Bullets hissed past him, thudding into flesh, sending blood gouting into the clean air.
He was firing his Smith amp; Wesson Magnum into the ranks of their attackers, but he had no idea whether any of the rounds actually hit anyone.
An arrow feathered itself in the shoulder of his horse, making it buck and rear, bloody froth around its jaw. Bivar leaned over and snapped the shaft with his left hand, knowing that the barbed tip, probably poisoned, would be working its mischief in the animal’s chest.
To his right, there was someone he didn’t recognize, his face a mask of flowing crimson, a tiny dart protruding from the socket of his left eye.
Some of the men were trying to control their terrified mounts, seeking a way out of the maze of low walls. But every turn brought them face-to-face with more of the natives, heading them off from the gates, which were closed behind them.
A bullet snatched the panama hat from Bivar’s left hand, the ribbon unraveling as it dropped to the bloodied dirt.
Garcia fell when a young woman darted in among the hooves with a sharp gelding knife and sliced through the girth, tipping the saddle and dumping Garcia out the side door.
Despite his own pressing danger, Bivar watched in fascinated horror as one of his oldest compadres staggered to his feet, dazed by the tumble, reaching for his revolver, which had been jarred from the holster by the fall.
He was attacked by a half-dozen women, pecking at him with cooking knives and hacking with kindling axes, beating at him, severing fingers as the man began to cry out and wave his hands to try to defend himself.
Then he was down, vanishing in the dirt as the women crowed their triumph.
The last thing that Bivar saw of his friend Garcia, who’d had a fine light tenor voice and knew the names of all of the animals and birds of the forest, were his castrated genitals flourished high in the crimsoned fingers of one of the cackling older women.
RYAN HAD MOVED QUICKLY along the back of the front line of huts, an occasional bullet whistling dangerously close through the reed walls, ripping away a section of the thatch. His SIG-Sauer was cocked in his right hand, and he ran in a crouch, stopping twice to glance out at the battle.
As he’d hoped and planned, it was far more of a massacre than a battle.
The thirty-six slavers had been taken totally by surprise, cribbed into a confined space with no clear areas to turn their horses or work up any momentum against the defenders. The fresh-built walls were just high enough to deter a horse from attempting a jump off a short run, and already two of the newly dug pits had claimed victims.
There was one to his left, and Ryan sidetracked himself to check it. Two old natives were flanking it, so doddery that they could barely notch an arrow to their bows.
A horse lay in the pit, impaled on some of the sharpened stakes that lined its bottom. One of the slavers was standing on top of the dying animal, struggling to reload his blaster. One leg was crooked, with a jagged end of white bone sticking through the torn material of his cotton pants.
Ryan’s face slit in a wolfish grin. It looked as if nobody there was going to do any killing. As he watched, one of the old men tried to loose an arrow, but it slipped off the string of the long hunting bow with a dull thunking sound and fell harmlessly into the staked pit.
“Let me,” Ryan said, pausing a moment and shooting the slaver through the top of the head. The distorted bullet drove through the cranium, pulping the brain, past the eyes and nose, emerging through the roof of the dying man’s mouth, giving him a final transient burning sensation on his tongue as he went down into endless night.
The two ancient natives both laid down their weapons and clapped their gnarled hands, beaming broadly at Ryan, who bowed in return and moved on.
BIVAR SCREAMED IN AGONY, as an arrow pierced his thigh, missing the bone, drilling clean through, pinning him to the palomino.