James Axler – Shadowfall

Dean was sitting, hands tied in front of him, a tight strip of rawhide knotted tightly around his neck, holding him against the center pole of the tent. As far as Ryan could see, the boy hadn’t been badly hurt, though there were dark shadows of bruises around his eyes.

The other person was an old crone, bent almost double. She was performing a bizarre dance in front of the helpless boy, lifting up her ragged skirt to expose herself, mocking him in a chanting, singsong voice.

“Chilled the buggerin’ sec men and chilled all your buggerin’ outland friends, and soon we’ll be chillin’ you. Ditchdown’s promised me I can have some funnin’ with you, laddie. Like what you see, do you? Like a ripe taste of it?”

There was no point in waiting any longer.

Every minute that passed brought the dawn a little closer, and with it the chance of returning brushwooders revealing that Dean wasn’t the true son of the baron.

If he was to rescue the boy and get him away, then the last moments of darkness would be an essential friend to them. He gripped the hilt of the panga and drew the razored edge down the outer cover of the tent.

The old woman had her back to him and was too preoccupied with her taunting jig to be aware of anything happening behind her.

Ryan eased himself through the gap in the material, seeing the sudden widening of his son’s eyes. But Dean knew better than to attract attention. He immediately dropped his gaze to the packed earth floor of the tent.

“Won’t even look at old Rosie, eh?” the woman squawked in an eldritch screech of delight.

For a passing moment Ryan considered knocking her unconscious and tying and gagging her.

But he didn’t have the time or the inclination.

He switched the steel to his left hand and stepped close to the capering figure, clubbing her hard across the nape with his right fist. There was the familiar click, and she dropped like a discarded bundle of rags.

Ryan knelt and checked her pulse, ready to open her throat. But there was no need.

He turned to his son. “All right, Dean?”

“Yeah, Dad. Better than all right now you’re here.”

“Hurt?”

“No. Knocked me around a bit. Worst was what that old bitch was planning.”

“I can guess.”

He crouched and cut the cords around the boy’s wrists. Dean gasped as he rubbed hard at his hands to try to bring back the circulation. “Wow! That hurts. Watch out for the one around my neck. Real tight.”

Ryan eased the tip of the blade under the rawhide, slicing through it.

“Ready? You can stand up all right?”

“Sure. Listen. That old sow had my blaster. Let’s see if she’s still got it.”

He rummaged through her clothes, pulling out the Browning and sticking it back in his belt. As he stood, Dean deliberately kicked the corpse in the face with the toe of his combat boots.

“Wasted effort,” Ryan said.

“Not when it makes you feel so good, Dad.”

They moved to the back of the tent, where Ryan reached to draw aside the cut material, the movement tugging painfully at the wound in the small of his back.

“Hurt?” Dean whispered, seeing his father wince.

“Some. Not bad. Talk when we get outside. Head straight into the trees but watch out for the brushwooders. They seem like an army out there.”

Father and son slipped out of the camp and vanished silently into the misty forest beyond.

Chapter Thirty-One

Though it gave him more discomfort, Ryan led the way up along the flank of the steepest slope, above and to the north of the brushwooders’ settlement. He carefully avoided the main trail back toward the ville, where armed horsemen could easily have ridden them down.

It was heavily wooded, and the recent rain made the going slippery and treacherous. But it brought them out where Ryan wanted to be, close to the side canyon that he suspected might be the home of the pack of mutie pigs.

When they’d been out of the camp for about ten minutes they both heard a piercing shriek of rage.