The boy closed his eyes, his hands gripping each other so hard that it looked as though the white knuckles were going to break clean through the skin.

"Yes," he said finally. The single word seemed like it had been ripped out of the walls of his soul.

The others stood around him in a ragged circle. Silence crawled by.

"You expectin' us to read your mind, kid?" Trader said. "Time's passing."

"Sorry. I'm so dreadfully sorry, Mr. Cawdor. I feel as though it were all my fault."

"Go on," Ryan prompted.

Jamie was on the brink of tears as he told his story to the listeners. "It wasn't my idea," he stammered. "I

swear before all the gods of land and sky that it wasn't. I didn't know that Dean was going to do that. I was speechless."

"Convenient," Trader muttered, receiving an angry glance from Krysty.

Ryan patted the boy on the shoulder. "There's times when words don't come easy."

"I argued with them."

"You did?" Ryan nodded. "Brave, even if it might not have been the brightest thing to do. Dean can

probably look after himself better in that kind of trap than you can. But I admire your nerve, Jamie. What happened next?"

SHAKING LIKE AN ASPEN in a hurricane, Jamie had protested. "He isn't really the son of the baron. Can't you see that? I am."

Straub had laughed at him. "'Course you are, child. I can just see some ragged-assed brat carrying a Browning Hi-Power in top-of-the-line condition while he rides with the son of a baron who's unarmed. Highly unlikely."

"It's true." Jamie's voice leapt up the scale like a salmon going up a run of rapids. "He's the son of an outlander. Name is Dean Cawdor."

Dean had turned to him, grinning through bruised lips. "And I'm the King of Deathlands! Nice try, though. If we get out of this, Dad'll thank you for that." He looked toward Straub. "Can we get on with this. I could do with some food and a rest."

Straub had actually smiled at him, something that was more frightening than any of the man's other expressions. "Sort of spirit I expect from the son of a baron. Even if Weyman's on the downslope to nowhere."

At this moment, amid general laughter from the watching and listening brushwooders, Dean had taken a half step to bring himself beside the other boy, whispering out of the corner of his mouth. "Just fuckin' do it, Jamie. Argue and we both get chilled. Bring my father and the others. You can do it."

"Stop talking to each other," Ditchdown snapped. "Won't have it."

They both kept quiet at the threat from a fist the size of a smoked ham.

"AND THAT'S IT?" Ryan asked. "They believed that Dean was you, and they gave you the ransom demand to take to the baron. Show it to me."

Jamie fished for the note in his pockets, eventually pulling it out and giving it along to Trader, who was slightly the nearest to him.

"Waste of time givin' it to me, son," he said. "Never got on with them crawly little black spider marks. Give it to the lady to read."

The letter was crumpled, written in ink on the usual Deathlands handmade paper, though it was slightly better quality than what was usually encountered. What was surprising was the neatness of the writing, in a sort of sloping Gothic hand, impeccably spelled and punctuated.

" 'To the noble and respected Baron Weyman. We hold your son, Jamie, a prisoner, but do not wish any fellness to befall him. You will be pleased to hear that we are not demanding jack from you, beyond your powers of paying. No, that is not our wish. All you have to do is return a message with this boy that you accept our terms and your son will be released unhurt. Not at once, you understand. But once you have done what we ask. That is to abandon your ville to us and disband your sec men. Once we see that done, then Jamie is a free boy again.' "

"They don't want much, do they?" Krysty said. "Just everything!"

"Go on." Ryan was glancing at the sky, his mind working like a racing calculator. The brushwooders wouldn't know that he and the group were so close. It would have taken Jamie at least six or seven hours, on foot, to reach the ville, meaning there was no risk of any retaliation until after dark. They wouldn't be expecting any sort of attack within the hourwhich meant their best chance. They would creep in silently and waste the camp before anyone knew they were there.

Krysty was still reading the letter.

" 'In the event that you don't believe us, we will deliver to the ville, twelve hours from noon this day, the right ear of your son. Then, at such intervals, other parts of his body so as to leave him still in fair working order, but sorely mutilated. We think this is only fair. Send reply by this ragged boy at your fastest convenience.'"

