Chapter Eight

Ryan rose from his drug-induced dreams like Orpheus ascending from Hades. Every horror he had seen, every atrocity he had witnessed, every terrible act he himself had been forced to commit or had visited against him in this fire-blasted world had come to him, come back assisted, exaggerated and multiplied tenfold by his imagination and the hallucinogenic vileness Baron Barat had poured forth into his cup. The world spun as Ryan became aware of his surroundings. He tried to rise and put his feet beneath him, but fell. Constable Jorge-Teo and his sec men laughed as Ryan fell from his bunk and knocked over the slop bucket.

Ryan lay naked in filth. A shuddering smile passed across his crusted lips. Naked except for his eye patch. That was the second and last mistake these chill-pale, rad-blasted sec muties were ever going to make. The men stopped laughing as someone pounded on the door. Ryan lay where he was and spent time gathering himself.

The door opened. Jorge-Teo called out in greeting. “Father Joao! I see your fishing trip went well!” He laughed again and called back to the holding cells. “Hey! Prisoner! Your friends are here!”

Ryan ignored the imperative to look and just lay on the concrete. Ryan recognized Mildred Wyeth’s voice as she made an outraged snarl. The constable wasn’t pleased with Ryan’s recalcitrance. “Mateus! Get him up.”

Mateus was a lanky man as tall as Doc but with black hair and bad teeth. He walked up to the cell and drew another of the home-rolled, double-barrel blasters the sec men in these parts seemed to favor. “Hey, this one is loaded with salt.” He jerked the barrels upward, indicating Ryan should stand. “But you still won’t like it.”

Ryan still felt as weak as a kitten, and being blasted with rock salt wasn’t going to improve matters. He crawled across the floor and used the bars of the cell to haul himself up to a swaying, standing position. Jak and Mildred were bound by the hands. Neither one looked injured. The sec man behind Mildred couldn’t seem to keep his chalk-white hand off her behind. The muzzles of the blaster pressed against the back of her head were telling her to shut up and love it. Another man was putting Jak’s and Mildred’s weapons and packs in a locker. Ryan’s blasters weren’t among them, and he suspected the baron had confiscated them for himself. Ryan met the eyes of a chalk-faced man in a hooded black robe with red piping. His black hair was tonsured rather than long, and he had a short mustache and beard. He wore a golden crucifix around his neck.

Father Joao.

“Prisoner.” The priest gestured at his captives. “You know these?”

Ryan looked back and forth between Jak and Mildred. He spit as he surveyed Jak. “He’s one of you.” Ryan’s eye slid across Mildred in disgust. “I don’t know what kind of rad-burned mutie that is.” Ryan turned and shuffled back to his bunk. He waited for the double blast of rock salt in his back, but it didn’t come.

The constable was amused once more. “Well, either our friend is a very uneducated man or he is lying.” He examined his two new detainees. His eyes lingered long on Mildred’s shapely form. “An African and an albino. I must say I am intrigued.”

Mildred was in no mood to be contrite. “Why don’t you start singing Ebony and Ivory and watch what happens.”

Constable Jorge-Teo stared for a few uncomprehending heartbeats and then jerked his head at the sec man behind her. “Valter!” Mildred crumpled as Valter drove the butt of his blaster into her kidney. The men all laughed. Father Joao tsked in unconvincing disapproval. Valter stared down at Mildred in open cupidity.

“I want this one.”

Jorge-Teo scowled and his hand went to his semiauto blaster. Father Joao raised a warning hand. “It is the baron who decides who is to breed with who and when outside of marriage.”

Tension filled the sec station.

Valter broke the tension with a leer. “Who said breed?” He stared down knowingly at Mildred as she pushed herself up to hands and knees. “She has other holes.”

Jorge-Teo grinned and called back, “Prisoner! What do you think?”

Ryan stayed in the shadows of his bunk. The slop bucket scraped as he pulled it to him. He had nothing left in his stomach, but he stuck his finger down his throat and retched. The sec men all laughed once more.

“I don’t think he cares,” Valter stated.

Jorge-Teo nodded at Father Joao. “Perhaps you should go outside and keep watch.”

