main rival and said the dreaded word.
“Mutie.”
It didn’t matter that the man showed no sign. The people of the ville had seen Tag ferret mutants out earlier in the spring. The accused’s own men turned on him. Strangely enough, over the course of the next few days, most dissenters or loyalists to the old regime found themselves declared mutie and found themselves summarily shot. Strangely enough, after the coup, Baron Mace Henning discovered a tolerance for human muties as long as they were useful and fell short of outright abominations, and they began flocking to him and his ville in a slow, steady and extremely loyal trickle.
Tag had been Mace’s right-hand man ever since, and the only man he let call him Mace, though even then only in private.
Mace and Tag hadn’t stopped at usurping a backwater ville. They had turned their former blackmail victims across Canada into a web of informants. Knowledge was power, and Mace had waxed strong. Half a dozen villes paid him yearly tribute, and word of what was going on in other villes he had yet to conquer or intimidate was nonetheless whispered in Mace’s ear.
Mace had had his eye on Val-d’Or for some time.
The previous year Tag had pulled his act in Val-d’Or, and what he had discovered had been a game-changer in Mace’s dreams of conquest, and his plans for the ville.
Tag followed the baron on a slow walk around the raiding camp. “Mace?”
“What do you think, Tag?”
“About the battle?”
“Yeah.”
“Didn’t like it.”
Mace snorted and spit. Yesterday had hurt. “Pulling out that third armored wag, like an ace in hole. I didn’t expect that out of Toulalan. Oh, he’s smart, mind you. Too smart for his own good, a damned intellectual, but he ain’t battle clever. Not like us. He’s shown us that more than once. Him switching tactics like that stinks of something. Maybe he’s finally started listening to Six.” Mace’s ugly face flushed angrily. Six had been a thorn in his side for years. “And why none of the boys can seem to put a bullet in that son of a bitch is beyond me.”
Tag pushed back the hood of his robe. He preferred clothes of flowing homespun. Pants and tight clothes chaffed and tore at his affliction. Around his neck he wore a gleaming silver coin. “It’s not a new tactic, and it’s not Six. Six never wanted to leave Val-d’Or. He thinks the mission is foolish. That’s part of his problem. It undermines his strategy.”
“Oh?” Mace’s face flushed redder. “We’ve been picking away at the bastards for weeks. I mean nuke it! We could have taken them the last time out if we’d pushed it. Yesterday we had them dead to rights. I was about to pull the men back and let the bastards lick their wounds for another week when that third war wag came out of nowhere and rained on us like a chem storm!”
“They weren’t part of the convoy,” Tag asserted.
Mace stopped walking. “Oh?”
“You saw. Toulalan’s people can barely drive those iron wags, much less fight them. The people in the third came out of that bunker coldhearted and knowledgeable. Took out our scouts, flanked us and rained on us.”
“So how’d they get into the bunker in the first place?”
“I don’t know.” Tag shook his head. “It’s anomalous.”
Mace raised his left eyebrow a hair higher than normal. “Don’t give me the big words, Tag.”
Tag smiled. Despite the mutated flesh studding his face, it was surprisingly charming. Beneath it he was undoubtedly a very handsome man. “Don’t know. Don’t like it.” Tag leaned in conspiratorially. “Tell you this, though.”
Mace leaned in. “What?”
“The newcomers got a mutie among them. I felt it.”
There was nothing charming at all about Mace Henning’s smile. “Interesting.”
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