"No. Knocked me around a bit. Worst was what that old bitch was planning."

"I can guess."

He crouched and cut the cords around the boy's wrists. Dean gasped as he rubbed hard at his hands to try

to bring back the circulation. "Wow! That hurts. Watch out for the one around my neck. Real tight."

Ryan eased the tip of the blade under the rawhide, slicing through it.

"Ready? You can stand up all right?"

"Sure. Listen. That old sow had my blaster. Let's see if she's still got it."

He rummaged through her clothes, pulling out the Browning and sticking it back in his belt. As he stood,

Dean deliberately kicked the corpse in the face with the toe of his combat boots.

"Wasted effort," Ryan said.

"Not when it makes you feel so good, Dad."

They moved to the back of the tent, where Ryan reached to draw aside the cut material, the movement

tugging painfully at the wound in the small of his back.

"Hurt?" Dean whispered, seeing his father wince.

"Some. Not bad. Talk when we get outside. Head straight into the trees but watch out for the brushwooders. They seem like an army out there."

Father and son slipped out of the camp and vanished silently into the misty forest beyond.

Chapter Thirty-One.

Though it gave him more discomfort, Ryan led the way up along the flank of the steepest slope, above and to the north of the brushwooders' settlement. He carefully avoided the main trail back toward the ville, where armed horsemen could easily have ridden them down.

It was heavily wooded, and the recent rain made the going slippery and treacherous. But it brought them out where Ryan wanted to be, close to the side canyon that he suspected might be the home of the pack of mutie pigs.

When they'd been out of the camp for about ten minutes they both heard a piercing shriek of rage.

"Found Rosie's corpse," Dean panted, grinning happily at his father.

"Don't sound pleased."

"Think that was Straub?"

Ryan leaned his hand against the bole of a spreading sycamore, catching his own breath. "Could be. I heard brushwooders saying that Straub personally, on his own, chilled ten armed sec men. Think that's possible? I figured him for a triple creep. Something about him"

Dean had hunkered on a rounded boulder, and he considered the question. "I felt dizzy when he stared at me, and I sort of had the feeling that he could be a seer or a doomie. Kind of reading what I was thinking.

You know, Dad?"

"Yeah, I know."

"We going back to the ville?"

Ryan shook his head. "Not yet. Got an idea that just keeps on growing and growing."

RYAN WAS SURPRISED at how much the arrow had taken out of him. It hadn't been that grave a wound he'd certainly had far worse in his life and hadn't touched any major organs or broken any bones. The only potential damage was to the web of muscles that protected the base of the spine from harm.

But it had been a clean wound, the arrow coming out fairly easily.

"Getting older," he told himself.

He decided that it was about time to take a break from the grinding uphill climb. They were comfortingly

close now to the crest of the ridge, on a deer trail that Ryan hoped would eventually bring them down again some way along the side canyon that had been his destination.

"Take five," he said.

Dean dropped on a patch of soft turf, in between a grove of alders. Now the dawn light was strengthening, and Ryan could see that the boy had been badly beaten, with congealed blood rimming both mouth and nose, as well as purple weals across his cheeks and around both eyes.

"You feel all right, son?"

"Just a few hits. Only on the surface. Right now I never felt better, Dad."

Ryan sat beside the boy, watching the pale spears of light break through the trees around them, casting

long, watery shadows down the slope. It seemed amazingly still and peaceful, and it was difficult to believe that only a mile or so away, in the grove where the horses had been tethered, there had been bloody butchery done.

They'd been moving fast since the breakout, and this was their first opportunity to talk quietly together.

Ryan told the boy about the abortive raid that had ended with the deaths of the two sec men and the capture of Micah. Dean explained what had happened, and why he'd had to chill the helpless prisoner.

"Did the right thing, son."

Dean was concerned to hear about the injuries suffered by J. B. Dix, Jak and his father, though Ryan

stressed that none of the wounds was life-threatening.

The failure of the night's attack surprised the boy. "Was it Trader's fault?"

"Difficult question, Dean. He and I argued about placing the backup force. But, in fairness to the bad- tempered old bastard, none of us knew that Straub had the kind of mutie power it seems he's got."

"Jamie tell you what happened?" The question dragged itself out with great reluctance.

"How you pretended to be him?"

"Yeah. It was my idea. I'm not saying that to make myself any kind of hero, Dad."

"I know that."

"Just so you know that the kid didn't turn chicken on me. He was going to own up, but I stopped him. I

reckoned it was the best chance for both of us to make it."

Ryan nodded, keeping alert for any sounds of pursuit. "Turned out right."

Dean had something on his mind, but he couldn't quite steer around to it.

"You like Jamie Weyman, Dad?"

"Sure. Much tougher than you think, the first time you meet him."

Dean nodded. "I thought that. Only he's got all that that learning , don't he?"

"Doesn't he? Should be 'doesn't,' not 'don't,' Dean. Krysty's always on at me for making mistakes like

that."

"Think it's important, Dad?"

"Krysty says that if you can choose between getting it right and getting it wrong, then it's better to get it

right. I suppose I agree with her."

Now it was coming to it.

"Jamie knows all about math and history and places and science and stuff, Dad."

"He's been well taught."

"Not like me," Dean muttered, head down, not looking up to meet his father's eye.

"No. Not like you." He moved close enough to put an arm around the boy's shoulders. "You've been

taught in a different school. School of life. Sure, Jamie knows all that learning stuff, Dean. But put him in

a wilderness with a knife and no shelter, and he'd die in forty-eight hours. Probably much less. You know

what I mean?"

"Yeah."

"You're the most self-sufficient boy I ever met. Bet you a bucket of jack that even Jak Lauren wasn't as good as you when he was your age."

"You reckon?" Dean seemed happier at that idea.

Ryan followed the course. "You can look after yourself, Dean, anytime and anyplace. You've been in

tight spots that would make someone like Jamie sit down and wait for the last train to the coast."

"Sure, but"