himself. Or to put his people at risk. When the outlanders had come their way, the ville folk had been suspicious. So soon after the ones who had stolen their young, it was remarkable that they had not chilled the newcomers on sight.
Yet there was something about the six people who had ridden into the ville in a battered wag that was on its last legs that set them apart from the ones who had come before.
“Listen, Ryan,” K said carefully. “When they came, I should have read the signs. A bit of me did. But another bit of me couldn’t do anything about it. Why the fuck was that? You tell me,” he continued before the one-eyed man had a chance to speak. “All I know is that they did what they liked. In my ville. And then they took our kids. My kid,” he said quietly, almost as an afterthought, but one that he deliberately downplayed. “I can’t trust myself to follow them. I can’t trust any of my people, much as I can any other time. This is…different.”
“Then why us?” Ryan questioned.
K looked him squarely in the eye. “Because you haven’t fallen under the spell. Because you’re prepared…” He railed off, but seemed far from done.
“And?” Ryan said.
K shook his head. “Because you need the gold I’ll give you for it.”
Chapter Three
Ryan was the last one to take watch, and was still staring out across the wastes when the others had roused themselves and risen to join him.
Krysty walked over to him as he stood on the lip of the crevice, surer of his footing now that he could see the gaps between land and empty air.
“You see anything, lover?”
“Like what?” He turned and looked sharply at her. There was something about her tone that set his senses tingling.
She shrugged. “I don’t know. Like a trace of where they went after they disappeared over the edge.”
He said nothing for a moment, that single, ice-blue orb burrowing into her consciousness, probing that mind it knew so well. Finally, he said, “There are some tracks. They were careful, no doubt, but no one can be that careful. No one.”
She nodded. “That’s good.”
“Something you want to tell me, mebbe?” he asked quietly. “About what you saw in the night?”
She grimaced. “I didn’t see anything…not actually see…and I’ve got to be honest with you, lover, I didn’t get so close. There was a way weird feel to it, and Jak… Well, I don’t really know what Jak saw, but it was something that wasn’t just a bunch of coldhearts.”
“This whole business has the ring of the macabre and mysterious about it,” Doc announced, moving near and clapping his hands together as he did so. “I do so love a mystery, especially when knowledge of it could save my skin. It resembles some stories I used to read by a young man called Pope. Edgar Wallace Pope, as I recall. Liked a touch of the bizarre. A bit like these fellows we are chasing.” Doc’s tone, which had previously been jocular, now became somber, his voice lowering. “I really do think you and young Jak should share this with us, no matter how silly or odd you may feel about it.”
“Doc’s right,” Mildred said, also coming near. “No matter how odd it is, even if it isn’t spooky, the fact that they’re making us feel like that means it’s one of their weapons.”
Jak had remained apart from the group, which had slowly clustered around Ryan. He was ruminative, as though weighing how to explain himself. He joined them, then. Looking away from them, he began. “Not sure how say. Deal with things in front you—hit man, chill mutie. Blades and bullets, know where are. Not with this. Shit scare kids with…didn’t feel like that, though.”
And so hesitantly, as the sun grew higher in the sky, Jak went on to outline how he had felt the previous night when he had tried to scan the dark, and how he had felt as though something was almost physically manhandling him. They listened in silenced until he had come to a halt almost as hesitantly as his beginning.
“Even if one does not believe in the supernatural,” Doc said, “then there is the preternatural. There are powers of the mind that we have all felt, one way or the other. Indeed, our own dear Krysty is living testament to this. To suppose that there are others with a more enhanced power, who could strike fear in this way, is not such a leap. To purport to be an ancient evil as a means of clouding men’s minds and gaining protection, that would be a simple expedient for such a power. I would venture to suggest that we proceed with nothing less than the utmost caution.”
“I guess that goes without saying.” Ryan grinned. Trust Doc to state the obvious, and in a way that used twenty words where one would do. But nonetheless, his central point remained valid. And as Ryan turned back to the narrow valley made by the crack in the earth, he knew that the people they were tailing had strengths that could put the companions on the last train west.
The fissure was unusual. It looked for all the world as though a fork of incredibly strong lightning had struck the earth and mined out a narrow and deep seam of soil. It was no more than fifteen yards across at its broadest point, the ledge that had nearly claimed him the night before being not so much an incursion into existing space as a curve in the trajectory of the seam, its width being the same even though the path suddenly changed. Now that they had good light they could see that it curved in a slow arc that took it beyond their view to the east and west. It was as if nature had decided to arbitrarily cut the earth in two, using this line as a crude division.
And yet there was something that was odd. At the edges of the horizon, where you would expect the curve to continue in a smooth arc, it suddenly seemed to cut sharply at an angle.
The Armorer had noticed that, and to his practiced eye there was something unnatural about the curve. Wordlessly, he took out his minisextant and took some readings by the newly risen sun. Then he sucked on his teeth, deep in thought.
“Something wrong, John?” Mildred asked.
“Could be,” he said after a reflective pause. “This might sound crazy, but if you look at the distance between here and there, then there’s no way we should be able to see those kinds of angles. What’s more, where do they actually go?”
Ryan looked again. J.B. was right. The sharp bend in the fissure seemed to suddenly peter out into nothing before it finally hit the edge of the horizon.
“We’ll follow the trail, such as it is, but we’ll take it real slow,” he said carefully. “There’s something about this that’s crazy, and not in a good way.”
The path ahead of them seemed treacherous. The slope into the fissure was almost sheer, and it was deep. In places, it was so deep as to disappear into shadow. There were paths, but they were narrow and covered with shale. To try to descend them would take a sure-footed care that Ryan felt only Jak truly possessed. And yet the men they sought had made this descent with a bunch of children.
Was there another way? One they were missing? It certainly didn’t seem so. Indeed, from the evidence of torn shrub and cleaned and skidded patches of shale, it would seem that there was a clearly defined route that they could follow.
“I’ll take point,” Ryan said. “Jak, you stay near the back, keep an eye on Doc.”
