Ryan leaned closer so that his mouth touched the Ar-morer’s ear. With muties, you never knew what kind of skill they might have. These primitives might be deaf, or they might hear as well as cave-born bats.
“Soon as they sleep,” he whispered.
J.B. nodded his agreement, then passed the message quietly to Krysty, to Jak, on to Lori and finally to Doc.
the moon had disappeared behind a bank of cloud so dense it seemed like a floating mountain. A storm was brewing, and the air crackled with ozone. Ryan could feel his hair standing on end with static electricity. The stew
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had been eaten by the muties, and the fire was dying to glowing embers. The valley was less cold than the upper slopes, outside the hidden redoubt, but there was a biting dampness that seemed to creep through the layers of fur and leather, seeping into the marrow of the bones.
Ryan hooked the G-12 to a loop on his belt and drew the pistol, feeling its familiar weight. 25.52 ounces, pre-cisely. Back when they’d been with War Wag One, J.B. had shown him the crumpled, brittle field manual for the SIG-Sauer P-226, and he remembered all of the details about it.
“Let’s go, my friends,” he said quietly.
There’d been no sign of anyone out on patrol around the filthy little hamlet. Apart from the rafts, there wasn’t likely to be anything there worth stealing. With a wave of his hand, Ryan motioned for Jak Lauren to take the lead. Out of the six of them, the albino boy was probably the best at creepy-crawling. His bleached hair blazed like an incandescent beacon, making Jak easy to follow.
Ryan came second, with Krysty at his heels. Doc and Lori were together and J.B. brought up the rear, several safe paces behind to cover them in case of a sneak attack.
Against the rumbling backdrop of the fast-flowing river, it was hard to make out any other sounds. As they passed between the stinking hovels, Ryan heard a wom-an’s voice. She was .singing a mournful dirge, soft and low, with no recognizable tune to it and no words at all. It was fortunate for them that the villagers didn’t seem to keep any dogs to warn of strangers. But their hamlet was so isolated that it was doubtful they even knew what hu-man enemies were.
The raft had no sail, but there were a number of smoothed branches, each about ten feet long, that looked as if they were used to propel and guide the clumsy craft.
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Jak turned, asking, “We go on this?”
“Yeah. Get ready to cut the rope. We’ll have to push her out into the flow, or we’ll beach on those rocks a few yards downstream.”
In fact, the raft was so firmly grounded that it took all six of them to heave it off the sloping beach of shingle. It sat so low that the Mohawk bubbled over its logs. With six of them on board, Ryan knew they were in for a wet journey. Only the rope held it, knotted around a frost-riven boulder, high up on the bank.
“Get on, and move slow an’ easy!” Ryan ordered, eyes raking the sleeping village for any threat.
“Keep to the center,” Doc urged, folding Lori Quint in his long arms.
“Right?” Jak called, crouching with one of his leaf-bladed throwing knives in his fist, waiting to slice the knotted creeper apart.
Ryan took up the mooring line, hung on to it with both hands and braced himself against the pull of the current. He kept the raft steady for the boy to run down and board it.
“Now,” he said, staring intently into the gloom, able to see only the splash of whiteness that was the boy’s hair.
There was the blur of movement as the knife whis-pered through the rope, and Ryan felt it go slack, so that all the weight was on him. But, as he watched, he saw a chunk of the night rise from behind the boulder and grapple with Jak.
“Fireblast!” Ryan yelled, helpless to assist the boy.
But Jak could look after himself. The mutie had grabbed at him, pulling him to the earth. It uttered fero-cious grunting noises, its foul breath nearly choking him. Its stubby fingers ripped at his coat, groped for his eyes, trying to squeeze them from their soft sockets.