"WHAT HAPPENED to their leader, Ditchdown?" J.B. asked. "He kind of disappeared once Straub came on the scene."

Ryan nodded. "I read that he's a sort of senior man. Schickel was really their war chief, and Straub was someone who'd come along and was using them all to his own advantage. That how you see it?"

"Sure. It means that they might still try to go ahead with that plan they had to go after the baron."

"Could be. He say how far off the ville was, J.B.? Was it fifteen miles?"

It was the Armorer's turn to nod. "We've been going around four hours. Dawn can't be far off. Should be within about three miles or so of the ville."

"Yeah. So far so good."

THE FIRST PALLOR of the false dawn was creeping over the land, and the snow on the mountaintops ahead of them was already touched with pink.

They had crossed a couple of old blacktops, the surface of the pavement rippled like taffy from quakes.

The tall trees were behind them, and they were moving through a mixed forest, on a broad trail.

When they heard the pigs.

Chapter Nineteen.

The companions were moving in a loose skirmish line, with Jak stalking along at point, his white hair like a glowing beacon for the others to follow.

Ryan and Krysty, with Dean just ahead of them, brought up the rear of the group.

"Lovely morning," the woman said, her hand resting gently on Ryan's arm. She breathed deeply. "Just smell that freshness. Think the air was as good as this back in predark days?"

"Don't know. Supposed to have had all sorts of pollutants and chemicals and lead and stuff that destroyed the atmosphere. As well as the nuke leaks."

She nodded. "I read some old mag once that said the planet would have become sterile and dead within

twenty years if skydark and the long winters hadn't come along first and both destroyed and saved."

"Skin cancers increased by fifty percent in the last few years. That breathing sickness in kids was massively worse. What's it called?"

"You mean asthma, lover?"

"Right. They reckon What's up?"

Jak held his right hand raised, the warning signal for silence.

They gathered around him, everyone with a blaster drawn and ready.

"What?" Ryan whispered.

"Real quiet and listen. Caught it twice."

Everyone stood still.

The dawn chorus of birds was only just beginning. A bright-breasted jay sat on a branch only yards away,

head thrown back, noisily greeting the new day. Jak stopped and picked up a fallen pine cone, lobbing it at the bird, missing by inches, sending it fluttering away.

"Can't hear what heard," he explained.

Suddenly they could all hear it, a snuffling, grunting sound, a rutting, scratching sort of a noise.

"Pigs," Trader said. "The mutie pigs those brushwood bastards told us about."

"How far off?" Ryan asked.

J.B. lay down, pressing his ear to the packed earth of the forest floor. "Can't tell," he said. "Moving this way, I think."

"How many?" Dean was looking nervously around him, sizing up the trees to see if any of them looked possible to climb. But most were full-grown pines, with their lower branches only starting thirty or forty feet from the ground.

"Can't tell," the Armorer replied. "But if we can hear them, then there must be a herd. That the right word for pigs? A herd of pigs?"

Doc nodded. "A herd of swine sounds right, does it not? There was a time when I could have rattled off dozens of such collective nouns for the creatures of the earth and water and sky. A host of sparrows, a pitying of turtledoves, a skulk of foxes, a"

Ryan tapped him on the arm. "All right, Doc. I think we get the idea. Doesn't much matter what they're called. Just so we know there's a lot of pigs coming this way, and they could be mutie killers."

"Run, hide or fight?" Trader asked.

"If we run, we might run into the middle of more of them." Ryan considered the other two options. "Fight

and we can certainly chill more or less any number of them. But we'd spend a lot of ammo doing it."

"And make a shit load of noise," Abe added.

"Right." Ryan nodded. "And we think we might be close to the ville of this Baron Weyman. Don't want to

greet his morning with an alarm. Sounds like one of your fancy names, Doc. An alarm of sec men?"

"Upon my soul, Master Cawdor, but that's a most excellent jest. Perhaps we can think of other droll and amusing examples. Let me see" "Leave it, Doc," Mildred snapped. "Got more important things to think about. Like becoming a mess of piggy chowder if we don't get our asses into gear. That noise is definitely getting louder and closer."

"Hide," Ryan decided. "Best place is up trees."

"Not many good ones to climb, Dad. I've been looking around. There's a big oak over there." Dean

pointed toward a large-boled tree about fifty yards to the left, just visible among the pines.

"Good boy. Anyone got a better idea?"

"Mebbe we could take them out with knives," Trader suggested. "No ammo and no noise."

"We don't know how many." Ryan shook his head. "If they're really mutie killers, then we could find

ourselves deep in big muddy."

They all heard a strange sound, an unearthly shriek that echoed all around them, making it hard to tell the direction.

"Let's climb," Trader said.

AT FIVE FEET FOUR INCHES and stockily built, Mildred had the most difficulty making it into the lower branches of the live oak.

In the end, J.B. dropped to hands and knees so that she could stand on his back, while Jak and Abe, already in the tree, reached down and hauled her up.

"I recall seeing one of the great whales being heaved up to the masthead of a schooner, by a team of merry chantymen," Doc stated. "The image is strangely familiar at this moment."

Panting with the effort, Mildred looked down at him, shaking her head angrily so that the myriad tiny beads rattled softly. "I wouldn't piss on you if you were on fire, Dr. Theophilus Tanner," she grated.

The noise of the pigs was becoming closer.

Only Ryan and Doc were now standing on the ground. "Come on, Doc, up you go."

"After you, dear friend."

"Not that easy a scramble."

The old man smiled condescendingly. "I was scrumping for apples before you were even a gleam in your

father's eyes, Ryan, old friend. In fact, I was doing it about one hundred and seventy years before your father impregnated your mother."

"Well, do it now, Doc."

Ryan glanced around the tree toward the northeast, where the sound seemed to originate. He realized, to his dismay, that he could now see the dim shapes, moving in the morning shadows, like great gray ghosts, sliding between the pines.

"Very well," Doc said, oblivious to the closeness of the danger.

He reached up for an ancient burr on the side of the live oak, grasping it firmly and kicking himself into the air, legs scrabbling for a purchase, failing to find it and dropping, panting, to the ground again.

"Like us to drop a rope for you?" Mildred called.

The last thing Ryan wanted was to instigate a panic in the old man, but the animals were moving ever

nearer, stopping to dig with their hooked tusks among the roots of the trees, seeking mushrooms or grubs.

The ones that Ryan could see looked to be appreciably larger than normal pigs, but distance was

deceptive and he couldn't be sure. At least the light breeze was blowing from the north, so that they wouldn't yet have scented the humans.

"Move it, Doc."

Despite his efforts to stay cool, the old man picked up on the frayed note in Ryan's voice. "Are we about

to enjoy some company?" he asked.

"Looks that way."

"Perhaps you should climb up yourself, first, my dear fellow. You have a great deal more to lose than I