"Can't make out the words," Ryan said. "Anyone else?"

None of them could pick out any recognizable words in the chanting.

From the location of the smoke, Ryan figured they were only fifty paces or so from the fire and the singers. He went straight ahead while J.B. looped left and Jak went right. The others stayed with Ryan.

The undergrowth was thick, but the soft earth and the compressed fallen leaves made for silent stalking. He dropped to a crouch when he spotted crackling flames, and two fur-clad figures squatting on the earth by the fire. Both of them had their backs turned to the approaching men and women.

Krysty tugged at Ryan's sleeve. When he turned to look at her she mimed notching an arrow and drawing a longbow, pointing ahead of them to the singing duo. Ryan couldn't see the weapons, but he trusted Krysty's keen sight.

Placing each foot cautiously in front of the other as if he were walking on eggsh.e.l.ls, Ryan closed in, Heckler & Koch at the ready, eyes raking the surrounding woods for the possibility of a trap.

"Chill them," Lori whispered, her breath ruffling the short hairs inside Ryan's ears, making him start.

"Blood-drinker b.i.t.c.h," he whispered back.

"Safe," she retorted.

It was true. But that still wasn't quite enough of a reason to send a couple of strangers off to buy the farm. Not when they might be able to help out by telling where this elusive settlement of Claggartville could be found.

He moved to the edge of the clearing, waiting until he'd located Jak, almost invisible in his camouflage jacket, and J.B. Dix, both covering the singers. The smell of burning meat was much stronger. A light brown jug was being pa.s.sed frequently between the two men. Ryan found himself beginning to salivate.

"Move and you're dead!"

The singing continued, both the huddled figures waving their short arms from side to side. Ryan couldn't believe that they hadn't heard him. But they both had dark fur caps on, with long flaps over their ears that tied under their chins, and they both looked and sounded drunker than skunks.

Shaking his head in disbelief, Ryan stepped out from cover and poked the barrel of the caseless rifle into the back of the nearer man, who leaped to his feet so fast that he nearly knocked Ryan over. He vaulted the fire, catching his foot on the spit that held the blackened haunch of venison, sending it spinning. He began to scream in the same puny little voice that Ryan had heard singing, moments earlier.

The other men also had lightning reactions, a knife springing from sheath to fist, cutting back so fast that he nearly slashed Ryan across the thigh.

"Hold it, you stupe!" Ryan bellowed as he took a couple of steps away, keeping both strangers covered. Jak and J.B. appeared like lethal phantoms from the other side of the clearing, the boy with his satin-finish cannon and the Armorer with his trusty Uzi.

"Stand still and keep your hands up. Drop that blade!"

Now that they turned to look at Ryan, he saw that both the men had rounded, brutish faces, with reddish eyes sunk in layers of weathered flesh. They had thin lips and short necks. Under their furs, both of them looked stocky and muscular. As far as he could see, neither was a mutie.

The one with the knife glanced sideways at his comrade, muttering something in his rumbling, deep voice. The other fluted something back and the knife thudded into the turf, a couple of inches from the toes of Ryan's boots.

"Don't push it, friend," he growled, lifting the muzzle of the G-12 toward the man's face.

"We don't want to hurt you," J.B. told them. "Just a little food and some directions. Give us that and you can go free."

There was no reaction from either man.

"They dumbies?" Jak asked.

"They were sanging," Lori observed.

"Perhaps they do not speak your tongue," Donfil suggested, staring intently at

their two prisoners. "It is an arrogance to think every man you meet will speak your language. You understand me, One Eye Chills? Do you?"

Ryan nodded. "Sure, Man Whose Eyes See More. I know what you mean."

"Do you speak English?" Krysty asked, standing at Ryan's side.

The slitted eyes turned to her, but the faces showed no trace of emotion.

"Looks like they don't."

"Fireblast! If they can't help us, we'd better chill them. Safest."

Doc pushed past him. "Really, my dear Ryan, there are times that your chilling desire for chilling makes me concerned for your immortal soul. There are times that there could be alternative solutions to 'Chill him,' if you look for them."

