James Axler – Shadowfall

“Then what?” Trader asked.

Rainey grinned. “You got the look of a man who knows the answer to that question before he asks it.” He waved a hand to drive away a cloud of small gnats from near his face. “Time’s passing. We have to keep on patrol.”

“Looking for the brushwooders?” J.B. asked.

“For trouble. Any size and shape.”

One by one, Krysty and the others climbed down from the lower branches of the leafy tree. The appearance of the women attracted the predictable leering interest from the mounted sec men, until Rainey turned and hissed something under his breath that wiped away the smiles and gestures.

But it was Dean who got the most response when he dropped to the ground.

“What are you doing here, Jamie?” Rainey shouted. “Your father’ll skin us all if he” He stopped as the boy spun to face him. “You aren’t Be damned! Now I see the darker hair and the eyes. But there is one hell of a resemblance between that boy and the baron’s son, Jamie. You’re Cawdor’s son?”

Dean nodded, blushing at finding himself the sudden center of attention.

“Not many lads of his age in this part of the country. If Baron Weyman agrees, you could meet Jamie. I know he gets a mite lonely. What’s your name?”

“Dean. Dean Cawdor.”

Rainey smiled approvingly. “Could be that your son, outlander Cawdor, might be the best ville pass you could want to give you a fine welcome.” He slapped his horse on the neck. “Now, I’ll ride back and warn them of strangers. Rest of my boys can finish the patrol. And you nine can walk a couple more miles due east, following this trail, and you can’t miss the ville. You’ll be expected.”

He set spurs to his horse and rode off at a fast trot. The sec patrol, without another glance at the outlanders, moved westward in a ragged line.

Ryan looked around at his friends. “So far so good.”

Chapter Twenty-One

“Rad count’s eased up into the yellow, again,” J.B. observed. “Still nothing too much for us to worry about, but it looks like there might have been some hot spots around here in the long winters.”

The companions were in sight of the ville, having just breasted a rise in the snake-back trail. They spotted the drifting gray smoke from among the trees, finally seeing the building itself.

“It resembles a Victorian boarding school,” Doc stated. “Look at those Gothic chimneys and the proliferation of gables. By the Three Kennedys, but I swear that it’s the most elegant ville that I have yet seen.”

The house was built from gray stone, weathered over the years, stained with creepers and lichen on the second and third floors. The mullioned windows with leaded lights contributed to the impression of age and style.

“Handsome,” Mildred agreed. “If it was privately owned, then he must’ve been a fat cat.”

“Fat cat?” Dean repeated. “What’s that mean?”

“Jack rich,” she replied.

The boy nodded. “Like a gold rat. I get it.”

Trader spit in the leaf mold that lay all around them. “We goin’ to visit this baron, or do we stay here and chatter the day away?”

“We go visit the baron,” Ryan said.

RYAN CHECKED out the defenses of the ville as they trudged wearily toward the main gates. It had been one of his special tasks when he rode with the Trader. Most of the war wags’ crews, when entering a strange ville or frontier pesthole, would appear uninterested and would wave and shout to the inhabitants, greeting sec men in the same way, making it appear like they didn’t care about the way a place looked.

But Ryan and, sometimes, J.B., would be hidden away, using the ob slits, carefully taking note of every detail of the defenses and the layout of the buildings, reporting to Trader within the hour and giving him a sketch plan that showed the relevant points of strength.

And weakness.

The ville of Baron Weyman was solidly built, looking as though it probably dated from around the latter half of the nineteenth century.

The outer wall was a dozen feet high, granite, lipped with iron points, some of which had corroded and rusted. Threads of razored barbed wire still hung here and there, plaited around the remaining spikes. In its day it had to have been a formidable barrier, but now it wouldn’t have stopped a determined ten-year-old.