“Bring him to his feet.”
Her voice was soft and gentle, yet it carried the unmistakable caress of total authority.
The hunted man didn’t make any effort to struggle as he was heaved upright, standing between the guards, who each held him by an arm.
Ryan and the others knew, without a shadow of doubt, that they were looking at a dead man. Mildred wondered what crime he could have committed to be chased like an animal. Dean’s private guess was that he was an escaped prisoner. J.B. was studying the blasters, impressed by their condition. Michael was feeling sick. Krysty had closed her eyes, the certainty of murder bringing a wave of sudden faintness. Doc was chasing a residual memory of some ancient story he might once have read, about someone hunting human beings with a pack of dogs. No, a pack of hounds. But it slipped elusively away from him and he decided it probably didn’t much matter.
Ryan watched the woman, almost overwhelmed by the palpable and oddly sensual aura of power that surrounded her.
The clearing had become almost silent.
Most of the rottweilers had thrown themselves on the trampled turf, tongues lolling. The horses were still, with only an occasional shift of movement.
From their hiding place, the watchers could hear the harsh breathing of the captured man.
“A disappointing chase, friends.” The woman heeled the mare closer to the prisoner. “But you have had your chance at saving your life, have you not?”
There was no answer. The sec man with the whip lashed the man across the face, making him cry out.
“Answer Mistress Marie when she speaks, you bundle of shit in a skin!”
The woman shook her head, her long hair glittering in sinuous movement, like a nest of countless black snakes.
“Don’t waste any more time. The sun is on his way to his bed, and we should return to home for food and rest. Do the necessary to him.”
The “necessary” was brutal and mercifully swift, carried out with such a casual expertise that Ryan knew it had been done by these sec men on many previous occasions.
Off came the mud-splattered shirt, tossed down in the dirt. The sec men on each side took a half step away, pulling the man’s arms straight. His ribs stood out like a picket fence against the pale skin of the chest.
The man with the whip drew a heavy blade, like a Bowie knife, fifteen inches in length, tapering to a needle-point He glanced toward the woman on the horse, who nodded.
Though her face was partly in shadow, Ryan caught the gleam of teeth and realized that she was smiling.
The knife was thrust in hard, just below the man’s navel and was drawn up to grate against his breastbone, then to the left, toward his armpit Back again, repeating the deep gash to the other side.
“The flying eagle,” Doc whispered. “It was a Viking way of butchery.”
The doomed man had given an inarticulate cry of agony as blood flowed thick and dark from the cuts, across his trousers, puddling at his feet.
“Now,” the woman called in a high, clear voice. “Finish it now!”
The sec man immediately plunged both of his hands, wrist-deep, into the white-lipped gashes, fumbling for a moment, then pulling them out, holding the man’s lungs, froth coated and dripping, in his fingers.
The other guards let go, and the dead man slumped to the bloodied earth.
There was a round of polite applause from the four male civilians, while the woman merely tugged sharply on the reins of her mare, swinging it around.
“Home again, I think,” she said. “Leave the offal where it lies.”
Ryan felt a release of tension.
It was going to be all right.
The wind was carrying their scent to the east, well away from the pack of hunting dogs, and it was obvious that not one of the riders had any clue that they were being observed from only a few yards off.
If this was the way of life in the nearby ville, then it seemed that a better option for them all would be to return to the redoubt and face the unpleasant challenge of a third jump.