There was a single moment when he suddenly sensed the taste of danger in the air, but it was too late.

Something hit him on the side of the head, stunning him, then his blaster was snatched and a sack was thrown over his head.

The gold tooth in the mouth of the bald man gleamed in the dimness as he laughed and laughed.

Chapter Twenty-Three.

Ryan reined in on the side of the hills, where the main trail wound down toward a ruined building. "That a mill?" he asked Rainey.

"Used to be," the sec boss replied. "Hasn't worked in my lifetime."

Jak was alongside and he suddenly stood in the stirrups, looking back over his shoulder.

"What?" Ryan said.

"One horse. Pushed hard. From ville."

"Only one?"

"Yeah."

"Must be some kind of message from the baron," Rainey said. "Mebbe he wants us back."

But the messenger, astride an Appaloosa gelding, was Krysty.

They waited as she galloped up to them, her horse's flanks streaked with sweat. Her own fiery hair was

tangled, and there were burrs stuck in her clothes where she'd ridden hard and cut corners. The woman reined in, brushing pine needles from her thighs.

"Boys have gone," she said. "Why've you come to tell us?" Rainey asked suspiciously. "Why not one of the sec men?" He looked at her horse. "And you got the baron's best mount." She fought for breath. "He was showing it to me in the yard out back of the ville when the word came that the boys had taken two ponies and vanished. Weyman asked if I could ride and told me where to go. Nobody else was around and ready."

"Fireblast!" Ryan punched his right hand hard into his left palm.

"They following us?" Trader said thin-lipped. "Need their asses reddened!"

"We stopped when Jak's horse went down. Better part of an hour wasted and lost." Ryan suddenly

remembered the odd stillness when he'd gone into the forest for a piss. "The trail that runs higher up," he

said.

"Think they've taken that?" Rainey looked down toward the ruined mill. "Paths come together just down there. We can see from the tracks if they've come this way."

J.B. looked at Krysty. "Baron Weyman sending out any reinforcements?"

"Don't think so. He didn't seem too worried. Said it was a boyish prank."

Trader snorted. "Your son should know better, Ryan," he said. "Can't answer for that other boy."

"Can't argue, Trader." Ryan considered the options. They'd come a fair distance from the ville. If the

brushwood men and women were still in the area, then they could, just possibly, be hunting out this far.

It was a worrying thought with the two boys missing in the area.

"We'll go down and take a look by the mill," Rainey decided. "You got a good tracker in your party,

outlander?" "Jak."

"Come on." He beckoned the albino to follow him down the steep track.

YOU DIDN'T NEED TO BE an expert in reading signs to see what had happened.

"Two ponies," Jak said, pointing to the clear hoof marks. "Tethered around back. Dean and other go in. Men waiting. Watching them."

"Marks are deeper," J.B. said. "Not muties. Got to be the brushwooders."

"Struggle. Not much. Not long. Eight men or so against two children. Left west. Took ponies."

Ryan knelt and looked at the trampled marks in the wet mud, seeing the way that water was still seeping into some of them. "Not all that long ago," he guessed.

"Within the hour," Jak agreed. Even in the dark interior of the wrecked building, his hair still blazed like a lamp. "Could still be around."

"They'd have hit us as we came down the trail," Trader stated. "Like blasting fish in a barrel. No, Jak. They've lifted the boys and now they're taking them all the way back to their camp. Best we get after them right away."

Rainey was out of his depth. His eyes darted nervously from face to face, the narrow mouth betraying his confusion. "Mebbe we ought to send for some reinforcements."

"Longer you wait, the less chance of getting Dean and Jamie back alive and safe." Ryan rubbed a finger down his chin, feeling the smoothness where he'd had an overdue shave before breakfast that morning.

"They could be anywhere," Rainey argued. "Brushwooders move their camp all the time."

"Not if we follow the tracks." Ryan looked the sec boss in the eye. "I don't mind much what you decide to do, Rainey. But they've likely got my only child. All I aim to do is go get him back. Quicker the better."

