Jak had also been watching the boys, smiling at their dawn high spirits. He gasped and Ryan glanced back in time to see the taller of them, a ginger-headed youth, throw up his arms and topple silently into the muddy waters. He rose once and then vanished in a small ripple.
The blaster coughed above them once more, and the second lad went down, blood blossoming from his face, joining his dead companion in the river while the empty boat drifted on southward.
“Son of fucking bitch!” Jak swore, half drawing his own Magnum. “Those shit-eating bastards. Came from”
Ryan heard the laughter from the closed-off stateroom deck and recognized the high, grating metallic sound of the Magus’s voice.
He touched Jak on the shoulder, aware that the teenager was quivering with the ferocious tension of white-hot anger. “Let it lay,” he said.
“Cold murders.”
“And nothing we can do about it. Not now. Likely nobody else saw or heard a thing. Silenced huntings blaster. Noise wouldn’t carry above the sound of the engine and the paddle wheel. Kids are dead. Nothing bring them back.”
“Like a chance at venging them.”
Ryan nodded. “Can’t argue with you on that, Jak. Just have to hope the chance comes.”
HE DIDN’T TELL KRYSTY or the others about the bloody double murder. There wasn’t much point. The only thing that really mattered to them was self-preservation.
At breakfast they were entertained by a tall, skinny musician, with greased back hair and a vivid floral waistcoat. He plucked a long-neck banjo and sang a mournful and beautiful song about guerrilla fighters running the ridges of their green homeland of Tennessee.
He bowed at the round of applause when he finished the song. “Many thanks, y’all,” he said. “That was a predark melody from the talented pen of a great writer called John Stewart, one of the immortals.”
Mildred clapped loudest. “I know John Stewart. Got several of his albums. Well, I mean that I used to have them. Love him. Amazing to hear one of his songs here, like this. Amazing.”
Ryan urged them all to eat as large a breakfast as they could manage. “Never know what’s going to go down and when we might get another chance of a good meal.”
Not that Jak needed any urging.
There was a serve-yourself buffet, and Ryan watched incredulously as the snow-haired teenager seemed to be in perpetual motion, coming to the table with a platter heaped high with hash browns, eggs and bacon. Moments later he was up and moving back toward the long table of food, peering under the polished metal covers, helping himself to baked trout and a mixed-pepper omelet.
Ryan finally raised a hand as Jak stood, ready to begin his fourth trip to the buffet. “Don’t take what I said too literally,” he said. “Three helpings should be enough for anyone.”
“Still got couple small gaps that’d fill up nicely some fresh fruit salad.”
Ryan grinned. “Just don’t make yourself sick. Need all the health we got.”
Krysty put down her empty coffee cup and dabbed at her lips with a linen napkin. “Think that all of this could be mind games, lover?”
“You mean that the Magus and Wolfram don’t actually intend to do anything hostile? Just scare the shit out of us?”
She nodded. “Yeah.”
Ryan rubbed his finger down his chin, thinking. Finally he shook his head. “No,” he said. “No, I don’t think so.”
Chapter Twenty-One
“By the mark three by the mark twain.”
The elements were combining against the Golden Eagle. After the violent storm, they now encountered a dense fog that had come drifting out from the forest to the east, layering itself over the sullen waters of the Sippi. Ryan and the others stood on their section of deck, leaning on the cold, wet, iron rail, watching as the banks disappeared from sight.
Captain Huston had immediately slowed the paddle wheel, dropping the speed of the huge vessel to a bare walking pace. And he had put a leadsman into the blunt bow, swinging his weighted line, hauling it in and reading the depth of water beneath the shallow keel.
“By the mark twain.” There was a pause as he coiled the line, heaving it ahead of the slow-moving boat, the splash muffled as the lead hit the river. “By the mark twain. Coarse sand.” His voice echoed around the silent stern-wheeler, up to the captain, who stood huddled in a dark blue pea jacket on the bridge.