James Axler – Way of the Wolf

Hesitantly the little man put his hand out, as well. Doc knelt in front of him and let him climb on. With his short arms, Albert had difficulty holding on. Finally Doc shoved him up onto his shoulders, and Albert sat there like a child.

The comparison cut Doc through to the quick. A memory, blunt as a ghost in a Shakespearean play and as cutting as ridicule in Louis XIV’s courts, drifted into his mind. He had carried another small person like this in the past. A name filtered through to his mind. “Rachel,” he groaned, almost seeing the little girl in his mind. Emily and Jolyon were there as well. In that moment, Doc’s heart turned to lead, weighing him down.

“Dr. Tanner?” Albert asked in concern.

Doc ignored the tears that trickled down his face. They would fade soon enough, just as all the others had. “I am all right, my diminutive companion. But please, honor me and entertain me with a discourse you have read, heard about or imagined. Something that would keep my mind occupied as I walk this winding path. And please call me Doc.”

“A learned discourse, eh?” Albert asked. His voice brightened. “Do you know Percy Shelley and Lord Byron?”

“The authors of Prometheus Unbound and Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, to name but a couple of their major works?” Doc asked. “By the Three Kennedys, I would be remiss not having read their works, even more so not having heard of them.”

“Those are the two.”

Doc felt better already. Both poets were personal favorites of his. “Then pray tell me.”

“Okay,” Albert said. “Shelley and Lord Byron go into this bar, see…”

RYAN CROUCHED at the top of the hill that led down to Hazard. The ville was less than a quarter of a mile distant now. He surveyed it through his field glasses.

Krysty knelt at his side, her hand resting casually on his thigh. “Look at the houses, lover,” she said wistfully. “All painted white and looking brand new.”

“From here,” Ryan said. “You get closer up, you’ll see where the whitewash didn’t quite cover.”

“Still, it’s a pleasant thought. What about the big building in the center? It looks like a hotel.”

“It is,” Ryan replied. The building was three stories tall, bigger than any other in the ville, and only the church steeple was taller. Pink-flowered green curtains filled the windows. A sign ran along the side of the building’s second floor, reading Hazard Royale Inn.

“A bed would be nice, wouldn’t it?” Krysty asked. “For a night or two.”

“Mebbe,” Ryan said. He shifted the binoculars, taking in more of the ville. Despite the ville’s peaceful appearance, he didn’t trust it. Memory of the thirty-seven people who’d been butchered by Liberty and his band at the bequest of the ville’s elders stuck out in his mind.

No wag tracks showed in the beaten earth of the roads marked out in straight lines through the ville. Evidently it had rained lately, because great washouts still showed mud in the center of the streets. A few children played in the ville square under an old, tattered flag of the United States of America. A Civil War cannon, grimed over with rust that hadn’t been removed despite a dogged attempt sat in the square atop a small, shaped hill partially covered by a carpet of yellow-and-white daisies. More daisies thrust out from the cannon’s mouth.

Women talked in front of a two-story laundry that had a generous wooden porch and hand-lettered windows. Men sat and whittled on the benches in front of the laundry, while the women stood with baskets of clothes on their hips.

It looked idyllic, but the men wore weapons and so did some of the women. The ville wasn’t a place that took kindly to strangers.

Ryan knew they needed a story. And the trading one sounded as good as any. “Albert.”

The dwarf turned from where he’d been talking to Doc. “Yes, Mr. Cawdor.”

“Just call me Ryan,” the one-eyed man said. Too many people in the area might have heard the name, and Harvey Cawdor had given it a large disservice. “Does the ville have a healer?”