"Such as?"

Doc stepped closer to the man who'd thrown the knife. As he did so the blank face

lightened and he again mumbled something to his companion, who clearly nodded his agreement.

"Seems like they know you, Doc," J.B. said amusedly.

"Claggartville," the old man said very slowly and clearly. "Where is

Claggartville?"

The one who had knocked over the venison opened his eyes a millimeter wider. Though his accent was barbaric, there was no doubt at all that he repeated the name. "Claggartville."

Doc shrugged his shoulders, miming someone who was lost, shading his eyes with his hand, looking around and saying the name of the ville in a puzzled tone of voice.

"Great performance, Doc," Ryan said.

"Claggartville," said the man with the high voice. He then tried a string of guttural words. Seeing that this failed, he relied then on pointing to the west, using his hand to indicate they should then curve toward the south.

"What we figured," Jak said dismissively.

"How about telling them we want to steal all their food and they can go," Ryan suggested.

"I'll give it a try. I was always rather a stunner when it came to playing charades at the Yuletide parties, back when I was... when the world was young," he finished, biting his lip. "I'll try, Ryan."

He stooped with cracking knee joints and picked a few pieces off the piece of meat, wiping his mouth in a vivid pantomime of appreciation. Then he took the two men, one by each arm, and led them to the edge of the clearing, to the east. He gently pushed them toward the forest.

Both stubbornly resisted his efforts to get them to leave the clearing. One pointed to his knife, the other to the pair of horn longbows that leaned against a tree.

Ryan shook his head angrily, gesturing at them with the rifle. "Tell them to get out of it, Doc."

"I don't speak their tongue. It sounds like some debased form of German or Polish.

I don't know. They were probably a small community that was cut off by the bombing and kept elements of their mother tongue. Immigrants."

"f.u.c.k off!" Jak shouted, c.o.c.king his Magnum and ramming the end of the barrel under the chin of the nearer man. The tip of the forward sight cut into the skin, leaving a tiny, perfect bead of bright crimson blood on the tanned skin.

The hand rose and brushed away the gaping muzzle of the ma.s.sive handblaster, as if it were a mildly troublesome insect. J.B. laughed out loud. "Sure terrified him there, boy."

Lori took the next try, pulling the fur-covered men to the farther edge of the small clearing, coughing as she pa.s.sed through the smoke of their cooking fire. She rubbed her stomach and mimed hunger, smiling at the venison, which was rapidly cooling on the gra.s.s. Then she pushed the men from her, with a wave and a sad smile.

One of them nodded, mouth breaking into a toothless grin, which made Ryan wonder in pa.s.sing how he would have eaten the roasted meat. But the man was pointing again, this time to the earthenware crock of liquor.

"Yes?" Lori asked. Getting Ryan's smile of agreement, the tall blonde ran across, silver spurs tinkling, and picked up the jar, handing it to the primitive outlander.

He raised it to his lips and gave the teenage girl a deep bow. His companion also bowed low, offering a slightly cautious smile to the rest of the watching group.

Then the two turned and began to pick their way between the trees. Within a couple of minutes they'd totally vanished.

"Well done, my poppet." Doc grinned, hugging Lori and giving her a great smacking kiss on the lips.

"Yeah, Lori," Ryan agreed. "Jak, just keep a watch in case they decide to come back for their bows. Let's eat."

Apart from the outer skin of the deer, which had been roasted to charcoal, the meat was good, tender and succulent. They all sat cross-legged around the dying fire, chins slick with the juices of the animal.

Ryan sighed. "Food's good. If that map Doc saw is about right, we still got some miles to cover to try and find this ville down on the coast. Best be moving."

They left the bows where they'd found them, so that the two primitive hunters would be able to retrieve them after they'd gone.

The outskirts of Claggartville were reached just before sunset with no further trouble.

Chapter Twelve.

