a semicircle facing the three companions.
Pointing their longblasters at them.
ANOTHER PARTY profoundly impressed by the volume of fire laid down by MAGOG was Chato. The sudden stunning coruscation of really big muzzle-flashes had made his decision for him on a preconscious level. He turned and gave the boot to his pony, and was already below line of sight heading away when the thunderous roar rolled over the hill.
He hadn’t gone half a mile before he rode into a broad shallow wash with a bottom of fine, almost-white sand. At the far side sat a solitary rider: El Abogado in his immaculate frock coat and Panama hat, astride his cream-colored mule with black-tipped ears.
“Where are you going in such a hurry, my friend?” the coldheart asked the fleeing warlord in Spanish.
His life suddenly become a misery, Chato answered truthfully, “Away from this fiasco.”
“Indeed. I believe I shall accompany you.”
“But what of your followers? Do you not seek to avenge them?”
“They’re dicks.”
“Well, do you…do you intend to drag me back in disgrace so that you can take my place?”
El Abogado laughed. “As what? Leader of an even bigger bunch of dicks? Ah, no, my friend. In all the Deathlands, there is no commodity so plentiful as violent fools. It’s as well to be unburdened of this lot, don’t you think?”
Dumbly, Chato found himself nodding.
“What do you want of me?” he asked, still incapable of believing anything but disaster—bloody, painful disaster—impended.
“You are an exemplary sociopath, Chato.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means you have yourself a new partner. Such gifts as yours are useful. Shall we ride on? The brighter of our former followers will be fleeing the debacle behind us by now. It would hardly do for them to overtake us, now, would it?”
And so they rode away south together, Chato on his paint pony, El Abogado on his fine mule. As they did, it seemed the weight of the whole world dropped away from Chato’s skinny shoulders.
Chato’s coldheart army was a monster. Sooner or later it would devour him. He had known that from the start. But now—
Now he was free.
He began to smile.
It had been a good plan after all.
Chapter Seven
J.B. carefully laid his black longblaster on the cinders and rose, hands spread and raised. “All right, boys. Everything’s easy. Just stay back off the trigger.”
His two companions did likewise. It wasn’t as if they had much choice.
“I hope we just did the right thing, John,” Mildred murmured from the side of her mouth. Any chance they had of slipping away in the confusion had evaporated.
“All right, you three,” Banner commanded. “Down the embankment. Hands behinds your heads.”
Half crouching, Jak shot the Armorer a questioning glance, as did Mildred. He shrugged, then slowly complied. The other two followed.
“Walk over there by the brush,” Banner said. “Don’t turn around.”
“Now, let’s not get way ahead of ourselves, here, Banner,”J.B. said over his shoulder. “We’re on your side.”
“Penalty for civilians carrying blasters is death.”
“But we fought the coldhearts for you,” Mildred said.
“No exceptions.” The wind blew through an endless pause. “Sorry.”
“Yeah, that makes everything just fine.”
“Won’t die this way,” Jak snarled as they approached the scrub, barely bothering to keep his voice down.
“Me, neither,” the Armorer said. “Slim chance is better’n none. When I count three, scatter like quail, children.”
“Sergeant Banner!” It was another familiar voice. “What’s going on here?”
“Firing party, Captain Helton, sir.” The sergeant sounded disgusted. Whether with the handsome young officer, with himself, or with the situation, J.B. couldn’t tell.
“What are you talking about? These people fought for us.”
“That’s what we’re trying to tell the man,” Mildred called. The three had stopped on the edge of the brush. The chance offered by the captain’s intercession seemed better than that of bolting. And anyway, the Armorer counted fast.
“Regulations, sir,” Banner said.
“That’s absurd!”
“One,” J.B. said under his breath.
“General order number twenty-three,” Banner said. “Prisoners caught in possession of weapons are to be executed immediately. No appeal, no exceptions. General’s a real stickler about that. You know that, sir.”
“Two.”
Helton’s face fell. “Well, if that’s the way it’s got to be…”
J.B. flexed his legs slightly and opened his mouth to say “three.”
Somebody new sang out, “Captain Helton, Sergeant Banner! Orders from the General.”
“Don’t leave us in suspense, Corporal McKie,” Helton said.
“General wants to see these three prisoners in his office at once, sir.”
RYAN CAWDOR OPENED his eye.
Blackness. Hintless of stars. Was he blind?
If he was, it would be the capstone misery of a mighty pyramid of them. His whole body was a pulse of pain timed to the pounding of his heart. His head hurt as if it had been recently used as an anvil. He felt the mixed sensations of clammy heat, nausea, and being somehow unmoored from the world that indicated a fever raged in his body. And beneath it all there lay a vast aching void, a sense—a knowledge—of loss.
He realized, then, that dim light was seeping into the lower edge of his field of vision. He expelled a long breath in relief and rolled his eye down. Dust-colored light, as if it were shining in through a tunnel mouth just out of sight around a curve. He lay on his back with his head propped on something yielding. His body was swaddled in what he guessed for blankets.
He suddenly remembered. Wags appearing out of nowhere. Uniformed coldhearts with blasters. A great flickering muzzle-flash, pale yellow in the sun. A blow like a sledgehammer to the upper chest.
Falling.
