Now, Sandra pulled out a fat leather pouch and laid it next to the blaster. With trembling fingers, the baron pulled open the top and saw it was filled with lead shot and a clear plastic jar of black powder.
“So, you did it,” the baron accused in a hollow voice.
“Yes,” she replied simply.
“So that mule you mentioned, it was Digger’s,” he ventured.
Over by the stone well, a group of laughing sec men tossed a rope over a bare tree branch normally used for hanging outlanders, and hauled the dead mule into the air. Even before its hooves left the ground, a child slid a plastic basin underneath and big woman started skinning the beast with a sharp knife.
Smiling slightly, Sandra shrugged. “He didn’t need it anymore.”
So the trader was aced, eh? he thought.
“Were there any survivors?” the baron asked hopefully. “I know about the power of the Angel, but surely you could not have…I mean, an entire ville?”
She laughed, and he received his answer.
“It was them or us, dear Father.” Sandra chuckled. “There was no other way. One ville died, so another could live.”
“But you took all of their food.”
“All that I could find,” she corrected, clenching her teeth. “Some of it was…inaccessible.”
Slumping in his throne, the old baron tried to come to grips with the idea of jacking the dead. More, Jeffers had been a friend. Long ago, the two villes had fought together in the Mutie Wars. Was that bond of honor to be broken over loaves of bread?
For a time there was only the sound of the funeral pyre and the happy singing of the butcher doing her messy task. As the meat came away from the bones of the animal, children took the huge wet slabs and awkwardly carried them around the blockhouse to the cooking fire. Staying close by the littles, armed sec men guarded the food and carefully stayed between it and the starving crowd who watched the preparations with near madness in their gaunt faces.
Hitching up his loose pants, a burly sec man approached the dais and clumsily saluted, his right hand not quite touching his temple. “Baron?” he asked hesitantly.
Sandra frowned at the man, but the baron turned to look upon the man with patience. Gedore was a new sec man, recruited just before the crops failed. He was strong and obedient, but lacking in any imagination. A grunt, as the baron’s grandfather would have said. Just a blaster with feet.
“Yes, what is it?” Baron Tregart asked.
Gedore gestured to the chained men shivering near the funeral pyre. They kept casting furtive glances at the flames as if expecting to be tossed upon the conflagration at any moment. Plainly written on the faces of the sec men holding the chains of the two prisoners was their opinion that they would have heartily approved of such a command from their chief, or baron.
“What about the thieves?” Gedore asked.
Stroking the round of bread for a moment, Baron Tregart scowled at the two men in open hatred, his face contorting into a feral mask of fury. Releasing the bread, the old baron grabbed the blaster on the table and started loading the chambers.
“Bring them closer,” Baron Tregart whispered hoarsely, both hands busy with powder and shot. “I shall do this myself. Myself!”
“No, Father,” Lady Tregart interrupted, stepping in front of the elderly man.
Snapping up his head, the baron stared at her as his hands continued their work. After fifty years of being a baron, the man could load a weapon in the dark while drunk.
“They killed the son of the baron,” he reminded her, closing the cylinder with a satisfying click. “The punishment is death.”
“And why should we waste precious ammo on scum such as these?” Sandra asked soothingly, then smiled at the chained men. She could see a flicker of hope come into their faces.
“No,” the woman continued. “Don’t shoot them, Father, and there shall be no burning today to mar the funeral of my brother.”
“Thank you, lady!” one of the prisoners cried, dropping to his hands and raising both hands.
“Gedore!” Sandra said loudly, motioning him closer.
The big sec man rested a boot on the dais and leaned inward. She could see the folds of loose flesh around his neck and guessed he had been giving some of his rations away. A lover, perhaps? That would end today.
“Yes, ma’am?” Gedore asked.
“Cripple them, and throw them alive to the dogs,” Sandra said calmly, savoring the panic that grew in their eyes. Fools, did you think to ace a Tregart and live to tell the tale? “I see no reason to waste all of the meat. Today marks the passing of my brother, and the salvation of the ville! Everybody eats their fill!”
Her eyes sparkling with amusement, Sandra grinned at the stunned prisoners. “Even the dogs,” she added softly.
“No!” a prisoner screamed, shaking all over. “Mercy, mistress! Chill us, please! It was an accident! An accident! I swear!”
A guard cuffed the man silent, while the other prisoner slumped his shoulders and began to softly weep, his tears falling unnoticed onto the dusty ground.
“Take them away,” Sandra commanded with a flip of her hand. “Oh…and, Gedore?”
The sec man had already started across the courtyard, so he stopped to look over a shoulder. “Ma’am?” he responded.
“If I find them with cut throats, you will be next. They go into the pens alive.”
Turning slightly pale, Gedore nodded, and started directing the other guards to herd the shuffling along the street toward the dog pen near the front gate. As if sensing the coming meal, the dogs began to howl in eager anticipation.
“Justice must be swift,” the woman recited, “if it is to be fair.”
Looking up from the bread and the blaster in his lap, Baron Tregart tilted his head at the beautiful young woman.
“So you do remember the stories I used to tell you and Edmund at bedtime,” he muttered.
“Yes, I remember,” she said, facing the bonfire. The figure on top of the woodpile was reduced to only bones at this time, and as she watched even those crumbled away and the tongues of red fire lapped at the darkening sky. It was done. Edmund was gone.
“Now, there is only you, Daughter,” Hugh Tregart said softly.
“That was all you ever had, old man,” she whispered with a snarl. “Except that you were too drunk to notice before.”
But the desert wind carried away her dark words and nobody heard.
Chapter Three
Sucking in a lungful of warm air, Ryan struggled
