Ryan's hands were still cuffed behind him. Krysty, sensing that the word of doom was coming, took a half step forward to be beside him and rested her hand on his arm. Jak ignored the baron, continuing to stroke the puppy that now rolled on its back to have its stomach tickled.
J.B. stood at ease, the dawn's light glinting off his spectacles, his fedora pushed back off his forehead.
"My order is... Sergeant!"
"My lord?"
"Chill that fucking dog!"
"Now, my lord?"
"Now, man!"
The sec officer gestured angrily to one of his men on the far side of the hall. The guard was tall and skinny, the blaster looking as if it weighed him down. Ryan could almost smell the sec man's fear at being picked on in front of the baron.
"Move away, Jak," he said quietly. For a moment he wondered if the boy was going to try to make an issue of it, but after a split second's hesitation, Jak stepped away from the puppy, shaking his head, the pure white hair seeming to float in the shafts of light streaming from the high casements of the hall.
"Chill it, Trooper Vare," the sergeant ordered.
The young man had his M-16 set on continuous fire, and his finger froze on the trigger, pouring all thirty rounds into the fawning dog. The bullets kicked and sparked from the stone floor, ricocheting and whining off the far wall, tearing an old tapestry into colored rags.
The puppy disappeared in a spray of blood and jagged bone that frothed in the air, splattering the sergeant. He staggered back, hands clawing at the warm slush that blinded him, spitting out crimson hunks of phlegm onto the flagstones. Ryan closed his eye, wincing at the burst of violence, feeling Krysty's fingers tighten on his arm. He heard Jak's voice whisper an obscene threat to the sec man, but it was drowned out by a great guffaw of laughter from Harvey Cawdor, his rolls of fat quivering under the bright silk robe.
"Wonderful, Sergeant. Triple fucking A. There's magic. Like Jabez. The disappearing dog. Wasn't a sec man blowing our son apart like that? Course not. Course not. Nothing left to hunt for."
"Get on with it," Rachel grated from between clenched teeth. It was obvious to Ryan that she was craving a line or two of the white elixir of life. Once jolt had the noose around your soul, it pulled it tighter and tighter until you finally snapped.
"Wait, bitch. I said 'hunt.' Hunt." Harvey's thick pink tongue ran over his fleshy lips, and he giggled to himself. "You always liked the thrill of the hunt, didn't you, brother?" Ryan didn't answer him. "Yes, you did. And I love it. My dogs love it. Even my trained boars love being hunted, using their sharp tusks to rip open bellies and throats. Ah, yes. The hunt."
"Hunt them?" Rachel said, suddenly alive. She gave Ryan a look of such intent that it puzzled him, not understanding what lay at the back of her vicious and ambitious mind. Seeing his blank face, she turned away from him, biting her lip in disappointment.
"Yes, hunt them. Sergeant, get everything ready. We shall ride out at noon. Horses, weapons. All the sec men that can be spared from the ville's defense. We eat at eleven."
"The dogs, Lord?"
"Of course, cretin! Make sure they have no food today."
"The old man and the girl?"
"The old what? Oh, them. Keep them. They can do us no harm. I'll question the girl tonight. I shall be in the mood."
"The prisoners?"
"Feed 'em. We are kind, brother, are we not?" Again Ryan ignored Harvey. "Give 'em clothes and boots. Keep them locked up and bring them to the drawbridge at eleven. They shall have an hour's start. Escort them out to the Oxbow Loop. We'll hunt them in there. String out a patrol so they can't break back. This will be..." He hugged himself gleefully.
"No blasters, brother?" Ryan asked.
"Last time you gave me this, Ryan," Harvey spit, touching the puckered scar that deformed his mouth and nose. "A fair trade for your left eye." He stepped closer to his brother, right shoulder hunched, leg trailing. To Ryan, he resembled a mutated, brilliant-colored spider.
"Give us blades," J.B. demanded.
"Blades, little man? You might cut yourself." Close up, Ryan could see from his older brother's eyes that he floated in a sea of tranks, his ferocious temper spurting through on occasion.
"Scared might find an' take throat out?" Jak said.
The sergeant raised a fist and moved toward the boy, who dropped into a fighting crouch. Harvey squeaked and cowered back, hands tangled like a praying monk.
Jak's white face stared menacingly at the sec man. "Not little whelp, bastard," he hissed. "Not forget." He beckoned to the tall officer, fingers waving softly like the fronds of a virulent sea anemone. The sergeant stopped, hesitating, looking to the baron for orders.
"Leave... him," Harvey stammered. "He can... he is... Why not a knife each? One hunting dagger for each man, and for the redhead witch."
Ryan dropped a deep bow to his brother. "One knife against all your men and dogs. Still the white-bellied coward, brother."
"I could have you all torn and burned," Harvey Cawdor protested, his voice a petulant squeak.
"That would show your fear even better, fool," Rachel whispered. "Close your mouth and let us go to our rooms. I have..." The sentence dangled in the dusty dawn light of the long, vaulted hall.
To have a knife was better than anything Ryan Cawdor could have hoped for.
He'd sensed a new spring in the steps of his three friends. J.B. nodded to him almost imperceptibly as they parted company in the upper corridor. Jak whistled a song Ryan had heard before, something about feeling on fire. And Krysty recovered from the horror of the dark night that had seared her soul. She almost glowed as she walked away from the hall. To be burned alive had faced them all. Now they had a chance.
Four blades against thirty or so men who had M-16s, horses and dogs.
That was their chance.
The Trader used to say that if you found yourself with no hope, or odds of a million to one, you took the long odds.
"Long odds," Ryan said to himself as the sec men slammed the door of his room, having chained him once more to the wall.
The meal was soup and fresh bread. Good soup, rich with vegetables. And half a loaf, still warm on the outside, sweet and crumbling on the inside. They freed his hands to eat but left the chain around his neck.
One of the guards stared curiously at him. "You're truly Lord Ryan Cawdor, aren't you? My father spoke well about you until his death."
"It was speaking well cost him his life," the other young sec man mumbled. "Baron set him waltzing on air on the river road, these five years past."
"If Harvey is such a blood-eyed chiller, why not rise against him?" Ryan asked.
"Would you swallow the barrel of a blaster? First man to say treason dies. And then the second. The baron is careful and ruthless. It would take a great rising and his death. And his lady's."
The sec man was nudged by his friend. "Enough. Too much. Lock him again and let's get out of here 'fore we do the oxyjean jig like your father did."
Ryan could just see the edge of the rising sun through the window. His guess was that it was around eleven o'clock. The sky was a light blue-green, tinted with flecks of orange cloud. Far below him he could hear the excited yapping of the hunting dogs, sensing that they were to be set free on a hunt. Ryan closed his eye and tried to relax, but the sound of the door opening disturbed him.
Oddly he wasn't all that surprised to see that his visitor was Lady Rachel Cawdor.
She stepped toward him, eyes bright in the sunlit room. The lady had obviously been enjoying several lines of jolt, and her whole body seemed to tremble with an eager anticipation.