Seeming to materialize out of the pall of smoke came several bloodstained men. They were heavily armed with lances and crossbows. There were only five of them and they scanned the foot of the slope before moving forward, in close single file, treading as lightly as panthers. One bent down to stare at the ground. They saw the trail of the horses and they halted instantly, their black eyes questing the shadow-spotted outcroppings.
They saw nothing and moved again, more rapidly now. Ryan kept a tight rein on his pony, waiting for Joe to appear. He doubted the man had been chilled or wounded too severely to walk. If either had happened, his warriors would have lost heart and retreated. More than likely, Joe had sent this small scouting party ahead as a feint, to draw a reaction.
Ryan couldn’t allow the warriors to reach the rock formation. Knowing he was showing his hand, allowing Joe to see his ace, he heeled his pony from the shadows and rode for the line of warriors.
He leaned over the animal’s neck, the SIG-Sauer spitting bullets. As one, the men wheeled toward him. A warrior catapulted backward, trailing a streamer of blood from high in his chest. Another clapped a hand to his leg and fell twisting to the shale-covered ground.
A third warrior held his position and launched his lance in a smooth, beautiful arc. Ryan pulled on the reins, turning the pony aside. The lance point missed his mount’s right flank by a fraction of an inch, but the animal’s hooves struck loose rock, which turned beneath them.
The pony stumbled and slid out from under Ryan, slamming into and crushing the warrior who had thrown the lance. The one-eyed man hit the ground rolling, keeping his body turning over and over to minimize injury. He stopped, slamming heavily into a boulder the size of a wagon wheel, and his blaster was jarred from his fingers.
Groggily Ryan flung himself onto his side to see a warrior racing toward him, his painted face a ferocious grimace. He raised a long-handled ax, then his head burst apart in three pieces.
Carried by his momentum, he continued to run for several paces before his bullet-blasted brain stopped working and he fell, draping himself over the boulder. Only then did Ryan hear the faint echo of the Steyr’s cracking report.
Though he had no idea where she was, Ryan got to his feet and waved toward the massive rock formations as a thanks and a signal he was all right. He reached for his SIG-Sauer, but the remaining warrior came savagely in to the attack. He swung a tomahawk at Ryan’s chest even as the larger man swiftly back-pedaled, whipping the panga from its sheath.
The warrior swung again with the ax, an overhead blow meant to split his enemy’s skull. The long knife checked the downward sweep and struck the weapon aside. Ryan ripped upward with the blade into the man’s belly.
An awful howl burst from the warrior’s lips as he crumpled, thrashing, disemboweled. The cry of baffled agony was answered by a wild chorus of yells from the smoke. Some twenty warriors burst through the gray fog, shrieking like the demons they feared.
As they saw Ryan, their screams rose to a blood-freezing crescendo and they increased their speed, loosing arrows as they came. Ryan snatched up his blaster and started to run, shafts showering and breaking on the rock around him.
Over the warbling war cries, he heard the crack of the Gewehr, and dirt exploded in a foot-high fountain near his right leg. Rock fragments stung him, but he continued to race toward the towering rocks and crags.
Chapter Thirty
By the time Krysty had moved to a vantage point atop a flat, house-sized boulder, she had a clear view of Ryan being pursued up the slope. Steadying the Smith amp; Wesson with both hands, she chose the closest warriors and fired a full cylinder into the horde massed behind him.
Several bodies convulsed, then fell. The warriors hesitated, slowing, and Ryan sprinted between a pair of outcroppings and out of her range of vision. Within a moment she was under attack herself by a dozen warriors who had fixed her position by her blaster’s muzzle-flash.