Jak cleared his throat. “I was borned ways from here. Don’t know any big villes. No powerful barons. Not since Tourment bought farm.”
Forde extinguished his cigar in the dirt, making sure it was properly, safely out. “Never heard of the man. All I heard of is of a big old house close by. Family lives there and they have some power over their neighbors.” He tugged at his neat beard. “But it was odd strange.”
“What?” Dean asked.
“Strange, the behavior of most of the folks that told me on the road. Warned me away, you might say. Wouldn’t meet my eyes. Stared at their boots like they might find the mystery of the ages writ there. I’d have said they were scared.”
“They say what they were scared of?” Jak looked around at the circle of darkness that surrounded their fire. Twice they’d seen the golden eyes of some nocturnal predator glinting back at them, but the menace had passed on.
“No. One old woman crossed herself like this.” Forde demonstrated, using small pecking gestures. “Said to sleep with my windows closed and to face the north.”
“You know what she meant?” Ryan was considering whether a third helping of the stew would be excessive, consoling himself with the thought that it would probably go to waste if it wasn’t all eaten. He ladled out another generous helping.
Forde shook his head, the flowing hair, the color of Kansas summer wheat, catching the red glints of the flames and reflecting them, as though his skull were covered in a dancing array of tiny fireflies.
“No idea. I’ve come across isolated communities where they were frightened of shadows. Frightened by seeing three magpies together in a field. Seeing a ginger cat turn twice around, widdershins. Broken a mirror or spilled fresh-boiled milk. Deathlands is filled with taboos and totems, isn’t it?”
Ryan nodded. “Most of them are aimed at outlanders. Watch out for blacks or redheads or white hairs or tall or short or fat or thin. Anyone who looks kind of different from other people. That’s the fear.”
“Deviation from the norm,” Doc stated in his deepest voice.
“I’m heading for the ville tomorrow,” Forde said. “You’re more than welcome to come along.”
“Know its name?” Jak asked.
“I believe” He tugged once more at his goatee. “Bramton, I think.”
“Not know it,” the albino teenager said. “Most my early life didn’t go far from home. Must be hundred villes around bayous don’t know.”
“We could walk along with you.” Ryan looked around the circle of companions. “Nobody vote against that? No? Fine. Yeah, Johannes, we’ll come to Bramton with you.”
BEFORE RETIRING for the night Forde delved inside his wag and emerged red faced and triumphant, flourishing a dusty bottle. “This will aid sleep and bring the sweetest of dreams to us all.”
“What is it?” J.B. asked. “Some kind of home brew?”
“Bathtub hooch,” Doc suggested.
“Predark gin,” Mildred added. “Used to come in earthenware bottles like that one.”
Forde swung himself off the wag’s tail, grinning broadly. “Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Zero from ten for all of you. I would stake a mile of 16mm film that none of you has ever sampled anything like it.”
“What?” Ryan took the bottle from the stranger, wiping at it with his sleeve, discovering that it lacked any sort of label. “We give up.”
“Samphire liqueur,” Forde said.
“Never heard of it,” Dean told him. “You greasing our wheels, mister?”
“Samphire is a sort of herb,” Doc explained. “The name originally came from France in old Europe, a corruption of the herb of Saint Pierre. I have never heard of anyone making a drink from it.” He licked his lips. “But if it complements your cooking, friend Forde, then it should hit the spot.”
The man was sitting down again, cross-legged, working with an antique Swiss Army knife, hacking away some metallic foil around the cork.
“Ah, there. Now, care is needed. I have known corks to break in the neck of the bottle and Ah, here it comes.”
There was a faint popping sound, and the air filled with an elusive and delicious aroma.
Another journey into the back of the looming wag brought a number of small shot glasses, emblazoned with the name of Stovepipe Wells. Forde handed them around the group, glancing at Ryan before offering one to Dean.
“Sure. Small drink never harmed nobody,” Ryan said.
“Anybody, lover. Never harmed anybody.” Krysty shook her head. “How can you expect the lad to ever learn anything when you set him such a poor example?”