DEAN WAS JOLTING along on the back of a horse, his wrists tied to his ankles, under the animal's belly. The sack over his head, stinking of fish meal, made it impossible to see where they were going. But he knew that they would be heading west, knew precisely who their captors were, knew that the dangerous man called Straub rode the horse that was carrying him away into imprisonment.

Dean's head still rang from the heavy fist that had laid him low on the muddy floor of the old mill. He could taste dirt in his swollen mouth, along with a trickle of blood, and he knew that his face was masked in filth.

There had been very little conversation between the men. All the boy could tell, as he recovered his senses, was that they were in a hurry. They suspected the lads hadn't been out unaccompanied that far from the ville.

The other fact that Dean learned was that they knew that they'd captured the son of Baron Weyman.

But Straub had quickly quieted the whoops of enthusiasm, his cold, quiet voice was far more effective than the lash of a steel-tipped quirt.

"Might help us to take the ville without risking our lives," he said. "Use the son as a hostage."

When the brushwood men wanted to push the plans further along, Straub had stopped them, pointing out that Ditchdown was their notional leader and they would all have to discuss any plans with him.

The main thing was to get moving.

THE RIDERS PICKED their way westward at not much more than a brisk walking pace. Jak was in the lead, swinging low from the saddle to check on the tracks, making sure that the group they were following didn't take them by surprise.

"Two horses riding double," he said. "Means both boys alive. Wouldn't carry corpses."

Ryan had a sinking feeling in his gut that the boys might not be alive for very long.

There was no way that it could have been a planned ambush, since not even the lads themselves had known they were leaving the ville. So, it had been a lucky break for the brushwooders, one that he figured Straub would find a way of exploiting to his own advantage.

THE HORSES STOPPED, and Dean was aware of yelling and laughter all around him. Something struck him a whistling blow across the back that stung badly, but he heard Straub's voice raised in anger and the noise diminished.

The boy had been counting as best he could, through the discomfort of the jolting, with the saddle sticking painfully into his stomach.

His best guess was twelve minutes, at something between a fast walk and a trot. That meant the brushwooders' camp was around a mile and a half to two miles from the derelict mill where he and Jamie had been taken prisoner.

He felt Straub swing down, and then a sharp knife whispered through the ropes around his wrists and ankles and he was dumped unceremoniously onto the ground. The tightness of the cords had affected the circulation in his hands and feet and he sat still, blinking in bright sunlight as the stinking sack was ripped off his head.

It would have been easy to stand, but Dean stayed where he was, pretending to be dizzy and sick, keeping

his eyes open for a chance to break and run.

He was surrounded by the ragtag horde of back-lane travelers. Children giggled, and one girl of twelve or thirteen tried to poke him in the balls with a long sharp stick. Dean kicked it away and was relieved to see an older woman flat-hand the girl across the side of the head, sending her staggering away, crying noisily.

Straub had disappeared into the crowd.

"These are what they call brushwooders, aren't they?" said a voice behind him.

Dean spun, seeing Jamie Weyman sitting beside him. The boy had a black eye and a cut on the side of his

face. Streaks in the dirt across his cheeks told a tale of weeping, but now he seemed to be hanging on to control.

"Don't say a thing," Dean whispered.

"Do you have a plan? A dangerous induction? Oh, do say you have!"

Dean scowled fiercely at him. "This isn't some fucking game! Shut up and say nothing. And don't be

surprised at anything I might say."

"What?"

"Just don't argue, whatever I say."

"Oh, all right."

"SMELL SMOKE," Jak said.

The odor of the sulfurous hot springs had been getting much stronger as they rode closer to the coast.

"Then we're near enough," Ryan said. "Stop here and we'll go ahead on foot. Leave the horses tethered."

Rainey stayed in the saddle, as did the three sec men, none of whom looked to be below fifty years old.

"I believe the baron placed me in command of this hunting party," he said.

"That was before." Ryan looked at him, trying to overcome his irritation. "You want to follow another

plan, then do what you like." He paused a moment.

"But if it risks the life of my son, then you get a front seat on the last train west."

"What do you figure?" the sec boss asked. "Remember the son of my baron's out there, as well. It would

chill Weyman if anything happened to the boy."