A WHITE MIST CREPT off the Lantic Ocean, toward the sh.o.r.e. Already its first questing tendrils had reached a line of large boulders a hundred paces off the beach. The seven friends stood together on a low bluff surrounded by tall pine trees, looking down on Claggartville.

"Handsome little ville," J.B. observed.

Ryan nodded. "Looks clean." He counted the line of masts alongside the quay. "Eight sailers. Must be fishers and transports. They're burning coal in those houses. Must ship it in."

Claggartville looked as though it consisted of around seven to eight hundred houses, making it one of the largest villes that Ryan had ever encountered. Smoke poured from well over half of the chimneys, drifting their way.

The buildings were almost entirely white-framed, with red roofs. The streets looked narrow near the harbor, but wider farther up the hill. He could see the spires of two churches and a large windmill, its sails motionless in the calm of the evening.

"Several of the houses got a kind of platform on the top," Krysty said, using her amazing eyesight to scan the ville. "Rails around them, as well. Wonder what...?"

"Widows' walks, my dear," Doc replied. "The women climbed up them to spy out across the sea for some sight of a returning sail. These whalers often were away for five years at a time. It was a bleak, harsh life."

"Any those ships whaling?" Jak asked. "I fear that I can't tell, dear boy. The old peepers see less than once they did. Perhaps Krysty can... ?"

"What am I looking for, Doc?"

"Some evidence of small ovens on board where they would render the oil. Several long, narrow boats shipped aboard. Tough, seagoing vessels ready for any weather."

Krysty shook her head. "Can't see from up here, Doc. The fog's closing in on the ville. We should get down there if we want to find a bed and food."

"Best step easy. Those men with the venison might live here. Or it might be home to some relatives of the good folk of Consequence."

Ryan shook his head at the Indian's words. "Doubt that, Donfil. Hardly ever seen such a trim ville as this one. But it could be the sort of place with a heavy presence of sec men. Best we step slow and easy and avoid trouble."

"PUT UP BLASTER or I'll stick where sun never shines!"

"Cool it down, Jak," Ryan warned, fearing the confrontation was already fallen from their hands.

"You blaspheme, mutie outlander," the sec guard snarled.

"Don't know word, stinking b.a.s.t.a.r.d!" the boy replied, hand trembling over the holster that held his .357.

"Jak!" Ryan shouted. "Just b.u.t.ton up the mouth and let me do the talking." He faced the angry sec man. "Boy's wild. Sorry for the way he speaks. He was orphaned when his family was taken by stickies. We rescued him."

It was a situation familiar to Ryan and to J.B. Throughout Deathlands there were all kinds of different communities. Large villes, ruled over by successful barons and an unknown number of smaller settlements, sometimes only a handful of scattered hovels. The difference between these and the villes was most often seen in their att.i.tude to security and strangers.

The Trader and the war wags had frequently run foul of over officious sec men, many of whom were swift and evil b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, born and reared in an atmosphere of bullying and corruption.

But the trio of sec men on the main highway into Claggartville was a little different from the usual breed.

The mist had reached the houses along the quay, twisting and turning in the alleys and courts of the town. As they drew closer it had become obvious to the seven companions that Claggartville was one of the oldest villes they'd come across. Or it had been cleverly rebuilt to give the impression that it was extremely old. The houses had gables and small leaded windows, and the streets were narrow and cribbed.

"Sec patrol," Krysty had warned, seeing the three men standing by a kind of tollgate lowered across the road. All three wore black jackets and pants, with knee-length boots of black leather, and had trimmed mustaches and long side-whiskers that practically met under their chins. Two of three wore old-fashioned stovepipe hats like the one Doc had favored for so long.

That was the general impression. But from habit Ryan's eye went to the weapons the three men were carrying.

He blinked.

At his side J.B. whispered, "Can't be real, Ryan. They're remakes. Good ones. But they gotta be remakes."

The most modern was an 1848 Colt Dragoon .44-caliber revolver. That was carried by the tallest of the three sec men. He also had an 1819 Hall .54-caliber flintlock breechloader slung across his shoulders on a worn leather strap with a polished bra.s.s buckle.