As if in response, Krysty’s voice cried out, her blaster blazing steadily. More voices were raised, the smoke and steel walls distorting their origins. A riderless horse galloped past Ryan, almost knocking him down. The LeMat discharged five, six, seven times in a row, the last answered by an anguished scream. Slapping in a fresh clip, Ryan grunted in approval.
Suddenly, he heard the sound of splintering wood, followed by the sound of two blasters firing together. Then it abruptly stopped. Pocketing the gren, Ryan headed for the baron’s home. As he went past the well, a spear stabbed out of the swirling fumes, the shaft coming so close it passed through his black hair, ripping some out by the roots. Ignoring the minor pain, Ryan spun and fired from the hip. There was the meaty thump of a slug hitting flesh, but again no cry of pain. The invaders seemed to make noise only when they died; wounds meant nothing to them.
Huffing horses were running everywhere in the compound, the bones of the dead audibly cracking under their hooves. A flintlock discharged, a revolver answered, and then there was silence. No sound or movement for several minutes.
Barely breathing, Ryan stood stock-still, straining to hear anything. But the eerie quiet continued. Even the scavenger birds were gone, and the complete lack of noise seemed thicker than the roiling clouds of gray smoke.
Chapter Seven
Chaos and pain filled J.B.’s world as he sluggishly came awake.
He was tied wrist to ankle, bouncing on something hard that kept slamming into his stomach, knocking the breath out of his lungs, and he was facedown with the ground moving past his face at great speed. Dark night! He was tied over the back of a galloping horse. A big one, white with black stripes on its rump.
There were a lot of horses, fifteen, maybe twenty, and he caught jumping glimpses of the riders. Gray camou! So that’s how they did it. Clever bastards. The group was racing along the dried riverbed, the hard-packed earth cracked in a mosaic pattern. The stink of sour horse sweat and badly cured leather nearly made him vomit, but he fought it. With his mouth gagged, he could easily drown if his stomach rebelled. Out of the hundreds of ways to die, that was suddenly the worst he could think of.
Struggling against his bonds, he tried to see the rider on his horse, but there was a bundle in the way. In horror he realized it was three of the gray men roped together and stacked across the back of the beast. J.B. was near the rump, which explained the severe jostling. They took their dead? Oh, no.
Then a familiar sight swung into view, bouncing off the chest of the huge animal. His munitions bag was hanging from the bone pommel of the saddle, the wire stock of the Uzi sticking out the top flap. Now he had a goal. J.B. tightened his stomach muscles to handle the pounding, and worked out a couple of plans in his mind. He knew that time was against him; moments, not minutes counted here. Two plans came to mind, each seeming more dangerous than the other as he mentally reviewed them. But the man couldn’t think of a third, so he had to use one of these.
Decision made, J.B. pulled on his bonds as hard as he could, the ropes tightening painfully on his wrists and ankles, but that gave him some slack. Bracing himself, the Armorer dived forward to slide around the beast and was suddenly looking at its stomach. The hind legs started banging into his side like sledgehammers, and the ground slammed into his back so hard he feared bones would break. Breathing was impossible in this position, and J.B. fought to suck in enough air through his nostrils to stay alive. His arms felt as if they were coming out their sockets, and he squinted as hard as possible to keep his glasses from flying off.
Dark night, this was the worst idea he had ever come up with, but it was too late now to stop. They’d chill him, or blind him once they discovered he was trying to escape. This was his only chance.