He ignored the yelling and screams from all around him, steadying the powerful blaster, wishing that the vanished Straub was still somewhere around him, so that he could have chilled the outland bastard. No time for that.

If there had been a few minutes of warning, then it might have been possible to guide some of the settlement up into the sheer hills around them.

Now the only hope was to run west, toward the ocean. But that meant the territory of the scabbies, then into the yellow land of boiling mud.

Ditchdown just didn't feel much like taking up either of those options. "That's enough," he said quietly. The pigs were already at the outskirts of the village, hundreds of them, most of them weighing well over the five-hundred-pound mark, tusks gleaming through the dust. They charged clear across the camp, their attention turning toward the trail that continued out the far side, barreling straight through anything that was in their way.

RYAN'S ATTENTION WAS on the white streak that ran through Ditchdown's dark hair, blazing like a

beacon in the cloudy, misty gloom.

There was the brief muzzle-flash from the Kalashnikov, and several of the leading boars went toppling over in a tangle of hooves. But it was like trying to stop a crumbling dam with your finger and thumb.

"He's not trying to run, Dad."

"I see it."

"Why?"

"Times that you have to stop running, Dean. For better or worse."

"Don't see Straub."

"Nor me."

The leading pigs were beginning to emerge from the other side of the camp, hot on the heels of those

brushwooders who'd taken the option of running. Behind them they left ruined tents and splintered huts.

And the dead and dying.

Because of the whirling dervish of dust and the deepening fog, it was difficult to make out the full details,

but it looked as though there weren't going to be many survivors in the settlement.

Nor any settlement to survive.

A young woman, carrying a child, was knocked sideways by a huge sow, vanishing under the trampling

herd.

An old gray-haired man was tossed high in the air, his body spinning, arms and legs flailing, his guts spilling out of him in greasy cartwheeling loops, before he too was absorbed into the dust and fog. Ryan watched Ditchdown meet his doom with an extraordinary calm, still holding the blaster, staring defiantly at the mutie pigs, standing upright until he crumpled before the tidal wall of rampaging flesh. As the cloud of dust began to clear, it was possible to see the mangled bodies, one or two of the slower pigs pausing from the stampede to begin their snuffling, rutting feed off the smears of blood and broken bones and mashed flesh that had once been the wild brushwooders. Ryan stood, wincing at the stabbing pain from the arrow wound, an injury that he'd managed to forget during the adrenaline rush of the deathly battle with General and then the lighting of the fires. It had been a plan fraught with all sorts of perils and chances for spectacular failure, failure that would probably have meant their deaths as well as the destruction of the ville. But Dean had done his part perfectly, and it had worked. The brushwooders were scattered and destroyed. Though the unseen final act was played out a mile or so farther to the west, past the territory of the scabbies, among the lethal geysers and sucking swamps of scalding, bubbling, golden mud, Ryan knew that precious few from the ragged camp would live to see the sun set that evening.

Though he would have been a little happier to have seen the man called Straub meet his own doom.

"That it, Dad?" Dean also stood, adjusting the heavy handblaster in his belt.

"That's about as much 'it' as you can ever get. Yeah, it's done."

"Baron Weyman and Jamie're safe?"

"For a while. Until next time."

"Will there be a next time, Dad?"

Ryan smiled at his son. "There's always a next time, son. Always."

He turned away from the scene of murderous desolation, ignoring the feasting mutie pigs, leading the boy along the ridge, eastward, skirting the fire, back to the ville and their friends.

Chapter Thirty-Five.

The events of the past few days had put a great strain on the frail physique of Baron Weyman, and he was only able to bid farewell to the outlanders from his bed. Bill Rainey stood by the shuttered window, and Jamie sat in a small armchair by the side of the fireplace, where a pile of weathered apple logs burned bright and clean.

The baron was pale, wearing a thick woolen shawl around his shoulders, but he seemed cheerful enough. "Well, Ryan Cawdorand all of you outlander friends, it is time to say goodbye and to thank you all, yet again, for everything that you've done."

He smiled across at his son. "What would you say, dear boy?"

"That parting is such sweet sorrow, Father."

Doc Tanner beamed at Jamie.

Mildred nodded. "Even I know that. Romeo and Juliet , isn't it?"

Jamie blushed. "Yes, it is." He looked at Ryan. "Forgive my asking, and I know that I've asked you this a lot of times in the past few days, ever since you came back from scorching the brushwooders' camp"

"But can Dean stay here with you for a while?" Ryan completed. "And the answer's still the same. I'd be happy enough, but the decision is my son's. Not mine."

"Thanks," Dean muttered, eyes fixed resolutely on his feet. "But we all stay together."

Trader slapped him on the shoulder. "Nothing's forever, boy. Time comes when everyone has to move on. Fucking better or worse. Way life is."

Dean swallowed hard. "I know that's true, Trader. And me and Dad've talked some about about making changes. But not yet, not now. Got to go a little farther down the line. But I like being here and I like you, Jamie. Be good if we could sort of meet again."

"Farther down the line?" Jamie grinned, then got up and offered his hand to Dean.

