“Found Rosie’s corpse,” Dean panted, grinning happily at his father.
“Don’t sound pleased.”
“Think that was Straub?”
Ryan leaned his hand against the bole of a spreading sycamore, catching his own breath. “Could be. I heard brushwooders saying that Straub personally, on his own, chilled ten armed sec men. Think that’s possible? I figured him for a triple creep. Something about him”
Dean had hunkered on a rounded boulder, and he considered the question. “I felt dizzy when he stared at me, and I sort of had the feeling that he could be a seer or a doomie. Kind of reading what I was thinking. You know, Dad?”
“Yeah, I know.”
“We going back to the ville?”
Ryan shook his head. “Not yet. Got an idea that just keeps on growing and growing.”
RYAN WAS SURPRISED at how much the arrow had taken out of him. It hadn’t been that grave a wound he’d certainly had far worse in his life and hadn’t touched any major organs or broken any bones. The only potential damage was to the web of muscles that protected the base of the spine from harm.
But it had been a clean wound, the arrow coming out fairly easily.
“Getting older,” he told himself.
He decided that it was about time to take a break from the grinding uphill climb. They were comfortingly close now to the crest of the ridge, on a deer trail that Ryan hoped would eventually bring them down again some way along the side canyon that had been his destination.
“Take five,” he said.
Dean dropped on a patch of soft turf, in between a grove of alders. Now the dawn light was strengthening, and Ryan could see that the boy had been badly beaten, with congealed blood rimming both mouth and nose, as well as purple weals across his cheeks and around both eyes.
“You feel all right, son?”
“Just a few hits. Only on the surface. Right now I never felt better, Dad.”
Ryan sat beside the boy, watching the pale spears of light break through the trees around them, casting long, watery shadows down the slope. It seemed amazingly still and peaceful, and it was difficult to believe that only a mile or so away, in the grove where the horses had been tethered, there had been bloody butchery done.
They’d been moving fast since the breakout, and this was their first opportunity to talk quietly together.
Ryan told the boy about the abortive raid that had ended with the deaths of the two sec men and the capture of Micah. Dean explained what had happened, and why he’d had to chill the helpless prisoner.
“Did the right thing, son.”
Dean was concerned to hear about the injuries suffered by J. B. Dix, Jak and his father, though Ryan stressed that none of the wounds was life-threatening.
The failure of the night’s attack surprised the boy. “Was it Trader’s fault?”
“Difficult question, Dean. He and I argued about placing the backup force. But, in fairness to the bad-tempered old bastard, none of us knew that Straub had the kind of mutie power it seems he’s got.”
“Jamie tell you what happened?” The question dragged itself out with great reluctance.
“How you pretended to be him?”
“Yeah. It was my idea. I’m not saying that to make myself any kind of hero, Dad.”
“I know that.”
“Just so you know that the kid didn’t turn chicken on me. He was going to own up, but I stopped him. I reckoned it was the best chance for both of us to make it.”
Ryan nodded, keeping alert for any sounds of pursuit. “Turned out right.”
Dean had something on his mind, but he couldn’t quite steer around to it.
“You like Jamie Weyman, Dad?”
“Sure. Much tougher than you think, the first time you meet him.”
Dean nodded. “I thought that. Only he’s got all that that learning , don’t he?”
“Doesn’t he? Should be ‘doesn’t,’ not ‘don’t,’ Dean. Krysty’s always on at me for making mistakes like that.”
“Think it’s important, Dad?”
“Krysty says that if you can choose between getting it right and getting it wrong, then it’s better to get it right. I suppose I agree with her.”