'Broke in armory year back. Baron knows what we got. Knows we got enough to stop him looking for firefight. Mebbe beat us, but take knocks that'd cripple him. So it's a standoff.'
Ryan was fascinated by the boy's talk about his plans for West Lowellton and Lafayette, once the tyrannical fist of Tourment was removed from the land.
It revealed a spirit that somehow reinforced all the good things he and Krysty had talked about. Why it was important that they didn't give up. Why there was a point in going on. Because there was already a kind of future. All a man could do was strive to make it better. Move on through the land and leave it just a little cleansed.
'Lafayette's got big library. Lotsa books. Old vids. Got the viewers working again. We got big plans, Ryan. Set up windmills to bring power. Got some gasoline, but not enough. Baron don't have that much gas. We can make 'lectrics with wind. There's ways using tides and all. We gotta try.'
'Sure,' interrupted Doc. 'What you say, young fellow, is feasible. Can be done. Only if you got peace.'
Jak nodded his head, the veil of fine white hair floating about his narrow face like a drift of snow.
'Sure. That's it. But we can't beat Tourment. Less'n we got help.'
'From us?' asked J. B. Dix.
'Yeah. We help get women back. You come in with us and wipe out the giant.'
'And set up your windmills?'
The lad shook his head angrily. 'That's not all. You outland stupe! Drain the bayous. Bring back good land for crops. Stop the way we live. Moving and blasting and eating and moving on.'
Doc Tanner coughed. 'Classic piece of optimistic sociological growth, gentlemen. Boy wants his people to have time and freedom to make the quantum leap from being primitive hunter-gatherers to having a settled agrarian culture.'
'That's what we want, old man?' asked Jak. 'You understand all them words. I read 'em. Taught myself. I heard them words. Yeah, that's what we want.'
Ryan sat quietly, listening and thinking. This raggedy kid, not yet twenty, had plans and ideals like nothing he'd heard before Ч not in all his time in Deathlands. If ever they had found a case, a reason to live, this could be it. He blinked his good eye as he realized that for a moment he'd forgotten about Krysty and Lori, so deeply had he been affected by this broad picture of purging the area of Baron Tourment and his evil.
'You help us with the women, and we'll help you? That the deal?'
'Sure. We got a base in an old vid-house a mile from here.'
'Kid?' said Finnegan.
'Yeah?'
'You run this pocket army? You run it?'
'Me.'
Finn sucked at his teeth. 'How come a kid like you is boss blaster?'
'I killed more sec men than anyone else.'
When baron Tourment unzipped his pants and un-peeled his cock, holding it in his right hand, standing near the head of the table where Lori was tied, the girl screamed.
Once.
Krysty winced as the massive man slapped Lori across the face, the blow as sharp as thunder. The girl's cheek reddened, and blood trickled from her nose. Her eyes rolled in their sockets, and she moaned, knocked stupid by the force of the blow.
'Keep it quiet, whore,' he said, still showing no anger in his voice. 'I'll have every tooth in your jaw knocked out with a hammer. Then I'll fuck you in the mouth so hard you'll feel it in your fucking guts. It'll choke you to death if I don't drown you when I come. So why not be good?'
Krysty started to flex her muscles, ready to draw on her secret power, knowing that she could snap the cords, and maybe even take the towering baron. And after that?
After that, they'd be alive, and he'd maybe lie iced on the floor.
But the baron stepped away, pushing his erection back out of sight. 'Later. Right now it's questions and answers. Then it can be pleasure.'
Lori still sobbed quietly.
Jak refused Finn's offer of a slug of thick, sweet brandy. 'No. Best we go and meet others. Talk battle plan. Not much time. Baron has a way with women that's fast and ugly.'
Ryan stood up, stretching, holding the G-12. Jak Lauren glanced at it. 'My eyes saw that. Said it wasn't like any normal blaster.'
Ryan held it out. 'Fifty-shot automatic. Caseless bullets. Carry 'em in pockets.' He didn't mention their reserves of ammo back with their clothes and supplies at the gateway. 'Four point seven by twenty-one mil. No recoil, and it's real quiet. Single, triple burst or continuous. Night sight. Nice gun.'
The boy looked at it enviously. 'Ten of those, and we wouldn't need your outland help.'
A question came to Ryan. 'Jak? How do you know where we come from?'
'Out the swamps. The old secret place. There's stories our fathers told that one day folks'd come from there and help us. Has to be you.'
Ryan nodded. 'Let's go then. One other question?'
'What?'
'How old are you, Jak?'
'Fourteen last midwinter.'
The baron swayed on the tensioned struts and webbing that enabled him to stand upright on his weak legs. His fingers on the aluminum handle of the door of the cellar, he looked back at the two women, helpless on the tables. 'Later,' he said.
Lori's left eye was closed shut, purpled with a deep bruise. Her panties were around her knees, and her thighs were both scratched and bitten. The blouse was torn open, baring her breasts. Her pale skin showed bloody furrows, narrow as coffin nails. Krysty was untouched.
As Baron Tourment had loomed over her, grinning, his hands working like steel traps, she had looked directly into his eyes. 'I have the Earth power, and I swear by Gaia that if you harm me I'll kill you.'
He had straightened and left her, staggering clumsily on his steel-bound legs.
'You threaten me!' He was unable to hide his shock, and also, she noticed with a grim satisfaction, unable to conceal the touch of fear.
As he paused on the threshold, he looked venomously at Krysty Wroth. 'Later, firehead. You'll beg for death after... after you tell me.'
'Tell you what, cripple?'
The taunt failed to rile him. He even managed a laugh that echoed hollowly. 'Tell me all I want.'
Krysty had a little of the gift of doomseeing, and she realized that Tourment also had something of the gift. Or the curse. He must know about them. That was partly how he'd got to them. But if he had questions, then he had only some of the answers.
'You know nothing,' she mocked. 'Nothing. You would torture women to pierce your own blindness.'
'What?'
'You fear the snow-wolf boy. And now you fear all of us.'
'No. I have you and her. Soon I will have the other four.'
So Finn had escaped. That in itself was a small victory for Krysty.
'A mouthful of dirt and slime is all you'll have. A gift.'
Baron Tourment laughed. 'Who makes me this gift, you gaudy slag?'
'The one-eyed man,' she replied.
The door of the cellar slammed with such crazed violence that the lock splintered apart as the Baron burst out, away from the girl.
Krysty and Lori were left alone to wait.
