“What does ‘couldn’t’ mean, son?”
“It means Jak said it would be double dangerous to go into thick brush. Like chasing after a wounded animal into mesquite. So he said to come tell you.”
“The others up? Where’s Krysty?”
“Taking a wash. Everyone else is up.”
Doc appeared in the doorway of the bedroom, grinning wolfishly. “The sun has got his hat on, Brother Cawdor, and there is likewise a wind on the heath.”
Ryan recognized the quote from previous repetitions by the old man, but he couldn’t remember the source. “Life is very sweet, brother. Who would wish to die?”
“Good. Very, very good, Brother Cawdor. We shall make something of you as a scholar after all. You’ve heard the body has gone from the secret garden below?”
“Yes.”
“I shall go and reconnoiter what I may of this mysterious disappearance. Will you join me?”
“Soon as I can get my clothes on in some privacy. Like a gaudy saloon on a Saturday night in here.”
THE GARDEN WAS MOIST and green and mostly in heavy shadow, the sun rising far off to the east, across the Lantic, behind the frame house.
“See impression where body lay,” Jak said, sitting on the bottom step of the porch.
“Which way did they go?” J.B. asked. “Not that it matters much in the green hell out there.”
Jak pointed toward a flowering wisteria that had curled itself around the trunk of a tall self-seeded sycamore. “Vanished in bushes.”
“We going to take a look for the other man?” Krysty asked. “I can sort of feel him close by.”
“Might have a blaster.” Dean dropped his hand to the butt of his own 9 mm Browning Hi-Power.
“Best move on toward the center of Washington Hole.” Ryan glanced up at the sky. “Could be a nice day.”
Doc stood with his right hand holding one of the pillars of the porch, his fingers spread wide. “King George says go, we must obey, over the hills and far away.” He sang the old song in a surprisingly melodious voice.
“Might as well move. See if we can pick up some breakfast on the road.”
“Pity,” Doc said. “You know, Ryan, I would dearly have loved to see a real-life samurai warrior. Or, even a real-dead samurai warrior. I am sure he could have offered so much arcane wisdom to us.”
There was a strange thrumming noise in the bushes, and a whir of movement, a resonant thud, and an immensely long arrow, nearly five feet from honed tip to feathered end, cracked home into the wooden pillar, right by Doc, landing between his spread fingers.
Chapter Nine
“By the Three.” The words whirled out Doc’s mouth, ending in a gasp as Ryan snatched at the old man and hurled him prone on the porch, behind the cover of an ornamental fence.
Everyone else hit the dirt, blasters drawn, peering through the gaps at the still and silent garden.
A little way off a pigeon, red-collared and crested, clattered noisily from the brush, flapping up to perch on a high branch of a stately elm.
“That way,” J.B. said, pointing with the blunt muzzle of the Uzi.
“Thank you for saving my life, my dear Ryan, but I feel you might have been a little less violent. I am quite breathless with the sudden exertion of it all.”
“Quiet, Doc.” Ryan was looking up at the bizarrely long arrow, with its elegant goose-feather flights. “You seen anything like that, J.B., anywhere in Deathlands?”
“Never. What kind of a bow does it take to fire something like that?”
“Looks like would go through wall of house,” Jak muttered.
“And it passed between my fingers. Brushed both of them with the force of its passing. Look.” Doc held out his hand, trembling a little. “See the scratches on them.”
“Probably aimed for that,” Mildred said. “Not at all impossible,” Doc replied. “I have read a little on the subject of the samurai, and their skill at arms is quite legendary.”
“Can’t see anyone out there,” Dean said. “We going to go out after him?”
“That sounds like a triple-good way to get yourself chilled, son.”
“Yeah, I suppose so. If he’s got a big bow to go along with that arrow. It’s more like a spear. I’ve seen people fishing through ice with a sort of arrow a bit like that one.”