"Later."

Trader lay flat, watching the activity below him. "Bald fucker's gettin' them organized. Won't take long

for them to get around and behind us. Sooner we go the better."

"What about Micah?" Rainey asked. "He was alive when they took him."

"Won't be for long," Ryan replied. "Nothing to be done. Let's get out of here, best we can."

TO RYAN'S SURPRISE, there was no effort made by the brushwooders to pursue them into the forest, and they reached the tethered horses safely.

"How come they aren't on our heels?" Trader threw his Armalite in the dirt, ignoring a reproachful glance from J.B.

Ryan was sitting, his shirt pulled up, while Krysty and Jak peered at the gray-feathered arrow that pro-traded from his back. "Only thing I can figure is that Straub's playing it real smart."

"How's that?" Trader had lain down beside his blaster.

"He reckons that our attack was a coincidence. Odds are that we hadn't met up with Jamie, so we didn't know about the ransom note. Boy wasn't with us."

Rainey was tying the bridles of two of the sec men's horses to his own saddle horn, ready to lead them back to the ville. Jamie would ride Micah's animal. "You mean he's still hoping to get the baron to leave the ville?"

"Remember he doesn't know that Jamie's with us and he's got Dean instead."

J.B. had allowed Jak to put a tight bandage around his musket wound, and he was flexing the fingers on his right hand, seeing how much movement and control he had in them. "Makes sense. Otherwise we could've had those sons of bitches swarming all over us by now."

Ryan was trying to look back over his shoulder at his own wound. "Best way's to break it and pull both ends out clean," he suggested.

Krysty nodded. "It's nicked the big muscles above your hips, but it hasn't gone deep enough to risk damaging the kidneys or liver. Just sort of pierced that roll of fat that you claim isn't even there."

"Why don't you" He controlled himself. "Just break it in half and then pull it out, will you? And hold the wisecracks for another time."

Krysty took the slender shaft in both hands, where it had driven through the flesh, just behind the barbed hunting point. She drew in a slow, deep breath, then cracked it sharply across the middle, breaking it in two.

Ryan gasped at the jar of pain.

"Sorry, lover," she said, kissing him on the cheek.

"Get on with it."

She pulled out the section of arrow with the barbed point first, easing it carefully through the bruised and swollen flesh. Ryan bit his lip and kept still and silent, closing his eye and trying to use the meditative skills that Krysty had attempted to teach him.

"It's out. Just the flight end to go." She paused to wipe perspiration from her forehead, even though the day had become clammy and cool.

The goose feathers were damp with the misty rain that had started to fall a few minutes earlier. Krysty gripped them firmly and drew out the rest of the broken arrow in a single, smooth movement.

"Done?" Ryan asked, breath hissing from his parted lips. There was a tiny worm of crimson blood creeping down over his chin. "That it?"

The woman dropped the two ends of the bloodied shaft in the dirt. "Over."

"Thanks, lover." He kissed her, a gentle brush of the lips that became more urgent as they clung to each

other.

"Should go," Trader said.

JAMIE TRIED SEVERAL TIMES to apologize to Ryan for what had happened.

"Keep telling you. Not your fault, son. We'll soon be back at your father's ville. And we can decide what to do to try and pick up the broken pieces."

"Do you have a plan, Mr. Cawdor?"

"Does a shark shit in the sea? 'Course." Ryan paused, longer than he'd intended. " 'Course I have a plan."

Chapter Twenty-Six.

Dean had been tied to the center pole of one of the larger tents when the rescue party arrived.

He'd been trying to do the same mental calculations as Straub, guessing that it would take Jamie until dusk to get back to the ville. At least that long. There would have to be some discussion and planning before Ryan led the assault unit that would sweep that would sweep the brushwooders out of their camp and into the surrounding wasteland.

Dean guessed that Straub would be expecting an attack during the hours of darkness. But he wasn't sure whether his father might prefer to wait, then come in at them in the misty light of dawn.

What nobody had looked for was a bungled attempt at a raid, only an hour or so after the little boy with the swollen face had gone running east.

There was a desperate yell, muffled by the thick hide cover over the tent, then it sounded like all hell had broken loose outside.

Dean sat up, wincing as the rawhide thong around his throat tightened. He recognized the individual weaponshis father's SIG-Sauer, its explosions echoing and loud in the damp, humid air; the ripping sound of the Uzi; the short, sharp shocks of what he figured had to be Trader's Armalite.

The firefight lasted less than sixty seconds from beginning to the end, when Straub's voice rose over the bedlam, ordering a cease-fire from the brushwooders.

Dean waited, his body as tense as a coiled spring, unable to believe what he was hearing. From the whooping and excitement, there could only be one possible interpretation.

