There was a burst of shooting from a battered Czech machine pistol, but Ryan was moving again, dodging back toward the open door of his turret bedroom. He snapped off another round, the shot flying high, screaming into the black pool of shadow at the top of the narrow staircase. The second round from the Colt caught the guard through the open mouth as he raised his head, peering to see where the boy had gone. It splintered his teeth and angled up-ward, burying itself in the brain, through the roof of the mouth.
“Harvey shouted to me, then. He’d seen the blaster and knew it held seven rounds. He yelped out that he knew I only had one left.”
“What’d you say?”
“Told him I had a spare mag. Didn’t, though. Morse only stole one mag for me. I’d fired six and had one left. The fucker was right.”
Krysty looked across at the blank, emotionless face of the man she loved. “No other way out? No other door? No window?”
“Fifty feet on stone. Courtyard under the window. You gotta realize, Krysty, that this ville was built way back ‘fore the long winter. Based on some kind of old castle.
70
Harvey would have some more sec men there, faster than goose shit off a shovel. There was only one way out-past my big brother.”
Ryan Cawdor was never a person, even at fifteen years of age, to hesitate when what was needed was instant ac-tion.
“I dived out and rolled. Lot of lead came my way, blowing chunks of rock off of the walls. I squeezed my last shot at Harvey, but he was hunkered down and it went high. Had me a real good knife. Fireblast! But I lost it in a firefight close by what used to be Kansas City.”
The dagger was made with the hoof of a stag for a hilt, and it fitted the palm of the hand like it had been made for it.
“I jumped the dead and the dying. They all figured I must have more ammo, or I was fucking crazy. My brother called me a bastard, and I called him a butcher. They were the last words we spoke.”
Harvey was taller and stronger than his younger brother, and he clawed out at him. He drew Ryan close, fingers digging into his flesh. The fifteen-year-old sud-denly felt a streak of icy fire across his ribs, and Harvey laughed, breath rank in his face. The knife cut was long and painful, but not deep. The laughter ceased as Ryan managed to bring his own blade into play, slicing into Harvey’s upper arm, making him squeal in shock and pain.
“Another moment and I’d have butchered the gimp where he stood,” Ryan spit, fingers clenching as he re-lived the moments in that long corridor. “But there was another sec man there, and he came from behind and pulled me away.”
Krysty could catch the faint scent of fish roasting on the beach far below them. But she ignored it, wanting Ryan
71
to finish the bleak tale-to finish it and to exorcise it from his mind.
“I chilled the guard with one thrust to the heart. I felt… a moment of being sorry. His name was George Cross. A good man but… He fell all in a piece, dead be-fore his body hit the stone flags of the passage. But he delayed me for the second that cost me this,” Ryan said, touching the patch over his left eye. “And fucking nearly killed me.”
As he half turned, Ryan had seen Harvey lunging to-ward his face, his own eyes exultant with a feral grin of triumph. The younger boy had tried to parry the knife thrust, but was too slow.
“I saw it, Kr ysty! Saw the knife. I can see it to this day if I close my eye, see the point of his dagger, like a needle tipped with fire. It came direct into my eye.” He stopped and turned away from her, looking across the valley to-ward the sinking ball of the orange sun.
The knife had been well aimed. It slashed into the left eye so that the young Ryan Cawdor could hear the steel grating against the bone of the socket.