James Axler – Watersleep

“Well, I’m always impressed when a guy strangles a helpless woman to death. That’s three I owe you for, now.”

“Three?”

“Three,” Ryan said, but didn’t elaborate.

Poseidon leaned back in his chair and cracked his knuckles. “As I was saying earlier, my reputation is marred with innuendo and lies, but so is your own.”

“What do you mean?” Ryan said.

“I’ve heard of you and your little mercenary group.”

“Don’t believe everything you hear,” Ryan said.

“Oh, I never do. Besides, as they used to say back in wartime, loose lips sink ships,” Poseidon replied, miming the closing of a lock on his upper lip and throwing away the key. “Still, just between you and me—”

“And the tree trunk,” Ryan added, glancing at the grim sec man who continued to hold position behind him.

“Never mind Jonesy. He hears what I tell him to, right, Jonesy?”

“Hear what, sir?” the sec man asked on cue.

“Good man,” Poseidon said brightly, as if talking to a beloved pet. “Now, back to our discussion. There’s change in the wind, Cawdor. Wild cards such as yourself are due to be eliminated. The more pow­erful of the barons are starting to communicate for the first time in decades. They speak on a regular basis by radio and through intermediaries via travel­ing caravans, and do you know why?”

“They were getting lonely?”

Poseidon looked at Ryan with a pitying expression. “Scuttle the sarcasm, Cawdor. You don’t have the timing for it. No, they’re starting to align themselves for protection from murderous thugs like you, self-serving renegades who roam Deathlands in packs, like mangy wolves, slinking into law-abiding villes and stealing food and supplies.”

Ryan couldn’t help it. Even if it meant another blow from the rifle butt, he had to laugh aloud. “You’re crazier than I thought.”

“Don’t mock civilization, Cawdor. It’s what makes man rise above the animals.”

“Civilization is also what destroyed the world. As I understand it, the barons in power back then didn’t bother to ask anybody’s permission when they wanted to do something, and it’s still the same today. Once a baron gets some food in his stomach and some prop­erty and the jack to hire a sec squad, he stops listening to anyone but himself.”

“But the ones in power will listen to their peers,” Poseidon replied.

“I doubt it. Most of the villes I’ve been in have been hotbeds of hatred, closed-off parcels full of ha­tred and inbreeding. There’s no way in hell there’s going to be any sort of alliance.”

“You’re not thinking, Cawdor—that, or you’re just being thick to annoy me. As many barons and villes as you and your merry band of outlaws have brought down, how could you expect otherwise? You aren’t alone in spreading the seed of destruction, nor are you the first. There have always been the fringe elements who refuse to conform.”

Ryan leaned back farther in the chair slowly, so as not to give any indication of an attack, then swung up one of his long legs, placing his boot heel on the top of Poseidon’s desk. “Those arrogant bastards in charge of their pissant baronies and villes couldn’t stop shouting and posing long enough to make a group decision on what kind of meat to serve at their first communal meal, much less come to any kind of agreement.”

“I shall be a part of a grand new alliance, where a council of baronies shall rule,” Poseidon said confi­dently. “I am at the forefront of the new wave to help reconnect the world.”

“How?”

Poseidon spread open his arms. “The sea, Cawdor, the sea! No air travel! No safe and efficient way to crawl across the radiation pits scarring the landscape! What does that leave?”

“Let me guess. The sea.”

“Correct! From the day man crawled up from the muck and the slime onto dry land, the control of the seas from whence he sprang has meant dominance. All the great generals from all the great wars have been forced to take possession of the waters surround­ing their territories, their lands. And once they lost the sea, they lost the war, and they lost their com­mand.”

Poseidon paused. “I have no intention of losing my power, Cawdor. Only increasing it.”