The two boys shook, watched approvingly by the others.

Baron Weyman broke the silence, coughing into a white linen kerchief. "Forgive me. Time passes and you must be gone. You're sure you don't want an escort to the coast?"

Ryan shook his head. "Appreciate the offer, Baron. But I think we can handle any raggle brushwood remainder that might've made it through the mutie pigs and the scabbies and the sulfur swamps. Thanks, anyway."

THEY HAD their armament, clothes washed and patched, wounds treated and rebandaged.

Rainey and a couple of sec men rode with them as far as the remains of the camp, stopping there to lead back the string of horses that the friends had borrowed. It was late morning when they finally parted company, after the briefest of farewells, and headed west on foot, toward the ocean and the raft. There was far too much death between them and the solemn-faced sec boss for any more cordial goodbyes.

Trader walked with Ryan.

"Don't know which is the worse stink," he commented. "Sulfur all around us in this bastard fog, or the smell of those bodies rotting away back there."

"You and me've smelled more bodies than sulfur over the years, Trader," Ryan said.

The older man shrugged the Armalite to a more comfortable position on his shoulder. "Ain't that the truth, Brother Cawdor? Sure have seen too much chilling."

"Likely see plenty more." Behind them, the vultures that had been scared off into the misty sky came flapping down again on their wide, leathery wings. There hadn't been that much left of the brushwood dead after the pigs and the carrion eaters had taken their pleasure of them.

There were only a few pathetic tangled piles of gnawed bone and sinew between the wrecked camp and the beginning of the sulfur pools and hot springs.

"FOG'S THICKENING a lot, lover."

"Yeah. Wind's freshening, as well. Blowing dead behind us, from the Sierras. Could be some seriously bad weather to come. Sky's black as an Apache tear."

Krysty's hair was curled tightly around her nape against the miserable, damp weather.

"Least we can get on the raft, paddle across the strait and make the jump. Reckon we should be at the coast in about fifteen minutes."

They had come through the seething, blighted terrain without serious harm to any of them. Jak's ankle was still giving him trouble, and he had once stumbled over some loose stones and nearly fallen into one of the boiling springs. But his amazing reflexes had saved him.

The whole region still carried the sickly smell of overbroiled meat.

Much of it was pork, with several of the smaller basins of scalding mud choked with the corpses of the stampeded herd of pigs, the meat already tumbling from the white bones. There was also evidence that more of the brushwooders had perished in that bleak and dreadful place.

The lower half of a woman's body lay on the winding path, several chomping bites ripped from the thighs. The upper half of the corpse was immersed in brightly boiling, salted water.

It wasn't possible to tell any difference between boiled pork and boiled human.

Doc chose that place to offer an academic lecture on how cannibals in the South Seas used to call human flesh "long pig" because of its alleged similarity in terms of texture, smell and flavor.

JAK EXAMINED THE TRAIL once they were through the hot springs. "Some pigs got past safe," he said. "Some came back."

"Brushwooders?" J.B. asked. "Some. Also bare feet. Scabbies? One man in Western boots. Straub?"

Ryan wasn't that worried. He had never imagined that his plan would involve the deaths of all of the ferocious mutie pigs or all of the brushwood tribe.

But it was enough to know that the twin threats had been thoroughly diluted.

By the time they reached the rocky beach, the weather had deteriorated. There was the unusual combination of a howling wind and a thick fog that swirled about them.

Krysty shuddered. "Like to get away fast," she said quietly to Ryan. "Don't care for this much."

"Me neither. Raft was over here." There had been the worry that someone, or something, might have

found the fragile, ramshackle craft and destroyed it. But it was where they'd left it. "Wood's gotten sodden," Abe said, peering at it. "Floats lower in the sea than before." Abe was understating the problem. There was barely any freeboard above the lapping waves.

"Two trips?" Mildred queried. "Make it one," Trader argued. "Bastard impossible journey to try and run a ferry service. Look at that rucking riptide running out there."

Ryan had to agree with his former leader.

Through the patches of fog, they could see the way the ocean was tearing past them, with oil whirlpools and ragged stretches of white, tumbling water. The mist concealed the redoubt.

"Once we're off, there won't be any coming back," Ryan said. "Current'll pluck us off, and we'll have to paddle like smoke. Be risky."

They all stood and looked at the raft, barely afloat, tethered to a jagged spur of rock at Trader's feet.

"Go for it," Dean said. "That's my vote."

"Why can we not detour along the coast to that other craft that needed a bit of mending?" Doc asked.

"Take too much time," Ryan replied. "And we might finish up in a nest of scabbies."

"I say let's take a chance," Krysty offered. "Got a bad feeling about staying here."

Jak stared out into the fog, the wind blowing his silken white hair around him like a torn veil of snow.

"Go," he said, lips hardly moving.

"Three to one so far," Krysty said, turning to the Armorer. "What do you reckon?"

"Sea's triple bad. We could wait until this evening, or even until tomorrow morning."

"I vote with John," Mildred said. "I agree with you, Ryan. Once we've pushed off there's no way we could