Chapter Twenty-Eight

 

 

 

"One of the few times in my life that I've ever felt reasonably safe in the middle of a ville."

 

Ryan grinned at his companion's words. But there was some truth in what the Armorer had said. Tenbos, despite his obvious serious illness, seemed to be on top of things, including his two unpleasant and threatening stepsons. There was no evidence of evil or cruelty, and the sec men simply went about their work without bullying or sadism.

 

"Yeah," he said. "If we weren't in a hurry to meet up again with Trader, I wouldn't mind taking up the baron's offer and staying here awhile longer."

 

"Me too. Hope he's well enough to show us his weapon collection this morning."

 

"Main thing I want is to get some more decent food under my belt. See me through the next few hundred spine-rattling miles in the armawag."

 

There was a discreet knock on the door of their room. Both of them reached instinctively for their blasters, hesitating, both laughing.

 

"Death doesn't often let you know he's coming," J.B. said.

 

He raised his voice. "Yeah?"

 

"It's Edward Tenbos, gentlemen. The baron wonders if you would like to visit him on the top floor of the tower to view his firearms? And then to the first floor for breakfast?" The voice was calm and very deliberately neutral.

 

"Thanks a lot," Ryan replied. "Tell him that the answer to both of his invitations is 'Yes,' and we'll be with him in about five minutes."

 

They heard steps moving away. J.B. turned to face Ryan. "Only thing that worries me is those two boys. Something seriously creepy about them. Mebbe it's that everyone knows they're just waiting for dead man's boots."

 

"Mebbe. I know what you mean. Wish Krysty was here. Could do with her 'feeling' about them."

 

"Taking your blasters?"

 

Ryan looked at the Steyr rifle and the SIG-Sauer automatic. "I don't know. You?"

 

"Don't really want to hump the Uzi and the scattergun up and down stairs."

 

"Doesn't seem dangerous."

 

"True."

 

"Fireblast! Look, I'll just take along the SIG-Sauer. Should be more than enough for any piss-ant problem that might blow up in our faces."

 

 

 

THE STAIRS WERE DARK, curling around and around, with only an occasional slit casement to let some filtered light through. One of the great problems of windows in Deathlands was the amount of ordinary glass from predark days, a century back, that had become crazed and dulled by the harsh elements.

 

There was a pair of sec men on the landing below the arms collection. By the time that Ryan and J.B. had reached them, the two guards had tensed, recognized them, then relaxed, waving them through.

 

"Baron's been there for an hour or more. Got a half dozen of us to try to do some cleaning and dusting."

 

The other sec man nodded. "Even had his shitbag sonspardon my speechup here. Truth is, since his illness and the business with the slut-whore wife, well, the baron sort of lost interest in his blasters."

 

"You'll be the first onesfirst outlandersup these stairs for months and months. Still, best go on ahead. Don't keep him waiting."

 

J.B. ran his finger along the curving balustrade, brushing his hands together. "Filthy," he commented.

 

 

 

THE LIGHT WAS FAR BETTER at the top of the old tower, with windows on every side. There were a few padded seats remaining around the periphery of the large circular room, left over from its use as a revolving restaurant.

 

Baron Tenbos was sitting on one of them, his head leaning back, motionless.

 

Ryan stopped at the top of the stairs, holding up a warning hand to J.B.

 

"Chilled?" the Armorer whispered.

 

"Far from it, Mr. Dix." The voice was weak, but the piercing eyes under the hooded lids were still keen.

 

"Forgive my not rising, but I found the climb rather more steep than I remembered it. A real bastard becoming feeble when once you were so strong. Do come on in, gentlemen."

 

The air of neglect was palpable.

 

The room smelted of disinfectant and polish, and they could both see the evident signs of some hasty and halfhearted cleaning. But cobwebs still clung to the corners, by the old mock chandeliers. The carpet was dirty, with spots of oil and grease marking the delicate floral pattern.

 

Tenbos waved a hand. "A sorry thing these days, but mine own. Feel free to wander and look at anything."

