The hand rose and brushed away the gaping muzzle of the massive handblaster, as if it were a mildly troublesome insect. J.B. laughed out loud. "Sure terrified him there, boy."
Lori took the next try, pulling the fur-covered men to the farther edge of the small clearing, coughing as she passed through the smoke of their cooking fire. She rubbed her stomach and mimed hunger, smiling at the venison, which was rapidly cooling on the grass. Then she pushed the men from her, with a wave and a sad smile.
One of them nodded, mouth breaking into a toothless grin, which made Ryan wonder in passing how he would have eaten the roasted meat. But the man was pointing again, this time to the earthenware crock of liquor.
"Yes?" Lori asked. Getting Ryan's smile of agreement, the tall blonde ran across, silver spurs tinkling, and picked up the jar, handing it to the primitive outlander.
He raised it to his lips and gave the teenage girl a deep bow. His companion also bowed low, offering a slightly cautious smile to the rest of the watching group.
Then the two turned and began to pick their way between the trees. Within a couple of minutes they'd totally vanished.
"Well done, my poppet." Doc grinned, hugging Lori and giving her a great smacking kiss on the lips.
"Yeah, Lori," Ryan agreed. "Jak, just keep a watch in case they decide to come back for their bows. Let's eat."
Apart from the outer skin of the deer, which had been roasted to charcoal, the meat was good, tender and succulent. They all sat cross-legged around the dying fire, chins slick with the juices of the animal.
Ryan sighed. "Food's good. If that map Doc saw is about right, we still got some miles to cover to try and find this ville down on the coast. Best be moving."
They left the bows where they'd found them, so that the two primitive hunters would be able to retrieve them after they'd gone.
The outskirts of Claggartville were reached just before sunset with no further trouble.
Chapter Twelve
A white mist crept off the Lantic Ocean, toward the shore. Already its first questing tendrils had reached a line of large boulders a hundred paces off the beach. The seven friends stood together on a low bluff surrounded by tall pine trees, looking down on Claggartville.
"Handsome little ville," J.B. observed.
Ryan nodded. "Looks clean." He counted the line of masts alongside the quay. "Eight sailers. Must be fishers and transports. They're burning coal in those houses. Must ship it in."
Claggartville looked as though it consisted of around seven to eight hundred houses, making it one of the largest villes that Ryan had ever encountered. Smoke poured from well over half of the chimneys, drifting their way.
The buildings were almost entirely white-framed, with red roofs. The streets looked narrow near the harbor, but wider farther up the hill. He could see the spires of two churches and a large windmill, its sails motionless in the calm of the evening.
"Several of the houses got a kind of platform on the top," Krysty said, using her amazing eyesight to scan the ville. "Rails around them, as well. Wonder what?.."
"Widows' walks, my dear," Doc replied. "The women climbed up them to spy out across the sea for some sight of a returning sail. These whalers often were away for five years at a time. It was a bleak, harsh life."
"Any those ships whaling?" Jak asked.
"I fear that I can't tell, dear boy. The old peepers see less than once they did. Perhaps Krysty can?.."
"What am I looking for, Doc?"
"Some evidence of small ovens on board where they would render the oil. Several long, narrow boats shipped aboard. Tough, seagoing vessels ready for any weather."
Krysty shook her head. "Can't see from up here, Doc. The fog's closing in on the ville. We should get down there if we want to find a bed and food."
"Best step easy. Those men with the venison might live here. Or it might be home to some relatives of the good folk of Consequence."
Ryan shook his head at the Indian's words. "Doubt that, Donfil. Hardly ever seen such a trim ville as this one. But it could be the sort of place with a heavy presence of sec men. Best we step slow and easy and avoid trouble."
"Put up blaster or I'll stick where sun never shines!"
"Cool it down, Jak," Ryan warned, fearing the confrontation was already fallen from their hands.
"You blaspheme, mutie outlander," the sec guard snarled.
"Don't know word, stinking bastard!" the boy replied, hand trembling over the holster that held his .357.
"Jak!" Ryan shouted. "Just button up the mouth and let me do the talking." He faced the angry sec man. "Boy's wild. Sorry for the way he speaks. He was orphaned when his family was taken by stickies. We rescued him."
It was a situation familiar to Ryan and to J.B. Throughout Deathlands there were all kinds of different communities. Large villes, ruled over by successful barons and an unknown number of smaller settlements, sometimes only a handful of scattered hovels. The difference between these and the villes was most often seen in their attitude to security and strangers.
The Trader and the war wags had frequently run foul of over officious sec men, many of whom were swift and evil bastards, born and reared in an atmosphere of bullying and corruption.
But the trio of sec men on the main highway into Claggartville was a little different from the usual breed.
The mist had reached the houses along the quay, twisting and turning in the alleys and courts of the town. As they drew closer it had become obvious to the seven companions that Claggartville was one of the oldest villes they'd come across. Or it had been cleverly rebuilt to give the impression that it was extremely old. The houses had gables and small leaded windows, and the streets were narrow and cribbed.
"Sec patrol," Krysty had warned, seeing the three men standing by a kind of tollgate lowered across the road. All three wore black jackets and pants, with knee-length boots of black leather, and had trimmed mustaches and long side-whiskers that practically met under their chins. Two of three wore old-fashioned stovepipe hats like the one Doc had favored for so long.
That was the general impression. But from habit Ryan's eye went to the weapons the three men were carrying.
He blinked.
At his side J.B. whispered, "Can't be real, Ryan. They're remakes. Good ones. But they gotta be remakes."
The most modern was an 1848 Colt Dragoon .44-caliber revolver. That was carried by the tallest of the three sec men. He also had an 1819 Hall .54-caliber flintlock breechloader slung across his shoulders on a worn leather strap with a polished brass buckle.
One of the other men held a battered Kentucky flintlock musket in his hand, the stock resting on the ground. He also had a brace of smoothbore flintlock pistols at his belt, looking the same bore as the Hall musket.
The third man had a single pistol in his belt. It was the Harper's Ferry martial flintlock, the rare 1806 model, Ryan noticed, with the number 22 stamped on the barrel.
Apart from the Kentucky musket, all the guns looked in amazingly good condition. There were a few, a very few, original antique firearms in Deathlands. But these blasters were so good that they had to be, as J.B. had suggested, skillful remakes or rebuilds.
All three men looked to be in their mid to late thirties, and they were calm and self-possessed. Yet they showed none of the usual sec men's arrogance.
"The words of the young are as the falling of broken shards of pot," the leader of the patrol said to Ryan.
"And of less worth than the dry dirt that spills from the wheels of the dung cart," his colleague with the musket added.
"Yeah," Ryan said. "What can we do to help you folks?"
"Whither go ye and from whence? And what is your business here in Claggartville?"
The speech was old-fashioned and stiltedly formal, reminding Ryan of old books he'd read and old historical vids.