Krysty shook her head. "It's signed The Levelers. Don't know what that means."

"How far's the camp, Jamie?" Ryan helped the boy to his feet. "We'll go straight in now, fast and silent All of us. You can show us the way."

"About a mile. The trail winds and twists an awful lot, but I can find it easily."

"Good lad." Ryan patted him on the back. "Your father'll be proud of you."

"You don't mind the way I left Dean?"

" 'Course not. Soon have him safe and snug with us, Jamie. Don't worry."

Trader chimed in. "Yeah. Nothing'll go wrong, kid. Not with us hitting the ace on the line."

THE ONLY THING that went wrong happened just as the hunters reached the perimeter of the camp, halfway down a steep and slippery slope.

The sky had darkened with the threat of imminent rain, sweeping in toward the mountains from the west from over the Cific Ocean.

It was perfect timing for their raid. It was obvious from a quick recce that Ryan had taken with J.B. that the brushwooders were totally off guard, not anticipating any trouble for several hours.

There had been a short, sharp shower, lasting less than three minutes, but it had been enough to dampen the grass and the mud between the trees.

Ryan was in the lead, SIG-Sauer drawn, the rest of the group strung out in a ragged skirmish line. At his order, the boy was waiting for them a couple of hundred yards in the rear, at the top of the hillside.

The only worry for Ryan was the trio of sec men with Rainey. The sharp-featured sec boss seemed the sort of man who could look after himself, but the others were slow and hesitant, clutching at their armed crossbows as though they were frightened that the bolts might fall out.

It was the fattest and oldest of them, named Micah, who lost his footing and fell crashing through the brush, yelling at the top of his voice, leaving everyone stranded halfway down. As it hit the fan.

Chapter Twenty-Five.

It was Straub who'd taken over one of the powerful AK-74s, carrying it across his shoulder on a sling of canvas webbing. Ditchdown had the other Russian automatic rifle, already in his hand.

They'd been walking around the encampment, discussing the strengths and weaknesses of their tactical position, just in case Baron Weyman decided to act contrary to his normal character and lead his sec men against them. Not that they thought there was much realistic chance of that happening.

Ryan had been absolutely correct in his assumption that they wouldn't be looking for any threat, at least until the evening. But it was unlucky that Straub had just gathered the brushwood men near the base of the wooded hillside, giving them a talk on what might happen, when a fat old man in the dark green livery of the ville came yelping through the bushes, landing almost at Straub's feet, his crossbow discharging the thrumming bolt harmlessly into the afternoon sky.

The reaction from Straub was terrifyingly fast, so quick that it was only in hindsight that Ryan realized the uncanny speed of the man.

The Kalashnikov spit out an arc of lead even before Micah had stopped rolling, spraying through the brush from left to right, which was hard luck for Al and Doug, Micah's two security colleagues who happened to be on that end of the skirmish line.

Al took two bullets through his belly, only a couple of inches apart. The double exit wounds literally blew his back apart, smashing his spine, burying fragments of the splintered vertebrae deep in the bark of a juniper just behind him. He was thrown back by the dual impacts, dying from a mixture of the massive trauma and total blood loss.

Doug was hit once. He'd been a little lower down the slope, and the tumbling round caught him in the right shoulder. It pulverized his collar bone, blowing a hole that left his arm dangling by a few bloody threads of gristle and ripped muscle. He screamed as he fell, trying to grab hold of the ruined arm with his left hand, screaming again as his falling broke the few sinews and left him holding the severed limb.

Like Al, he didn't live very long after that.

Bill Rainey had moved down the slope with greater ease, and the burst of fire from the Russian assault weapon went over his head, close enough for him to hear the high whine of its passing and actually feel the heat of the rounds as they missed him by a couple of inches.

Straub saw immediately that he was shooting high and hastily adjusted his aim as he swung the weapon across the line of men in the brush.

Ditchdown had also reacted quickly and had his own AK-74 ready, opening fire from his hip.

The rest of the brushwooders were slower.

