James Axler – Bitter Fruit

He bent down, grabbed Tarragon’s clothing and ran to the wag Krysty and Doc had already climbed into. As Ryan shoved the boy into the back of the vehicle, he glimpsed movement on the ridge back along the tracks the wags had made coming down into the valley.

Horsemen crested the hill. A rider in long green robes with a silver brocade led them.

“It’s him!” one of Gehrig’s party shouted. “Prince Boldt himself!”

Krysty took the unconscious boy’s shoulders and pulled him under the bench seat that ran down the side of the pickup bed. “I’ve got him,” she told Ryan. She peeled back an eyelid. “Don’t worry about him. Bringing him was probably the best thing you could do for him.”

“You don’t know if that’s the Prince,” another man shouted. “Not with the way these tree-huggers can bend a man’s vision around with their magic.”

An argument ensued, but it was swallowed by the roar of the revving engines.

“Got us an effing tree-hugger right here,” said a bearded man with a ragged scar through his lower lip. He stood up in the back of the wag and approached the unconscious boy. “Easy for the killing.” He slipped a hooked knife from his belt, then reached down and grabbed the boy’s hair.

Ryan moved in a blur of action, lifting up the Steyr, then butt-stroking the man in the face.

With a groan of pain he fell over the side of the wag as if he’d been poleaxed. Before he landed, the other men in the wag were grabbing for weapons.

“Stay down!” Gehrig ordered. “Stay down, the lot of you mangy dogs!”

Ryan and his group had already drawn their weapons, and lines had been drawn between the two groups.

“You got something special in your heart for that bloody tree-hugger?” Gehrig demanded.

“Lost one of my people when the Celts opened the ball on this,” Ryan stated, his eye roving over the assembled chilling crew Blackjack Gehrig ran. “This boy’s our prisoner. Could be he’s the only thing that’ll help us get our friend back.”

The machine gunners were burning rounds by the belt, and the drivers were screaming for the order to move.

“I can understand that,” Gehrig said, looking at Ryan. Then he turned his attention to his men. “And if I can understand it, then you dogs can, too. I say this once, so clean your effing ears out and listenany man touches that boy, he answers to me, then he answers to his maker. And that’s all I’ve got to say about that.”

There was a good deal of grumbling, but the tension drained from the situation.

Ryan looked at Krysty. “Have a care, lover.”

“You, too.”

Gehrig waved the wags into motion.

Sprinting, Ryan caught up with the jeep and pulled himself in behind Gehrig. He settled into the seat, then belted up. Empty brass rolled around his feet.

The Celts on horseback approached at a gallop, their weapons blazing. Motorized vehicles had joined the pursuit, and a half-dozen wags now threaded their way through the horses along with motorcycles.

Ryan kept his head low as bullets whacked branches over their heads. “Where are we headed to?”

“New London,” Gehrig said. He craned his head around the seat. “You’re not from around here, are you?”

IT WASN’T A ROAD so much as a trail they followed. Ryan watched with interest. Gehrig’s men were obviously well versed in scooting along the treacherous terrain, not panicking when soft ground gave way beneath them and sent the wags whining yards out of the path they’d chosen.

Gehrig stood and turned to look over his shoulder, shouting at someone behind them and waving enthusiastically as they approached a narrow notch in the mountains. To Ryan, it looked like a gunsight carved between the rocky slopes.

“Here’s where it gets lovely,” Gehrig said, dropping back into his seat. He waved his driver over to the left. The man steered away, then held his own in the rough terrain as the full-sized van came rattling up to pass them.

Ryan, sitting behind Gehrig, had noticed now that the steering wheels for the wags were on the opposite side than he was used to. He remembered from bits and pieces of conversations between different drivers he’d known while traveling with the Trader, and books he’d looked at and read, that the people of England and a few other countries drove on the other side of the street. It felt alien to him, but the vehicle handled admirably.