Then Azimuth’s eyes popped open, and he began to scream. As he fought against the straps, his shrill cries were blood curdling.
Crecca moved forward and hit him again.
And again.
It took a half-dozen full-power blows of the pipe to dispatch the huge man. And by the time it was over, his head from the ears up was an undistinguishable mass of shattered bone, brains and dreads.
Puffing from the effort he’d expended, the former carny master lowered his head and leaned on the handle of the pipe for a couple of minutes. He was the only one in the audience who was resting. His rousties unfastened the straps holding down the scout’s body, then lifted the corpse and dumped it headfirst into the cart. When he’d recovered his breath, Crecca bent, grabbed the fallen chair by an arm and set it upright. Azimuth was a big man, but he wasn’t quite big enough to fill the pool’s requirements. As the baron looked over his beaming subjects, he said, “Who’s next?”
The crowd edged closer. Everyone wanted to be next.
Crecca’s glance swept past, then returned to the young son of Ryan Cawdor. He was just the right size. He aimed the bloody pipe at the boy. “How about you, then?” he said.
Crecca didn’t have to ask twice.
Dean raced over to take a seat in the gore splattered chair. He looked very, very happy as the rousties cinched him down.
Crecca put a hand on the boy’s shoulder and said, “I promise to try to do a neater job of it this time.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
Doc hung back at poolside while the others started back down the hill with the empty cart. When they were out of sight over the lip of the slope, he slogged over to where Ryan had dropped his longblaster. He pulled the Steyr from the mud and used the tail of his frock coat to wipe some of the dirt from the barrel, scope and stock. The weapon had gone in muzzle first, so he had to assume the bore was blocked. There was no time to clear it. And he had nothing to clear it with. He slung the bolt-action rifle over his shoulder and hurried down the trail. By the time he caught up the rest of the group, they were lining up in front of the burn barrel to get another ration of the wormy chow. His own stomach growling, Doc carefully hid the Steyr against the wall at the far end of the blockhouse.
As the old man walked across the square to join the others, the carny master climbed on the bloody chair and banged on its arm with the metal cudgel to get everyone’s attention.
Doc had hoped that the chilling was over for the day. He had counted on having the entire night to work out a plan for getting his companions away from the gruesome horror of this hellhole.
But it wasn’t to be.
The red-haired carny master announced a coup d’etat and proclaimed himself baron. Looking at the man, Doc had no doubt that he had dispatched the former ruler personally. Because both men were in the control of the pool, because both were coldheart chillers of the lowest order, it didn’t matter who was baron. The agenda was the same.
Doc’s heart leaped into his throat when the new headman said the pool wasn’t satisfied and called for volunteers. Of which there were plenty, including his own dear friends.
Doc’s window of opportunity was rapidly slamming shut.
The simplest course of action was to break the spell of the pool, but he had tried that without success. There was nothing he could do to the companions themselves to snap them out of it. He had noticed that their respective dazes seemed to wane at times, that they appeared to be struggling against the reins. He also noticed that their resistance to control ended with the paralysis that followed each spore fall. If this wasn’t an illusion on his part, it meant that the confused state of mind was temporary, and maintained only by regular redosing with spores, and perhaps with bounty. From the thunder and lightning coming over the ridge above, another downpour was imminent, as was another meal of fungal nodes.