The party of eight sec men and the seven companions had walked straight to the head of the valley, with little attempt at concealment.
“Interesting idea of decoration they’ve got,” Ryan remarked. “And an interesting idea of not being seen that you’ve got.”
“Yeah, where are their sec forces?” J.B. added, peering into the gloom and voicing the unease felt by the others.
“Ain’t got any sec forces. They don’t need them,” Harvey answered, poking at one of the bird corpses with the snubbed barrel of his blaster. The rotten carcass fell off the wire and landed in the dust. “The only thing that wants to come anywhere near this pesthole is the wildlife. Come to that, even that ain’t so keen.”
“Why don’t you wipe them out once and for all, if they’re such a problem?” Mildred asked.
Harvey shrugged. “We’ve got other things to do. Besides, they don’t bother us much, and that’s all we ask. Guess we just don’t like visitors.”
Doc eyed the sec chief speculatively. Now why would that be? he wondered. On reflection, he decided to save that question for another time.
Krysty had other ideas. She had kept silent for some time, but there was something about the sec chief that made her hair crawl close to her neck.
“Why don’t you like visitors?” she asked. “Why do you keep the entrance to your ville so well hidden you don’t even mark it on your own maps?”
“Privacy,” Harvey said shortly. “It’s a rare thing, and we prize it.”
“Especially if you have something to hide.”
Harvey’s eyes momentarily blazed, but Krysty didn’t flinch under his glare. She could feel his men tense around them, and saw from the periphery of her vision both Ryan and J.B. tense also, expecting trouble.
The sec chief won the struggle to control his temper and said quietly. “Our business is our business. Mebbe you’ll find out later…if we want. Meantime, we’ve got work to do.”
The fifteen-strong party looked down at the ville of Samtvogel. The inhabitants, clearly and unmistakably visible against the light of the fires and the dull colors of the valley, were moving slowly toward the center of the ville, which was a circular courtyard between the two largest ranch houses in the valley. It was here that the fire blazed. Standing between the two houses, and completely blocking one entrance to the yard, was a squat object, painted in a multiplicity of colors and standing malevolently over the unfolding scene.
“What’s that?” Doc asked, gesturing with his stick.
“Who knows?” the sec chief answered in a bored tone. “Some kind of totem left over from the old days. I’ll bet as how most of the mutie scum are so dumb they don’t even realize it’s there, let alone what it is.”
“Perhaps…” Doc replied in a faraway tone that made Ryan look at him sharply.
There was no time for the one-eyed warrior to ask Doc what was on his mind, as Ant spotted something in the melee below.
“There they are… Shit, what a bunch of sick fucks,” he whispered, pointing to the center of the ville.
The multicolored muties, chanting tonelessly and incessantly, had taken the three poles and upended them, so that the corpses of the children sat one on another, sinking down the poles into heaps of dead flesh. Some of the muties were laying kindling around the feet of the bottom children.
No one could tear their gaze away, wanting to, but unwilling to believe what they were seeing and needing confirmation.
“Those are our dead,” Harvey whispered, “and they ain’t gonna burn them.”
“So how do we attack?” J.B. asked. He wanted to ask why it was so important to get back some chilled kids, risking their own necks for nothing, but figured at that point it was more practical to figure out how they could mount the attack and get out in one piece.
“The way I see it is like this,” Harvey said after pausing to gaze around the circumference of the valley edge.
JAK SLID DOWN the loose stones and patches of scree that constituted the sides of the valley. He knew that it would appear pitch-black in the area immediately outside of the gathering of huts, shacks, old ranch houses and ragged tents that made up the ville of Samtvogel. The intense light of the fire would only carry so far, and mutie eyes wouldn’t be able to adjust to the sudden change in light levels. As his flowing white hair and pale skin shone out against the dark of his camou clothing and the dark earth, he was pleased about this.