“Sorry. I reckon Dean should be even more pleased at the chance of getting himself some good learning. Specially when he sees the problems his old man has.”
Forde poured out eight measures of the samphire liqueur. “I’d like to propose a toast,” he said, lifting the shot glass. “To new friends that might one day become old friends.”
“I’ll drink to that,” Doc responded, sipping at the dark green liquor. “By the Three Kennedys! But that is a taste of paradise. The flavor of tropical ice overlaid with arctic fire.”
“Prettily put,” Forde said. “I was taught the secret of preparing the samphire by a wise old woman who lived up on the high plains. Only a dozen miles from the scene of the Little Bighorn battlefield.”
“The place where the ghosts walk in the midday sun,” Doc said, holding out his glass for a refill.
“It’s delicious,” Mildred said. “Got a fresh tang to it.”
“Burns when it starts getting down into your belly.” Dean finished the contents of his shot glass, shaking his head at the offer of a top-up from Johannes Forde.
“Can we see some films tomorrow?” J.B. asked, also rejecting a second glass of the richly scented liqueur.
“Don’t see why not. Fact is, you can see them better in the darkness.”
Krysty glanced sideways at Ryan. “How about it, lover? Couldn’t we ?”
“I don’t think so. Been a tiring day, what with the muties and all. Could be a big day tomorrow, visiting a strange ville. Specially one with a reputation. Best we all get some sleep now. Mebbe see the vids tomorrow.”
“They’re films, not vids, friend Cawdor,” Forde said. “Common mistake.”
“Bed sounds good.” J.B. yawned even as he said that, putting out a hand to touch Mildred affectionately on the arm. “How about you?”
“Yeah, John. Least the weather’s decent.”
“If any of you would like to use the bed of the wag ?” Forde offered.
But they all agreed to sleep in the open, at the center of the circle of nodding trees. Ryan considered placing a watch, but there didn’t seem to be any feeling of danger.
He slept dreamlessly.
Chapter Eight
Daylight came late, a sullen sun reluctantly appearing from a bank of heavy, dark gray cloud to the east of the clearing. The air felt cooler, with a hint of rain riding in the teeth of a fresh norther.
Ryan blinked his eye open, his hand reaching automatically to check that his weapons were still secure. The Steyr rifle lay at his right side, the barrel pointing toward his feet. The SIG- Sauer was close to the rolled-up coat that had been his pillow for the night. And the panga was still snugly sheathed on his hip.
Like the rest of the group, Ryan hadn’t undressed for the night, simply loosening the laces in his steel-capped combat boots.
Krysty was very close to him on the left side, her firm buttocks pressed against his groin and the tops of his thighs, so that the lovers lay together like two spoons, laid neatly in a cutlery drawer.
She sensed his waking and opened her bright emerald eyes, her arms stretching, muscles creaking, above her head. Ryan noticed that the coils of sentient hair were curled tightly and defensively against her nape.
“All right, lover?” he whispered, not wanting to wake the others.
“Sure. You?”
“Slept great.”
“The samphire drink didn’t give you any good dreams, did it? Like Johannes promised.”
He sighed, brushing a dried sycamore leaf from his chin. “No. Just sleep. How about you, lover?”
She lifted herself onto an elbow, turning to smile down at him. “Gaia! But I love you, Ryan,” she whispered, lowering her face to his, kissing him on the lips.
“Love you, too,” he said, when they broke apart. “But tell me about your dreams.”
She looked around the clearing. The pair of bay mares were standing contentedly still, heads close together, their breath just visible in the cool of the morning. There was no sign of life from the canvas-topped wag, nor from the hummocked bodies that circled the fire.
“Dark dreams,” she said.
“Nightmares?”
“Kind of.”
“Remember them?”
Krysty nodded, lying down again and cuddling up to Ryan for warmth. “Course. Nearly always remember my dreams. They were coiling and dark.”
“Tell me.”
She laughed quietly. “No. Nothing more boring than listening to someone else’s dreams.”