But still he had been unsuccessful. His tongue and eyes bulged vilely from his purpled face, the color distorted like his features by the length of chain that was around his neck. Rusted metal with small links, it was double wrapped and had been pulled tight…so tight that it had cut into the skin of his throat and left him with some of the links lodged under his flesh. From the shape of his neck, it seemed obvious that the vertebrae had been crushed, and his head had been pulled to a grotesque angle by the tension on the chain. Blood seeped from between the links.
The final indignity was that his body had been cleaved at the waist, so that Doc’s torso had been detached from his legs, the two halves lying within inches of each other. The lack of blood told Jak that the butchery had taken place after Doc had already been chilled, his blood stilled and so only seeping onto the earth.
Jak turned and walked away from the carnage. He didn’t look back. He didn’t think about where he was going. He simply began to walk and kept on walking. He didn’t think about his direction.
He just wanted to get away. He didn’t understand how he had gotten there or why he could remember nothing of the fight or how he had arrived at this point. He didn’t care. He just knew that the doomie feeling in his guts wouldn’t go away, despite the fact that he had now faced the inevitable and seen what it could do and what it could mean.
Distracted from his habitual vigilance, Jak was taken completely off guard.
The albino was pitched forward, head over heels, by a sudden and heavy impact in the small of his back. Recovering quickly, he relaxed his body into the momentum of the impact, and turned a sudden fall into a roll that brought him back onto his feet, crouched around toward the source of the attack. Part of his mind raced, running a series of mental checks that were completely instinctive. He could feel no blood down his back, no sharp internal pain, no uneasy sensation in the areas of his vital organs. He ached like hell in the pit of his back, but it was purely the force of the blow. There was no damage—of that he was sure.
He didn’t waste time wondering what had attacked him. Instead, he focused simply on locating the enemy so that he could attack it. This was easy, as his enemy made no attempt to disguise himself. He couldn’t have, not on the open veld.
As Jak drew his .357 Magnum Colt Python blaster with one hand and palmed a leaf-bladed knife with the other, he weighed the odds. They weren’t pretty. On his side, he was just over five feet tall, slender and quick, with his blaster and knives, as well as sinuous strength and a cunning hunting instinct. But his opponent…
The man in front of him stood about eight feet in height, with broad, heavily muscled shoulders that rippled under the bright yellow one-piece bodysuit. It was made of a material that Jak recognized from one place only: the raiding party they had encountered some time back on the road to the villes of Samtvogel and Raw, when they had tangled with the cult of the Sunchildren. The raiding party with the laser blasters had appeared suddenly, indulged in a brief firefight and then disappeared. Ryan believed them to be part of the Illuminated Ones, a secret society from predark times that had somehow survived and might hold secrets that could lead them to a peaceful, tranquil land of legend.
“Would” have lead them. Jak had to remind himself that his companions lay dead on the veld. And unless he acted swiftly, he would be joining them.
He ran a swiftly assessing gaze over his opponent. The giant had a laser blaster slung on a strap over his left shoulder, but he didn’t seem inclined to use it— instead, he held a chunk of rock in the vast paw of his right hand, which he swung loosely and easily at waist level. The heavily muscled shoulders and arms tapered to a comparatively thin waist, with thighs that looked well muscled and strong, but considerably less so than the upper torso.