James Axler – Way of the Wolf

Nothing moved out in the clearing.

Ryan lifted his voice. “Jak!”

“Done,” the albino called back, letting them know the three men who had disappeared from sight no longer mattered.

“J.B.?” Ryan wiped perspiration from his forehead before it had a chance to drip down into the open socket behind the eye patch and burn.

“I think we got them all,” the Armorer replied.

Ryan took a fresh magazine for the SIG-Sauer and changed it with the partially depleted one. “Cover me.”

“Give me plenty of room to shoot around.”

Ryan stood and moved from behind concealment. He kept the 9 mm blaster in front of him and moved slowly. The muzzle tracked across the scattered dead men, looking for signs of life among the mangled bodies.

Ryan only found two men alive. One of them still had the breath to beg for his life. Ryan didn’t waste a bullet on either of them, instead taking a knife from a nearby corpse and slitting their throats. He intended to take his group into Hazard, and he didn’t mean to leave a chance of any vengeance coming up from behind them.

The converted wag rattled from a faint movement. At first Ryan thought it was the only surviving horse feebly kicking out its life. The wag had turned over, coming to a rest across the horse’s legs. But when he looked into the horse’s eyes and saw only death reflected there, he knew something else caused the motion.

“I got somebody still alive in the wag,” Ryan called back to J.B.

“I can put a few rounds into it,” the Armorer offered.

Ryan directed his voice at the wag. “Is that what it’s going to take?”

“Don’t kill me,” a voice said. “Mebbe I can help you.”

“Looking around at things,” Ryan replied, “I don’t get the feeling we’re in a spot to need a lot of help.”

“Are you planning on going into Hazard?”

Ryan crouched and looked under the overturned wag. The dwarf, Albert, stared back at him, eyes wide and frightened. “And if we are?” Ryan asked.

“The folks in the ville are going to wonder what happened to Liberty and his bunch. They might not like it if you just come strolling into the ville. But if I go with you, I can tell them Liberty said it was okay.”

“The way I hear it,” Ryan said, “the people of Hazard have been letting Liberty do their chilling for a while now. Could be there’s not many in the ville who’d care to stand up against us.”

The dwarf licked his lips, laying his final ace on the line where they could both get a good look at it. “You want to take that chance when you could take me with you and be sure?”

Ryan grinned in spite of the situation. The little man had a lot of nerve. “How do I know you and Liberty weren’t related or something? Mebbe you’ll try to stick a knife in my guts as soon as you get the chance.”

“Me and Liberty related?” The dwarf had to strain to make a rude noise, but he succeeded after a dry-lipped moment. “And I got all the looks. He kept me around to torment, mister. A few miles to the north, there was another ville just setting up. I was part of that ville. Some of us had a disagreement with a local baron, so we pulled up stakes and tried to make it on our own. Except we hadn’t counted on Hazard being so territorial. Twenty miles away, we were, and the ville elders decided we were still too close. They were afraid we were going to overhunt the game in this area.”

Ryan knew that was a serious worry for a ville like Hazard, which was still living off the land.

“They warned us to move away last year, but by then winter was coming on,” the dwarf continued. “We asked them to give us till the spring. Instead, they sent Liberty and his bunch of coldhearts to burn down our tents and the two permanent buildings we’d started before we talked to them. When they rode out of the ville, not many people were left alive. I don’t think the ones that escaped survived. Winter hit the next week, and the land around here can be bastard inhospitable during those times. Thirty-seven people, and all of them wiped out. No, sir, I don’t have any love for the folk of that ville.”