ruins. "No choice. I'm going now. Slide in and find Dean. Bring him out. See you back at the ville sometime tomorrow. Don't try to come after me. Just fuck things up even more." He turned on his heel, then paused as another thought struck him. "Brushwooders know we're here. Get the horses if you can, but they're probably already lost. So try and circle around and move fast. Let Rainey and the kid guide you. They know the area."

"Take the greatest of care, my dear fellow," Doc said, gripping him by the shoulder.

"Thanks, Doc. Here, take my rifle with you. It'll only get in the way."

There wasn't anything else to be said.

Ryan gave Krysty a kiss on the cheek, then turned away. In passing he couldn't help noticing how Trader

seemed to have aged by ten years in the past five minutes, at the realization that his fight plan had gone so appallingly wrong.

The fog wrapped itself around Ryan as he moved away.

RYAN MOVED LOW AND FAST, not worrying much about making noise. The mist and the surrounding trees would combine to muffle and distort any sounds, and there were brushwooders scurrying around him.

He had the SIG-Sauer still bolstered, relying on the panga drawn in his right hand. If there was to be any chilling, it would be well to try to make it silent.

The one thing that he had on his side was the knowledge that most of the fighting men from the camp seemed to be out and about in the forest. If he could get back under cover of night and fog, and find Dean quickly enough, there was a real hope that they could get away before dawn.

He pushed aside the insistent thought that Straub, Ditchdown and the brushwooders had somehow found out that Dean wasn't the baron's son.

If they had found out, then he was on a mission to try to retrieve his son's corpse.

RYAN WAS TRYING TO GET the local geography clear in his mind as he ran toward the camp.

The brushwooders' settlement was in a narrow bowl, surrounded by steep hills. The only trail to the west out of it wound along a ravine, into the unclaimed territory of the scabbies, only opening up when it reached the treacherous, snaking pathway that ran through the golden wasteland of hot springs and geysers, and swamps of boiling mud.

There was the tiny seed of an idea beginning to germinate at the back of Ryan's mind, but it was still too small to be worth a lot of thought.

He was still thinking about the route back to the coast when he walked around a grove of stunted tamarisks, straight into one of the brushwooders. The man was a little above average height, and he had just finished taking a leak against a redwood.

"Seen any of" he began, turning as he laced up his pants.

Ryan didn't hesitate. He stepped in close, swinging the panga in a powerful upward cut, aiming at the brushwooder's throat.

The point struck home just below the lower ear, driving through, splintering teeth, pinning the tongue to the upper palate and continuing on.

The tip of the eighteen inches of cold steel ended up in the front part of the man's brain.

It was a brutally effective killing stroke.

The brushwooder tried to speak, but his mouth was filled with his own blood and broken teeth, the wide blade forcing his head backward.

Ryan squeezed the lower jaw so that he could withdraw the panga, but it had become jammed among the upper bones of the skull and it wouldn't come free.

The man had reached for his own knife, but the lines were down and his fingers opened and closed helplessly.

Ryan let him fall, releasing the hilt of his panga, waiting until the residual twitching and thrashing was over. Then he set his combat boot on the corpse's chest and, using both hands, rugged the blood-slick blade free.

Before wiping it on the ragged coat, he straightened and looked around him. The fog walls were just as impenetrable. Nothing human was visible, and nobody seemed aware of the instant slaughter of one of their fellows.

Yet there was a sense of bustle. Standing completely still and quiet, Ryan could sense that there were people in the forest, all oblivious to his own presence. The feeling he had was of some moving east, toward the horses and his invisible companions, and some west, back toward the village.

Which was where he was heading.

THE MOON WAS WANING, meaning that the woods became even darker, making the mist denser.

Ryan had to slow his pace, fearful of becoming totally lost, fearful of missing the brushwooders' camp altogether and blundering out into the death-trap land beyond.

There was also the very real danger that he might blunder blindly along, straight into the middle of a bunch of the hunting men.

But there was the smell of wood smoke and roasting meat, overlaying the throat-tight stink of sulfur, leading him along the right trail.

The main track was a little way north, higher up the hillside, but Ryan was following a narrower, winding path that had all the hallmarks of being made by animals rather than humans. It followed the course of a zigzag stream that ran swift and bright to Ryan's left.

His back was aching, and he stopped and stretched, feeling the stiff bandages peel stickily away from the wound and the instant warmth of leaking blood.

It had been several hours since he'd left the ville, and he was becoming thirsty. Might as well take advantage of the stream while he could.

The tinkling of the water covered any other sounds, but he stopped, head to one side, listening. For a moment he thought that he'd heard something moving on the far side of the narrow stream, where he could just see another, similar path. But the sound wasn't repeated.

He took a chance and threw himself flat on his stomach, wincing at the effect on his arrow wound. He sheathed the panga and drew the SIG-Sauer, holding it ready in his right hand. If anyone took him by surprise, it wasn't likely to be an opportunity for a swift, clean kill.

The water was utterly delicious, flowing from somewhere high up in the distant Sierras, away to the far east. It was as cold as charity and as sweet as hope.

