"No, I'm... Look, there in the shadows, to the far right."
If they hadn't been standing so close to the window, they never would have seen the movement. It was a man, bent low, scurrying across the gap between two of the wooden huts. He was followed by another, and then a third. As the last one darted across, Ryan caught the flicker of silver moonlight glancing off steel.
"He's got a blade," whispered Krysty.
"I knew that Ti Jean was a swift and evil bastard," said Ryan.
"It might not..." She stopped. "No. That's stupid. Course it means trouble."
"And the engines you hear."
"Yeah."
"Couple of hours to dawn. What can?.. This Mardy festival, I heard of things like this. Some backwood villes where they pick a boy and let him do what he wants. Eat and drink what he wants. Fuck anyone he wants. For a special day each year. Then they slit his throat for the promise of a good crop. I wonder if..."
Krysty left his side, padding to her clothes. "Best get moving." She dressed with an elegant haste, tugging on her boots.
He joined her, polling up his trousers, then fastened the buckle on his belt and checked his guns. Moving silently to the door and inching it open, he peered around the edge of the warped frame. He saw nobody out there. Yet his sixth fighting sense told him that the whole of Moudongue was bristling around them.
"I'll wake the others?"
"Yes. I'll wake Doc."
J.B, came instantly to full awareness, the gun probing out into the darkness, his eyes open. "What? Trouble?"
"Men on the move. Holding knives. Krysty thinks she hears swampwags, far off."
Lori came awake, trembling a little like a frightened fawn, eyes glistening. "What?"
"Trouble," said Krysty, matter-of-factly.
Ryan knew from previous experience that Doctor Theophilus Tanner wasn't the quietest of men when it came to being roused from sleep. He knelt beside him, cautiously extending his right hand and clamping it across the old man's jaws, holding the mouth shut. Simultaneously he hissed into Doc's ear, "It's Ryan. Keep still and quiet." Doc jerked and struggled, his hands scrabbling to free himself, but Ryan was far stronger, holding him down on the floor. "Fireblast, Doc! Wake up, will you? Keep quiet Ч there's danger."
Only when Doc was finally still did he release him. The old man sat up, rubbing his face. "Upon my soul, Mr. Cawdor, but you have a grip like a poacher's trap. What ails you now?"
Krysty answered him. "We've seen men moving around the huts with cold steel in their hands, Doc. And I heard engines, miles off."
"What about Finn?" asked J.B., standing at the window, flattened against the wall, squinting out. "He's with that giant whore."
"Where?"
Lori answered. "Saw big woman and Finn. Go to house with picture of bird on door."
"A white cockerel with a red band about its neck," exclaimed Doc. "Three down from the long hut where we all danced."
In a couple of minutes everyone was fully dressed and armed and ready. Ryan once more looked out of the shuttered window where J.B. had been keeping watch.
"Anything?"
"No. Thought mebbe I heard a noise, along to the side, by the river."
Ryan eased out of the hut, keeping in the dark lake of shadow and peering into the surrounding forest where the Armorer had said he'd heard something. It was difficult to tell, but there could have been the faintest light of a fire. A dim red glow, but he couldn't have sworn to it.
J.B. joined him. "What d'you figure?"
"Get out. I reckon we should make for that township we saw. West Lowellton. This Baron Tourment runs Lafayette. Keep out of that ville. I figure we'll lose if'n we try and fight these Cajuns in the mud. Better we get into some ruins and make them play on our patch."
"We go and get Finn?"
Ryan nodded, slowly. "Yeah. You take Doc and Lori and go get him. I want to see what those bastards are doing by the river. I'll take Krysty. Meet you out where the trail narrows. Get to the far side of that and cover the path."
J.B. nodded and turned to go back inside the hut, then paused. "Chill the big woman?"
"'Course," replied Ryan.
All the noises of the Atchafalaya Swamp were oddly muted.
Ryan led the way, with Krysty a silent shadow at his heels. There wasn't a light showing in the whole ville, but ahead of them they now saw that a large fire was lit deep into the curtain of the mangroves. The wind was drifting eastward, toward the ville, so they could smell the scent of the burning wood.
"I hear a drum. Muffled, slack kind of noise," said Krysty. "Beating slow and even. It's 'bout in time with a heart."
Ryan heard it, too, or more exactly, felt it, as though it was striking within his body.
Something suddenly scurried away from beneath the toes of his boots, making him jump. It vanished with a soft plopping sound into the river.
Now they were so close that they heard the crackling of the fire. They also heard an occasional mumbled chanting, rising and falling in the damp air.
Ryan stopped so abruptly that Krysty nearly bumped into him.
"What is it?" she whispered.
"Don't like this."
"What?"
"This whole fucking place. The heat. The damp. The fucking mud. That creepy ville with its songs and dances and all the time... always there's something fucking rotten going on. Since we met we've been in the cold, high country. That's better, somehow. This swamp is fucking evil, girl."
"I feel that, too. Mebbe stronger than you, lover. How's 'bout us turning right around and heading back for the gateway and getting out?"
"No, Krysty. Trader always figured a man had to go out and hit a lick for what he believed was right. If'n everyone turned their backs when things got mean, then I guess the world would just get real fucking mean. Let's go see what the Cajuns are doing out here."
Now they were within fifty paces of the blazing bonfire, close enough to make out figures moving in a shuffling ring around it. They were men and women, from what they could see through the dangling fringe of Spanish moss on the trees. The riverbank was only a few yards to their left.
"Look," breathed Krysty barely audibly, pointing ahead and slightly to the right.
Someone was standing rock-still, leaning against the trunk of a topless sycamore. It was one of the Cajuns who'd asked Krysty to dance: a large, squat man, wearing an old plaid shirt torn across both shoulders. He had a long beard, streaked with silver like a tree seared by lightning. There was enough orange light from the fire to show that he was cradling a blaster. It was a long, old-fashioned musket, like the one...
"The one that killed Henn," Ryan said.
Revenge was one of the sweetest-tasting dishes in all creation to Ryan. But he had been alive long enough to know that it was also a dangerous pleasure. If this was the man who had slaughtered Hennings, then it would be good to ice him. But only if it could be done safely.
The drums, would drown out the noise of a cautious approach, Ryan realized as he studied the man, who was obviously supposed to be on guard. The stock of the musket, bound with baling wire, rested on the soft earth. There was a machete, similar to Ryan's own steel panga, sheathed on the man's left hip; a smaller knife was strapped to his right knee. Beyond him, the fire was burning brightly, the breeze carrying the scent of bitter spices to them.
At his side, Krysty looked up at Ryan's, face, seeing the orange light flickering across the hard, almost brutal planes of the high cheeks, throwing his good right eye into shadow. The faint gleam, of the strong teeth was revealed between parted lips. It was a face of total, cruel concentration. The girl knew that he was considering how best he could murder this Cajun: it showed in every angle of the taut face. Yet it was a face that only an hour or so before she had seen melt into gentle consideration in their love-making.