“Constable!” Father Joao lapsed into Portuguese as he protested.

Jorge-Teo returned the conversation to English for the benefit of the captives. “Come now, Father, we all know what you do in your cottage with that little island girl the baron gave you.”

Father Joao’s alabaster skin flushed pink.

All the sec men laughed once more. Jorge-Teo shrugged. “You can do the same to the African when we are finished. As long as her womb is not damaged, the baron will not mind so much. I believe we would all like to see it.” The men laughed again, but cruelty replaced shame in the priest’s eyes as he moved to the door. Jorge-Teo raised a cautioning hand. “You see the baron’s wag or his personal guard, you knock three times. Best we apologize later than be caught now.”

“Yes, Constable, I understand.”

“And, Father?”

“Yes, Constable?”

“I know you are distracted, and we are in town, and you pray for us, but remember our duty. Keep an eye out for the nightwalkers.”

All lust and cruelty drained from Joao’s face. Valter and Mateus both handed him a blaster and the priest took them. “Yes, Constable.” Joao stepped out in the night.

Nightwalkers. Ryan filed that away. He rose as the sec men began unbuckling their swords and blaster belts. They shucked off long coats and shirts to expose worm-pale flesh. Valter and several others dropped their trousers to reveal the purple, engorged flesh rising between their legs. Ryan flipped up his eye patch. A pair of curved spring-steel slivers made a frame around its edges. They had keylike flanges and cuts on both ends. The picks popped into Ryan’s hand with a squeeze of the patch. He pulled the eye patch back into place and stalked to the bars of his cage. The constable’s sec men had no attention to spare for a vomiting prisoner.

They had fresh meat in front of them.

Mildred suddenly rolled over and snapped her boot up between Valter’s legs. Most of the men laughed and roared as Valter keened and dropped. They liked a victim with a little life in her. But not too much. Mateus stomped on Mildred’s stomach, and she gasped and curled.

Ryan silently slipped his picks into the tumblers and began working the lock.

Jak struggled violently, but he got a flurry of fists and boots for his trouble.

Ryan felt the ancient lock responding to his seduction. The lock was old but oiled and well maintained. He suspected the holding cells had frequent guests. The constable was just stupid enough to keep the hinges of the cell doors well oiled, as well. He should have known that nothing should open silently in a jail.

The would-be rapists heard nothing as Ryan stepped from his cell.

The sec station blasters were all chained, and the sec men had piled their weapons on the other side of the room. Constable Jorge-Teo and his men stood in a circle, pants down, as Valter stood over his victim. Mildred feebly tried to kick him and he stomped on her ankle in reprisal when she failed. Valter grabbed Mildred by the legs and savagely flipped her onto her stomach.

Ryan draped a sword belt over his shoulder.

Valter took out a knife and began cutting his way down the back seam of Mildred’s khaki cargo pants. “Christiano! Hold her!” Christiano helpfully grabbed Mildred by her beaded plaits and rammed her face into the floor. Jorge-Teo dropped his pants. “Muisa!” He pointed to the man holding Jak. “That one does not move.”

Muisa’s paper-pale fist fell into the side of Jak’s neck three times and left him twitching on the floor.

Ryan silently removed a whaling lance from the rack. Long ago Ryan had been upon the waters of the Lantic and chased Leviathan. He took up the seven-and-a-half-foot killing spear, and it felt familiar in his calloused hands. Half of the length was a wooden haft as thick as his arm. The rest was an iron shaft tipped with a fist-size lozenge of sharpened spearhead. Ryan took the lance in the underhanded hold. He took three short, sharp steps forward and let fly. It was a heave rather than a throw. Like many implements designed for killing rather than fighting, it was the weight of this weapon that did the work. The whaling lance was made to sink through half a fathom of whale flesh to seek its life.

Valter’s spine proved little barrier to the twenty-pound pike.

He proved so unresistant to whale spears that the blade punched all the way through his middle and sank into Christiano’s face where he knelt holding Mildred’s head against the floor. Ryan’s stolen sword hissed from its sheath as he stalked forward among the suddenly screaming blood-spattered sec men. He was only a middling sword-fighter. Nevertheless Doc had tried to teach him a few things in his more lucid moments. Ryan rammed his blade through Mateus’s heart with an authority that would have done Doc proud.

