It was his look. His legacy.
Cold fire.
The two-headed scalie, its faces, necks and massive, flabby chest smeared with gore, was threatened back into its cage by four roustabouts with clubs and the carny master with his long prod.
As Baldoona was rolled out, it gripped the bars in both hands and belched sonorously in defiance. Then another tarp-covered cage was rolled in.
“You all have heard the legend of the Wazl bird,” Crecca said. “A ferocious mutie strain found only in the darkest, grimmest mires of Deathlands. Half crocodile, half condor. All chiller. The legend says the Wazl can’t be tamed, can’t be taught, can’t be defeated. It lives only for the joy of tearing apart living flesh and drinking living blood. It drops out of the night sky like a meteor and takes the unwary from behind with talons and teeth. It is my honor and privilege, dear Bullard ville, to present to you, the Wazl!”
Crecca threw back the tarp, exposing a pair of huge, featherless bird creatures. Their bodies and wings were covered with what looked like thin, aged, well-tanned leather; their long, straight, reptilian beaks were lined with tight rows of serrated teeth; their tri-talons black and curving like great fish hooks. As the two creatures took in the crowd, and the crowd’s fear, their eyes were full of savagery and insane fury.
First one of the muties opened its maw and let out a shrill, sawing cry, then both of them were doing it. The noise required no explanation from the carny master; its meaning passed through the ears and into the marrow.
It was the Wazls’ call to taste blood.
A moment later, a large, strangely attired figure stepped into the center ring. A steel-mesh fencing mask concealed the man’s face and head, his body was protected by a chain-mail suit, his hands and arms by mesh gauntlets. He wore a monumental black codpiece strapped to his hips.
Of all the bad ideas ever come to fruition, letting the Wazls out of their cage was right up there with the nukecaust.
But from what had gone before, Ryan knew, as did everyone else in the crowd, that that was exactly what was going to happen. The only question was, how? Six roustabouts used long metal poles to trap and pin the Wazls against the inside of the bars. The bird creatures’ screams of outrage drowned out the music from the tent’s speakers, and made many of the Bullard ville folk cover their ears with their hands. Once the Wazls were securely pinned, the cage door was opened and the man in the steel helmet and suit stepped inside.
The mutie birds wanted him.
They snapped their beaks and hissed in blood lust.
The man bent, spread his arms and took hold of the birds’ ankles, trapping both feet of both birds in his gauntleted hands.
The Wazls didn’t like that one bit, and it was all the roustabouts could do to keep them hard against the bars.
“Are you ready?” the Magnificent Crecca asked the man in the cage.
His reply was a nod.
“Then fly!” the carny master cried.
The instant the roustabouts let off the pressure on their prods, the two mutie avians exploded out the open cage door, their long, leathery wings snapping like unfurled sails caught in a shifting gale. Behind them came the man, out of the cage and into the air.
Chaos erupted inside the carny tent.
The Wazls shrieked even louder. Dragged down by their two-hundred-pound burden, they flew low and fast, circling the walls of the tent. The man’s heels, as he was carried aloft, grazed the heads of the stunned spectators.
People screamed.
People threw themselves flat on the ground.
The lizard birds beat the air, raising clouds of dust from the dirt floor. As they flew, they tried to bite their rider, cocking their heads this way and that, looking for an opening to wound, to maim, to chill. The gauntlets protected the man’s hands and arms, and the birds couldn’t get at his head and continue to fly. Their instinct to fly away was stronger than their need to be rid of him.