The sec boss knew from long experience that it was best to be careful when approaching Baron Tourment in the night. His predecessor had died from a snapped neck for just such a foolishness.
"Lord," he called, from the safety of the doorway, keeping the heavy octagonal table between himself and his slumbering master.
"I heard you creeping on tiptoe along the corridor, Mephisto." The sonorous voice sounded gently amused, "Though the knocking of that ice-chiller came close to drowning the sound."
"Shall I turn it off?"
"No, no, any machine that still functions from before the fireblast deserves every chance. What is it? You have news? I can tell. I heard the noise of the swampwag a half hour back."
Mephisto took a few more careful steps. His eyes had adjusted, and he could make out the calipers leaning against the side of the long bed. Tourment's bare feet protruded beyond the bottom of the blankets. The air-conditioning in the room whirred and hissed, keeping the awful damp heat at bay.
"He brought a bird from a ville."
"Where?"
"Moudongue."
"Aaah." He sounded like a great cat purring its satisfaction. "Our hunched friend Pecker, as they call him. Master Bochco as he is truly named. How many?"
"There were seven and now six."
"The black on the bayous?"
Mephisto nodded, knowing that Baron Tourment could see him well enough. "I have arranged a payment of food. But they killed a dozen of the morts-vivantsand ran."
"To Moudongue, Mephisto?"
"Four men and two women, is the message."
"And they are still there?"
"Oui."
"The question is, where do they come from? Who are they? What do they want? Are they to be allies for the snow-head bastard and his wolf pack? Questions, questions, Mephisto, and no answers."
For a moment Tourment managed to stand without the aid of his exoskeleton, flailing his great arms in a fit of anger. But the effort was too much, and he crumpled backward onto the bed.
"Questions," he repeated softly. "Will they join the renegades?" Then he began to laugh. "But if they are strangers in Moudongue, at Mardy... I guess that mebbe there's nothing for us to worry on."
"Should I send men to the ville? Better to be safe than sorry, lord?"
"When they are sorry, then we shall be safe, mon cherMephisto."
"Could they... they be blasters from the Deathlands? Hired guns?"
"Generosity. That was my error. I left them a little more than usual last year, and how do they repay me? By buying guns? Surely they would not dare, Mephisto, would they?"
"The people love you, Lord. Only the snow-head and his running curs... The rest are in mortal fear of you."
Tourment smiled indulgently. "If the saints in their wisdom had not wished them to be bled, then they would not have been created as hogs."
Mephisto laughed heartily, wondering as he always did whether the note of fear rang through his desperate merriment.
"You did well to wake me, Mephisto. If the strangers have arrived... the ones seen by the blind witch... then we should walk light. Take a dozen men and two swampwags and go hunting."
"How should we take them, Lord?"
Again he smiled lazily. "Alive, if you can. Specially the women. Oh, yes, Mephisto. I would have the women brought to me alive."
The sec boss backed out of the bedroom, nodding his eager agreement. When he closed the door, he leaned against it for a moment and took several long, slow breaths, finally recovering his composure.
Only then did he go to call for his men to go hunt in the ville in the swamp.
Chapter Ten
Ryan made love to Krysty as quietly as he could. Wrapped in a blanket, J. B. Dix was sleeping in the far corner of their hut, away from the door and window. His hat was by his side, and his Steyr AUG 5.6 mm pistol was tight in his fist. Doc and Lori lay side by side against a wall, the old man snoring gently through his open mouth.
Finn wasn't there.
Toward the end of the night's revelry, the mother of the girl that Finn had been dancing with had come along and whisked her away, chattering accusingly in Creole French at the plump blaster. But all hadn't been lost for Finnegan. The giantess who'd snatched J.B. had tired of his lack of enthusiasm and had sidled up to Finn. Nobody knew what she'd whispered, but it was the first time that either the Armorer or Ryan could recall seeing Finnegan actually blush.
As the dance had ended and Ti Jean had come to see them all through the small ville back to their own quarters, Finn and the woman had disappeared. The Cajun had laughed at it. "Marie has found a man worthy of her," he said.
Krysty had reached for him in the sultry humid darkness of the hut. Her long fingers spidered over his muscular chest and across the flat wall of his stomach, then down lower, finding him springing to a hard erection. He turned his head, raising himself on one elbow to kiss her. It was a long, lingering kiss, their tongues thrusting against each other.
"Yes, love. Oh, yes," she sighed as his hand touched her thighs. Her long legs opened to him, so that he could read the moist warmth of her body. The tender bud of flesh hardened as her passion rose. She kissed him all over his face and neck, nipping with her sharp teeth, drawing a bead of crimson salty blood from his lips. He bent his head to nuzzle her breasts, the nipples swelling at the touch of his tongue.
Unable to control his fiery lust, Ryan had rolled on top of her, his hips rising and falling, letting her reach and guide him into her.
He climaxed moments before the girl, her nails raking at his bare shoulders, clutching him deep within her. She'd sighed, pressing her lips against his chest to quiet herself, fighting not to waken the others in the hut.
"I love you. By Gaia, but I love you with all of my heart, Ryan Cawdor."
"And I love you, Krysty." But the words still wouldn't come easily to his lips, which for so long had been used to a cold tightness when he rode with the Trader. Love and tenderness hadn't played much part in Ryan's life for far too long.
"You don't have to say it, lover," she'd whispered. "I can feel you feel it. That's enough for me." She kissed him as they rolled apart. "One day it'll be easy and natural. Trust me, lover."
"I do, Krysty." And he really did.
Around three he woke, pressed against her back, cuddling like two spoons, snug in a box. The contact was enough to rouse him again, but the second time she mounted him, sitting above him, grinning triumphantly down into his face. Her hair seemed to billow about her face and shoulders, even though there was no wind in the hut.
With all the dozens and dozens of women that Ryan Cawdor had taken to bed, none had been like Krysty. She had the most amazing control over all her muscles, so that he felt sucked and gripped into a cave of sexual heat that squeezed at him, milking him for her pleasure.
After the second time they both rose, naked, and walked to the window of the hut, peering out through the slats across the trampled earth of the square toward the sullen, rippling surface of the river.
They stood together, savoring the faint breeze that came sidling in through the blind. She shivered, and he put his arm about her waist, pulling her close to him.
"Cold?"
"No. It's not that. I think I hear engines."
"Swampwags."
"I don't know. They're far off, almost beyond my hearing. I don't know if I really hear them or whether I'm imagining."
"Are you a woman dreaming you're an eagle, or an eagle dreaming that you're a woman?" he asked her.
"Don't be so fucking runic, lover," she said. "Next you're going to be asking me to describe the sound of one hand clapping."