 

"They been fired lately?" J.B. asked, picking up a poor German replica of a Genoan wheel-lock pistol.

 

"No. I haven't" The words trickling away. "I did once butthere is no ammunition now kept up here."

 

"Why?" Ryan asked, squinting along the chased barrel of a superb saw-handled dueling pistol, still carrying the maker's gold cartouche on the breech plug. "Parker?" he said.

 

J.B. joined him, taking the blaster with an almost religious awe. "Beautiful," he breathed. "William Parker of 233 High Holborn, London, England. 'Massive magnificence,' someone called it. Walnut stock. Nine-inch smooth-bore octagonal barrel. There's the sighting groove out into the tang of the false breech." He pointed with his index finger. "There. Look at the lovely plates, silver, here, protecting the stock by the barrel cross bolt. Single set trigger."

 

Ryan watched and listened in silence. J.B. wasn't the most talkative of men, and to hear him whisper this eulogy of the gun maker's art was extraordinary. Baron Tenbos was also transfixed, standing and making his slow and painful way around the room to join them.

 

"Must date from around 1812. Possibly a year or so later." He tested the action. "See, there's no adjustment for 'let-off' on the trigger. Wonderful swan's-neck lock. Bit fragile if you're in a touch-and-go fire-fight. Safety catch here behind the cock. Bolts the tumbler. See. Ramrod beneath."

 

"I swear that you must know more about firearms than any man living, Mr. Dix," the baron said. "Would you not like to remain here for a month or so and put my guns back into shape? Categorize and label them all."

 

"No. I've made a promise to a friend, and that is worth more than all the blasters in all of Deathlands."

 

Ryan had known his companion for long enough to be fully aware what that cost J.B.

 

The Armorer laid the pistol down on its rack. "This is a wonderful weapon. But that cheapjack German copy of the wheel lock is total shit. Why?"

 

"Why both in the same room?"

 

"Yes."

 

Tenbos sighed. "Because I became lazy, Mr. Dix. A wretched reason, but the truth. Though my lack of health was something of a factor in this. Perhaps you might give me the incentive to begin again."

 

"Worth it, for the good stuff."

 

"Why no ammo?" Ryan asked again.

 

"No ammo means no risk to me."

 

"I would've said you had some good men in your sec force. Where's the threat?"

 

Tenbos took a long, slow breath. "By now the poison will have begun to seep into the ears of my people. Two strangers in the ville. Perhaps their intention is to chill our beloved stepfather, the honored baron, and usurp his rightful successors. That has started already."

 

Ryan didn't say anything for a moment. He looked at the Parker flintlock, its stained copper powder horn below it in the glass-topped display case. "Why not simply remove the problem?" he said finally.

 

"Not my way, Cawdor. I did what I did to their mother and brother in a bloody rage."

 

"You had cause," J.B. protested.

 

"Perhaps. But that dodges the bullet, doesn't it? That night, when I visited the two cold corpses in our small chapel, I swore I would not take another human life. I have managed to cleave to that oath."

 

J.B. had turned and picked up the pistol again. "You said there was no ammo."

 

"Ah." The baron's fragile smile was back in place. "I couldn't fool a gunsman like yourself. Some of the weapons carry a single charge. Most do not. That Parker is one of the loaded guns. But let us make the most of our small time together, outlanders. Let me show you around."

 

The whole collection was much as J.B. had spotted, a strange mixture of rubbish and wonders, an occasional gold nugget glittering among the coal.

 

Cheap cast replicas of Second World War Brownings and Mausers and Walthers lay alongside an immaculate, cased, five-chambered flintlock revolver, made by Collier over two hundred and fifty years earlier.

 

"The Civil War blasters are the nicest," the Armorer commented. "Why not ditch the crap and keep those?"

 

The baron had been forced to sit down, fighting for breath. He looked up, nodding. "Should. Mebbe I will. I started collecting that period."

