closing the door behind them.

"That man needs his balls pushed into his throat," Trader said, his face flushed with anger. "Who the fuck

does he think he is, treating us like that? If we had the war wags here, we could blow his penny-ante ville into the mountains."

"I didn't think he was that bad," Abe commented.

"Shows what a piss-poor judge you are, Cohn," Trader snarled. "Always were and always will be."

"I'm Abe," the gunner said. "I wish you'd try to get my name right."

Trader turned on him, looking for a moment like he might smash him to the floor of the corridor with the

butt of the Armalite. He restrained himself with a visible effort, his voice surprisingly gentle. "I'm trying, for Christ's sake, Abe! You think I'm not trying?"

Ryan cleared his throat. "Break it up, friends. Last thing we want in a strange ville is to get ourselves

locked at one another's throats."

They moved toward the head of the stairs. J.B. eased the Smith amp; Wesson on his shoulder. "Weyman didn't seem that bad. Talks like he's swallowed a word book. But he's kindly to us."

He turned to Trader. "Not many barons in Deathlands greet outlanders as friendly as that, do they?"

"Mebbe and mebbe not. Just that I never liked a man thought himself so clever."

"Right," Dean said loudly, making everyone turn to look at him. "His kid's the same. All smart ways of saying things to put you down and make you feel small."

"What did I tell you, lover?" Krysty whispered.

Ryan didn't answer her. "Let's go eat."

RAINEY WAS WAITING, leaning against the frame of a door. "In here." He gestured with his thumb. "Baron said he was going to come down and join you, didn't he?"

"Yeah," Ryan said. "Mean he won't?" The sec man rubbed a finger along the side of his narrow hooked nose. "Baron has a funny way of talking. You probably heard that. But he's straight as a crossbow quarrel. Steadfast, loyal and true, that's Baron Weyman." He grinned. "But he sometimes loses track of time. He's got a collection of predark coins up in his rooms. Takes them out and stares at them through a bigger-glass. Hours on end. Anyway, come and sit down, and I'll tell the kitchen staff to get their asses into gear."

THE REFECTORY TABLE WAS a good thirty feet long, carved from a single length of wood, and easily the finest article of furniture that they'd so far seen in the ville.

The dishes were brought out by a gaggle of giggling young women, most of them unable to stop staring at Jak, while the albino teenager completely ignored them.

The food was of much better quality than they'd eaten in the brushwood gypsy camp. The soup, so thick you could almost have sliced into it with a knife and fork, was flavored with delicate herbs and pulses. Salmon in a pastry shell was smoked over oak chips and served with leeks in a cream-and-wine sauce.

"If the main course is going to be pork, then I'll take a rain check on it," Mildred said, getting a laugh from the others.

Rainey leaned forward. "Better to eat those mutie porkers than be eaten by them, Dr. Wyeth."

Jamie had appeared and joined them, explaining that his father would be down shortly. He was sitting next to Dean. "Pigs are one of the most omnivorous of creatures on the planet, you know?" he said.

Dean looked across the long table to his father for help, but Ryan shrugged his shoulders. Doc quickly came to the boy's assistance.

"Do you know the roots of that word, Master Weyman?" he asked, a kindly twinkle in his pale blue eyes.

"You mean the derivation?" The lad looked down at his plate and blushed. "I think it's probably Latin. Is

it?"

" Omnis , meaning 'all.' Vorare , meaning 'to eat.' Our word 'devour' comes from it. Omnivorus . The Latin is almost exactly the same word. Means that pigs eat everything."

"Including people," Mildred added.

"We hunt them when we can. But it's dangerous for the horses," Rainey said. "Pigs get in close and rake

them along the belly with their tusks. And out fall the guts. Messy death."

"We would also hunt other prey."

Rainey stood, as did the boy, seeing Baron Weyman move forward out of the shadows that lurked like

spilled night around the flanks of the dining room.

Ryan also pushed back his chair, levering himself upright, looking around to make sure that everyone followed suit. Trader and Dean came equal last.

"What other prey, Baron?" Jak asked once everyone was seated.

"You were lucky not to encounter a camp of scabbies near the sulfur springs. Not to mention the ragtag

horde that has moved into the fringes of my land."

Ryan studied Weyman, able to see him properly for the first time.

The baron was older than you'd expect for someone with a son of eleven summers. He sat slightly

stooped, with powder-gray hair that hung neatly to his collar. He had a faint mustache and beard, with white eyebrows, pale blue eyes the same hue as Doc's and a pallid complexion that suggested he rarely went outdoors. He was wearing a dark maroon jacket of brushed satin over a startling white lace shirt. His pale cream linen breeches were tucked into silk slippers of crimson and gold.

He was unarmed.

"Why not lead out your sec men against them?" Trader asked. "Or send them out if firefights aren't in your field." "Since the death of my dear wife, some nine years ago, I have dedicated myself to raising Jamie, my only child. He has received the best education that Deathlands can offer. Which is something of an oxymoron."

Everyone turned to look at Doc. "Sort of contradiction in terms. Like a trustworthy mutie or a silent woman." He grinned at Mildred.

