“Not broken. Stiff. Slow me down some. Hinder-any tightrope walking I might be thinking of. And it’s going to take the edge off my famous, gold-medal-winning tango.”
“Want to try standing?”
“No.”
Ryan grinned. “Need a hand up?”
“No. Yeah.” He reached for Ryan and heaved himself erect with a single movement, spitting out a muffled curse and hopping around, keeping his bad foot off the ground.
“Best try and get that boot back on before the swelling gets too bad and you can’t manage it.”
“You’d have done well as the grand inquisitor of the Spanish Inquisition, Ryan. Torture’s your trade. Help me sit down again, and I’ll get the bastard thing on.”
It took several more minutes of painful wrestling before the boot was on and laced. It was halfway through the process that Ryan caught the sound of movement, behind them, along the southbound trail.
“Patrol’s coming back,” he whispered.
“Didn’t go far.”
“Just checking a wide perimeter, I guess. Get down flat and keep still.”
The sec men moved past, keeping silent, in an impressively well-ordered patrol, vanishing through the open main gate of the forest camp.
“Think that’s it for the night?” J.B. asked, finishing tying his boot.
“Who can tell? Wolfram’s a wily rodent. And the Magus plays games nobody else knows.”
IT BECAME OBVIOUS very quickly that the leg injury was going to be too serious for them to do anything combatwise for several hours. Ryan left J.B. resting among the undergrowth, while he scouted deeper into the trees, finding a narrow, fast-flowing, icy-cold stream. With support the Armorer was able to limp the quarter mile to reach it, peeling off the boot again and bathing the injured limb.
“Feels good,” he said, stretching it out and examining it by the light of the moon.
There were several deep indentations around the top of the ankle, black-purple in the silvery glow, all of them badly swollen. There had been very little blood, but the bruising seemed to have gone through to the bone.
J.B. kept moving the foot, wincing and muttering under his breath, trying now and again to take some weight on it.
“Easier?” Ryan asked anxiously.
Time was passing, though he didn’t want to put any undue pressure on his friend. They hadn’t eaten properly for some time, though the chilly stream water was reviving. It was vital that they got their attack under way as soon as possible, taking the best advantage that they could of the remaining few hours of darkness. It was already past midnight.
“Little bit better. I can walk, but I still can’t run. When we finally make our plan, we’d best take that into account. Put me somewhere to stand and shoot, and you do the chasing around.”
“Yeah. Guess we best come up with a finished plan and do it soon.”
They both stared at each other and grinned at the absurdity of it all.
Chapter Thirty-Two
The wag rumbled up the trail from the south, bucking and heaving over the old quake ripples in the surface. It was the rebuilt cab of a predark semi, dappled with old strips of wasted chrome, and hooked up on the back was an armored flatbed piled high with crates.
The moon was almost hidden behind some ragged clouds, and Ryan angled his wrist chron toward it to try to make out the time. “Ten minutes after three,” he whispered to J.B. “Night’s passing on by.”
The Armorer had been dozing at his side, waking every now and again, wincing in pain, biting his lip and massaging his badly bruised leg, trying to restore something close to full movement in it.
“Wonder where they’ve been.”
Ryan peered through the screen of trees, uncomfortably aware of the number of alert sec men who patrolled inside the wire, as well as those watching through night glasses from the range of tall towers around the perimeter of the fortress.
“Looks like they’re stopping. Guards coming out and checking it. Don’t think they were carrying anything of great Wait a minute.”
“What?”
Ryan flattened himself in the short grass, staring intently. “Refueling it.”
J.B. wriggled over alongside his companion, sighing as he dragged his injured foot across the rough ground. “Fuel! Now, that could be”