Ryan nodded. “Mebbe. But I’ll have to sort that out for myself.”
“You owe her?”
“As much as anybody.”
“You owe me, too, Ryan.” Gehrig’s voice was soft and low, but carried an edge to it.
Ryan didn’t see it that way, but didn’t argue. He let the silence between them build.
The raider captain leaned forward and took a pencil from his pocket. The lead was greasy and heavy. He took a moment to whittle it sharp again with a pocketknife. “I’ve had people scout the perimeter, but never inside.” He sketched a horseshoe shape on top of the table. “He’s got a fortress up in the mountains. It’s all ringed by trees. One way in.” He tapped the pencil point against the gap in the horseshoe.
“What about up the mountains?” Ryan asked.
“Be a real bitch to do. That spot was well-chosen. Easy to defend. Mountains are full of wolves, and they keep tangler plants all along the sides.”
“That where you get most of yours?”
Gehrig looked at him.
“Didn’t figure they’d leave them just sitting out for you to come along and take whenever you wanted.”
“Yeah. That’s where we get them.” Gehrig laid the pencil against the left leg of the horseshoe. “Here.”
“So they’re conditioned to you coming up that way.”
“It’s easier. I get snipers up in the trees with silenced rifles, we can take out the perimeter guards, get sometimes an hour, hour and a half to work before any of the dryads get wise.”
“How do you take the tanglers?”
“With the armor. Just wade in and get them, throw them in the baskets. Sometimes we have to kill three plants just to get one. They plant them pretty tight.”
Ryan nodded. “Raid teams. Tanglers. Wolves. Anything else?”
“If by some lucky chance you were able to get inside the thorpe, Boldt’s primary fortress is high up. In the trees here.” Gehrig tapped the bow of the horseshoe.
“Is it a building?”
“Underground. Lives in the root systems from what I’ve been told.”
“Who told you?”
“Dryads I’ve talked to over the years. They weren’t in any shape to lie.”
“Boldt lives in the roots? Not caves?”
“The roots,” the raider captain insisted. “From the sound of them, they’ve been gen-gineered.”
“So were the tanglers,” Ryan said. “Something like that, does all them things, food, clothing, protection and the like, didn’t just happen because of some mutie strain.”
“I agree.”
“How much tech does Boldt have?”
Gehrig leaned forward, eyes alight with the drug and larceny. “The way I hear it, Boldt has computer systems down there from predark days.”
Ryan knew that meant the security didn’t end with flesh-and-blood guards, wolves or plants. Still, leaving Mildred there without knowing one way or the other how things stood wasn’t an option.
And if there was predark tech there, perhaps there was a mat-trans unit that would take them back to Deathlands, as well. The possibility drew him in.
“Boldt is bastard crazy,” Gehrig said. “He starts some of the stories on his own. He’s got him an idea that he’s some kind of knight risen up to strike vengeance at the rest of the world. Every so often you can see him out there on a horse, wearing this black armor and waving a sword, swearing to bring new life to this barren world. Those are his words. Says Lugh Silverhand himself assigned him to bringing this about.”
Ryan didn’t comment. Since he’d been wandering Deathlands, he’d come across his share of religious wackos. With life in Deathlands ground back down to the basics, sometimes the things people chose to believe in the most were things they could touch, weigh and measure the least. It reminded him of the desert muties and their allegiance to the giant spiders.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” the one-eyed man said. “Right now I think I’m going to take advantage of that hospitality you mentioned.”
“You do that,” Gehrig said. He pulled a cigar from his pocket and lit up. “And you keep in mind what I said. You get a bug up your butt to go venturing into the dryad lands, you check with me first. I could help.”