Ryan dipped his face below the surface, drinking deeply, feeling refreshed from just a few mouthfuls.

He lifted his head, the dark curly hair dripping spangles of water back into the stream, and looked straight into the swarthy muzzle and hooked tusks of a huge mutie pig.

The beast wasn't quite as big as the boar that was called General, but it had to have weighed better than a thousand pounds of murderous hatred on the hoof. Its tiny deep-set eyes glowered at the man who had invaded its own drinking place, and its sharp hooves pawed at the bank of wet mud.

All that separated it from Ryan was less than five feet of deep, chilly stream.

Ryan didn't make any hurried, frightened movements that might have induced the pig to launch itself at him. He raised himself a little way, bringing the blaster around to cover the beast, not sure quite what effect a 9 mm round would have on a creature that size.

The pig snorted, its breath reeking with rotting meat. Ryan realized that it wasn't sure what sort of a threat he represented, and it kept lowering its head as though checking that the water was still there.

"Fuck off," Ryan whispered.

To his amazement and relief, the mutie animal did just that. It shook its huge rutting head from side to side, then backed away a few steps, as if it might be readying itself to charge. Then it simply turned and trotted ponderously away into the white fog, disappearing in seconds.

Ryan realized that he'd been holding his breath for a long time and slowly released it in a white plume into the cold predawn air.

THE EDGE OF THE CAMP was less than two hundred yards farther on, nestling in the sheer-sided valley.

There were no guards out, but Ryan could see through the clearing mist that there were men and women moving around the makeshift huts and tents.

The fire had been built up to a roaring blaze, which was one of the reasons that the fog was markedly less thick around the brushwood settlement.

Jamie had described where he thought Dean would be held prisoner. It was on the far side of the encampment, in a ragged tent with a high lodgepole from which something that looked like a human scalp was fluttering.

Ryan made his way around the perimeter, using the plentiful cover. He stopped once as three men walked quickly by, talking excitedly about the way Straub had massacred ten of the ville's sec men entirely on his own, and how they had all the horses from the raiding party.

At least that was what the snatch of conversation sounded like, though Ryan simply didn't believe that one person could take out ten armed and alert sec men. Unless he'd been armed with a first-class light machine gun. And there's been no sound of any shooting.

"Impossible," he whispered to himself.

DAWN WASN'T FAR OFF, and Ryan knew that his task would be made that much more difficult by the

way the shrouding fog was leaking away.

But he was safely at the rear of what he hoped was the right tent. He'd come close to the flapping canvas, straining to catch any sound from within that would give him a clue.

But it was as silent as a tomb.

Ryan had a sudden vision of what he'd find insidehis son's corpse, naked and bloodless, hideously mutilated. It was so powerful an image that he had to kneel, fighting against the desire to throw up.

"Don't believe you."

The words were barely audible, but Ryan would have known the voice out of ten million others.

"Dean," he breathed.

There was another voice there, harsh and croaky, sounding like an old woman's. Ryan cautiously probed

at the coarse material with the needle tip of his panga, boring open a tiny hole, pressing his eye to it.

A small, smoky fire and a tallow lamp gave just enough light for him to be able to see what was happening inside the tent.

Dean was sitting, hands tied in front of him, a tight strip of rawhide knotted tightly around his neck,

holding him against the center pole of the tent. As far as Ryan could see, the boy hadn't been badly hurt,

though there were dark shadows of bruises around his eyes.

The other person was an old crone, bent almost double. She was performing a bizarre dance in front of the helpless boy, lifting up her ragged skirt to expose herself, mocking him in a chanting, singsong voice.

"Chilled the buggerin' sec men and chilled all your buggerin' outland friends, and soon we'll be chillin' you. Ditchdown's promised me I can have some funnin' with you, laddie. Like what you see, do you? Like a ripe taste of it?"

There was no point in waiting any longer.

Every minute that passed brought the dawn a little closer, and with it the chance of returning brushwooders revealing that Dean wasn't the true son of the baron. If he was to rescue the boy and get him away, then the last moments of darkness would be an essential friend to them. He gripped the hilt of the panga and drew the razored edge down the outer cover of the tent.

The old woman had her back to him and was too preoccupied with her taunting jig to be aware of

anything happening behind her.

Ryan eased himself through the gap in the material, seeing the sudden widening of his son's eyes. But Dean knew better than to attract attention. He immediately dropped his gaze to the packed earth floor of the tent.

"Won't even look at old Rosie, eh?" the woman squawked in an eldritch screech of delight.

For a passing moment Ryan considered knocking her unconscious and tying and gagging her.

But he didn't have the time or the inclination.

He switched the steel to his left hand and stepped close to the capering figure, clubbing her hard across

the nape with his right fist. There was the familiar click, and she dropped like a discarded bundle of rags.

Ryan knelt and checked her pulse, ready to open her throat. But there was no need.

He turned to his son. "All right, Dean?"

"Yeah, Dad. Better than all right now you're here."

"Hurt?"