Fifth was another son. Ryan’s guess put him in his middle twenties, bearded, with long reddish hair. Like the rest of the family of wildwooders, his wrists were chained together. There was what looked like an untreated gunshot wound through his left shoulder.
The five were linked together with a long steel chain that was looped around each neck.
“How does this work, Guiteau?” Mildred asked. “They fight each other and then what?”
“One gets left alive.”
“You mean they have to try to kill each other?” Ryan was disgusted. “While we all stand and applaud them? Son slaughters grandmother. Or mother chills husband? You’re bastard sick, Harry. I’m leaving.”
“No.”
“I don’t believe that you can compel us to remain here and watch this sick-brain spectacle,” Doc said, his eyes narrowed with anger.
“You believe wrong, Doc,” Guiteau replied. “Baron has plans for you all that he can tell you about some time. Not my place to do that.”
“Obeying orders again.” Mildred sneered.
“But he’d have you all gunned down without blinking if you went against his afternoon’s sporting.”
“Be a lot of blood spilled if that happened.” J.B. made it obvious that this was a simple promise and not an idle threat to the sec man.
Guiteau smiled, genuinely amused. “Think that worries me or the baron, outlander? Main thing is that some of the spilled blood would be yours. All of you. Rest doesn’t matter.”
Nobody had noticed that Michael had walked from the raised dais and now stood by them, with Marie Mandeville holding his hand.
Krysty turned to the woman. “You truly don’t have any sort of a conscience, do you?”
The mistress of Sun Crest smiled, showing perfect white teeth. “Conscience? Conscience, Krysty Wroth, is a dying moth fluttering in an empty attic.”
“What happens to the one left alive?” Dean asked. “You let him go?”
“Sure,” Guiteau replied. “But we kind of make certain he doesn’t cause trouble for the baron again.”
“How?”
“We call it the four by one,” Marie replied.
“They go free, minus one ear, one eye, one hand and one foot. We allow them to choose which. The left or the right. We are not barbarians.”
“Generositythat could be your big mistake,” Mildred said, her voice thick with ironic anger.
The woman smiled and snapped her fingers, the dying sun glittering off the strange ring with the realistic human eye sealed into it.
“I’ll still be generous long after the worms are shitting in your mouth, lady,” she said. “Come on, Mickey. Come and watch the last of the sport.”
Before any of them could say a word, she had led the teenager back to the dais, carefully draping her long cloak across both their laps.
“Someone better speak to that boy,” Doc said, poking at the grass with the ferrule of the sword stick. “I am not one to talk ill of a lady, but that ferocious dragon whore is most certainly not a lady.”
There was the rattling of steel as the chain was unshackled from the necks of the wildwood prisoners. Their cuffs were removed, and they were pushed by half a dozen sec men into a ragged line in front of the baron.
There was a distinct rumble of thunder, echoing around the sky, and more lightning from the east.
Ryan and the others finally sat down and waited for the day to reach its brutal ending.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Oddly it wasn’t the first time that Ryan had encountered this kind of punishment being meted out by a powerful baron.
There had been a ville in the bayous, with its center in an ancient tumbling church. The war wags had been passing by on a trading mission and arrived for the climax of the revolt. A number of sec men had plotted rebellion, but had been stupid or unlucky enough to get found out before they had a chance to put their plan into operation. Barons didn’t usually appreciate treason, particularly from within their ranks.
The men were mostly burned alive.
But the leaders were a father and son.
And the baron saved his best for them.
There had been eight small glasses on the table in front of the two prisoners, each containing a measure of a colorless liquid. Seven of the eight held only water. The eighth was a deadly poison that would act with agonizing slowness. The survivor was promised he’d walk free, though banished from the lands of the baron.