“Do you all want to die,” he went on, “all your women, your children? You want your houses burned, your animals slaughtered, your crops stomped flat? Is that what you want?”
Hatcher barely waited for a response. His hoarse, maddened voice roared, “If that’s what you fuckers want, we’ll give it to you!”
A volley of shots ripped out of the gorge mouth. Everyone ducked, and the bullets flattened themselves against rock. Then the bugle sounded, playing a familiar series of melancholy rising and falling notes.
“No quarter,” Doc said with a bleak smile.
“Good,” Ryan replied. “That’s just the way I want it.”
Chapter Ten
Wincing in pain, Autry said, “Even if he’s out of grens, he still holds the pass. We’re still boxed in.”
Ryan laughed, a low, harsh chuckle without humor. “Not as boxed in as he’s about to be.”
Rising, he and his friends conducted a quick inspection of the fortifications, Autry shuffling along behind them. Of the thirty-six defenders, only eleven remained on their feet. More than a dozen were injured so severely that they could only lie on the ground, bleeding and groaning.
Making a quick head count, Ryan counted at least nineteen Cadre casualties, both in and outside the perimeter. He could only guess at how many wounded were within the pass.
The young man named Allen sat upright against the rock wall, his legs stretched in front of him. Both hands were clasped over a hole in his stomach, and pink-gray entrails showed between bloody fingers. When Doc knelt beside him, he stared up at him through unfocused eyes reflecting the sure awareness of imminent death.
Face white beneath its coating of soot, Doc patted him on the shoulder and murmured a few words to him. As he did so, Allen expired quietly, his body relaxing and slowly sliding to one side.
With gentle fingers Doc closed the lids over the young man’s staring eyes and rose, turning away from the others.
After completing the circuit, Ryan said to Autry, “When I get over the wall, I want you to pin down the Cadre inside the pass. Shoot at them, throw rocks, anything to stop them from coming through it again.”
“Get over the wall?” Autry asked. “Where are you going?”
Ryan holstered his blaster and didn’t reply. He handed the Steyr to Krysty and vaulted over the barricade and sprinted toward the foot of the right-side hill. He had run only a few yards when musket balls began to strike around him. He saw the winks of several muzzle flashes in the shadows of the gorge’s mouth.
Heavier fire answered from the barricades behind him a triple burst from the Uzi, the door-slamming bang of Mildred’s ZKR, then deeper reports from Krysty’s and Jak’s handblasters, as well as a few softer pops from flintlocks.
A couple of musket balls plucked at his clothes, but he kept running. His eye was fixed on the powder-impregnated fuse that stretched down from the top of the hill.
But even as he looked at it, the length of line suddenly quivered, was drawn upward in a jerky fashion, then came flying back down, looping and coiling.
Ryan snarled and scrambled up the slope, grabbing at rocks and tufts of grass. When he reached the crest, he flung himself to where the jugs of gunpowder were cached. Then he rocked to such a sudden halt, his feet nearly went out from under him.
Standing spraddle legged over the containers of powder, slapping the blade of his hatchet into an open palm, was John Hatcher. As Ryan’s hand darted for the butt of his blaster, Hatcher brought the hatchet up and over his head. The SIG-Sauer cleared leather at the same time the hatchet spun toward Ryan. It rotated through the air, on a direct line with his head.
Ryan didn’t aim, squeezed the trigger from the hip. The bullet struck the blade of the hatchet and deflected it from its course. It spun crazily to one side.
Hatcher didn’t gape at the incredible accuracy of the hip shot. Roaring in anger, he bounded forward in a flying leap, feet first. The soles of his moccasins thudded solidly into Ryan’s stomach. The one-eyed man stumbled, his nervous system momentarily overwhelmed by the force of the unexpected kick.
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