James Axler – Stoneface

Ryan was on his feet in an instant, and as the woman started to rise, he side-kicked the hand that held the bowie. Wrist bones popped, Fleur screamed and the long knife skittered across the ground, finally plopping into the dust.

She gaped at him in horrified surprise, then lunged sideways, scrabbling with her good hand across the ground, reaching for the knife. Ryan brought the heel of his boot down on the back of her hand. She screamed again as he pressed down with all of his weight. When he heard the delicate bones crunching, he removed his foot.

Fleur, hissing curses in an aspirated voice, tried to get to her feet again, using only her legs. This time the heel of Ryan’s boot connected squarely against her forehead. Her one eye rolled back in her head, and she flopped flatly on her back.

Ryan stared down at her, the panga hanging from his hand. The onlookers went berserk, screaming and shouting, “Knife her! Chill her! Kill the bitch!”

The screams whirled and spun in the air around him. His body ached, his shirttail was a sodden, soaking mass from the blood leaking from his shoulder wound, and he was expected to kill an unconscious woman.

Ryan surprised the spectators and, to an extent, himself. He slid the knife through his belt, turned and started walking toward the dais where Hellstrom sat.

People swarmed out onto the field, yelling, laughing and shouting congratulations. Ryan looked around and saw Krysty and Jak in the crowd. He hoped J.B., Doc and Mildred were nearby.

As Ryan reached the foot of the platform, Hellstrom waved a hand. “This is it, Cawdor. Fleur is yours. Chop her to fish bait or take her as a slave. Your prerogative.”

He glanced over his shoulder. Two men had propped up Fleur and were dragging her forward. Glancing back to Hellstrom, Ryan muttered, “The law of the jungle with a relish.”

Hellstrom smiled in genuine amusement. “The law of Charlie, the law of Helskel. The law of Deathlands.”

Someone handed him Fleur’s knife. Ryan turned as the woman was dumped unceremoniously at his feet. She was conscious now, though dazed and disoriented. She stared up at him as he stood over her. Her one eye expressed fear, but her lips curled in a sneer.

Ryan looked at her for a very long moment, from the soles of her dusty boots to the top of her tangled mass of hair. Finally he rested his gaze on her hands. They were discolored, swollen, twisted at unnatural angles.

He stooped over, not averting his eye from her face. He laid the bowie knife beneath the heel of his boot, stamped down and yanked up sharply on the handle at the same time. The blade snapped at the hilt with a chiming sound.

Turning away, Ryan dropped the useless hilt on her lap and turned back to face Hellstrom, who was smiling a faint smile of bemusement.

“Let’s hear your decision, Cawdor.”

Chapter Eighteen

Ryan and his friends were accompanied back to Helskel by a jubilant crowd. There was no sound reason for their good humor, though the sight of blood and violence had obviously started their day on a high note.

Back in his room at the saloon, Mildred bathed, disinfected and examined Ryan’s wounds, pronouncing them superficial. Only the shallow knife slash on his shoulder blade warranted stitches.

Ryan stoically sat through the operation.

Watching Mildred’s deft movements with the needle and surgical thread she had taken from the first-aid kit, Jak asked, “What you tell him?”

The one-eyed man started to shrug, but a sharp spasm if pain made him turn it into a short nod. “I told him yes. He wants us downstairs by noon for the swearing-in ceremony.”

Krysty winced. “I hope he doesn’t intend to carve X’s on our foreheads.”

Mildred snorted. “Ryan’s got so many scars already, one more won’t make much difference.”

“Hellstrom won’t want to mark us as Family,” Ryan said. “If we’re captured in the Anthill, we’re not supposed to have visible connections to Helskel.”

When Mildred was done, Ryan put on a new shirt, his last one. “We better request that our other clothes are laundered, or I’ll be wandering around buck-ass naked soon.”