Chapter Twenty-Nine
“Had provisions for two days,” Jak reported.
“Means that they were scouts on a recce.” J.B. looked at Ryan. “Bivar’ll expect them back the day after tomorrow. Allow them a day. Then he’ll come in.”
Ryan counted on his fingers. “He’ll probably still be moving toward us during those two days. Means that he’ll likely arrive here in a minimum of two days.”
“Maximum of three,” Jak said.
“Anything else interesting in their saddlebags?” Krysty asked.
Jak pointed to the table in the hut. “That bag blasting powder. Doc says it is.”
“I recognized it by the feel and the smell. An uncle of mine had done some prospecting out in the Superstitions in the sixties. Always after that elusive lost seam of the Dutchman.” Doc smiled to himself at the two-hundred-year-old memory. “Needless to say, he never found it.”
J.B. clapped his hands softly. “Might just be what we need to trigger the thermite, Doc. Done well.”
“No. If Jak and I had departed a little earlier and traveled a little quickerbut he was slowed by some tardy cripplethen we might truly have done well and saved more than a dozen young lives from a vicious bloodletting.”
The village was in mourning.
When Doc and the white-haired teenager returned with their grim news, Itzcoatl had dispatched a working party of thirty heavily armed men to retrieve the bodies and bring them back to their homes for ceremonial interment.
The companions had kept well out of the way of the massive grief.
Now they were all gathered in Ryan and Krysty’s hut, discussing whether the happenings of the day made any difference to their plans, eventually deciding that they didn’t.
“IF Bivar HAD COME BY this afternoon or evening he could have walked right in and taken the whole place without a single hand being raised against him.”
Krysty stood in the doorway of the thatched building as the rituals for the dead were still going on. The sun was almost down in the far west, beyond the lake.
Ryan joined her, resting his hand gently on her shoulder. “It’s like we’ve said before, lover. You find a new place and it seems like it could be paradise. Bite into the apple and there’s a stinking great worm.”
“Best we can do is try and leave something better than we find it. Only thing we’ve ever been able to do.”
THE DRUMS had been pounding a slow, mournful rhythm since the bodies of the women and children had been returned to the village, going on into the hours of darkness, making rest almost impossible, though it hadn’t stopped Dean from falling instantly asleep the moment he got into his bed.
“Those damned drums,” Ryan said, standing in the doorway, framed in bright moonlight.
“You ever take a good look at them, lover?”
“The drums?”
“Yeah.”
“Not really. Why?”
Krysty pulled a face. “Like those robes the priests wear for the rituals.”
Ryan turned. “No! You mean that those drums are made from flayed human skin, as well?”
“Right. The horrible thing is that you can see recognizable human parts on them. Nipples and navels. And arms and legs dangle down the sides.”
“Fireblast, Krysty! Times in the last few days I’ve wondered whether we were doing the right thing staying on here to help. Now I’m even less certain than I was.”
“But the god Jak is happy to help them against the slavers, isn’t he?”
“Guess so. You going to try and sleep?”
“Might be able to set myself into a trance. Way Mother Sonja taught me.”
They heard boots on the veranda outside the front door of the hut, followed by a light rap on the wall.
“Who is it?”
“Me,” J. B. replied. “You able to get off to sleep with those bitchin’ drums?”
“Dean’s asleep,” Krysty said, “and I’m going to try and ease myself off, as well.”
“Doc’s snoring like the last of the thunderbirds in our hut,” the Armorer said. “Mildred keeps dropping off for a few minutes, then waking again.”
“How about Jak?”
J.B. look behind him. “Not sure. Kid went out an hour ago and hasn’t reappeared yet. My guess is that he and Rain Flower might have something going together.”