A few wild men had been caught in the razor wire under the wagons and had to be finished there. In golf sprang up to the bed of a wagon and looked out carefully.

"They won't try again tonight, or anytime soon," he said.

"You think, Capitan?" Jose said. "They were pretty fierce, this bunch."

"We probably killed off half the swinging dicks in three or four bands-and all the stronger ones. They'll be fighting each other for weeks, settling who eats who."

" Si. Good thing we were ready for them, though."

The commander of the Villains nodded; if they'd got ten right up to the wagons where they could use their numbers, everybody in the Villains would have died. Quickly, if they were lucky.

"Hey, maybe you'd better look at this, though," Jose went on.

Ingolf turned and waved to the thrower crew so they would stand down; they didn't have so many flares that they could keep lobbing them indefinitely. Then he vaulted over the barricade and followed his second-in-command a short way into the dark.

A wild man lay there; there was a bolt through his thigh, his feet had been slashed to ribbons by crossing the spikes, and he was trying to crawl away around them. As they approached he turned, glaring. He had a finger bone through his nose too, and one through each earlobe; on his body was an ancient threadbare pair of jeans, loose on his skinny shanks and patched with rabbit skin. A cloak of the same had been about his shoulders, and from the smell roughly piss tanned. There was a big gold necklace around his neck, lying on the bare chest and glittering with diamonds. It was all pretty fancy, by local standards.

What really caught Vogeler's eye was what Jose had noticed, the weapon near the man's hand.

"Probably their jefe, their bossman," Jose said. "That's funny that he has a shete, isn't it, Capitan?"

"Damned odd," Ingolf agreed, his eyes narrowing. "It's not a machete-that's new work."

The modern weapon was longer and thicker at the back of the blade than the pre-Change tool which had inspired it.

"Want to try to get the story out of him?"

The wild man snarled at them and barked, an ough ough-ough sound, snapping with little lunges of his brown-yellow teeth, his hands scrabbling for something to throw.

"No, I don't think this one's a great talker."

" Si, he doesn't look like it, does he?"

Jose shrugged and brought the crossbow to his shoul der and aimed carefully. Tunngg, a flash through the dark, and right beneath it a meaty whack. The scrawny body jerked and went slack; Jose bent, set the span ning hook on the string, and cranked the crossbow taut again.

"You've got the watch until dawn," Ingolf said to his second-in-command, kicking the mysterious shete farther away from the body before picking it up.

He didn't want to go near the dead man; the lice and fleas jumped ship when a man died, and these probably carried disease. Safer to leave the burial detail for a day or so. Which reminded him...

"If they try to drag the bodies away, let them."

"Capitan?"

"Don't want them stinking the place up." Any worse than it is now, he thought.

Smell was inevitable when you cut men's bodies open. At least the sandy soil would sop up the liquids; it would be safer to bury any remaining tomorrow.

"This is the most defensible campsite we're going to find around here, I think, so you'll be stuck in this location for a while."

He took the captured shete back under the lamps-not much point in trying to sleep more tonight-and as he cleansed his hands and arms with sand and then water, he studied the weapon.

It was a fairly typical example of what horsemen used everywhere he knew of, from the Big Muddy to the Rockies and south to the Rio Grande; a yard long piece of slightly curved steel, three fingers broad at the widest spot near the tip, sharpened all along one edge and four inches down the other from the point for a backhander. The hilt had a simple cross guard and a full-length tang, with fillets of wood on the grip and a wrapping of braided rawhide that was coming loose in one or two spots; the pommel was a plain brass oval.

This one was better made than most, forged by a real smith and not simply ground and filed out of old-time stock. He tapped it against a wagon's frame, and the al most bell-like sound was right, and so was the elastic way it sprang back when he bent it against a tree stump by sticking the point in and leaning on it.

Still sharp, he thought, feeling cautiously with his thumb. Shame the way it's been let rust. Looks like it hasn't been cleaned or oiled in a month... maybe a bit less, with the air here.

