Vertebrae shattered in her neck as her skull popped free of her spine. The damage robbed her immediately of her motor skills. The knife fell from nerveless fingers.
Her eyes were already dimming when Ryan released her. He forced himself to his feet and ran a hand inside his coat. His fingers came away covered with bright scarlet from the wound along his side, but his touch revealed its clean edges, only a couple inches long and not bleeding seriously.
“What the fuck is going on here?” a man’s deep voice demanded.
Ryan was already in motion, his legs driving him. His peripheral vision revealed the man standing at the top of the hill that had cut off the violent business from the rest of the brushwooder attack teams.
Instead of breaking and trying to run away from the man, Ryan raced straight at him, his hand grabbing the throwing knife that still had his blood on it.
The brushwooder hesitated for a moment, stunned by Ryan’s apparent suicidal play. He raised his rifle when the one-eyed man was less than fifteen feet away and closing fast.
Chapter Two
Ryan drew back his arm and let the knife fly. Jak Lauren was by far the best hand with a blade Ryan had ever seen, but working for the Trader had provided an all-around education in the arts of death. The knife sailed like a steel dart, barely passing above the muzzle of the leveled rifle.
Ryan dived to one side as soon as the knife left his fingerprints. He hit the ground on his wounded side and stifled a cry of pain from the impact. He rolled at once, clawing the P-226 from its holster.
Coming up on his knees, the blaster before him, Ryan watched as the brushwooder struggled to remain on his feet. The rifle remained unfired. His mouth was open, the haft of the knife jutting from between his lips.
Ryan kept the SIG-Sauer trained on his adversary as he approached the man.
Harsh gagging croaks issued from the man’s bloody lips, cut up by the passage of the sharp blade. He tried to bring the rifle around, but Ryan grabbed the barrel and yanked it away. He then pulled up the knife, bringing the man’s face toward his own.
The brushwooder tried to scream, but the sound came out his nasal passages as a drawn-out whine that announced his death.
Holding on to the haft, Ryan kicked the corpse free. He cleaned the blade on the man’s clothes, then noticed the case over his back. Inside, neatly stored, was a fiberglass bow in three pieces that screwed together, and a quiver of arrows.
Ryan drew out one of the shafts and studied the big, triangular hunting arrowhead at its end. It showed signs of use, like the bow, but appeared in good shape.
He tossed the case to one side, then maneuvered the dead man into the trees. It took only a few minutes more to retrieve and clean the panga, and to arrange the other two bodies.
Moving at a trot, warm now from his exertions and from the adrenaline pumping through his system, Ryan adjusted the case containing the bow and arrows and followed the brushwooders.
Krysty Wroth put the thought of the pursuing brushwooders as far out of her mind as she could, concentrating instead on the broken terrain. The full moon was both a blessing and a curse.
Without it, they’d have been dead for sure. Chasms opened up unexpectedly, covered by shadows.
“No torches, no muzzle-flashes,” Mildred Wyeth said beside her. “And that’s the good news. The bad news is that Ryan and J.B. could already be chilled and we just don’t know it yet.”
“No,” Krysty said. “If Ryan was dead, I’d know.”
Pressing on, the red-haired beauty followed the narrow path that Jak had taken only minutes ago. The ledge was only a couple feet wide, and wisps of snow trying to cover its surface made walking only a little tricky, She thanked Gaia, the Earth Mother, that the wind was too cold to let the flumes cling to the stone. Conditions could have been much worse.
Krysty felt her hair coil tightly against her scalp. Her hair was deep crimson and prehensile, products of her mutie blood. She was a couple inches short of six feet, with generous curves and emerald green eyes. The dark blue Western boots she wore weren’t made for hard climbing, but they were what she was used to, and anything else would have made it even harder.