But Trader was insistent, refusing to listen to any kind of reasoned argument. "We leave the sec men here. Rest of us go in, and when the shooting starts they can follow and pick off any brushwood stragglers."

Ryan patted his horse on the side of the neck, trying to relieve his own tension. "What if Straub has men around us now? Those crossbows only give one chance to the sec men. Could get chilled. And once you run in out of the fog, blaster blazing, the first thing they might do is open up my son from throat to groin." The anger was almost beyond control. "If that happens, then the first person I waste is you, Trader."

"Oh, yeah?"

"Yeah."

The SIG-Sauer was somehow out and cocked in his hands, and the Armalite had moved around with the lazy ease of a snake, covering him.

Krysty came out of nowhere, forcing her mount in between the men. Her emerald eyes were wide and staring, green fire in the moonlight.

"Gaia! You'd rather murder each other and ruin the attack than back off and admit that either of you could be wrong." Her finger pointed at Ryan. "Back off, lover. You know how to do it."

"Trader's dog-brained wrong," he grated.

"It was agreed that I run this mission. If we were still with the war wags, Ryan, then I'd have had you held down and shot through the back of the neck for mutiny."

"You used to do the shooting yourself," Abe interrupted. "Seen you do it."

"That's right enough." J.B. let the Uzi ease down again, as the tension slithered away.

"We do it the way I said."

Ryan looked at him, breathing slowly, feeling the butchering rage passing. He had been within a ragged moment of putting a 9 mm round between Trader's eyesassuming that the old man's AR-16 hadn't chilled him first.

"I said that we do this my way, Ryan. I want to hear what you got to say."

"I say you best not push this any further. I say that this could all go sadly wrong, Trader. I say that there could be some of the wrong blood spilled in the dirt. Understand me? That's what I say."

Trader relaxed, aware that he'd gotten his own way. "Good," he said. "Fucking good."

THE SEC MEN SEEMED HAPPY enough to rest with the horses, as a rear guard. Rainey had spoken with Trader, arguing that he should remain with them. But he'd been talked down.

"Easy enough. They wind up the cranks on those crossbows and get the bolts loaded up. They form a small perimeter, say forty yards, and watch out for trouble."

"Won't see much in this fog," J.B. stated. "Might do better to stick close and quiet."

Trader didn't even bother to argue with the Armorer. "Rest of you got your blasters ready? Make every one an ace on the line. I'll head for where Jamie thinks the kid's holed up. Jamie and Abe, stick close to my side."

He looked around them, deep-set eyes lingering for a moment on the faces of J.B. and Ryan.

Rainey held up a hesitant hand. "Trader?"

"What is it?"

"Got one question. There's women and children down there in the camp."

"Wrong, sec man. All there is down there in the fog is the brushwood camp. Every single person in that camp, young or old, male or female, drunk or sober, is an enemy to us. Understand? Everysingle person."

THE FOG WAS singularly unpleasant.

In only a few paces the main attacking party was already out of sight of the sec men and the horses, though they could hear the animals whickering for several minutes before the mist muffled the sound into silence.

The stench of sulfur was heavy in the wreathing clouds, and it clung to the skin and clothes, insinuating itself into the mouth and nostrils and the pores of the skin. It was cool and clammy, like trying to breathe through a wet kerchief.

As Jamie led Trader along the winding trail, the rest kept close to them, walking through the dank, dripping stillness, aware of the trunks of trees that swiftly disappeared into the fog, vanishing barely twenty feet above their heads.

For most of the time there was no sign of life at all in the forestthough everyone stopped dead after barely five minutes, hearing the sound of something large and ungainly, blundering through the blinding mist just a little way ahead of them. Ryan was walking fourth in line behind Jamie, Trader and Abe, and he glimpsed the shape of something, which grunted and snuffled and had two tusks, one broken.

The wild mutie boar didn't scent the group of humans as they stood, paralyzed, watching its bulk disappear again toward the north of the track.

"Bit too close," Abe whispered, as they resumed walking west, toward the brushwooders' camp.

KRYSTY STUMBLED against Ryan and nearly fell. He half turned to steady her, shocked at the wide-eyed look of horror etched on her face.

"What?" he whispered.

"Oh, Earth Mother! Back. Must turn back now. Feel desperate danger behind us. Turn back now." She pushed Ryan aside, running clumsily past the others, nearly knocking over Abe.

She grabbed at Trader's sleeve. "Stop!" she hissed.

"What?" He was taken by surprise, almost hefting the Armalite to crack it against her skull.

"Must stop and go back, Trader. I can feel it. Very, very strong. Behind us."

"Feel what?"

Krysty stared behind her, into the dark bank of fog that was all around them like an encircling wall.

"Something's gone triple wrong, Trader. Mebbe they know we're coming. I can't tell what it is."

Ryan started to go back toward where they'd left the ten sec men, but Trader called to him.

"Goin' somewhere, Ryan?"

"You heard her. Krysty gets a feeling as strong as this one, then you take note of it."

"She doesn't know what it is, but she feels something might've gone wrong." Trader laughed and shook

his head. "We keep going."

For a moment nobody moved.

Then the sound came from behind them, to the east, a terrible, piercing scream of soul-tearing pain and

despair.

Chapter Twenty-Nine.

Magnus Lette, at nineteen, was the youngest of the patrol of sec menonly by six minutesthen came his identical twin brother, Marcus. They had been with Baron Weyman since they were lads of eleven. Their mother had been a cook in the ville, but had died of pneumonia in that cold winter. As far back as Magnus and Marcus could remember, there hadn't been a father. Eudoria Lette, their mother, told changing tales of a sailor, a packman, a whaler and a shootist.

In the end, it didn't much matter.

Weyman was a good master, kind and considerate, never demanding too much from the men and women who served him. And Bill Rainey was also a decent sec boss.

Magnus and Marcus Lette were sitting together, part of a forty-yard defensive perimeter that had the

horses at its center. Every man faced outward, into the fog that snaked between the tall pines. Every man had his powerful crossbow armed and ready across his lap.

The forest was dark and silent, only the ghost of a moon filtering through the mist.

"Marcus?"

"What is it, little bro?"

"Might only be little now, but baby boy Magnus is catching up to you."

It was the oldest of jokes between the identical twin brothers, but it still made both of them smile.

"What do you want, Magnus?"

"Just wondering whether we might see these wild brushwood folks. Bill says there's plenty of them."

Marcus grinned, teeth white in the silvery light. "Raggedy-assed bastards won't be no harm to us, bro. Just aim and loose a bolt at them."

The brothers blinked at the apparition that had sprung into sight from the woodland. One moment the

space had been empty of life, swirling with dense fog, then, in the beating of a heart, there was a man

there.

Neither Magnus nor Marcus were worried. They knew what brushwooders looked like. They were filthy, in old flea-ridden furs and torn hides, had long, lank hair and blotched skin and were better than halfway toward scabbies.

But this wasn't a brushwooder, so he obviously wasn't any threat to them.

From top to toe, the stranger looked even smarter than the baron himself.

He wore expensive Western-style stack-heeled boots in black leather with a silver snake crawling around

them, and a shirt as black as midnight, and jeans to match, with lines of silver rivets. A chunky necklace of top-quality raw turquoise hung around the muscular neck, and a large opal was studded through the right ear. He was smiling at the brothers, showing the glitter of a gold tooth at the front of his mouth.

He looked to be somewhere around fifty, with a totally shaved head.