Only Emma hesitated.
“Yes, little lady?”
“By stone and water! No, you won’t!” she said angrily, taking a few steps away from the mounted man.
“What?” He looked at Josh Morgan for an explanation. “She a stupe?”
Krysty answered him, speaking quickly, addressing her words more to the visibly disturbed Emma. “Had a bad time in Green Hill. Lot of men tried to rape her. Lot of chilling went on. Then, a day later, the fight with the stickies. She was very quiet seeing the way that the last of your men died.”
“How was that?” His curiosity made him forget the outburst from the golden-eyed young woman.
Krysty moved closer, putting herself physically between Joaquin and the distressed Emma, seeing out of the corner of her eye that Jak had stepped in again to comfort her.
“They had him tied, his jaws forced open. Stickies tipped in black powder and set light to it. Poor devil’s head practically exploded.”
The sec sergeant looked at Joshua Morgan. “Who was it? Who was last?”
“Didn’t know at the time. They had me stripped and tied in the shadows. I couldn’t see.” He swallowed hard. “It was only after, when I looked, that I recognized Harry.”
“Harry Nodes?”
“Yeah.”
Joaquin tugged at the reins, stopping his horse from moving sideways. “If. Woman said that his head was practically. How could you be sure?”
“Had that tattoo of two pigs fucking across his back, between the shoulders.”
“Oh, yeah. Right.”
The sun still shone down brightly, but there were banks of snowy clouds, fluffy-topped, gathering toward the north of the region, characteristic thunder-heads with the promise of plenty more rain to come.
Joaquin suddenly recalled Emma and her strange reaction. “Lady with the yellow eyes. She doesn’t want to ride double-up with me or one of the men?”
By now she’d recovered most of her self-control, even hanging out a watery smile to dry. “Thanks a lot, but I think I’ll be better if I walk with the others.”
“As you like. Looks as if there’s a big old chem storm on the way. Best move on to the ville and report to Baron Sharpe. Never keep a baron waiting is what I always say.”
He offered a hand to Joshua Morgan, who swung up onto the horse’s back. He locked his hands around the sergeant’s waist, giving a half wave to Ryan and the others.
The horses moved on. Ryan noticed that Joaquin sent two men ahead as scouts, confirming the professional skill they’d already noticed.
The seven friends, with Emma, strolled along the weed-strewed blacktop after the sec patrol. Ryan dropped back a little to walk alongside the doomie, who had Jak in close attendance on the other side.
“What did you see?” he asked her.
She shook her head, still keeping the smile in place. “Stupe of me. Can’t get used to it. Many of them in the group wanted to bed me. The one called Joaquin most of all. He was planning to try and get me in the stables. No. I guess ‘planning’ isn’t the right word. Too strong. More a sort of fantasy for him. But it made me feel choked and sick.”
Jak looked across at Ryan, his white hair dazzling in the sunshine, his ruby eyes screwed up against the painfully bright light.
“This good move?” he asked.
Ryan shrugged. It was a question that was nagging at him. But they needed food and shelter. And Baron Sharpe, whatever his faults, should welcome them as helpers of his sec man.
“I don’t know,” he said.
Emma patted Jak on the arm, looking at Ryan. “Can’t feel real danger.”
It didn’t console Ryan all that much, remembering how often the doomie had protested that her mutie skills were often variable and unreliable.
Chapter Nineteen
The ville had once been a huge rambling country mansion, built around 1885 in the classic Victorian Gothic style-towers, turrets, winding corridors and stained glass. It seemed that there had once been a number of multistory buildings surrounding it that had taken most of the nuke impact during skydark, preserving it, though there had been some minor damage to the roof where modern repairs stood out like a sore thumb.