Behind them, J.B. was cutting loose with his 12-gauge, firing, pumping, firing into the cannie rush. Double-aught buckshot blasted tree limbs, sending bark, leaves and chunks of cannie flying. Then J.B. let out a startled yelp, which made Ryan glance up just as he was raising the fresh mag to the SIG’s butt. The M-4000 dropped on its shoulder sling as J.B. grabbed at his left arm. Something dark protruded from the middle of it, crossways to the bone.
Over the steady firing of Jak’s Colt Python, Mildred’s .38, and Doc’s .44, Ryan heard crashing footfalls. Close. Slapping the full mag home, he turned to find a heavyset cannie shoving a hogleg Remington New Army pistol into Krysty’s face.
“Dad!” Dean shouted in panic.
It was a moment frozen in time.
Before he or Dean could do anything, almost point blank, the Remington .44 discharged with a flash and boom.
The cannie jumped over Krysty’s slumping form, fell upon Uda’s back and tried to wrench the baby from her grasp. Failing to instantly do that, he jerked the woman to her feet, snatched her by the hair and craned back her neck. He held the muzzle of the cocked .44 tight to her throat.
The SIG’s slide snapped closed, and a fraction of a second later, the pistol barked once. Shot in the temple, the cannie toppled backward, and, as he fell, the Remington discharged skyward. Ryan quickly turned Krysty onto her back and was relieved to see her green eyes blinking up at him. Black-powder soot dusted one side of her face; her red hair clung tightly to her head. “I’m okay,” she said, clutching at the juncture of her neck and shoulder. “Bastard just skinned me.”
More shotgun blasts boomed.
By the time Ryan looked up, he had no shot. The surviving cannies were already in full retreat. He leaped to his feet and sprinted after them. As he burst through the edge of the trees, he saw four of them darting into the willows on the other side of the channel. The last cannie in the line, a big guy with stubbly iron-gray hair and beard, was wearing a long khaki duster and carrying a scoped longblaster by its sling.
“Fireblast!” Ryan snarled, raising the P-226 and snapfiring twice as the man disappeared into the bush. The slugs thwacked futilely into the thicket. The bastard had his Steyr! It had to have gotten uncovered during the cannie advance or retreat. Ryan lowered his handblaster, a bitter taste in his mouth. He couldn’t go after the treasured rifle, and he couldn’t chase down and chill all of their attackers. Uda and her children still needed protection.
Jak stepped up beside him. Track? he said.
Ryan nodded. “Just far enough to see where they’re headed.”
When he returned to the others, Mildred was treating Krysty’s wound, a shallow pistol-ball crease where her neck met her shoulder. Though it bled a little, it was barely a nick. Krysty gave him a warm and confident smile, but her mane of red hair, which was still in a state of shock, coiled defensively close to the sides of her head.
“Hey, this hurts bad,” J.B. complained. He held up his arm for Ryan to see.
The wooden crossbow bolt was no more than six inches long. The single-bladed, steel broadhead point poked out the underside of his forearm, the fletched tail stuck out the top. Lucky for J.B., the broadhead had slipped between the major blood vessels, bones and tendons.
“Lend me a hand, Ryan.”
Ryan decided that snapping off the short bolt would cause J.B. unnecessary pain. He unsheathed his eighteen-inch panga, and with a couple of strokes from the heavy blade sawed through the shaft behind the broadhead. J.B. then jerked out the shaft himself. Bright blood seeped down his forearm and dripped off the tip of his elbow.
While Mildred cleaned and dressed the Armorer’s flesh wound, Ryan did a quick survey of the battlefield. Seventeen cannies were sprawled in and among the trees. Overhead, wisps of gunsmoke trapped in the foliage drifted slowly through skinny shafts of sunlight, shimmering like spirits of the newly departed.
“Will they come again?” Uda said to his back.