make out of bark.”

  “Don’t want a fragging canoe, we need a fishing boat,” Ryan answered curtly. “A big one. Got a whole ville to feed, and mine got swept out to sea in a storm last week.”

  “Along with our master carpenter,” Mildred added on impulse. “You ever try to make one of those things without any tools?”
/>   “Hell, no, and don’t ever wanna try, either.” The guard chuckled, changing the aim of his weapon. “Well, come on in. Guess you’re telling the truth. We do have the best carpenters on the world. A man can notch that into his crossbow!”

  “Everybody knows that flies straight,” Ryan agreed, resting his crossbow on a shoulder. “Is there a toll?” This was a weak point in their masquerade as locals, and he just had to bull through. As a slave, Liana had never entered the ville by the gate, and thus had no idea if there was payment due.

  “Toll?” the sec man asked, puzzled over the word.

  “We heard from a Northpoint sec man that folks had to give the payment of a good arrow to get into Anchor.” Mildred ad-libbed, trying to cover the gaff by playing on the natural rivalry of the two largest villes. “We thought it was a lie, of course, but still…” She shrugged, but didn’t finish the sentence.

  “Those, dirty, inbreed, mutie-kissing, sons of bitches,” the gatekeeper growled in clear hatred, his hands twisting on the wooden stock of the crossbow. “No, there ain’t no nuking toll. Never even heard of such a triple crazy thing before.”

  “Hey, you know Northpoint,” Ryan said with a shrug.

  “You got that right, friend.” The guard barked a laugh and stepped aside. “Welcome to Anchor. No riding a slave unless you ask permission first. Knife fights ain’t allowed in the gaudy house, only bare fists. Piss in the lake, not the street, or else you get ten lashes. Twenty for lying to a sec man, fifty lashes for refusing to obey a direct order. Savvy?”

  “No prob,” Ryan replied amiably, thumbing the safety on his weapon. “Where would we find the baron, anyway?”

  “Don’t worry about that, he’ll find you!” the guard replied gruffly, going back into the kiosk.

  Ambling through the gate and around the shatter zone, the two companions were instantly immersed into a living mandella of noise, smoke and motion. The air was redolent with the smells of baking bread, frying fish, horse dung and boiling laundry. The perfume of civilization.

  Laughing and cursing, pushing and shoving, civies and sec men were everywhere, each going in a different direction. Squealing children ran underfoot chasing rats, then a falcon swooped down from overhead and stole their prize. Sitting around in clusters, elders nimbly stitched repairs to ripped fishing nets, their conversations lost in the overlapping din. A burly woman walked by with a yoke across her wide shoulders to support a pair of large buckets full of freshly made charcoal, the blackened lumps still smoking. Inside a circle of rope, two men had stripped down to the waist and were having a bloody fistfight, while other norms watched and placed wagers. A smiling stone worker slapped his apprentice on the back in congratulations as the teenager successfully split a piece of granite into a set of perfect knife blades.

  In the open doorway of a log cabin, a beautiful young woman with an infant suckling at her breast was stirring a cauldron of bubbling maple syrup, the aroma so sweet to the companions that it was almost sickening. Crystallized sticks of maple candy hung from the eaves. At another cabin, a man was diligently smearing fresh mud along a wide split in a seam.

  The busy ville was alive with commerce, and nobody paid attention to the companions as they strolled along. Which was just fine by them—the less they were noticed, the better. However, Mildred secretly reveled in the commotion. Any kind of civilization was better than none. Then the physician saw the dreaded learning tree, the wooden stocks and wide leather straps darkly seasoned with overlapping blood stains, and she quickly revised her opinion. Clearly some societies were better than others.

  “Found it!” Ryan said in grim satisfaction, moving quickly in a new direction.

  Lurching forward, Mildred rushed to stay close as the one-eyed man slipped into the bustling crowd and disappeared from sight.

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Seven

  Down in the bowels of the Harrington, the ceiling lights sluggishly flickered several times, then they came back on, filling the engine room with a blinding corona of power.

  Surveying the assorted wreckage to the main engine and primary tokomac power reactor, the sec droid made a command decision. Several small hatches opened in the armored chassis of the machine and out rushed a score of small repair robots. Resembling mechanical spiders, the robots looked at the massive damage and started to rush forward when the sec droid issued an electronic command to override their programming.

  Pausing for only a nanosecond to digest the new information, the robots changed direction to converge on the auxiliary power plant. Crawling over the hulking machine, they conducted a preliminary assessment, noting every nick and ding, then patiently waited until the sec droid gave them permission to start the repairs.