The constable’s blaster rose.

Jak jumped up from the floor and put both boots into Jorge-Teo’s chest. The constable went flying over a desk, and his blaster sailed across the room. Jak couldn’t break his fall with his hands tied, and his breath blasted out of his lungs as he hit the concrete hard. The remaining sec man grabbed for the pants puddled around his ankles and screamed for mercy. “No! No! No!” Ryan rammed his blade through the man’s vitals and the sec man fell vomiting blood the color of wine.

Father Joao flung open the door. “Que inferno…” His already fish-belly complexion paled at the carnage in the sec station. Ryan darted his sword across the distance between them but it clanged off the door as Joao slammed it shut again.

Jorge-Teo was up and running for his office.

Ryan sprinted after him.

The constable slammed the door to his office shut behind him and flung the bolt home. Ryan dived through the frosted window. Jorge-Teo screamed as Ryan tackled him in a shower of glass. The two men rolled across the floor and Ryan came up on top. His fist pistonned into his opponent’s face like a jackhammer. Jorge-Teo’s lips split apart and his parrotlike teeth shattered beneath Ryan’s knuckles. He checked his bloody hand midblow as Jorge-Teo’s eyes rolled and he went limp. The one-eyed man rose and dragged the half-conscious constable back into the main jail.

Jak was free of his bonds and he rose from putting the wounded sec man out of his misery. As Mildred stared at the ruins of her pants, Ryan dropped Jorge-Teo. He walked over to the locker and pulled on his clothes and boots. He wished for his blasters; his blades were there. He tossed Mildred her pack and she quickly stepped into her spare pair of pants. Ryan strapped on his panga and then slid his slim-bladed combat knife into the top of his boot. He stalked across the room and picked up the constable’s fallen blaster. It had a long barrel and said MAUSER on the slide. Ryan checked the load and found a spare mag in the constable’s coat.

Mildred checked the loads in her blaster. “Where’s Doc?”

“Baron had him brought up to the manor.”

“Where that?” Jak asked.

“Dunno.” Ryan looked down at Jorge-Teo. “He’ll tell us. Where’re Krysty and J.B.?”

“The mat-trans only lets two people through at a time, and it looks like it’s set on a seventy-two-hour schedule,” Mildred said. “Jak and I came through, so I’m thinking J.B. and Krysty got denied and are still back at the redoubt. The stickie situation was getting pretty ugly when we left and can’t be getting any better. They’ll be running out of food and water soon.”

Ryan checked his chron. Two more days till Krysty and J.B. could jump, and the baron would have a welcoming party waiting. Ryan quickly filled his people in on the situation on the other island and what had happened after the crossing as the church bells began to ring the alarm out in the square. “I don’t like it but we’re going to have to split up. Mildred and I are going after Doc. Jak, I want you to get yourself a black hat and blend in.”

Without a word Jak rummaged through the caped long coats of the fallen sec men. They were all too large, so it came down to the least bloodstained. Mildred tucked his snow-white hair up into the broad-brimmed hat while he pulled on gloves. Jak tucked his blaster away and picked up a pair of the local weapons. He put on a pair of the local smoked lenses and gave Ryan a shrug.

“At first glance,” Ryan said, “you’ll do.”

“Job?” Jak asked.

“Father Joao. Get him. Get his boat. We need off this island and access to the sister isle and the mat-trans escarpment.”

“Got it,” Jak said. “Meet where?”

“Doc and I made landfall a couple miles north of the ville. Be there at dawn. We’ll meet you.” Ryan thought of the cave. “Don’t come within sight of land until sunup. If we aren’t there, then try again at noon, then dawn tomorrow. If we still aren’t there, then getting Krysty and J.B. is your priority.”

Jak moved to the back door of the sec station without another word.

Ryan turned his eye upon his former jailer. Ryan had beaten him senseless and Jorge-Teo’s eyes were still rolling. Ryan yanked him up by the hair and slapped him back to lucidity. “Where’s the baron?”

“Stop…I bleed! Please.”

Ryan cracked his hand across the constable’s jaw. “Where?”

