“What d’you think about those poles?” J.B. asked him, blowing out a perfect ring
of smoke from the dark, evil-smelling cheroot.
“Warnin’. Some mutie religion trick. Maybe we’re on someone’s home turf. I’ve
heard nothin’ on any townies movin’ up here.”
Within a few minutes the huge war wag had finally pulled over for the night, and
the usual sentries had been posted. Supper was cooking, and around a fire most
of the men and women in the team were making and mending-cleaning armaments and
repairing clothes.
Unusually in the Deathlands, the water was good. Ryan walked down and sat down
on a large boulder, riven by the frosts, and flicked pebbles into the river.
Alongside the rocks were patches of creamy Indian paintbrush and splashes of
golden vetch, absurdly rich, their colors still bright in the last shards of the
evening sun. The sky was a sullen red, streaked with wind-torn clouds in gray
and purple. Over the tops of the highest range of mountains there was the usual
silver lace of lightning.
Ryan Cawdor was not a man given to endless agonizing and self-doubts. But on
this beautiful evening he felt a rare sense of melancholy. Things were changing.
The majority of his friends had been chilled within the past week, and now
Trader’s race was damned near run. Whatever happened up in the topmost trails of
the Darks, it would mean an ending of the old ways of life that had been his
ways for over ten years.
“You look like a prickless mutie in a gaudy-house, Ryan.”
“Hi, Krysty. Guess Trader’s sickness has really gotten to me. He was almost like
a father, if that don’t make me sound like a stupe.”
She sat down by him, stretching out her long legs, staring at her own reflection
in the polished leather of her boots. “You don’t sound like a stupe. I’ve only
known the Trader a short while, but he’s… somethin’ special.”
On the farther side of the valley, up a slope of rough scree, Ryan caught a
flicker of movement. His rifle was still in the war wag, but his pistol flowed
into his fingers without any conscious thought, only to be bolstered again when
he recognized the white blur as one of the hardy mountain goatlike creatures
that thrived near the tree line in the Darks.
A bright blue bird with a spiky crest came to drink near them, dipping its beak
into the water in delicate, jerky movements. The smell of cooking stew came on
the breeze to them.
“Hungry?” Ryan asked, turning his head quickly, finding that Krysty was sitting
closer than he’d thought. So close that their noses almost touched and her veil
of crimson hair brushed lightly against his cheek.
Her green eyes drilled into his and she half opened her mouth, saying nothing.
Despite the cool of the evening, Ryan was perspiring.
It was utterly inevitable that they should kiss. And having kissed should kiss
again, and again. His hand was holding the back of her neck, and her hair seemed
almost to caress his fingers. His tongue thrust between her parted lips, and her
sharp teeth nipped him, so gently. His right hand slipped down the rough
material of her overalls, finding the zipper, lowering it in a whisper of
movement. He felt the warm swell of her breast as his palm cupped it, and the
nipple harden like a tiny animal. Her own hands were delving under the long
coat, but the wealth of guns and the panga hindered her from reaching and
touching him.
“Ryan…” she panted. “Please, can… ?”
“Where? In the war wag?”
“No!” Vehemently. “Not in there. Out here where you can breathe free. Over
there, in those trees beyond the river.”
Caution, and the memory of those odd totemic warning signs, made him hesitate.
But his desire overcame all resistance and he took her by the hand and they
walked together, jumping a narrow brook, finding a space of cropped grass
alongside a quiet pond. Trees hid them from the war wag, and the gathering
darkness kept their secret.
It was too cold for them to strip, but she wriggled out of the overalls, and he