Unbelievably the raid seemed to have failed.

"THAT WAS YOUR FATHER'S friends and sec men," Straub said, kneeling in the shadow darkness of the tent. "Why were they out here?"

"Don't know." Dean shook his head.

"They couldn't humanly have gotten the ransom demand. I believe they were on a routine patrol and decided to chance their arm against us." He shuffled closer and took Dean's bruised jaw between long finger and thumb, squeezing bard so that the boy cried out in pain. "What do you think, Jamie Weyman?"

The beads of raw turquoise on his necklace rattled as he leaned closer. His breath was sweet and dry, like a warm cattle barn, but it still revolted Dean. He tried to turn his head, but the weird eyes bored into his.

"Don't know," he gasped.

Straub squatted back on the heels of his snake-embroidered Western boots. "I think I believe you. But when I look into the shallow well that's your puny little brain, I see ripples below the surface, boy. If I had time I would dive below the surface and explore down in those murky waters. I think you're trying to hide something from me?"

"No, sir, I'm not."

"You promise, boy?"

"On my mother's grave, sir."

Straub stood, brushing dust from his black, silver-riveted jeans. "You interest me, Jamie Weyman. I had

looked to find a vapor-headed little boy and I find" He shook his head. "What do I find? But time passes. These muddied fools wish to terminate the life of one of your sec men that we've taken prisoner. You may come and watch."

DEAN HAD BEEN LED out by one of the older women, his wrists tied behind him. His face still felt sore, and his teeth seemed to have become loose in his jaws. He walked out into a scene of great excitement.

A stake driven into the ground close to the main fire of the settlement. The smooth wood already bore a number of old, dark stains.

A man was tied to it, while the younger women were gleefully hacking his dark green uniform from him. They were careless with their short-bladed, pecking knives, and streaks of blood marred his pale skin.

Dean thought he might have recognized the sec man, but he couldn't be sure, as many of the ville's guards were elderly and stout.

Ditchdown was parading proudly up and down in front of the yelping mob, grinning from ear to ear, an AK-74 on his right shoulder.

Dean's attention was drawn by a pair of taunting boys to two raggled, naked corpses, lying on the village's garbage heap. It looked to his experienced eyes as though the wretched men had already been dead before the knives had done their work.

"Come and watch one of your father's proud sec men enter the long darkness," Straub called, leading Dean to stand in front of the doomed man.

"It's Micah, Master Weyman. Can you do nothing to make them spare me?" the sec guard pleaded. He had been stripped naked by the women's blades and stood quivering like a great pink-streaked white jelly, wrists and ankles bound to the stake. He had already lost control of both bladder and bowels, and was smeared with his own wastes. His eyes were like plums, protruding from their sockets in terror. They suddenly focused on the boy. "They said that you were"

Dean saw the chasm that suddenly gaped in front of him. If the man betrayed him, then his life would be of no value to the brushwooders and they would make his passing long and painful as a revenge for fooling them.

There was a bone-hilted knife sheathed on Ditchdown's belt, and Dean kicked out at Straub, breaking free of his hold for a moment. He dived at Ditchdown and grabbed the knife, dodging the man's frantic grasp at him and launching himself straight at Micah.

The sec man opened his mouth to scream, but Dean was quicker. He stabbed the man through the heart, holding the knife point-upward, giving the blade a twist of the wrist before withdrawing it again, as his father had taught him.

The steel slid like silk between the ribs, cutting open the thudding walls of Micah's heart.

Straub grabbed at Dean, locking his fingers into his hair, yanking backward. His right hand reached for the boy's wrist and made him drop the knife.

"You little bastard," he said. But even in that moment of highest tension, Dean noticed that Straub didn't

seem to be particularly angry. "Sort of spirit I'd expect from the son of a baron. Even a sad geek like

Weyman."

"My father isn't a sad geek!" Dean lashed out backward, feeling his heel connect sharply with the man's shins.

The note of grudging respect vanished instantly from Straub's voice. "That hurt, you dwarf prick." He held Dean by the collar with his left hand, slapping him across the face with the right, hard, mechanical blows that made the boy's head rock from side to side, making his ears ring, his eyes losing their focus. Straub uttered cold, bitter words in time with each roundhouse slap. "Don't ever do that again unless you want me to flay you alive."

Dean could feel his nose beginning to bleed, more blood trickling from both ears. The pounding was so

brutal that the boy felt himself beginning to slip away into darkness. He was trying to speak, to ask Straub to stop hitting him.

"Stop hitting him, Straub." His voice sounded totally unfamiliar and puzzling to him.

But the blows carried on, remorselessly.

Dean wasn't even aware that he'd become unconscious, not until he opened his eyes and stared up at the