leaden afternoon sky. He felt a few spots of rain falling into his face, heard two angry voices arguing above him.

"He's our passport, Straub."

"He caused me pain. Nobody does that and walks away."

"You've beaten him to the dirt. What more do you want from him?"

Straub laughed, a sound that sent the short hairs curling at Dean's nape. "Today or tomorrow, Ditchdown?

What does it matter? It is a good day to die, my brother. It is always a good day for death."

"Not now, Straub. Might be that his father wants some proof Jamie's alive."

Dean sat up, wiping his nose on his sleeve and blinking up at the two men. He looked beyond them to

where the corpse of Micah was slumped in his bonds. There was surprisingly little blood spilled from the knife wound. The boy felt a pang of regret that it had been necessary to kill the helpless old man.

But it had been necessary.

"Get up, lad," Ditchdown said, not unkindly. "Go back to the tent and mind your own business."

Straub tapped him on the shoulder. "Your ears are bleeding, kid."

Dean shrugged away from him. "You want to pick on someone your own fucking size," he said.

"Temper, kid. Control that temper. Chilling that old guy." Straub leaned closer, his dark eyes with the whirling silver specks drilling into Dean. "I have a good idea why you did that, kid. But I'd like to hear it from your own lips."

Dean swallowed hard, tasting the salt bitterness of his own blood. He glanced past Straub to where the

children of the village were amusing themselves by cutting bits of flesh off the corpse of the sec man.

"Look," he said. "You'd have let them do that while the poor bastard lived. I had to do what I could to spare him that. Loyalty's a two-way street."

He unconsciously quoted one of Trader's favorite sayings. "Chilling him was the only way I could save him from your torturing. All right?"

Straub turned around. "All right, kid."

Dean turned around. "And stop calling me 'kid,' will you? I don't like it."

AN OLD WOMAN, her face furrowed and filthy, brought him a bowl of stew a little later. As she crept into the tent, Dean saw from the fading light outside that evening was closing in.

"You chilled our prisoner," she said.

"Yeah. Best I could do."

She put down the wooden bowl and carved spoon, then spit in the greasy mixture. "Spoiled our funning,"

she lisped through her toothless mouth.

"Thanks for the spit."

Her face didn't change. "Wanted to piss in it, but Ditchdown stopped me."

"You're a real queen, aren't you?"

The old woman looked over her shoulder toward the entrance, and shuffled closer to him. Dean, his hands

bound in front of him, readied himself to try to kick her in the throat.

"Might be the baron's son," she whispered. "Mighty and buggerin' high. But the day's comin' fast when you and all your buggerin' high-nosed kind are goin' to get brought real low. Very soon."

"That'll be the day."

She nodded, her veiled eyes peering malevolently at him. "Pretty little boy. Brave little boy. You reckon I'm ugly and old, don't you? Think I'm way below you. Wouldn't touch me with a ten-foot pole, would you?" She smiled through chapped lips. "When we got what we want from your limp-dick daddy, then Straub says we can have our funning with you."

"Go fuck a dead armadillo, you stinking slag," Dean said, just winning the battle to stop his voice from cracking.

"You'll crawl and cry and beg me to let you lick shit off my shoes," she hissed. "And that'll just be for a starter, kid."

Dean watched her go before picking up the stew and gobbling it down, regardless of her having spit in it. Food was food.

That night, alone, Dean whispered into the blackness to try to lift his sagging spirits. "Hurry up, Dad. Hurry up."

Chapter Twenty-Seven.

Back in the ville, the explanations were over. The letter from the brushwooders had been read by Baron Weyman, Doc, Mildred and Abe.

The wounds of Ryan, J.B. and Jak had been bathed, treated and dressed.

Two of the older women of the ville had been told that their husbands, the sec men, were dead, and Micah's sister received the news that there was little chance that she would ever see her brother alive again.

The sun was already setting.

On the winding trail back to the ville, they had spotted a couple of the mutie pigs, heading away from the horsemen, toward a narrow side canyon that led away north, between high cliffs. Rainey had pointed to them, suggesting that it could be the place where the herd was presently living.

It was a fact that Ryan had tucked carefully away into his memory in case it might become useful in the next couple of days.

The one thing blindingly obvious was that they had only a couple of days at the outside. By then the baron would have surrendered his ville, or Ryan would have organized a rescue party for his son. Either way, the outlook was grim and menacing for all of them.