They had a few firearms, and most were single-shot self-builds or remakes. But some had longbows, and it was only a matter of a handful of seconds before their shafts were also hissing toward the attackers.

If Micah's clumsy fall had happened nearer the bottom of the slope, Ryan could have led them all down in a bloody charge. If it had happened earlier, while they were close to the top of the steep hillside, it would have been easy to fall back to a safe defensive position and use their superior firepower to take out the brushwooders.

It was halfway house, the worst of both worlds.

Off-balance, suddenly under a murderous, raking fire, on a greasy slope of slick mud, it was hopeless.

"Get out!" Ryan shouted, his voice cracking.

He was shooting with the SIG-Sauer, managing to put down the man standing next to Straub, when he was hit by an arrow.

It struck him as he stood sideways, trying to work his way up the hill to relative safety. It entered just above the belt, driving into the muscles at the small of his back. Ryan gasped at the sudden shock of the impact and went down for a moment to his hands and knees, ducking and barely saving himself from another leaden spray from Straub's Kalashnikov.

He wasn't the only casualty.

Apart from the dead sec men, and the helpless Micah, the rest of the attackers were scourged.

J.B. took a musket ball in the left upper arm, the heavy shot passing clean through without striking bone or shredding muscle. But it knocked him over in the treacherous mud, nearly dropping the Uzi. He braced himself for a moment against a stunted tamarisk, saving himself from sliding all the way down into the brushwooders' camp.

Jak was the third casualty.

He'd been second fastest to react to the disaster, a thousandth of a second behind Ryan. The albino had seen instantly that their position was untenable, almost helpless. Their only chance was to blast away at the brushwooders and hope that it distracted them long enough to retreat up the hill to safety.

But one of the rounds from Ditchdown's AK-74 hit the dirt just below him and to the left, striking an outcrop of granite and splintering the rocks. One of the razor-edged shards caught Jak across the side of the right calf, ripping out a sizable chunk of flesh. Like J.B., he was unlucky to catch a wound, but lucky that nothing radical was affected by the injury.

"Out!" Ryan screamed again, backing away, forcing himself to carry on against the burning pain in his back, snapping off random shots through the screen of bushes.

Bullets and arrows seemed to fill the air, making it a miracle that they didn't all get to buy the farm. Their reactions had been so quick that the brushwooders were mostly firing too low, beneath then scrambling figures, dimly seen through cover.

Leaves fluttered to the ground, and the air was thick with the smell of cordite, overlaid with the tang of fresh sap from the scarred trees.

Krysty was first to the top, throwing herself flat and trying to pick off targets with her Smith amp; Wesson 640, though the .38, with its two-inch barrel, wasn't a good weapon once you got much above twenty-yards range. But it helped to keep their attackers moving and dodging.

Trader came second, his eyes staring wide, his lips peeled back off his teeth in a smile of pure rage, blasting away with the Armalite at his hip.

Ryan was next, Bill Rainey at his heels, the dirt-covered sec man cursing in a long, fluent tirade against the brushwooders. J.B. had gone a little way to the right, and he appeared unexpectedly over the ridge, almost catching a bullet from Krysty as she swung around to face what she had thought was an enemy.

Jak was last to reach the temporary haven of dead ground, hobbling painfully, pausing to fire back with

the big satin-finish Colt Python.

Arrows hissed toward them, thudding into the trunks of the tall pines. They could hear Straub below them, shouting orders, his voice rising above the incoherent babble of yelling.

The shooting stopped.

"Hold fire," Ryan said. "What's the injury count?"

"Lost all three of my men," Rainey said. "Poor bastards didn't have a chance." His voice cracked with

emotion, and there were unshed tears glistening in his eyes.

"Hit in leg," Jak stated, his voice as flat and calm as ever, stooping to bind a piece of rag around the bleeding gash in his calf. "Nothing serious."

"You know you got a shaft sticking out of your back, lover?"

Ryan grinned at Krysty. "I noticed. Leave it there until we can take some time on drawing it out."

"Best get out triple quick," the Armorer said, reloading the Uzi, holding it across his lap, blood dripping

down from his arm onto the gun.

"Want that tied?" Jak asked.