“Hot pipe!” the boy cried, and hopped into the fire pit, landing dangerously close to the flames. He flopped down on a rock and shoved his face toward the warmth, breathing in the waves of heat like a fish gasping for air.
Stepping into the pit a bit more carefully, J.B. went straight to the stocky black woman and gave her a kiss on the cheek. “Hey, Millie. This ville looks okay. No sign of slave pens like the last two.”
“Thank goodness,” Dr. Mildred Wyeth sighed wearily as she whittled on a tree branch with a wicked-looking knife. “Any chance we can trade for horses or a wag?” she asked hopefully.
“That depends upon how willing they are to be reasonable,” J.B. said gruffly. He removed his fedora and smoothed his sandy hair. “But we’ll get you some transport.”
“The ville seems to be a trading post,” Ryan stated, squatting on his heels. “We saw a caravan of wags and horses being prepared. Long as we can pay, there will be no trouble.”
“War wags?” Krysty Wroth asked, concern in her voice. Her sentient hair was coiled tightly about her head in response to her tense mood.
“No, just trucks and some vans. Nothing special.”
“Good.”
“How’s the foot?” Ryan asked, basking in the heat of the fire.
Sheathing the blade, Mildred used the branch as a crutch to lever herself erect. Experimentally, she put some weight on her bandaged foot and hobbled a few steps, then sat on another flat rock with obvious relief.
“Better,” the physician replied. “Swelling is going down. Feel like an idiot spraining my ankle jumping from that ship we were searching.”
“Thank Gaia it wasn’t broken,” Krysty said.
“Well, landing on top of John helped a lot.” Mildred smiled, straightening her leg carefully.
Adjusting his glasses, J.B. grinned. “Glad to be of assistance.”
Ignoring the banter, Ryan watched her face, noting the pain she was trying to hide. “Think you can make it to the vffle?”
“To get out of this cold, I’d walk barefoot over live sting-wings,” she growled. “Hell yes, I can make it. I’m ready to go right now.”
“Sit downwe’re going to wait for a bit before going,” Ryan said, rubbing his unshaven jaw. “J.B. and I need to warm up some in case there’s trouble, and we want to give the guards enough time to finish burying the dead.”
“And divide the loot,” J.B. added, resting his Uzi on his lap. He paused for a moment, listening to the sounds of the forest, then slowly relaxed.
“We heard the shots. Who got chilled?” Krysty asked, her long fiery hair waving softly around her shoulders as if stirred by secret winds only she could feel.
“A couple of outlanders trying to get inside the ville,” Ryan replied, feeling his muscles loosen under the waves of heat from the tiny fire. He rested a hand on the ground and discovered the surface was warm to the touch. This pit idea of Doc’s worked great. Doc Tanner was a gold mine of clever ideas. “Smugglers, we think. Man and a woman. She was dressed like she was pregnant, but it was only a bundle of white powder strapped to her belly.”
“Shot her on the spot,” J.B. added, using a handkerchief to polish his glasses. “Very fast on the draw, these guys. Not good marksmen, but bastard fast.”
Pausing in his work of sharpening a leaf-shaped knife on a whetstone, Jak Lauren looked up and said, “Close enough, speed all need.”
Born and bred down in the nuke-blasted ruins of Norleans, the teenager was the color of snow, hair and skin alike. He wore military fatigues with bits of metal and glass sewn into his camou-colored vest. A blue-steel handcannon rested on his right hip, and more than a dozen knives were hidden on his person. Another was sheathed on his belt, and a small knife peeked out from the top of his left boot.
“What was it, jolt?” Krysty asked. Ryan shrugged. “I have no idea, but that sounds right. What else could stir such hatred with a glance?”
“Did they have horses?” Mildred queried. “If the ville now has a spare pair, we might get them at a price.”