"There's no point, Ryan. It's the way of my people to make the best of what is. And not to weep over what is not. We're trapped. If they want to chill us, then they'll chill us. We can maybe take a couple with us to the shadowland beyond. But they might not chill us. So, we'll live."
Ryan couldn't think of a smart answer, so he crawled to his corner and sat huddled on a coil of thick rope.
Every now and again a wave of the drug would come surging up in his throat, like an extra high wave on a sloping beach, and it would suck him back into the dimness of half sleep. As Donfil had said, there was little point in trying to speculate on what might happen to them in the next few hours.
When it happened, then it would happen. The only thing that worried him at all was what might have happened at the Rising Flukes, once he and the Apache had failed to join the others.
It was Krysty who'd found out that life had dealt a hand filled with spades and clubs.
While waiting in the bedroom, watching condensation trickling down the cold panes of glass, she'd begun to worry about Ryan and the Indian taking so long in their private word with the landlord. Like many people in the Deathlands, Krysty carried mutie blood in her. One of the effects of this was that she could sense certain things see the future in a limited way, sometimes be aware of the presence of good.
And evil.
She'd rolled over on her side and sat, still fully clothed, waiting for them to begin their planned escape. She could see J.B., sitting cross-legged on his own bed, staring at her.
"I'm thinking..." the girl began, but the Armorer interrupted her.
"Yeah. Me an' all. I reckon I heard men moving in the alley. You see anything?"
Krysty closed her eyes. "I felt real bad down in that drinker there. Men by the door were waiting for... and Rodriguez was nearly shitting his pretty, tight trousers. Only... Oh, Gaia! I can seeit now! Come on!"
By the time she'd reached the top of the stairs, weapon in her hand, it was all over.
The bar was filled with sec men, all armed, muzzles of rifles and scatterguns pinning her in place. Rodriguez was behind the bar, wiping sweat from his face. Ryan's weapons and white silk scarf were on the bar, as were Donfil's Smith & Wesson Distinguished Combat .357 Magnum and mirrored sunglasses. Both men were gone.
"Don't move, outlander. Place is covered tighter than a sea gull's shit hole." The voice came from the sec man who'd first stopped them on the road into Claggartville. It was a calm, gentle voice, with no anger or arrogance. Just a man doing his job with a quiet efficiency. "Thou and thy friends had best come down and leave us your blasters. Then ye can all go back to your own quarters until morning. Nobody will harm ye."
"Ryan?" she said hesitantly, conscious of her four friends at her shoulder, frozen by the sec men's overwhelming force.
"Gone to seek the works of the Lord, outlander," intoned Rodriguez. "And His wonders in the deep." He paused. "And may the good Lord Jesus, our Redeemer, have mercy on his soul."
Chapter Eighteen
Ryan and Donfil both jerked awake at the grating sound of bolts being kicked open. The hatch was lifted, and they were blinded by a flood of bright sunshine.
Callused hands reached down and tugged them out of the rope locker. First the Apache, then Ryan Cawdor, were heaved into the sunlight, onto the scrubbed white planks of the deck.
Ryan stretched, drawing in deep breaths of the bitingly fresh air, feeling it clear away the last shreds of the knockout drug. There was a boisterous wind blowing, and he could see the gray-green waves as they rolled under the bow of the ship. There were men all around, but Ryan ignored them, looking beyond their heads, over the bulwarks, scanning the horizon slowly, checking out the vessel.
Donfil was doing the same, straining on the tips of his toes, using his extra foot of height, both of them reaching the same conclusion.
There wasn't even a blur of land to be seen anywhere. The sea stretched in all directions, marred only by an occasional white horse of tossed spray. From the angle of the sun, it was toward the evening side of the afternoon, the shadows spreading out from their bare feet.
Ryan's guess was that they must have sailed before the dawn, slipping their moorings and sliding, ghostlike, through the misty harbor of Claggartville.
"Seen enough?"
The speaker was one of the men who'd been sitting near the door of the Rising Flukes the previous evening. He held a short, knotted length of rope in his right hand, and he was swinging it against his left palm, eliciting a solid thwacking sound.
"Yeah," Ryan said.
"Thou didst take the life from Jonas Clegg, didst thou not?"
"Yeah," Ryan repeated, sizing up the quality of the opposition. It looked as if most of the crew had gathered to haul them out of their prison. There were more than twenty men there, with a fair mix of sizes, ages and races. The one thing they all had in common was they were tough, weathered men.
Ryan wouldn't really have expected any different. He guessed that a whaling ship, especially with Pyra Quadde as skipper, was probably about as hard as a war wag.
"Jonas had sailed many leagues with us."
"Way I heard it, he's still sailing. Around the harbor. Less he's sunk into the mud by now."
"Think that's funny?"
"No." Ryan shook his head. "I don't think a chilling's ever funny."
Donfil was staring up at the mast, watching its slow, pitching roll. His face was completely blank, almost as if he'd put himself into a kind of trance. Ryan had seen Krysty do something similar.
A short man with a white scar that tugged at the corner of his mouth poked Ryan in the back with the end of a belaying pin. "Know what thou'rt here for, outlander?"
"To give Pyra Quadde a chance of revenge."
It wasn't the reply that the sailor had expected, and his voice showed it, "Oh, yeah. That's right. But it's Captain Quadde, or ma'am, or you'll get chilled quicker than yesterday."
"Very dim, it be. Very dim," another man said in a tiny chattering voice. He was well over six feet in height, but his head seemed only the size of a large apple, so out of proportion was it. "The body'll rot, but the soul rolls along. Like the fifth wheel upon a wagon, shipmates."
"Ignore him," said the man with the rope's end in his fist. "Jehu has but one oar in the water, if thou takest my meaning."
There was a sudden silence, broken only by the tapping of a cane on the deck. Ryan could hear the far-off crying of gulls that trailed in the wake of the whaling ship. The whole vessel creaked as timber chafed against timber, spars moving, cords and cables tugging. The wind was whistling gently through the rigging of the Salvation.
Ryan wondered whether these might be the last sounds he would ever hear.
"Get 'bout thy guttin' business." The harsh croaking voice was memorably that of Pyra Quadde, invisible behind the row of men.
"What if they try on..."
"Thou hast fewer brains than Jehu! Why I made thee second mate after Clegg turned in his seaboots I swear I'll never know. Get the men moving, Mr. Walsh."
"Aye, ma'am," he said, turning and jostling the crew to move them off the deck, and out of the captain's way. Ryan noticed that none of the men showed any desire to hang around. In moments the planks were bare of other life. Only Donfil remained, still smiling at the limitless ocean, and Ryan.
And Pyra Quadde.
"Well, well, well. See how the wheel spins and the ship turns to the helm. Not so proud now, Ryan Cawdor?" She waited, but he said nothing. She laughed, showing her hideous, carved-bone teeth. "Well, aren't ye a fine pair? A ragged couple, and no mistake. I never asked for the harpooneer, thou knowest."
"Just me, huh?"
"Triple strike, cully. Just thee. And now I've got thee."