"Or a wise old man," she countered.

"Touche" He bowed.

"It is such a pleasure to have men and women of culture here at my ville," Baron Weyman said, nodding and smiling. "Is the food adequate?"

"Better than that," Ryan replied. "What we've had so far has been a real ace on the line for us."

"I eat very little and drink only water," Weyman said. "But I think it's time for the main course, Rainey. Give word. And bring a dozen of the best claret out of the cellar."

Ryan watched as the baron sipped at a bowl of clear soup, waving away the offer of the fish course, doing the same when a steaming saddle of lamb was brought in from the kitchens.

"Were you married long, Baron?" Krysty asked. "If you don't mind my"

"Of course not. Why should I object to recalling the greatest happiness of my life? My father died young, and I became baron at the age of eighteen. There was an arranged marriage with the daughter of a neighboring baron, some miles south. Morena was then nearly forty and not blessed with either looks or temperament. We tried for children, but she miscarried thrice."

"That means she lost a baby three times," Jamie whispered to Dean, who was busy helping himself to more gravy and a spoonful of some delicious red currant jelly.

"When Morena died of a venereal disease she had contracted from one of her dalliances with a sec man, I remarried. Jamie's mother was named Nell. She had visited the ville with her father, who stayed on as a farrier. After giving me my son, she succumbed to a virulent strain of influenza that was raging from poisoned water near the hot springs. And that was that."

"I share sorrow," Jak said.

"Then I feel pity and sympathy, my friend." Weyman smiled. "It is rare that I used that word. 'Friend.' But I hope that you will at least stay long enough for us to explore that word and its layers of meaning."

"Anything we can do to repay your hospitality, Baron?" Ryan asked.

Rainey tapped on the table with the flat of his hand. "Patrol didn't find any brushwood folks, Baron. Some sign of strangers and tracks. Could be a lot of them. Mebbe Ryan Cawdor here and his friends might lend a hand with patrolling."

"Go on a recce for you?" J.B. said, glancing at Ryan. "Don't see why not."

Weyman dabbed at his bloodless lips with a pale linen napkin. "You see for yourself that I do not enjoy the best of health. When a baron becomes unwell, the word races through the ungodly and wolfish like a forest fire from treetop to treetop. So it is now. The shadows are gathering at the edges of my ville. A few bold friends would help to hold the darkness away for a while longer. Perhaps to buy a breathing space for my son to grow."

"Sword at sunset," Doc said. "Just like being a sword at sunset."

Weyman nodded thoughtfully. "A fair image, Dr. Tanner, and one that rings a distant bell in my memory. But we can safely let that pass." He leaned back with a sigh. "Such weariness! Still, I feel better on many facets of my life. A companion for my dear boy." He smiled down at Dean. "A little brightness in an arid desert of culture. And a sword at sunset."

RAINEY SHOWED THEM to their rooms.

"I saw that there was a pair of couples. So, there's a double for you and Krysty, and one for John Dix and the lady doctor. Others get to share two doubles and a single."

Trader grabbed the single for himself.

The sec man told them that they were left to their own devices. "You can do what you like," he said.

"Come or go, be drunk or sober. Sleep or wake. The ville's yours. Talk about a recce patrol tomorrow."

Ryan stopped him. "We heard stories that Weyman was a bad baron. Doesn't seem that way to me."

Rainey laughed bitterly. "Like he said. The wolves gather when they scent a weakness. Weyman's not the

man he was, and I know better than anyone how standards have fallen. Time'll come when some wolf'shead bastard walks in and plucks all the tender fruit from off the branches."

RYAN SAT ON THE BED, pulling at a loose thread from the patterned coverlet. Krysty stood by the window, wiping away dusty spiderwebs from the leaded glass.

"What do you feel, lover?"

"Sadness. That above all."

Ryan nodded.

Chapter Twenty-Two.

Breakfast was every bit as good as the meal they'd eaten the previous day clam chowder that lined the stomach, followed by a fry-up of eggs and pork sausages, with a tureen brimming with crisp hash browns; a bowl of corned beef with a hot pepper sauce, as well as a huge patterned dish of grits with unsalted butter; fresh-baked bread with a range of preserves and a pitcher of cold milk.

"Could stay here some time, Dean," Ryan said, sitting opposite his son, who was tucking into a pile of hash browns, with three eggs squatting on top of it.

"That would be wonderful!" exclaimed Jamie, who'd poached the seat next to Dean.

Once again, Ryan was struck by the similarity between the two boys; both with dark curling hair and brown eyes, both with the same kind of quickness, the sort of brightness of spirit that burned like a flame.

The main difference lay in the types of education that the two boys had received.

Jamie wasn't a soft child, but he lacked the essential core of hardness that was so self-evident in Dean. He had been taught reading and writing at an early age, as well as principles of math and some knowledge of the sciences. His use of language was far more adult and sophisticated than Dean's, and he had also been taught far more history and geography.

Dean's wisdom came from the school of life and hard knocks. Ryan doubted that the baron's son had ever taken a human life, or fired a blaster in anger. If Dean cut notches on the butt of his 13-round Browning, there would certainly have been more than twenty.