Krysty had tied back the front flap, trying to let in some fresher air to take away the mustiness. "Coming,"

she said quietly.

The light was poised between day and night, with a ghostly mist creeping around the tops of the taller redwoods. There was no wind, the smoke from the cooking fires rising vertically into the still air, vanishing among the topmost branches of the trees. Ryan could see shadowy figures, a few on horseback, most walking toward the camp, some with muskets slung across shoulders. Several of the party had animal carcasses tied to poles. The light wasn't all that good, but Ryan thought that all of them were deer.

There was no sign of the mutie pigs.

"How many?" J.B. had joined him in the opening to their tent.

"Close to thirty. Looks like only two or three with serious blasters."

"See an M-16, like Trader. And another of the AKs. Which one's their chief?"

"Schickel?"

"Yeah. Probably the one on that big stallion. Fur coat, cross-belted."

"Carrying a scattergun. Sawed-down. Just the sort of blaster you'd take on a hunting trip."

The Armorer smiled at Ryan. "You and me never believed that story, did we?"

Mildred and Krysty were also watching, the entrance to the adjacent tent crowded with Trader and the

others.

"Plenty of fresh meat, Dad," Dean called.

"That boy certainly takes after his father, doesn't he, Krysty?" Mildred said.

"You mean only thinking of his stomach?"

"Yeah."

Krysty nodded. "You couldn't be more right."

THE MAIN MEAL DIDN'T quite measure up to the delicious bread they'd eaten earlier. But what it lacked in quality it more than made up in quantity.

The nine companions were seated at a low table, cross-legged on rush matting, with wooden dishes in front of each of them and small pitchers of beer standing at intervals. Ditchdown had gone to their tents to ask them to come and be seated, telling them that the hunt had been successful and that Schickel and some of the older men would join them once they'd washed.

Women of the tribe carried in the food, haunches of venison, slightly blackened on the outside, bloody when the knives penetrated them, and whole salmon, the skin glinting silver. The vegetables were overcookedpotatoes and carrots and black-eyed peas with a mess of refried beans.

"Do we start?" Dean asked, his mouth watering as the supper dishes stood steaming in front of him.

The scene was lighted by smoky torches tied to long staffs of wood jammed into the dirt.

"Wait for their leader," Ryan ordered.

"Food getting cold," the boy protested.

"You want to get to eat supper?"

"'Course I do, Dad."

"Then sit still and keep quiet."

J.B. nudged Ryan. "Here they come."

It was a tense and potentially dangerous moment. The nine companions had brought all of their weapons, including the Steyr and the Uzi, ready for any card to be turned up.

But the twenty or more men who came striding through the camp, past the line of night fires, didn't seem any great threat. A couple had handblasters at their waists, but the rest were armed only with knives.

Schickel was at their head, still wearing the thick fur coat that made him look even bigger than he was. Ryan put him at six-three, weighing around three-fifty pounds. He wore crossed ammo belts over the coat. His knee-length boots were splattered with mud. The sawed-down 16-gauge Ithaca, the Model 37, was tucked into a long greased holster, strapped onto the right side of a broad leather belt.

He looked to be a few years shy of forty, with sparse graying hair, a sharply hooked nose and a ruddy, outdoors complexion. The eyes that scanned the nine outlanders were deep blue, set unusually wide apart.

His gaze finally settled on Ryan. "You'll be the one called Cawdor, leader of this shipwrecked band," he said. "And you're Trader. I used to hear my father tell me stories of a man called Trader. Rode with war wags and his own private army. Heard he got chilled fighting against some rebel Comanche, out along Death Canyon Road. You the same man?"

"Not if I got myself chilled by a band of Comanche," Trader replied easily. "Plenty of men in Deathlands call themselves traders."

"That's true. And the boy with eyes bigger than his belly. Be your son, Cawdor?"

"Yeah. Dean. He's eleven."

"Baron Weyman has an eleven-year-old," Ditch-down said, standing next to the war chief. "Called Jamie.

Bright, they say. Being trained to take over from his father."

Schickel laughed. "Not if we can all get there first, eh, brothers?"

