James Axler – Deathlands

Krysty wasn’t going to be that easily satisfied. “All that bullshit! Head and heart! It doesn’t mean a bastard thing, Ryan. We could’ve saved them and cleansed the earth a little by chilling those cold-eyed slavers.” She bit her lip. “Could’ve done it. Should’ve done it.”

Ryan suddenly felt the familiar swelling of anger, the red mist that often came in a killing field. The seaming scar that ran from his right eye to the corner of his mouth began to throb.

He took a step toward Krysty. “Fireblast! I read in old predark books about what they called bleeding-heart liberals. Folks want to do the right thing, without stopping to think about what the fuck the right thing might be. Sure, we could almost certainly have taken the slavers out. Let all the natives go. Free to run around the forest. Killing’s a craft, just like any other. Get good at it and you stay alive. I figured the risk wasn’t worth the taking.”

Now they were face-to-face, toe-to-toe, glaring at each other. When Krysty spoke, her spittle dashed against his cheek. “There’s times you don’t put yourself first. Gaia! There’s things you can’t just ride around.”

“And getting me and Dean chilled is one of those things, is it? Well, is it?”

“No. Of course not.”

Ryan took a long slow breath and turned away, wiping at his face with his sleeve. “If there’d been any way of doing it without risking our lives, don’t you think I’d have thought of it? There wasn’t.”

“We could still go after them.”

“They’ll be ready. Not like taking candy from a blind baby, Krysty. Slavers aren’t specially trusting sort of men. They’ll be watching real careful. Could even be they might try a counterstrike first. Get their retaliation in before we move against them. No. Not worth it.”

There was a silence that extended to twenty heartbeats, which was broken by Doc.

“I fear that I must ally myself with Master Cawdor, my dear Krysty. History is full of vain sacrifices against hopeless odds. One remembers occasions like the Pass of Thermopylae and the Alamo and Sir Richard Grenville against the Spanish navy. Even Custer’s last stand. But all resulted in terrible mortality for the side of right. There is truly a time for the head to rule the heart. I would not wish to be saying prayers over the burials of Ryan and Dean here.”

There was a stillness after Doc’s words, and the only sound they could hear, by an acoustical freak, was the faint tinkling of the steel chains, far off and small, like the noise of a rat’s feet across broken glass in a dry cellar.

Krysty turned away, tears glistening in her emerald eyes. “You might be right, Doc. So might you, Ryan. But being right doesn’t make it right, does it?”

He reached out and touched her hand, feeling his own anger diminishing and shrinking to nothing. “You’re right from your side, lover, and I reckon that I’m right on mine.”

THEY CONTINUED along the track, on into the late afternoon, seeing the scuffed turf and broken branches where the slavers had driven their prisoners.

“Not quite the paradise it looked,” Ryan commented. He and Krysty were walking side by side, rebuilding the bridges between them.

“Never is. Got to have a serpent in the garden, or it’s not a real garden.”

“Wonder where the rest of them are. The leader, Rodrigo Bivar, said to watch out for another group of them.”

“If we find them, we could mebbe do something about it,” she said.

“I’d go with that,” Ryan replied. “Yeah, I’d carry that one to the wire.”

RYAN’S WRIST CHRON SHOWED a time of five o’clock in the afternoon. But he had no idea at all of what local time might be. “Be dark in a couple of hours,” he said.

“Reckon it’ll be a good idea to find somewhere to camp for the night.” J.B. looked around them. “Forest like this could harbor all kinds of predators.”

“Trail still winds downhill.” Ryan rubbed at his chin where an insect had stung him several minutes earlier. “Could be we might find water soon.”