  Instantly their dozens of small lasers pulsed into life, cutting away the dented access panels. As one of the heavy pieces of shielding came loose, the robots scuttled inside and crawled everywhere, measuring, testing and probing, to finely analyze the internal damage.

  Patiently, the sec droid waited for their detailed report. Soon enough, power would be restored to the entire vessel. Then it would immediately turn the power back off, making the Harrington appear to be dead once more, a helpless prey for the invaders. When they eventually returned, the power would come crashing back on and every hatch would slam shut, trapping them inside. That was when the sec droid would attack. The invaders would be confused, and frightened, easy prey for the military juggernaut.

  However, if for some unknown reason it seemed that the invaders might destroy the droid and seize control of the vessel, it would have no choice but to detonate the scuttling charges hidden inside the keel of the carrier. They were only atomic charges, no more than a few kilotons yield. But that would be more than enough to destroy the Harrington. Either way, win, lose or draw, the mat-trans would never fall into the hands of the enemy.

  With the patience of steel, the machine began to run a systems check on its various weapons systems. Everything was under control. Now it was only a matter of time.

  R EJOINING R YAN, Mildred matched his long stride, one hand artfully brushing the pocket of her dirty furs to check on her ZKR blaster. With any luck, they wouldn’t need weapons today. But luck had been evading the companions lately, and it was always wise to be prepared for trouble. The heavy gren in her pocket was a comforting weight.

  Moving among the mob of civies, the armed sec men were easy to spot in their matching uniforms—all of them were shaved bald and sported a small goatee. Ryan could only assume they did it to help recognize one another even in the thickest fog. Actually, it was a bastard smart idea.

  The homes in the ville were the expected conglomeration of rebuilt predark structures, log cabins and ramshackle huts. But they were all laid out in neat lines, the streets wide and paved with loose white stones. Harnessed elks pulled crude carts loaded with wood, and a sec woman rode by on a horse, a long line of slaves hobbling along behind. Lengths of rawhide were tied between their ankles and a thick rope was attached to wooden collars. In spite of the chill, they were dressed in rags, and hauling a wheeled cart full of giant arrows over ten feet long.

  “So they have an arbalest,” Mildred muttered, glancing at the rooftops. “That’s good to know.” If she remembered correctly, the weapon had a tremendous range.

  Grunting in reply, Ryan studied the ville, trying to get the feel of the place. A smart man could learn a lot with his eyes open and his mouth shut. Even if Liana had not told about the shortage of metal on the island, the companions would have figured it out for themselves in short order. Everything was either made of wood, stone or leather.

  On a corner, drunken laughter came from a tavern, and gaudy sluts lounged in the second-floor windows, smoking home-rolled cigs, their breasts exposed for potential customers. In a large corral, a herd of bleating goats was being milked by somber teenagers intent upon their task, and nearby lay huge wheels of cheese drying in the weak sunlight, the rind thickly coated with beeswax. Past that, a butcher wa
s chopping apart the carcass of a moose, a line of civies waiting impatiently for the big woman to finish, their arms full of empty wicker baskets.

  In the far corner of the ville was a row of gallows, the killing bar extended over the wall, a rotting corpse dangling from a noose and swaying gently in the breeze.

  “Smart,” Mildred said, impressed. “Just leave the body there as a warning to newcomers, and when the flesh rots, it’ll simply drop off.”

  “Plus, that high up, the wind would help reduce the smell,” Ryan agreed, trying to see through the bustling throng for the Wendigo. But so far, there was no sign of it.

  Situated behind a split-rail fence, a sec man was sitting in a rocking chair, a loaded crossbow in his hands and a massive black wolf-dog panting on the ground near his boots. A spiked leather collar announced that the beast was a pet, and not a wild animal.

  Protected by a stout wooden fence, the companions could just barely see a large iron kettle with a roaring fire underneath. A coiled copper tube attached to the top to slowly drip a clear fluid into ceramic jugs. The tangy smell of raw alcohol was thick around the still, almost overpowering.

  “If the shine is here, the Wendigo must be close,” Ryan noted, looking around the ville, through the hustling mob.

  “Over there,” Mildred said, tilting her head.

  Sure enough, the dreaded machine stood less than a hundred feet away, sitting in the middle of the ville square, for everybody to see and marvel over.

  “Smart. Newcomers have probably never seen that much metal in their whole bastard lives,” Ryan sagely guessed.

  “The Wendigo,” Mildred said, the name suddenly having resonance now that she could see the war wag. “This would really put the fear of the baron into their bones.”

  Ryan grunted in agreement. According to Liana, Northpoint ville ruled the sea with their infamous steamship, Warhammer, but Anchor was the undisputed master of the dry land from the eastern shore to the western mountains with the deadly Wendigo.