He rotated his wrist, whipping the steel through a blurring figure eight; the air hissed behind it. It was lighter than he preferred, but it felt alive in his hand.

Over at the fire he got out his cleaning kit and went to work. When he'd finished and held it out at arm's length towards the flames his brows went up. There was a rash of rust pits, no way around that the way it had been neglected, but the surface of the metal rippled in the firelight under the thin coating of linseed oil he'd applied, full of wavy lines-not just forged, but layer -forged from a mixture of spring and mild steel, and then hardened on the edge.

There was a very slight roughness in the steel along the working part, the point and about a foot back from there; that was blood etching, the way the salt and acid of blood attacked the softer layers even if you cleaned it immediately.

This beauty would set you back fifty, sixty dollars in Des Moines. More in Richland or Marshall, since the Iowan capital attracted the best craftsmen. That was the price of a good ordinary horse, or two months' wages for a laborer, but it was a working tool that had been used hard, not a dress weapon-no fancies like inlay.

Wait, I lie, he thought.

Symbols had been graven in the surface in the same spot on both sides, not far from the hilt: a stylized rayed sun, and within it three letters- C and U and T.

"Well, that's what it's for," he said. Then he called out: "Hey, Kaur, Singh!"

The scouts came over; Singh was still rubbing a cloth on the serrated head of the mace he used for close-and personal work. It smelled if you left the results in the grooves. There were spatters on his turban, as well.

"Ranjeet is well avenged, Captain," he said, his dark eyes sparkling.

Ingolf felt a little uneasy about these two on occasion.

Revenge was all very well, but there were times when he thought the pair of them were a bit monomaniacal on the subject.

"Take a look at this," Ingolf said. "One of the wild men had it."

They both looked surprised; they hadn't seen any thing more complex than tying a knife onto a stick since they got east of the Illinois Valley.

"It's modern work," Singh said, turning it over in his big hands. "Well done, too."

He had been a blacksmith's apprentice before his village was wiped out, and still dabbled usefully in it. Now he flicked a fingernail against the edge of the weapon to test the sound, and tilted it so that the firelight would pick out surface features.

"See the wavy line along the cutting edge, just a fin ger's width in? I have heard of that. It is done by coating all the blade except the edge with clay, then packing it in red-hot charcoal, letting it cool, and then retempering. It makes the cutting edge very hard, glass hard, without turning the whole blade brittle, but it requires great skill. The heat treatment has been well done, too!"

He was waxing enthusiastic. His sister leaned forward, a frown on her dark comely face.

"What is that doing here, Captain?" she said, toying with the long single braid of her hair. "These wild men, they can't even take apart a pair of old garden shears to make knives. Make shetes?"

She made a complex dismissive sound that involved gargling and spitting.

"Yeah, that's the question," Ingolf said. "So they must have stolen it off the body of someone in from the Mid west like us. I don't think I know of more than three or four other expeditions that've gotten east of the Ohio."

"There could be more that we don't know of, more so if they were small and done quietly," Singh said. "If they died here, who would hear anything?"

Ingolf grunted skeptically. "News travels slowly, but it does get around," he said. "And it would take a big outfit, well found, to get this far."

He took the shete back, reversed the blade and held it out to Kaur. "This is a little light for my arm, but it should be about right for you."

Her eyes lit as she took the blade and ran through a series of cuts and thrusts, feet moving like a dancer's as she whirled and lunged. "Yes! Thank you, Captain. This is a very fine weapon, better than mine or my spare."

"And see if anyone else knows what those marks on the blade are," he said.

Kuttner was standing by his bedroll. Ingolf got out his pipe and fixings and lit it with an ember held in a green twig as he sat and leaned back against his saddle. He didn't smoke much. If nothing else, tobacco was too hard to find outside the Republic of Richland, or too bad if you did-good leaf and fine cheeses and apple brandy were his home country's main exports. But sometimes it was an aid to thought.

And hopefully it might discourage the mosquitoes, or at least Kuttner, who he'd noticed hated the smell. He dragged the smoke across his tongue and blew a ring into the darkness, watching it catch faint light from the lan terns and coals of the fire and enjoying the mellow scent.

