But Ryan intuitively felt that it would be better not to turn your back on Ti Jean.
His unhappiness was compounded by not being able to understand what the villagers of Moudongue were saying to each other.
Doc whispered that he could speak a little French, but the people hereabouts spoke a bastardized patois that he suspected was Creole French.
On the surface, all was well.
There was a long room at the far end of the hamlet where everyone had assembled, and were drinking, dancing and bellowing out incomprehensible lyrics at the top of their lungs, Ryan made sure that everyone in his group carried their blasters, but he was reassured to find that the men of the small ville had no guns, though everyone wore a long thin-bladed knife at the hip. The building shook to its rafters from the heavy stamping that passed for dancing in the bayous, to the accompaniment of a fiddle and an accordion; the latter was played by an immense fat man, his shirt sodden with sweat, toothless mouth open, revealing a tongue that was bizarrely forked.
“The Two-step de Bayou Teche” was followed by a driving song with a heavy beat, called “Un Autre Soir d’Ennui.” Gradually the members of Ryan’s group split apart as they entered into the spirit of the dance. Doc swung Lori away, his legs kicking sideways, knees cracking audibly, whooping his pleasure, the girl smiling like a pretty doll in his arms.
Finn was eyeing a skinny girl who looked to be around thirteen. She sashayed up to him and whispered something into his ear.
“Can I dance, Ryan?” he asked.
“Stick to dancing, Finn. Don’t leave this room, or I’ll slit your fat windpipe.”
“Sure thing.” The fat man grinned and went wheeling away after the sprite in her torn dress.
J.B. leaned against the bar, rubbing a pattern in the spilled beer with his forefinger. A huge woman, fully six and a half feet tall and weighing around 350 pounds, came over and tapped him on the shoulder.
” Dansez, mon petit ?” she asked.
“What did?” began the Armorer, but not even waiting for an answer, she jerked him forward, pressing his face into her rolling breasts, nearly knocking his hat off and sweeping him onto the crowded dance floor.
“Want to dance, lover?” asked Krysty.
“Better offer than J.B. got,” he replied.
“Want it more formal?”
“Yeah,” he said with a grin. The beer was loosening him up, and the food had been as good as any he’d eaten inin a long time and a lot of miles.
“Sure.” She composed herself, brushing back an errant strand of the fiery hair from her cheek. “Miss Krysty Wroth of the sanctuary of Harmony requests the pleasure of the next dance with Mr. Ryan Cawdor of of where?”
The answer came in a crackling high-pitched giggle, from someone behind her.
“From the ville of Front Royal in the great state of Virginia, run by Baron Cawdor.”
The blood drained from Ryan’s face at the sudden voice.
Once, years back, a whore in a gaudy house somewhere near Denver had kicked him in the groin in an attempt to rob him. He’d broken her arm to teach her a lesson, but the shocking pain remained a powerful memory. It had felt like the breath had been sucked clean out of his body.
The feeling now was similar.
“What’d you say?” asked Krysty, turning on her heels.
“He’s the youngest runt o’ Baron Cawdor. Richest and most powerful man east of Ol Miss.”
The speaker looked to be around three hundred years old, but was probably somewhere between sixty and ninety, with a filthy fringe of hair around a peeling scalp. He was not much over five feet tall, with a drooping shoulder that made him look like a hunchback. He was dressed in a variety of rags, held together with mud and spittle.
His eyes were bright as stars.
Ryan gaped at the hideous apparition. There was something vaguely familiar about the old, old man, but he, couldn’t set his mind to it.
“You don’t know me, Ryan Cawdor, do yer?”
The noise of the music and bellowed singing was so loud that nobody apart from Krysty and Ryan had heard the dotard’s chattering, or shown the least interest. Instead they concentrated on having a good time.