“We’re just travelers who want to get out of the bastard cold,” he said, blunt but friendly.
“Well, outlanders be welcome,” the sec man said carefully. A wisp of steam rose from the hot bread in his pocket, the tantalizing smell a knife in Ryan’s rumbling stomach. “Always ready for a bit more trading is the baron.”
“Fair enough. This place got a name?”
“Rockville.”
Not a particularly original name for a ville built in a stone quarry, but Ryan made no comment. He had heard worse.
“We got goods to trade,” J.B. announced, his empty hands hanging open at his sides. But the Uzi was there on his shoulder for the world to see, along with the scattergun.
“I suppose so. Got enough blasters showing, it’s the truth. Mercies, I suppose?”
“Mercies?” Krysty spit in disgust.
“Hardly,” Mildred snapped.
“We fight only to defend ourselves,” Ryan said, feeling his temper rise to the insult. “Not for jack or a cut of the booty.”
“A man who sells his honor, sells nothing,” Doc stated forcefully.
“Sounds good, because we don’t take big-ville jack here,” the bearded guard said gruffly. “The barons might trade with it, but out here we only take what can be used. What you have, furs or fuel?”
“I can hear from your bellies it ain’t food,” the second guard added, his blaster still held level and ready as if expecting treachery.
Slowly reaching into a pocket, Ryan pulled out a cardboard box marked Remington. “Got full box of .38 longs here. Fifty live rounds with no corrosion. That buy us food and beds for a night?”
Both of the sec men burst into laughter and visibly relaxed.
“Shit and bedamned, One-eye,” the bearded man said, “that’ll buy the lot of you the best rooms and food we got for a week, plus a night with Mad Jennifer, the tightest piece of ass this side of the Shens.”
“No, thanks,” Krysty stated coldly. “We brought our own.”
“And the name is Ryan.”
“Russell,” said the man with a beard, then he jerked a dirty thumb at the other sec man. “And he’s Einstein.”
The skinny guard grunted in acknowledgment and stepped away from the gate, clearing the entrance. “Well, it’s almost dusk and time for our supper, so come on in if you’re going to stay for the night. There ain’t no toll coming or going. This ain’t Front Royal, you know.”
As he walked past the man, the unexpected words hit Ryan hard, but he forced his face to stay neutral and kept moving along with the rest of the companions. The thick wooden gate closed behind them with a boom, and the sec men locked it with a rusty steel chain. The wind cutting through their clothes noticeably lessened, and everybody stood a bit taller.
“Did you hear that about Royal?” Krysty asked, easing down the hammer of her wheelgun. “Wonder what that was about?”
“Tolls on travelersthat doesn’t sound like Nathan,” Ryan said thoughtfully.
“Mebbe he’s not in charge anymore,” Dean said. “Or there was a famine or something.”
Brushing back his long black hair, Ryan chewed that over. “A famine,” he finally stated. “Possible.”
“You called him nephew,” Mildred said, turning up her collar. “Is he blood kin?”
“Son of my dead brother.”
“Kin helps kin,” the woman said as if that were an immutable law of the universe.
Ryan didn’t reply, his scarred face somber in dark thoughts.
Pausing at an intersection of two streets, the companions studied the layout of the ville. The town was laid out in neat rows of log cabins, stores and homes, dark smoke curling from a dozen crude stone chimneys. A flagpole stood in the middle of the ville common, but no flag fluttered from the top. A Revolutionary cannon sat at its base, the antique surrounded by a circle of sandbag walls, a stack of iron balls conveniently nearby. It was clearly a functioning piece of city armament.
A big horse corral was off to the side, and a small paddock for cattle stood empty next to a butcher’s slaughterhouse. Blocks away, the water wheel turned steadily, creaking loudly in protest as it endlessly worked at whatever was going on inside the building alongside. The windows were covered with shutters and the one door closed. No smoke rose from that chimney.