“In…his manse.”

“Where’s that?”

“The biggest house! On the highest hill!” The constable sobbed and clutched at his mangled face. “You cannot miss it!”

Ryan closed his fist and sent the constable back to sleep. He wiped violet blood from his hands on the unconscious man’s coat. “Let’s get Doc.”

DOC WAS SURPRISED and somewhat displeased to find himself alive and in a great deal of pain. His left side and his back were on fire. Doc was in a bed piled with pillows and had a stack of quilts atop him. A fire flickered in the fireplace. Doc discovered his hands and feet were bound to the bedposts.

Barat spoke from a chair beside the bed. “You are awake.”

“I am surprised to be alive.”

The baron held up Nero’s massive double-barreled blaster. “The weapon was loaded with rock salt. Nevertheless, it is of .75 caliber, and I am afraid I gave you both barrels.”

“Nevertheless, I am still surprised you have let me live. I admit I had every intent of slaying both you and your son.”

“Well, that is understandable given the circumstances,” the baron conceded.

“I am forgiven?” Doc asked warily.

“Most assuredly not.” The baron smiled like a shark. “And not to unduly alarm you, Doctor, but the reason you remain alive is that our conversation is not yet finished.”

Doc was duly alarmed.

Barat leaned over Doc, his black eyes examining him as if he were an insect. “And given your past resistance, I fear the remainder of our conversation shall not take place in my library over cordials.”

Doc unconsciously pressed himself back into the pillows as far as he could.

The baron raised a calming hand and leaned back once more. “I believe you have more companions coming through the mat-trans, Dr. Tanner. Depending upon their affection for you, there is a chance you may prove of use as a bargaining chip.”

Doc wasn’t sure how much affection Ryan had for him, but the man’s loyalty to his friends was iron. Doc’s greatest concern was that Ryan would get himself slaughtered trying to effect his escape. He knew if Ryan were alive he would try, and so would the rest.

Barat gave Doc an inscrutable smile. “And…”

Doc regarded Barat warily. “And?”

“And Sylvano has spoken in your favor.”

Doc went from alarm to surprise. “Oh?”

“Yes, he is prevailing upon me to make you his tutor and fencing master. I am of two minds about this. I will tell you honestly, Doctor, your cooperation from this point on will have a great deal of influence on your prospects for survival, the survival of your friends and your own possible employment. No matter what the final outcome, you will tell me what I wish to know, willingly or unwillingly.”

Doc shivered despite the warmth of the fire and the covers. He would be damned if he gave Baron Barat one thing more, but nonetheless he shook. This was not the first time he had been brought down despite his best efforts and been taken captive. Bile rose in Doc’s throat. Terror racked his brain. Nor would it be the first time he had been humiliated, tortured and broken. Cold sweat burst upon his brow, and the spiders of madness began spinning their webs around his consciousness. Memories he strove to suppress rose. The damaged dikes of lucidity he struggled to shore every waking moment began to crumble once more.

Alarm bells in the ville cut Doc’s downward spiral and began ringing like hope.

Doc knew without a doubt his friends were coming for him.

“You think your friends come for you?” Barat inquired.

Doc was sure of it but shook his head. He searched through his tattered psyche for the courage he had found when he had faced down the baron and his son in the study. Doc was insufferably pleased that though he was bound and helpless and facing torture and death, a small, mostly hidden reservoir still remained. With the flickering candle of hope that his friends lived Doc found that he was still prepared to die. “No, but you have given them great offense, and they will make murder among your people until you see the error of your ways.”

Barat sighed wearily. “Pray that you are wrong, Dr. Tanner.”

“Forgive my impertinence, but if I may ask, by what reason should I devoutly desire such a consummation?”

The baron shook his head. “Because if your companions do not fall into the hands of myself and my men this night, they will most assuredly fall into the hands of my brother.”

Doc was not entirely sure what Barat meant, but he felt his guts turn to ice at the remark. “I fear I am not entirely sure I understand you, Baron Barat.”

“I fear I am not entirely in control of this island, Dr. Tanner.” The baron stared out inscrutably through the heavy iron bars that secured the window and into the night. “And I fear your friends are in terrible peril.”