“I heard the word.” Ryan finished eating. “What are they, J.B.?”
“Warrior cult from Japan. Not from China, I think. Kind of dedicated traveling sec men. Used swords. Sort of a bit like priests, as well.”
“You mean, there’s a gang of these guys around Deathlands, Trader?” Abe asked.
“What I heard. Never met anyone actually seen them. Someone’s brother knows a gaudy slut in some pesthole who heard a traveler say he saw a dying man who’d had a run with them. But you keep hearing the same sort of story. My belief is that you don’t get steam without hot water.”
“You believe this, Trader?” Ryan looked across the fire at his former chief.
“I reckon that you can live a long while by ignoring rumors and stories like this one. Then, just when you thought you’d made it across the river, one of them rumors jumps up, alive and grinning, and tears out your throat. Know what I mean?”
Ryan nodded. “Yeah. Know what you mean.”
“Thing is, I heard first of them far up north. Then each time there was a story of these Samurais, they were getting farther south. Organized like a regular little army, someone told me.”
“From what I read about them, it would only take a few to run a ville. Incredible discipline.” J.B. whistled between his teeth. “Sure would like to see them.”
“If they exist,” Ryan added.
“Sure. If they exist.”
THERE WAS NO DISCUSSION about whether they’d need to post a guard during the night.
Ryan took the last watch, through the small hours of the night, into the dawn. He sat by the dying embers of the fire, shrouded in a thick blanket, looking across the land, where pockets of white mist filled the hollows.
Now that he and J.B. had found Trader, and the old man had fulfilled his wish to visit the ruins of the ville, there was nothing to prevent them from setting out for home again.
Ryan felt a lifting of his spirits at the thought of seeing Krysty, Dean and the others again.
Chapter Sixteen
They lost the hearse four days later.
It wasn’t a dramatic accident, no rumbling fall of packed mud and snow, no ambush by screaming wildwooders, no forest fire with the flames leaping like napalm grens from tree to exploding tree, no flash flood.
Ryan was at the reins, at the head of the party, as they made their way cautiously along a badly rutted side road, south of Mount Rainier, not all that far from the ville of Yakima. Abe and J.B. rode saddle horses, leading the pack animals. Trader’s leg and knife wound were both much improved, but he had taken a liking to riding in style inside the glass-walled wag, lying back on blankets, watching the world move serenely by him.
It was early morning, a little after eight o’clock by Ryan’s wrist chron. There had been a sharp frost overnight, which left a layer of gray ice coating the puddles and rutted pools along the trail.
Most of them were only a couple of inches deep, but Ryan had still been very carefully, easing the team along.
There was a sudden cracking of ice, and a far louder cracking of wood. The hearse lurched to the right, nearly throwing Ryan from the box. Trader yelled out in dismay, sliding sideways, nearly crashing through the polished glass.
The team reared and kicked, unable to move on, while Ryan hauled at the reins, trying to calm the leaders. He looked over his shoulder to see that the rear right wheel had grated down into a far deeper pothole than any of the others.
And had simply disintegrated.
The metal rim had immediately buckled, and the delicate painted spokes had proved unequal to the pressure. They snapped one by one, the whole wheel crumbling into the frozen mud, dropping that corner of the rig, the distorted suspension springs protesting noisily.
“NO CHANCE,” J.B. said, once a degree of order had been established from the chaos.
The team had been unhitched and tethered in a nearby grove of larches, along with the pack and saddle animals. Trader had been helped out of the back of the toppled rig, rubbing his elbow where he’d taken a nasty blow.