Still in motion from sheer inertia, the wreck threw off a spray of sparks from the chassis scraping along the rough surface of the roadway. Shuddering, jerking, clanging, the destroyed wag noisily ground to a halt a good fifty paces farther down the road.
Only the steady ticking of hot metal slowly cooling broke the profound silence of the roadway.
Chapter Fifteen
Crouching sec men armed with knives and flintlocks stole toward the smoking ruins of the school bus.
A trapped bubble of air rose from the quicksand lake to burst on the surface, sounding very much like a human cough. Condors flew high in the stormy sky above, and tropical birds twittered in the oak and birch trees of the nearby forest, waiting for the night when they could hunt. Darting from stone to weed, a rat scurried along the ground with an ear held triumphantly in its jaw. The tattered bodies of the fallen stickies were strewed along two miles of mud and quicksand, ending in the crumpled remains of the wrecked school bus. A column of smoke rose from the quietly burning engine, and the rear door was gone, showing piles of crates and more corpses inside.
A short distance away, a dozen more soldiers sat on their horses with longblasters pressed to their shoulders, shiny new flint in every weapon and tense fingers on the triggers.
“If there’s a God still in heaven, hear my plea.” a corporal whispered hoarsely. “Let the outlanders still live, so I may avenge my brother.”
Mitchum leaned over in his saddle and pressed the point of his knife to the sec man’s throat. A drop of blood rose from the skin and flowed easily along the razor-sharp blade.
“Don’t speak again without my permission,” Mitchum whispered, applying more pressure. The sec man inhaled sharply, craning back his head to keep from being cut. “Or I will wear you as boots. I learned many things as a prisoner of the cannies. Skinning a fool was only the beginning.”
“They killed my brother,” the corporal said without moving his jaw. He could feel the warm blood flow down his throat. “Shot him in the back in cold blood. Want them bad.”
Mitchum studied the rage in the man’s eyes and returned the blade to its sheath. “The man who died in the mountains with us,” he said slowly. “Trying to outdraw the white-skinned man.”
“That was Cob, my older bro,” the sec man grunted. “I’m Whyte.”
“Fair fight. I was there,” the officer said out of the side of his mouth, now watching the troopers creep inside the bus. The men with longblasters got tense, leaning forward in anticipation to the brutal recoil of their black-powder weapons.
“Don’t care,” Whyte snarled, looking up at the mounted officer, reaching for his own knife. “I want them!”
Smoothly, Mitchum drew his blaster and slapped the corporal on the back of the neck just below the swell of the skull. Whyte didn’t even gasp as he limply dropped to the ground. His hands dug at the pavement for a moment, then stopped, but his back rose and fell in the rhythm of life.
“Anybody else speaks out of turn,” Mitchum said softly, cocking back the hammer of his piece, “and he dies on the spot. Now drag this feeb away and remove the corporal stripes from his shirt. He’s a private now.”
A private saluted the officer and hauled the unconscious trooper away just as a sec man appeared at the rear of the bus. He splayed an empty hand, closed it, then cut the air with a flat palm.
“Scorch!” Mitchum spit angrily, and thumped his heels on the horse’s rump to get it moving. Reaching the wreck, he slid off the animal and tethered the reins to a broken sapling. There were lots of them about, forming an orderly path that zigzagged to the vehicle. The driver had to have been dying or blind to hit so many.
“Any sign they had been inside?” Mitchum demanded of the waiting sec men.
The leader of the recce saluted. “Yes, sir. Lots of blood and spent brass is everywhere.”
“Must of been a hell of a fight,” another man agreed. “There be bullet holes in the windows and roof.”