James Axler – Cold Asylum

ONCE THEY WERE EN ROUTE for the ville of Sun Crest, Marie Mandeville virtually ignored them, riding ostentatiously at the front of the column, surrounded by the quartet of sycophantic and elegant young men.

The trail was well marked, though it occasionally narrowed among the trees, forcing them into a meandering single file. But most of the time it was possible to ride in pairs or threes.

Ryan found himself alongside the most senior of the sec men, a grizzled veteran with three golden stripes on his sleeve.

“Name’s Harry Guiteau,” he offered. “I seen you someplace, Cawdor.”

“Could be. I been most places. Looks like that could be true for you as well.”

The man nodded. His left cheek was badly scarred, as though he’d once been on the wrong end of a charge of buckshot, and two fingers were missing from his left hand. He noticed Ryan appraising him.

“The hand was a woman. Hunkpapa, up in the high plains. I was sixteen years old and drunker than a skunk. Pain woke me up, but she got away. I always wondered what it was that I’d done to make her so sore.”

“How about the mark on your face?” Dean asked, unable to quench his insatiable curiosity.

“I rode a time with Gert Wolfram.”

Ryan glanced around to see if J.B. had picked up on the notorious name from their joint past, but the Armorer was arguing with Michael about not holding on so tightly.

“You knew him?” Guiteau asked.

“No. Know the name. Used to run a kind of mutie freak show around some of the northern pestholes. Must be ten or fifteen years ago. Mebbe longer.”

They were moving steadily down a gentle slope, with clumps of stately cottonwoods on both sides of the trail. Somewhere not far ahead Ryan could hear the sound of fast-flowing water. The sun was sinking rapidly, and the shadows clustered more closely around the riders.

Guiteau heeled his mount through a narrow gap between a pile of jumbled stone and a fallen pine.

“Used to be a vacation cabin,” he said, gesturing with his thumb at the ruin. “Some vid star. Locals say she topped herself with a straight razor when her tapes stopped selling. Supposed to be triple-famous. I can’t remember what she was called.”

“How long before we reach the ville?” Ryan asked.

“Hour. Got to cross the south fork of the Antelope. Had some rain lately, so it’s up at the ford.” He looked back at the one-eyed man. “I’ve sure as shit seen you before. You was saying about Gert Wolfram?”

“No. You said you rode with him. I said I’d heard the name before. Years before.”

The sergeant had a chew of tobacco in his cheek, and he loosed a thin stream of dark liquid onto the trail. “Yeah, that’s right. Your kid asked me about this.” He touched the deep scar tissue that disfigured his cheek, tugging the corner of his mouth up into a perpetual quirkish grin.

“Shotgun?” Dean offered.

“Yeah. One of Gert Wolfram’s fucking star attractions done it to me.”

“Mutie?”

“Right, Cawdor. Kind of half-breed. Stickie mother and a swampie father. Least, that was the story.”

“Bad mix.” Now the noise of the river was growing much louder, making it more difficult to hear the sergeant’s story.

But Ryan wanted him to keep on talking so Guiteau lost interest in whether or when he might have seen him. There were places with long memories where the Trader and his men and women were concerned, places that had encountered the iron fist inside the iron glove.

“Bastard got hold of a sawed-down. Wolfram used it in part of his show. Only loaded with rock salt. Fired it at the muties when they pretended to attack him from right across the cage. Course, it made a hell of a bang but it didn’t do no harm. Not at that range from a sawed-down. This mutie had a woman, and I was younger and I’d have fucked anything that didn’t have hooves.” Guiteau laughed. “Fact is, even that’s not totally true. Long nights our riding the lines and that little sheep starts looking about the prettiest thing you ever But that’s not the point.”