"Why did you give the shete to the woman?" Kuttner asked at last.

Noticed he doesn't like Kaur. Doesn't like Singh ei ther, but he really doesn't like Kaur. Doesn't seem to like women in general much, at least none of the ones with us, but I don't think he's queer, either.

"It's the right weight and length for her. You've seen her fight," Ingolf said reasonably, then described the etchings. "You ever seen anything like those marks?"

Firelight was good for playing poker; the shadows cast on a man's face made it harder to lie. He could see the slight hesitation in Kuttner's response, and the way his eyes flicked aside for a moment.

"Not really. I think I've heard that someone uses those symbols in the far West, but no details-there isn't much trade that way."

Ingolf nodded; it was true enough. Iowa had plenty of cattle and wheat from its own fields, and the metals trade mostly went up and down the Mississippi and its right-bank tributaries. But there was something...

He's not telling all he knows, that's for sure.

A dozen of them rode into Innsmouth the next morning, as soon as the sun was high enough-too many shadows were convenient for ambushers. They came out of the forest, and into what had been the town proper; their hoofbeats echoed off the walls that flanked the broken pavement. This part didn't have many tall buildings; most of them had burned out at one time or another, their soot-charred windows like eyes in a skull. Bare black frames occupied half a street where the vacant spots weren't covered in second growth of saplings and sumac and brambles. Then they were back among brick structures that still stood.

It looked like the final collapse here hadn't come at once the way it had in Boston; there had been an effort to get the streets clear by pushing the vehicles off, and peeling, faded paint on a big warehouse-looking building read, EMERGENCY FOOD DISTRIBUTION CENTER.

That one had been inhabited more recently; you could tell by the stink, stronger than the silt-salt of the nearby sea, and the flies. And the crude wooden rack outside with the rows of skulls was a giveaway.

Dead giveaway, he thought mordantly. But it feels dead now, uninhabited.

"Check it out," he said.

They waited, bows ready, eyes traveling to the roofs on either side; the horses shifted nervously under them. Singh and Kaur swung to earth with their shetes in their hands; when they came back out they both looked disgusted, but relaxed and with the steel sheathed.

"Nothing, Captain," the man called. "They were here, but they cleared out last night. I think you were right-they fought among themselves a little when they got back from rushing us."

"Nothing?"

"Nothing living, and nothing I wish to remember having seen," Singh said, and spit.

Considering some of the things he'd seen Singh do himself in the war, he decided he really didn't want to look inside-no point in putting things like that in your head unless you had to. Instead they cantered down to the water's edge. There they found what they wanted; an old time warehouse for boats, where they were stacked up several layers high in metal racks. He'd seen that be fore in the ruined cities on the Lakes, and the guide-books listed several here.

The ground floor was smashed remnants where small animals scurried amid the tendrils of shade-loving vines, hiding as the humans dismounted and looked the place over; storm surges had come up the town's narrow cen tral harbor several times in the past decades. Beams of sunlight lanced down from holes in the rippled plastic of the roofing, catching on a chain, turning the bulks of cabin cruisers and catamarans into shadowy vastness. Birds flew in and out, tending to their nests.

Ingolf sighed and did some climbing-not easy in armor, but he certainly wasn't going to take it off. His limbs felt heavy after little sleep and a bad fight last night, but he was used to working while he was exhausted; it was a requirement in both the trades he'd followed since he left home. A lot of the boats were made of the old time material called fiberglass. He was familiar with it; some bowmakers used it instead of horn on the belly of a saddlebow, though it was getting rare back in civilized country. It had the advantage of not rotting if kept out of the sun, and at last he found a good sailboat with a folding aluminum mast.

"This one'll do," he called down.

More birds flew up at the echoes. Everyone in the Villains was used to working with pre-Change ma chinery, and more than one of this group had dealt with boats before, on the Lakes. It was still long hours of nightmare work to get the rusted slideway work ing, with only the spells of watch duty to break the hot monotony. He had barked knuckles and a sweat bath worse than the usual summer in-armor by the time the boat was in the wheeled cradle on the ground. Scavenging had found them enough Dacron and cord to rig the simple lug sail.