The baron had asked for a little while to consider his options, wanting to spend some time with his only child in his rooms, promising that he would meet with the outlanders over the supper table at seven o'clock.

MEANWHILE, RYAN AND THE REST of the group also withdrew to their own rooms. He lay on the bed, on his side, wincing occasionally at the way the arrow wound was pulling. Mildred had suggested that it would help to stitch it, but Ryan had argued against it, claiming the wound would heal more quickly unaided.

The musket ball that had gone in and out of J.B.'s upper left arm had left a neat entry and exit wound that was now tightly bandaged. The Armorer kept flexing his fingers, working his shoulder, trying to find out precisely how much damage had been done and how it might have limited his range of movement. It didn't seem serious.

The splinters of stone in Jak's right ankle was the most serious of the trio of injuries. Mildred had asked for an array of oil lamps to be provided on one of the big scrubbed tables in the kitchens. She peered over the white flesh, using a pair of borrowed tweezers to pick at the tiny shards of rock. The blood had welled from the dozen or more holes, some of them bone-deep, but the teenager had lain quite still, not making a sound, though he was biting his lip from the pain.

Eventually, having swilled it out with bowls of near-scalding water, using cotton swabs to pick away any remaining specks of stone, Mildred was satisfied.

"It'll do," she said.

Jak heaved a great sigh of relief as she dried the wound, then applied a length of bandage that swiftly became pink from leaking blood.

"Thanks, Mildred. Better."

But it was giving him a lot of trouble, meaning that he walked with a limp on the right side.

Trader paced around the room, slapping his hands together, fired up, ready to go again.

"That mealy prick says he'll give up the ville, then what do we do?"

Krysty sat next to Ryan, holding his hand. "Problem is that the ransom is meaningless. They think they've

got his son. We all know that they haven't."

"So he'll tell us to go bite the fresh air?"

Ryan shook his head. "Lots of barons would. Not sure about Weyman. I think he'll listen a lot to Jamie.

Partly his fault they've got Dean. We'll find out over supper."

J.B. stood by the window, looking out across the darkening land. "I agree. I'd lay my jack on him wanting to help us out."

"My suspicion is that the baron will do what he can to hang on to his power," Doc said, "which will probably mean having to assist us in attempting to save dear Dean. Of all the barons I've seen during my time here in Deathlands, I have to say that Weyman seems the most decent."

"Losing his power," Abe commented.

Doc smiled at the little gunner. "They say power corrupts and that absolute power corrupts absolutely. Perhaps it makes for a better class of baron if they are weakening somewhat. What think you?"

Jak had been doing kneebend exercises against the foot of the bed, wincing at the strain it put on his leg. "Waste time talking. Know soon enough."

ONE OF THE SERVING WOMEN at the supper table kept crying until she was taken away from her duties.

"Micah's daughter," Rainey said. "Lost her mother only six months ago from the flux."

Neither the baron nor his son had appeared when the first course arrived at the long refectory table, though the sec boss said that he'd received orders to get started on the meal on the understanding that Weyman and Jamie would be down to join them a little later.

The soup was a rich mix of tomatoes, leeks and potatoes, with succulent chunks of braised pork. It was perhaps a little too heavily salted for Ryan's taste, but the wholemeal bread made it more palatable.

Rainey was deeply on edge, only toying with his bowl of soup. He played with the cutlery, staring out across the room toward the shuttered windows.

He sighed suddenly and looked over at Ryan. "Well?" he said.

Ryan read the subtext in the single word! "We'll go after the brushwooders. Bring out Dean and take some blood payment for the three dead men."

"We don't have the practice. Not for a drag-them-down-and-kick-the-shit kind of firefight. Been too long.

We're all too slow for Straub and his butchers."

Trader tipped up his bowl to drain its dregs. He put it down and belched his satisfaction. "Tell you what, sec man," he said. "Danger is when someone doesn't know that they're weak. You're lucky. You got all of us to ride with you and shoot with you."

"One or two of us aren't at our best," Ryan said, "but there's nothing to stop us coming along."

"Stupes." Mildred shook her head. "I know none of your wounds are seriously life-threatening, but they're all nasty enough. You all need at least two or three days rest. Make sure the infection's cleared up."