At Ryan’s direction, they crawled into positions inside the edge of the long, narrow stand of spindly-trunked trees. J.B. and Jak were at opposite ends of the little island; Doc and Mildred were spaced along one side; Krysty, Dean and Ryan covered the other. In a sunken area in the middle of the grove of trees, defended by all seven blasters, lay Uda and the three girls. Together, the companions had a 360-degree view of the surrounding channels and all possible points of cannie attack, but they were spread very thin.
Some things just couldn’t be helped, Ryan thought as he scanned the tree line opposite for signs of movementlike Benjy’s death; like Uda seeing what had been done to him; like the battle lines being drawn so the dirt farmer’s corpse lay in plain view of his family. His mutilated remains were unrecognizable to the six-year-old, who, though terrified, didn’t seem to really understand what had happened. The oldest child kept staring wide-eyed, back through the trees at her father’s body, tears streaming down her cheeks. She understood, all right.
Ryan watched Uda reach over and touch her daughter’s small chin, gently turning her face away from the sight. “Don’t look,” she said.
Doc’s voice filtered through the trees to his back. “If you have formulated a defensive strategy, my dear Ryan,” he said softly, “I am sure we all would appreciate hearing the essential details. Or do you intend the impending conflict to be a free-for-all?” Loud enough for the others to hear, the one-eyed man replied, “When you see the cannies break from cover, give a shout, but hold your fire. We want them to cross the channels. On my signal we pull back to the center of the island. Let them follow us into the bush. That way they’ll be backlit and they’ll have to fight the tangle of limbs to get at us.”
From the trees off to Ryan’s right, J.B. said, “Sucker the bastards in, then wipe out the whole bunch.”
“You got it,” Ryan stated. “Otherwise we’ll be swatting them off our tails all the way to Perdition.”
“As masterful as ever,” Doc pronounced.
Anticipating the fight to come, Ryan hurriedly hollowed out a space in the bed of dry leaves beside him. With its long barrel, the scoped sniper rifle was going to be next to useless in the thick undergrowth at the island’s center, and if he tried to lug it with him, it would only hang up in the brush and slow him as he backed into position. After carefully covering the rifle with leaves, he pulled his 9 mm SIG-Sauer P-226 from its well-worn holster. He took an extra full magazine from his pants pocket and set it on the ground close to hand. Then he resumed his scan of the opposite tree line, which was separated from him by seventy-five feet of open stream channel. There was no sign of them, yet, but the branches were so tightly interlaced on the other side that the entire pack of cannies could have been inches back from the edge and still remain invisible to him.
A minute or two passed, and he shifted the pistol to his left hand and wiped the sweat from his right palm onto his pant leg. Ryan knew the all-out attack would come soon. As a rule, cannies weren’t big on patience, and they had already waited longer than they’d wanted to. They could probably smell the children.
“Coming at me!” J.B. stated. “I got three, no four.”
A feint, was Ryan’s first thought. It made no sense for the bastards to hit one end of the island; it meant that they’d have to travel through the maximum amount of brush to reach their victims. “Pull back,” he said, grabbing the extra mag.
Even as he started to scoot back from the perimeter, he caught movement in the other tree line. Dark shapes rushed out from cover and into the streambed. The end-on attack was, indeed, a trick. The main force was charging straight at him.
“Got ten on this side!” came Mildred’s shout from behind.
Correction, half the main force was charging at him.
Fireblast! Ryan thought as he reverse-crawled. There had to be a couple dozen of them. They weren’t yelling or whooping it up as they advanced, wanting to get as close as possible without raising an alarm. Backing through the undergrowth as fast as he could, he caught sight of Krysty and Dean doing the same thing on his right. Further over on that side, J.B.’s boot heels and backside came into view. By the time Ryan reached Uda and the girls, Doc, Mildred and Jak had closed in as well, and the children were ringed with outpointing blasters.