As the others were stowing the supplies, Jose drew him aside and spoke softly, with a glance at the Bossman's agent.

" Capitan, this cabroncito wants to go to that Nan tucket place really bad, let him go. So he's close to the Bossman, close enough his farts don't make no sound anymore, but that don't make him no friend of ours."

Ingolf smiled at the other man's worry. "And which friend of ours would I pick to send with him, to do something I'm afraid of, Jose?"

The Tejano blew out his lips in a gesture of frustration. "OK, I know what you mean. I still don't like it."

" I don't like it. Doesn't mean it doesn't have to be done."

Then Jose grinned, a quick white flash. "So now I complain how you take Kaur and Singh both. I'd feel better here with them to spot for us if the wild men sniff around. They're the best sneakers we got."

"That's why I'm taking them! And you know they don't work apart. It's the smallest number that'll do the job-me, the Sikhs, Kuttner."

Unspoken went: And the least loss if we don't come back. Losing three more wouldn't fatally weaken the Villains for the trek back to the living lands. He clapped his second-in-command on the shoulder and nodded back towards the wagon camp.

"Just keep it together for ten days. If we're not back by then, then break camp and head west on the eleventh day. That's an order. We've already got all the stuff the sheriffs and the bossman wanted, apart from this, and enough gold to start a mint. We'll catch you up, but you move. You hear me, trooper?"

" Si. Doesn't mean I have to like it either."

The harbor mouth hadn't silted up quite enough to catch the sailboat's keel, possibly because it was protected by the half sunken hulk of a great ship whose bow reared out of the water like a dull-red hill. There was a little lurch of contact as the four of them labored at the sweeps they'd found, and then they were over the bar and out into Nantucket Sound.

Ingolf found himself relaxing as the green-brown shoreline faded. That wasn't very logical-drowning killed you just as dead as a sharpened shovel in the brain, and if they were shipwrecked anywhere around here it was right back into the stewpot. The fresh breeze and clean salt air and bright sunlight must have something to do with it, and the fact that he was finally out of his armor; it was bound up with a couple of cork life vests, like all their gear. They had enough smoked venison and biscuit to last them for a few days, fishing line and hooks, map and compass, and their weapons.

Birds went by overhead, gulls and some sort of pigeons moving in a big flock. Not far away a whale breached; he couldn't tell what kind, except that it blew its spout forward in twin jets.

The wind was from the northwest, just off the star board quarter. He looked at the map again, at his com pass, and then up at the sun. Spray came in over the rail and flew backward, stinging his eyes with the salt, and he squinted into the brightness over the blue water and its white-topped waves.

"Should be there just before sunset, unless it moved," Ingolf said, lolling back with the tiller under his arm.

Neither Kaur nor Singh spoke, which was fairly typi cal. They were ready at the lines, with the care of people who liked to do things right but weren't entirely sure they could; their experience in boats was more limited than his, and he was no expert, just competent enough to set a straight course in not too bad weather. Kuttner didn't speak either, which wasn't like him. He usually had some order or observation or complaint. Now he was tensely silent.

Ingolf shrugged. I like him better this way, except that he looks like he's about to snap like a lift beam under too much weight. I suppose it was too much to hope he'd get seasick and call the whole thing off.

Instead he concentrated on his sailing. As they passed out of sight of land, the Sikhs' silence grew a little tense too. After an hour or so Ingolf spoke: "Hell, you two, we don't even have to tack for a while. I've been out on Michigan in rougher weather than this."

And nearly died, he didn't add.

For all his cheerfulness-you had to show willing and look confident if you were the leader, which necessity made it easier-he also let out a whuff! of relief when a low line of beach showed on the southern horizon. The sun was only a handspan over the horizon to their right, and it was starting to cast a glitter path on the water, tinging it with red. As they came closer Ingolf began to frown.

"Singh!" he said. "Take the tiller!"