“Get on with it,” Rachel grated from between clenched teeth. It was obvious to Ryan that she was craving a line or two of the white elixir of life. Once jolt had the noose around your soul, it pulled it tighter and tighter until you finally snapped.
“Wait, bitch. I said ‘hunt.’ Hunt.” Harvey’s thick pink tongue ran over his fleshy lips, and he giggled to himself. “You always liked the thrill of the hunt, didn’t you, brother?” Ryan didn’t answer him. “Yes, you did. And I love it. My dogs love it. Even my trained boars love being hunted, using their sharp tusks to rip open bellies and throats. Ah, yes. The hunt.”
“Hunt them?” Rachel said, suddenly alive. She gave Ryan a look of such intent that it puzzled him, not un-derstanding what lay at the back of her vicious and am-bitious mind. Seeing his blank face, she turned away from him, biting her lip in disappointment.
261
“Yes, hunt them. Sergeant, get everything ready. We shall ride out at noon. Horses, weapons. All the sec men that can be spared from the ville’s defense. We eat at eleven.”
“The dogs, Lord?”
“Of course, cretin! Make sure they have no food to-day.”
“The old man and the girl?”
“The old what? Oh, them. Keep them. They can do us no harm. I’ll question the girl tonight. I shall be in the mood.”
“The prisoners?”
“Feed ’em. We are kind, brother, are we not?” Again Ryan ignored Harvey. “Give ’em clothes and boots. Keep them locked up and bring them to the drawbridge at eleven. They shall have an hour’s start. Escort them out to the Oxbow Loop. We’ll hunt them in there. String out a patrol so they can’t break back. This will be…” He hugged himself gleefully.
“No blasters, brother?” Ryan asked.
“Last time you gave me this, Ryan,” Harvey spit, touching the puckered scar that deformed his mouth and nose. “A fair trade for your left eye.” He stepped closer to his brother, right shoulder hunched, leg trailing. To Ryan, he resembled a mutated, brilliant-colored spider.
“Give us blades,” J.B. demanded.
“Blades, little man? You might cut yourself.” Close up, Ryan could see from his older brother’s eyes that he floated in a sea of tranks, his ferocious temper spurting through on occasion.
“Scared might find an’ take throat out?” Jak said.
The sergeant raised a fist and moved toward the boy, who dropped into a fighting crouch. Harvey squeaked and cowered back, hands tangled like a praying monk.
262
Jak’s white face stared menacingly at the sec man. “Not little whelp, bastard,” he hissed. “Not forget.” He beck-oned to the tall officer, fingers waving softly like the fronds of a virulent sea anemone. The sergeant stopped, hesitating, looking to the baron for orders.
“Leave…him,” Harvey stammered. “He can…he is… Why not a knife each? One hunting dagger for each man, and for the redhead witch.”
Ryan dropped a deep bow to his brother. “One knife against all your men and dogs. Still the white-bellied coward, brother.”
“I could have you all torn and burned,” Harvey Caw-dor protested, his voice a petulant squeak.
“That would show your fear even better, fool,” Rachel whispered. “Close your mouth and let us go to our rooms. I have…” The sentence dangled in the dusty dawn light of the long, vaulted hall.
To have a knife was better than anything Ryan Cawdor could have hoped for.
He’d sensed a new spring in the steps of his three friends. J.B. nodded to him almost imperceptibly as they parted company in the upper corridor. Jak whistled a song Ryan had heard before, something about feeling on fire. And Krysty recovered from the horror of the dark night that had seared her soul. She almost glowed as she walked away from the hall. To be burned alive had faced them all. Now they had a chance.
Four blades against thirty or so men who had M-16s, horses and dogs.
That was their chance.
The Trader used to say that if you found yourself with no hope, or odds of a million to one, you took the long odds.
263
“Long odds,” Ryan said to himself as the sec men slammed the door of his room, having chained him once more to the wall.