Jak was riding a great alligator, fully sixty feet long, with mutie jaws and teeth. Somehow it skimmed above the surface of a vast swamp, covered with rich, waxy flowers in unearthly shades of purple and green.
Lori was wandering naked along swept corridors of gray stone, turning corners, walking and turning more corners. Always the corridors stretched ahead of her, limitless and featureless. Yet she knew that she must keep walking. She was cold, but if she could only find it, there was warmth somewhere for her. Her feet were sore and bleeding and she cried. In her dream, the girl cried.
J.B., his glasses neatly folded and tucked into the pro-tective top pocket of his coat, was immersed in a com-mon and repetitive dream. His lips parted in a faint smile of enjoyment.
He had fieldstripped a Stechin machine pistol and laid the parts out, all clean and oiled, on a cloth of white vel-vet. He ran his eye over them, naming each part.
“Barrel, recoil spring, slide, barrel bracket, extractor, tip of firing pin…” and all the way through the field manual.
The Armorer sighed with pleasure.
Krysty was dreaming of her childhood, back in the ville of Harmony. She was running through a field of pop-pies, red as spilled blood, feet bare, a ribbon holding back her vermilion hair. The sun was as bright as a newly minted copper coin. Around her she could hear the laughter of children, pealing sweet and hard like small bells of platinum.
The laughter was getting closer and closer to Krysty.
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The sun disappeared behind clouds.
The poppies withered and died.
But the laughter came closer and closer.
When Krysty jerked awake, she was sweating and trembling.
Doc Tanner slept shallow and often, like many old people. His dreams were of the long-gone past, lost and beyond recall.
He was in a book-lined room, which was lit with the soft glow of a brass oil lamp, the background resonant with the regular, measured heartbeat of a walnut grand-father clock.
Doctor Theophilus Algernon Tanner was reading, oc-casionally pausing to make a note with his quill pen, dip-ping it into the ornate ormolu inkwell.
Through the open doorway, he could see his wife, Em-ily, suckling little Jolyon, while baby Rachel, swathed in layers of lace petticoats, played with a plump puppy by the fire. It was a scene of intense domestic happiness, and the old man mumbled to himself, smiling on his bed of dry leaves and soft moss, two centuries away from his dream.
Ryan dreamed of a dagger.
When they awoke, they readied themselves for the journey to Front Royal, leaving their long winter coats in the wag. J.B. reluctantly laid his mini-Uzi on a shelf, and Ryan pushed his precious G-12 and its ammunition un-der one of the bunks.
It was dusk, a fresh spring kind of an evening with a flock of pigeons wheeling above the tops of the trees. The air tasted green, and already the beginnings of dew lay slick on the folded tops of the boulders.
“That way,” Ryan said confidently, pointing to the south.
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“Wait,” Krysty ordered.
“I hear dogs,” Jak said, brushing his hair back from the side of his head.
“Yes,” Krysty agreed. “Pack of dogs, coming this way. Fast. Listen. You’ll all hear them soon. They’re hunt-ing.”
Lori heard them next, then Ryan and the other two-a high keening that rose and fell as the animals ran into hollows or over hills in their hunt. Ryan felt the hair on his nape rise at the sound. It was a familiar noise from his childhood. He had heard it when he’d ridden to the hounds after boar, galloping behind his father, stirrup to stirrup with his oldest brother, Morgan.
“What do we do?” the Armorer asked. “I’ll get the Uzi out the wag.”
“Wait,” Ryan urged. “If it’s a full pack, then blasters won’t be much use. There’ll be forty or fifty curs, trained to go for throat or groin. The only chance is to get in the wag and shut the door.”
“Then whoever’s running the dogs’ll take us like rats in a trap,” Krysty argued.
“Better than being ripped apart.”