 

J.B. walked slowly past the rows of weapons, mainly handblasters. "Eighteen forty Colt Army. Forty-four caliber. Colt Navy next to it. Eighteen sixty-one. Thirty-six. I reckon one of the finest, best-balanced blasters anybody ever made. Anyplace. Anytime. Lovely gun. Nice .44 Remington New Model Army. Thirty-six caliber Savage. Some English blasters. Beaumont-Adams." He showed it to Ryan. "This was the first of the genuinely manufactured double-action revolvers. Double-trigger Tranter, eighty bore. Dark night, Baron! Man could lose himself up here."

 

"Delighted you you like them, Mr. Dix. If only you and Cawdor would"

 

Ryan shook his head. "What we said still holds. We have to be up north and time's passing."

 

"I understand."

 

There was a circular display of muskets, similar to that of the swords, and Ryan stood and stared at it. The stocks were dusty and dull, and some of the metal parts showed rust and verdigris, signs of shameful neglect.

 

"I think I need to rest," Tenbos said, tearing them away from the display of firearms. "I slept badly and rose too early. I think some morphine might make me a more presentable human being. Why don't you two go down to the first floor and have some food. It'll be ready by now."

 

"We can help you down," Ryan offered.

 

"No, no. Ask one of the sec men to bring the small brown vial from my bedside table."

 

"Sure?"

 

Tenbos nodded, then turned toward J.B. "And you have given me a new heart, my friend. If I may call you that. Pass this way again in a month or so, perhaps if you return toward your homes. And you will see everything as sparkling and clean as a new-minted bullet. I promise you that."

 

"Might take you up on that, Baron."

 

They left the lofty chamber, winding their ways down the stairs, pausing to pass on the message from Tenbos about the morphine to one of the armed guards. He nodded. "Baron gets this way. More and more often these days. Least you got him up and moving. More than those ass-shafting little bastards ever try and do for him." He called after them.

 

"Watch your backs, outlanders. Best advice I can give you." Ryan waved a hand. "Thanks."

 

 

 

SLICED HAM, smoked above hickory, with eggs over easy and some fried bread, made a good breakfast. The cook came and asked if they wanted anything to take on their journey and promised to make up a pack of food as well as filling up their canteens and tanks with fresh water from the ville's own well.

 

As Ryan and J.B. had walked into the rather gloomy dining room, Teddy and Robby had been eating at the far end of the table, heads close together, talking animatedly. As soon as they saw the two outlanders, they'd risen hurriedly and left. Both remembered to paste bright smiles on their sullen faces.

 

Ryan and J.B. ignored them, concentrating on their own meal, charging up their batteries ready to continue their odyssey to the Northwest.

 

One of the sec men had warned them of travelers' reports of unseasonable falls of snow in that direction, though the climate in Deathlands had been irretrievably altered by the massive nukings of skydark and nobody could rely on finding the weather that they expected.

 

"More to drink or eat?" the cook asked, wiping his large red hands on his greasy apron. "Baron said to give you all the best we had."

 

"I'm stuffed," Ryan said. "Thanks, though. Know where Baron Tenbos is?"

 

"Don't believe that he's come down from the gun collection yet. He hasn't been up there at the top of the tower for such a long while." He turned to go. "Saw the two boys going up the stairs," he added.

 

 

 

THEY QUICKLY GOT everything ready for their departure.

 

"Best say our goodbyes to the baron," J.B. said. "Leave our blasters here."

 

"Yeah."

 

Surprisingly the staircase was deserted, without a single sec man on duty. But neither of them thought anything about that. The air of relaxed competence that ran through the ville meant that it seemed as secure as anywhere.

 

They were near the top of the stairs.

 

"Quiet." J.B. halted a few steps from the open chamber. "Very quiet."

 

"Could be that he's sleeping. Looked like he needed it earlier."

 

The Armorer moved more slowly, his head turning from side to side, glasses glinting in the spears of dusty light. "Something's wrong, Ryan," he whispered, as the baseball bat from the shadows came hissing around in a lethal arc and struck him across the side of the head, knocking him to the floor.