James Axler – The Mars Arena

“Baron Hardcoe,” Hoyle answered. “LeMarck’s his most loyal man, but not the only sec boss. Hardcoe probably has a half-dozen of them. Got a lot of men with him.”

“And they’ve got control of the seven villes?” Ryan’s mind flipped the details around, keeping them mentally accessible while he put everything together.

“For now. The Big Game will decide who’s going to get control of the seven villes for the next year.”

“That was LeMarck out there behind us?” Ryan was thinking of the mysterious rifle shot that had nailed one of the brushwooders before he and J.B. had caught up to their companions.

“Behind you and the brushwooders,” Hoyle confirmed with a nod. “Spotted him through the telescopic sights of that Sharps.”

“And you’d know him?”

“Met him last week. Sort of. Bernsen and his friends thought that star was going to drop somewhere near the seven villes. I explained to them that nothing went on in that area unless it was okayed by the barons, so they marched into Jakestown pretty as you please and asked Hardcoe for permission to stay for a couple days. I’ve always heard he was interested on predark learnings, and I guess it must be so, because he not only let them stay, but hell, he even put ’em up.”

“Why would Hardcoe be up here?”

“The last I heard, Baron Hardcoe assigned LeMarck to bring in the brushwooder leader. Daugherty’s been raiding some of the farmers in the villes, and Hardcoe takes his business serious.”

“So he could have been after Daugherty?”

“Mebbe, but from what I saw, he seemed to be showing a lot of interest in you people.”

Ryan didn’t have an explanation for that, but he let it drift around in the back of his mind while they walked.

Nearly an hour later, they found Jak.

Ryan spotted the raft first, tucked up mostly out of sight behind and under some driftwood. Jak was just one shadow among myriad others, until he stepped out into view with a leaf-bladed throwing knife in one hand and his .357 Magnum in the other.

“Knew you come soon,” Jak said, grinning a little. “Waited. Too damn hard pull raft back up river alone.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

By the time they reached the part of the cavern where they’d left Doc, Mildred and J.B., Krysty ached all over. She hadn’t rested well the night before, and she’d taken a turn at pulling the raft partway, which had started out easy then gotten to be serious work as they approached the faster-running water still pouring into the river.

Doc was sitting up when they arrived, drinking some soup from a self-heat, and his color looked better.

“Ah,” the old man croaked in a voice that sounded more like him than his earlier weak whisper, “there they are now.”

“Anything happen while we were gone?” Ryan asked J.B.

The Armorer adjusted his fedora and shook his head. “River seems to be slowing some. Saw no sign of anybody who was looking for us. Unless you count a body that come through about an hour ago. Looked like a brushwooder, but I didn’t wade out to go check. Those damn skike were all over it. Things got bastard sharp teeth.”

“We have another problem.” Ryan squatted, waving at Jak to put the prisoners against the cavern wall almost ten feet away. He told the companions about Hoyle’s sighting of Hayden LeMarck, the seven villes and the Five Barons. The picture Ryan painted of the villes was grim.

“Mebbe the brushwooders gave up,” Ryan said at the end of it, “but mebbe LeMarck didn’t.”

“Didn’t see him along trail,” Jak said. “He there, I know.”

“If he was tracking the brushwooders,” Mildred said, “could be he found us then. We weren’t able to take in everything going on behind us.”

“But why get interested in us?” Krysty asked. “We’ve never even been through those villes.”

“Don’t know,” Ryan said.

“Mebbe LeMarck and his sec men aren’t looking for us at all,” J.B. said. “Reckon they could have been on the trail of these two people just as much as they were after the brushwooders.”

“Yeah, but why?” Ryan probed. “We found nothing in either one of those men’s equipment that looked valuable.”