The one slightly encouraging sign was that Doc had been able to sit up, with help from Ryan and Jak, and had sipped at his own helping of the steaming soup, licking his lips after three or four spoonfuls before wearily lying down again.
“We have to get him well away,” J.B. said, standing in the doorway, the setting sun flaring off the twin lenses of his spectacles.
Ryan was sitting on the bed, holding Krysty’s limp hand. “Fates are against us, bro.”
“You mean her using the Gaia power and it knocking her out like this?”
“Sure.”
Mildred was lying on her own bed. “She’s hit harder by it than I ever saw before.”
“When do you reckon she might be able to travel again?” Ryan asked.
“Krysty’s about the strongest woman I ever came across, Ryan, but she’s not going to be up and walking good for… At the most optimistic, say three days.”
“Just to get back to the gateway?”
“Still, three days.”
“How about Doc?” Jak asked.
“Same. Think he’s about turned the corner. If it came to it, he could maybe walk a short distance, tomorrow evening. Not a lot sooner.”
“If made break tonight? Me, Dean and J.B. help Doc, and you and Mildred take Krysty?”
Ryan sniffed. “Don’t know the country like they do, Jak. They got some dogs. And there’s the Apaches, as well. One of them’d hunt us down before we got two miles.”
The teenager got up from his bed and walked to stand alongside J.B., the dying rays of the sun turning his white hair to a mane of living fire.
Ryan looked at the two slight figures, side by side. His mind flashed back to the long years that he’d known the Armorer, and the shorter time with the boy, all the desperate times they’d faced together.
He wondered if they were all coming close to the end of the line.
“You four could get away,” he said hesitantly.
“Looks like a cloudy night. Be long gone into the forest before they started off to chase you. Move fast, a lot faster, without Krysty or Doc to slow you down.”
“Dad! You can’t mean that. I’m not going, and you can’t make me.”
J.B. and Jak both opened their mouths to speak, but Mildred was quicker, holding up an accusing finger. “In my time, Ryan Cawdor, we had a good saying. ‘Why not go and take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut.’ ”
“Come on, it makes sense.”
J.B. bit his pale lips. “Never reckoned to hear you say anything like that, old friend. Times to walk away and times to stand. Trader used to say that. And you know what, he was right as ever.”
“Tomorrow at noon they’ll find a legal way of butchering Doc in front of our faces.” Ryan sighed. “And there’s nothing we can do to save him. Then there’ll be some pretext for chilling you and me, J.B., then the others. Knife in the back? Poison in the cup? We don’t all have to die.”
“Together,” Jak said very quietly, with a calm finality. “What goes down, goes down together.”
JIM OWSLEY HAD LOOKED in just after dark, lighting the oil lamps for them.
The sec man was hardly able to restrain his delight at their hopeless predicament.
“Always said that nobody likes a smart-ass. Specially not mutie, black smart-asses. All that winnin’, just so you can end up losin’.”
Ryan casually rested his hand on the man’s scrawny shoulder, letting finger and thumb bite together. He clipped the nerve ends of the muscle, making Owsley whimper with the sudden electric pain, making him drop to his knees on the chipped planks of the floor.
“Hey, you son of a bitch! Didn’t have to do that to me.”
“Get out.” The voice of the one-eyed man was icy with anger and contempt.
“Just come to bring you light.”
“You did that. Now get the hell out of here.”
The sec man paused in the doorway. “You should try and reckon on winning some friends, outlander. By the saints of night and fog, but you’ll be needing them.”
He went out and slammed the door shut behind him, making the whole cabin shake.