“Yeah. Couple.”
“I know paths and ways. I’ll do what I can, Ryan. Don’t fight. Harvey and Rachel aren’t muties. Won’t expect you. Won’t think it’s you, mebbe. Play Floyd Thursby. Stick to your story. Could get away. Watch
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Rachel. More, watch Jabez. Warn others. Me and the other two’ll do what we can, when we can.”
Ryan’s fighting brain was racing. He still hadn’t heard any sound of a sec patrol closing in on them, but he’d seen enough of mutie skills in his life to know that his nephew was probably telling the truth. There’d been a blind lis-tener up in the high plains who could hear a kerchief of satin fall on soft earth at two hundred yards.
“Yeah,” Ryan said. “Don’t charge in after us. If’n we can fool ’em, we could get away free. Foolish to lose lives for nothing. Wait and listen, Nate. That’s the best.”
Then Ryan heard them-horse-mounted sec men, clat-tering along the main blacktop through Shersville. He knew they’d be good mounts. Front Royal had always been famed for the quality of its horses. Right back to the time before the long winter.
“Gotta go,” Nathan whispered. “Just meet the man I dreamed of for twenty fucking years. And we gotta part.”
“Watch your back, Nate,” Ryan said, quickly shaking hands with his nephew. The grip was brief but firm.
The young man leaped at the river, balancing for a moment on a large flat stone near the center, then hopped to another, smaller stone. With a splash, he reached the opposite bank. Pausing for a second and waving a hand to Ryan, he then disappeared into the dense screen of bushes.
Ryan turned away to make his way back to Shersville, where the sec men were already in control.
for a moment Ryan’s head whirled, and he felt himself transported back to his fifteenth year, battling for his life in a blood-slippery passageway in the stone heart of the ville. The uniforms of the sec men were unaltered ma-roon jerkins, with breeches tucked into high boots. They
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wore helmets that hugged the skull, and some wore gog-gles. They were armed with the same M-16 assault rifles that Ryan also remembered well enough from his child-hood-trusty weapons that had served the barony well over the years since the endless chilling.
Krysty, Jak and J.B. stood in a group outside the barn, surrounded by at least thirty of the guards. The old man, Tom, preened himself nearby. He was grinning broadly, chest out like a little pigeon, bursting with pride at his own achievement.
The leader of the sec guards was a sergeant, tall and with shoulders nearly as broad as the doors on the barn. He saw Ryan coming toward him and grinned.
“Hurry up, One Eye. That’s four plucked and two to go.”
“Where’s Nathan Freeman?” Tom yelped.
“Who? “Ryan said.
“You know, you bastard!” screeched the venomous little villager. “Make him tell,” he whined to the ser-geant.
The sec man spit in the mud, not bothering to hide his contempt. “Baron says you get to be sec chief of this dung heap until someone better comes along. So zip up that mouth of yours or I’ll shut it. I decide what happens.”
“And what’s that, Sergeant?” Ryan asked. “We’re travelers who only arrived in the Shens a day ago. We hoped to move on.”
“Came in a wag?”
“Yes.”
“Where? Where’s the wag?”
“Ran dry way back north. Dumped it. No chance of gas around here?”
The big sec officer laughed. “Not for the likes of you scum. Baron controls all gas for fifty miles around.”
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“Why are you here with this army?” J.B. asked.
“Old runt said you was armed and dangerous. Said there was two more of you. Old man and pretty little girl. True?”
Krysty stepped forward and smiled at the sergeant. “Do we look dangerous? Our two friends have gone to try to make their way back to the wag. But we fear they might be lost in the forest.”
“Don’t waste all that fucking charm, sister,” the sec man said, the smile vanishing. “Got my cock and balls blown off by an old anti-pers mine ten years back. Don’t fuck a lot now. We’ll get moving.” He shouted an order to the patrol, standing stone-faced in a maroon circle. They snapped to attention and began to shepherd Ryan and his companions toward the road, where they saw a couple of horse-drawn wagons with barred sides and roof, obviously built to accommodate prisoners.