Her eyes moved on.
The rest of the storehouse had been divided at some time into two separate
stories, but some of the floor of the upper chamber had long since rotted away.
The partition, too, that had once separated the main two-level store from the
living area had disappeared. Only a few planks here and there showed that a wall
had ever existed.
On the lower level, the ground floor section, she could see Scale’s armory and
store. Guns were everywhere, some in piles, some stacked against the outer wall:
MGs, rifles, shotguns. Some of the weaponry she could identify. There were rows
of crates, mostly still sealed, stacked along the inner wall, three or four
deep, five or six high. Many, she knew, contained canned food looted from land
wag trains. There were other boxes she recognized. A crate of grenades, open,
its top wrenched off, stood near the door. She had noted that one almost at
once. She knew very well how to use a grenade. She knew very well how to handle
an automatic rifle, too. In this, as in so much else, Uncle Tyas had been more
than thorough when he took her in after her mother’s death.
From where she lay, Krysty could not see the very farthest part of the building.
That was where the man called Scale was. She could hear him muttering to himself
as he kicked things over, wrenched at cardboard boxes, seeking something.
She wondered how much time she had.
She tried to relax. Forced herself to relax. To do what must be done required
calmness, peace of mind. Not for long, however. Only as long as it took for her
to be at peace with herself, and at one with herself. Under the circumstances,
not easy. But she had to become like the invisible clock in her body, blind to
everything but herself.
She closed her eyes, drifted. She felt as though she was on the edge of… what?
Difficult to say. She tried to imagine a huge soft mattress, of the kind owned
by wealthy folk in the East, one of the symbols of their status. Very thick and
very, very soft. And she was lying atop it. What she must do was sink into it.
But at the moment it was nothing but unyielding, as firm and obdurate as a
tabletop.
Or… maybe not quite as hard as that. Not quite…
She could feel a yielding.
She blocked off all noise, all outside sounds, everything that was not a part of
her.
And in her mind, she smiled….
And began to sink into the feathery, cotton-wool softness.
And as she began to sink, so she could feel, within her, a… stirring.
SCALE MARCHED BACK DOWN the long room, smacking the coiled bullwhip against the
side of his leg. The feel of it was reassuring, as though it was a trade-off for
the power he had so swiftly, so devastatingly, lost less than an hour ago. He
would do her now, do everything to her he could think of. Then having assuaged
the raging fire in his loins he would flay her, destroy her with the whip. Then
he would leave. That was it. He had no idea where he would go, what he would do,
because he was not thinking that far ahead. In his mind was a confusion of
images—fireballing explosions, red hair, stabbing rifle-flashes, white flesh,
soaring tracers, skin that was slick with blood. He marched like a robot,
cackling to himself, muttering disjointedly, not even knowing himself what he
was saying. Smacking the whip against his leg.
He strode out from under the sagging beams that supported rotting planks and
headed for the bed. He did not see the woman as a woman, as a flesh-and-blood
human being. Merely as a shape. He threw the whip down on the trash-strewn floor
and grabbed at the shape, his hands fumbling, then yanking the loose clothing,
ripping it, tearing off long strips of it, clenching fingers at her panties and
pulling. He reached for the knife at his belt, sliced the cords that bound those
limbs, wrenched them apart, heard the shape screaming… screaming….
SCREAMING! It was as though someone had thrust a spear deep into her soul. Such