James Axler – Keepers of the Sun

“On the side of the Ruskies, I expect,” J.B. said. “Way they always behaved historically.”

Mashashige shook his bead slowly. “There was no winner and no losers in the days of skydark. Everyone found themselves caught on wrong side of the line.”

“Don’t agree,” Ryan replied. “There may not have been any winners, but there was a shit-load of losers, like most of the world.”

“It will not happen again.” Yashimoto’s face was suffused with a sudden flaring anger. “We have so many people and so little land. But you gaijin in Deathlands are like fat, pampered babies and we shall”

“Enough,” Mashashige said warningly. “There are, words that might be spoken and some that might not.”

The samurai second-in-command bowed low in the saddle. “Forgive running tongue, Lord.”

RYAN OFFERED HIS SERVICES as tracker, and the shogun seemed glad to accept.

“There are so many of us in so small a space that we have little skills such as you must have in the immense wilderness of Deathlands.”

“You’ve been there?”

Mashashige shook his head. “I greatly and very much regret that it has not been possible. You have a saying in your country, Ryan Cawdor-san, that when the rats are not present then the mice begin to play.”

“Yeah, well, something like that. You mean that if you jumped into Deathlands through the mat-trans unit, then you might not be shogun when you jumped back again?”

“My powers rest on uncertain ground. There is always the snake sleeping beneath the rock.”

Ryan nodded. “See the problem.”

“But one day”

Ryan had gone on ahead of the main party, taking only Jak, the two leaning from their saddles to check the trampled ground about them.

“Quite lot men and animals,” the albino teenager said. “Difficult to tell packhorses.”

Ryan stared down at the reddish dirt. “If I had to put a guess on the number, I’d make around twenty mounted and twice that on foot.”

“Could be.” Jak ran his hands through his long white hair, bringing his pale fingers away stained with the crimson dust. “This shit-awful place.”

There was very little vegetation. They had already passed a swathe of pine trees, stunted and twisted, their branches grayish black and brittle with pollution.

Away to their right they could see another of the crowded conurbations, with hundreds of small huts clustered around a number of smoke-belching factories and processing plants. From the raw smell that burned the back of the throat, at least one of them was producing crude gasoline.

There was a significant number of larger properties, looking as if they dated from well before skydark, but most of them were severely run-down and in need of renovation. And nearly all of them looked to be home to dozens of families.

Ryan waited for the others to catch up.

“That looks like a picture in an old book, Doc,” Ryan said, pointing to a cluster of buildings up a side trail to their left.

“Based on European design,” the old man replied. “Eclectic mix of styles.”

“Many houses have electrics,” Hideyoshi said proudly. “We are not the barbarians.”

Doc smiled. “I did not meanbut let that pass. The one at the top is based on one of the dream castles of the mad Ludwig of Bavaria, with its towers and turrets. And next to it stands a scaled-down version of a classical French chateau from the banks of the Loire.”

“What’s that one, Doc?” Mildred asked. “Looks like Macbeth lived there.”

“A well-informed guess, madam.”

“Why, thank you.”

“A Scottish border castle in a shrunken replica. Though its battlements seem in need of repair. I think it would not withstand a siege for very long.”

“The honorable ancestors who lived in these parts were very wealthy and prosperous,” Yashimoto said, throwing out his chest in pride.

“All three?” J.B. asked quietly.

“Three ancestors?”

“Let is pass.”

The samurai shook his head. “If we were not enemies now and enemies yet to be, then I would speak with you at much length on the subject of American humor. I do not yet understand it at all, I fear.”

“What the?” Ryan reined in his ill-tempered pony and pointed down to the right, over the crest of the hill they’d just crossed.