His son was dead and vanished. His bitch-wife would soon have jolted herself into the grave. There was a pretty little doll with the longest legs waiting in the guardhouse.
And his prodigal brother would soon be ragged flesh and gnawed bones.
“Life is so good,” he said to himself. The bell chimed once, and he gave the signal for the hunting party to move out.
“So good, good, good, good,” he chanted.
“time,” said the sec officer, looking toward the dis-tant bell tower.
“Yeah,” Ryan said, leading the others off among the
trees.
Chapter Thirty
ryan cawdor felt fiercely exultant. There was going to be some chilling done, and that was something he was good at. Maybe the thing he was best at. He had three people he could trust with his life, running free in a country that he knew well. And there was a stout blade sheathed in his belt.
He’d read in an old book once-or it might have been in a crumbling vid If you’re goin’ down, take some of the bastards with yer.
Ryan was a realist, and he knew that long before sun-down they would probably all be mangled corpses, dragged behind horses, ready to be shown to the people of the ville.
“So die all traitors.” Something like that.
But right now they were sprinting along a narrow trail, beeches and sycamores on either side, the sound of their feet softened by the carpet of dead leaves. Ryan led the way, followed by Krysty, flaming hair tied back to avoid its catching on branches. Jak came third, his white mane similarly clutched in a length of twine. J.B. jogged easily at the rear. Despite his slight build and age, the Armorer kept himse lf honed to a critical edge of fitness.
They’d only had a few minutes for a council of war. There had been two simple possibilities split up or stay together. They had all agreed that their only, razor-slim hope was to keep together.
270
Ryan remembered the area called the Oxbow Loop. The river was known locally as the Sorrow, on account of the number of times it flooded and took away livestock and homes. And folks.
It was true that nobody could hope to try to get across the Sorrow. She ran at this time of year like a ravaging animal, her course studded with jagged granite boulders that turned the brown flood to scudding foam. With a long, fixed rope from bank to bank, it might be worth the gamble. Set against dying it might be worth it. But with-out a rope it was a fine way of chilling yourself.
Across the neck of the Oxbow was a strip of trail less than a quarter mile long, with an expanse of stunted bushes and low scrub. With mounted men keeping watch there it would be death to try to cross it.
Krysty had suggested they could hide until dark and then break out. Ryan had shaken his head. They could escape the dogs by going for the trees, but they’d get trapped, and the men would follow the barking of the hounds and pick them off.
“Easier’n fish in a can,” he said.
“What looking for?” Jak panted after they’d gone a half mile into the dense, prickling woods.
“Place to fight and kill us some hounds. Mebbe bring in a sec man or two. Then get us a couple of blasters. Then…?” Ryan hesitated a moment. “Then we’ll see what happens.”
They heard the pack arrive with Baron Harvey Caw-dor a little after two hours past noon.
There was a moment of silence, with only cicadas and a few mosquitoes. Then, the second the pack caught the trail of the runaways, there was the spine-freezing sound of hunting dogs in full cry a belling, endless wailing that rose and fell but never ceased.
271
“Best draw the blades,” J.B. suggested quietly. “Be needing ’em soon.”
“Guts or throat with hunting dog,” Jak said.
“Take out a hamstring,” Ryan added.
“Any place we could make a stand?” Krysty asked.
“Places I knew as a kid. No good for this. There’s a small redoubt where some of the ville’s gas is stored. Al-ways double-locked. In any case, you get inside it and they got you.”