James Axler – Bitter Fruit

“You’re an enemy of the Prince’s, then?” Cardamom asked Ryan when the boy had finished.

“No,” Ryan replied honestly. “But the boy’s told us about the plague. I got people back where I come from that I wouldn’t want to see anything happen to. We’re going into that fortress, come hell or high water, to take Mildred back if she’s alive, and chill the people responsible if she isn’t. I’m figuring if we work it right, Boldt is going to catch the last train west when we’re done. And if there’s a way to be done with this plague, then we’ll see to that, too.”

Cardamom eyed the Steyr with respect. “You have weapons?”

“All of us,” Ryan answered. “And a few more besides.”

“We’ve been kept to knives,” the old man said. “None longer than from our elbows to the tips of our fingers.”

“Makes the guards harder to kill,” Ryan observed grimly.

“That it does. But there’s some of us got staffs ready to hook the knives to. They make mean spears. And we’ve got bows and arrows.” Cardamom looked out over the dark terrain. “How many are you?”

“Me and four more.”

“Not hardly the army the Prince has at his beck and call.”

“When he’s dead, I figure mebbe some of the threat goes with him,” Ryan said.

“Probably true.”

“He got a second-in-command?”

“Boldt doesn’t believe in laying the groundwork for a rival,” Cardamom said. “The closest there is to a second is Pepper.”

“Met him,” Ryan replied. “Briefly, and in passing.” He faced the man more directly. “Tarragon suggested there might be some help in this for me and my people. Since we’re both aiming on chilling the same person, mebbe something mutual could be worked out.”

Heated lights gleamed in the old man’s eyes. “I figure something can be arranged. The Time of the Great Uprooting is nearly upon us. We’ve all seen how the Prince is behaving of late, and we know he’s been getting ready. The last raid really put him on the defensive. He was hardly out of his fortress at all today, which isn’t usual for him. Come on inside.”

Ryan signaled for the others and covered them as they threaded their way to the house while watching out for the roving guards. In only a few minutes they were all together.

“IT WOULD MEAN DEATH if these cellars were discovered,” Cardamom said as he pushed the hand-carved dining table and chairs aside in the small kitchen. He’d dimmed the lantern and thrown a towel over the room’s only window. “Boldt has his sec people search regularly.”

“You haven’t been found out?” Krysty asked.

Ryan knew all of the companions were feeling slightly claustrophobic, closed in as they were in the small house in the heartland of their enemy with potential death roving outside. He kept his hand close to his blaster.

“No.” Cardamom counted boards from the side of the house, then put his heel down on one of them. “Things aren’t quite as you think, lass.” He added weight to the foot. The wooden plank creaked a couple times, then it sounded as though something popped into place. “Spending all this time with Prince Boldt, we dissenters have had to become a bit more clever over the years. Only a handful of people know about the digging we’ve done over the years. After tonight it’s not going to matter anymore. We can’t wait any longer, either.”

The old man walked out of the dining room and into the tiny bedroom. His wife, lean and angular, her long gray hair pulled back out of her ruddy face in a ponytail, stood at the wall to the left of the sway-backed bed. A long, double-edged knife was partially hidden in the folds of her dress.

Ryan gazed around the room, noting the lack of personal items. The existence the Celts had under Boldt was stripped down to essentials.

Cardamom’s wife hooked her fingers behind a wall and pulled it open, revealing a narrow set of stairs that corkscrewed down into the earth beneath the small house.

“In the kitchen,” the old man explained, “the floors may creak a bit, but the Prince’s soldiers have never found this.”