"You're aiming to try and take this baron, are you?" Ryan asked.

"Why? You have a problem with that, Mr. One-Eyed Cawdor? Mebbe you don't see things too clearly."

His witticisms drew bellows of laughter from the rest of the hunters.

"I heard most barons had sec men. I heard most sec men had better weapons than a couple of

Kalashnikovs, a sawed-down Ithaca and a few smoothbores," Ryan observed.

"You heard right. Yes, indeed you heard right. So, your ears work well."

"So, I guess you know things we don't," Ryan concluded, sustaining a pleasant smile, suppressing the

temptation to cut the throat of the grinning oaf. "Sure. We been around Deathlands." He slapped himself on the chest. "I seen barons whose piss would blight the land for a thousand years. Seen barons only had to look angry at you and the bullets melted in the chamber. Then again" he paused for dramatic effect "I seen barons like Weyman whose idea of giving you a hard time is to stop you having an extra smear of butter on your bread. Know what I mean?" "You mean he's a weak baron?" J.B. asked.

"Sure." He stared hard at the Armorer. "You got four eyes there, friend. That to make up for Cawdor only having one?" Schickel turned around to bathe in the wave of raucous laughter.

"So I can see properly when I have to put a full-metal jacket through the hearts of bragging stupes," J.B. said quietly.

"Whoa back, buck! Hold on to them bosses, little Dix. Don't get your drawers in a tangle, eh? Guess it's true what they say about small men. They all got them ferocious tempers." He pretended to shiver with fear. "Have to step light when this pint-size fury's around us, brothers."

Ditchdown glanced back over his shoulder and whispered something to the bulky figure of the leader.

"How's that, Ditchdown? Who's on Oh, yeah. I noticed for myself. Can't hardly miss them, can you? Like having one eye froze with snow and the other burned with fire." He smiled broadly at Jak and Krysty.

"So merry and so fat can ne'er live long, they say," Doc whispered to Mildred.

She whispered back. "A man can smile and smile and still be a bastard villain, Doc."

"True, madam, true."

Schickel saw the exchange and hesitated, as though he were working on another wisecrack, changing his

mind. "Food's getting colder than a snow bear's dick. Let's all sit down and eat and drink. Get to know

each other better."

Dean didn't need a second invitation, grabbing at several slices of venison from the nearest plate, then helping himself to a pile of potatoes and carrots. He ladled himself a generous portion of gravy, so rich and thick that you could've sliced it with a good knife.

Ryan was about to tell the boy off for his greediness and poor table manners, then be realized how hungry he was himself and set to with a will, generally eating left-handed, as J.B., Jak, Trader and Abe all did, so that his right hand was free to sit snugly on the butt of the SIG-Sauer.

But there hadn't seemed any direct threat.

As far as this Baron Weyman was concerned, Ryan couldn't have cared less. Any baron in Deathlands was fair game. That was up at the head of the list of unwritten rules.

Tough barons held their villes.

Weak barons lost everything.

If this gang of brushwood heroes wanted to chance their arms, Ryan wouldn't bother to take sides though

his emotions lay with the poor, not with the powerful.

"Jak wants to know what's happened to the man called Straub." Krysty whispered, passing on the message

from the albino teenager. "One we heard about when we arrived and everyone seemed so interested in me and Jak."

"Ask Schickel."

"Right. I will." Krysty raised her voice above the hubbub of conversation. "I heard the name of someone

called Straub in this camp. Where is he?"

It was as though she'd uttered some dreadful blasphemy in an old predark cathedral.

Everyone around the tables stopped eating, spoons and forks frozen halfway to gaping mouths. All eyes

turned to look at the redhead.

A young woman next to Schickel answered Krysty. "Straub comes and goes when he wants, outie. He's not one of us. Not with us, so to speak."

"But not against us, Madge," Schickel said. "Straub's not against us, is he?"

"Oh, no. No, he's triple-not against us. Then again, Schickel, you can't sort of say he's with us."

"Well, you know how it is. Straub comes and goes when he wants."

"I said that."