James Axler – Way of the Wolf

Way of the Wolf

Way of the Wolf

#42 in the Deathlands series

James Axler

Song of the Wolf

Silent, sleek, savagely swift

on the watchful hunt.

Locking eyes with the chosen one

to see who yields to the final call.

While the stars wheel on their course

we are at one with that primal force.

O Pure Brothers, a sacrifice

to the gods of survival.

THE DEATHLANDS SAGA

This world is their legacy, a world born in the violent nuclear spasm of 2001 that was the bitter outcome of a struggle for global dominance.

There is no real escape from this shockscape where life always hangs in the balance, vulnerable to newly demonic nature, barbarism, lawlessness.

But they are the warrior survivalists, and they endure—in the way of the lion, the hawk and the tiger, true to nature’s heart despite its ruination.

Ryan Cawdor: The privileged son of an East Coast baron. Acquainted with betrayal from a tender age, he is a master of the hard realities.

Krysty Wroth: Harmony ville’s own Titian-haired beauty, a woman with the strength of tempered steel. Her premonitions and Gaia powers have been fostered by her Mother Sonja.

J. B. Dix, the Armorer: Weapons master and Ryan’s close ally, he, too, honed his skills traversing the Deathlands with the legendary Trader.

Doctor Theophilus Tanner: Torn from his family and a gentler life in 1896, Doc has been thrown into a future he couldn’t have imagined.

Dr. Mildred Wyeth: Her father was killed by the Ku Klux Klan, but her fate is not much lighter. Restored from predark cryogenic suspension, she brings twentieth-century healing skills to a nightmare.

Jak Lauren: A true child of the wastelands, reared on adversity, loss and danger, the albino teenager is a fierce fighter and loyal friend.

Dean Cawdor: Ryan’s young son by Sharona accepts the only world he knows, and yet he is the seedling bearing the promise of tomorrow.

In a world where all was lost, they are humanity’s last hope…

Chapter One

“What the hell are you doing out here?”

Ryan Cawdor shifted casually in the long shadows of morning, a flexing of muscles that most people might have missed, bringing himself around to face the coming trouble squarely. But several of the men among the twenty-six coldhearts, who were gathered in front of Doc and him, took notice. Their hands dropped to their weapons.

Ryan’s own hand touched the butt of the SIG-Sauer P-226 holstered on his right hip. He was tense, knowing what he and his companions faced, and knowing they had a slim chance of walking through the coming fire unscathed. They were all on triple red: Krysty Wroth, J. B. Dix, Jak Lauren, Mildred Wyeth and Ryan’s son, Dean, who hid in the forest beyond the clearing, watching over them.

Of course, Ryan had made sure the odds were tilted in their favor as best he could. He was a brave man, a man who’d faced some of the worst Deathlands could offer and walked away a winner by simply surviving the encounter, but he was no greenie stupe when it came to trapping and being trapped. This day he was the trapper, but he’d had to step into the lion’s den to get it done.

The clearing under the tall trees held the promise of defensible positions, but only if Ryan and his companions didn’t get cut down before they could make a move toward the enemy.

Rough-hewn, and stamped by violent events as a true son of Deathlands often was, Ryan stood over six feet tall and went over two hundred pounds, all of it rolling muscle from living hard. His curly black hair framed a sun-bronzed face, but the dark color was picked up again in the weathered patch that covered his left eye. He carried the SIG-Sauer pistol in a worn, serviceable holster at his right hip, and held the Steyr bolt-action sniper rifle in his right hand. His finger rested inside the rifle’s trigger guard, the safety off.

“Why, my dear fellow,” Doc said congenially, addressing the man who’d spoken to him and spreading his hands to indicate the small packages spread across the rough woolen blanket before him. “I came here to conduct a little free enterprise.”