Cohn's orders were simple and explicit.
'Keep in radio contact. Twenty-four-hour watch on the emergency frequency. Four guards out, turn and turn about each hour. Full alert all the time. Keep her locked up tighter than a Baron's cred chest.'
And then the most important part of it.
'If we're back, then we'll be here in four days. Call it a flat hundred hours. Unless you hear from us to abort this command, after one hundred hours precise, you push the boot to the floor and give her the gas and get out. From then on you're on your own.'
'What about a relief party?' Cohn asked J.B. and Ryan.
'There won't be one, you stupe bastard,' snarled Ryan. 'Hundred hours and we're not back, you go.'
'Where?'
'Watch my lips, Cohn,' interjected J. B. Dix. 'We go. You stay. We come back in less'n a hundred hours, all fine. If not, then War Wag One is yours. And you'll be low on gas and supplies, so get out fast. Now just nod your head if you understand.'
'Sure,' Cohn replied with a nod. 'That's fine. I'll be here like you say. And if there's problems, call it in.'
Each member of the team carried a pistol and rifle of their own choice. Each carried four grenades on the belts, a mix of incendiary, stun, implosion, high-ex, shrap, nerve gas and smoke. Each of them had a knife or edged weapon of his or her choosing, ranging from Krysty's delicate throwing knives in her bandolier to Finnegan's butcher's cleaver that would take the head off a horse in one blow.
They carried enough food for five days, with a small supply of water-pure tabs. Ammunition supplied most of the weight to their packs, along with a radio operated by Henn. No spare clothes or sleeping gear. There was no room for that kind of comfort.
They agreed that the best time to leave was around dawn the next day. Koll was designated to take charge of Doc, whose mind still vacillated between extremes of brief clarity and long spells of catatonic madness. His only response when Ryan Cawdor told him that they were planning on going toward the hidden Redoubt was to smile and bow, his hat nearly falling off. Krysty had managed to sew some strong elasticized cord for him to use when they ventured outside into the gales. He'd refused any helmet or goggles like the others, saying that a scarf for his throat would suffice.
'Suffice' was the word he'd used. Now he just asked Ryan about the guard dog.
'What dog? You mean the fog, Doc?'
'No. I speak of the canine deterrent... Ah, what memories that word brings back to me, Mr. Cawdor.'
'What memories?'
A look of pain flitted across the aquiline features of the old man. 'Sadly, that has escaped me, sir. But I believe there was something about a dog.'
That night Krysty came to Ryan in his bunk, and they managed, despite the tightness of the accommodation, to make slow, tender love three times before reveille finally woke them.
Farewells were short and formal. During the years that Ryan Cawdor had ridden with the Trader he had seen literally dozens of relationships formed and broken in the war wag. Many formed from loneliness and fear. Many broken by death.
Ryan noticed Hun taking a long time in quiet talk with a little girl called Sukie who had only joined War Wag One from three a day or so before the fall of Mocsin as a relief gunner on the mortar.
For the rest it was mainly a quick shake of the hand and a muttered word. Ryan had once seen a scratchy antique vid about some Westerners in a fort. Or had it been a church? There they were taking last messages to families and loved ones. That didn't arise in the Deathlands. Either your family and loved ones were on War Wag One or they weren't anywhere.
'What's the weather, Cohn?'
'Minus fifteen. Wind around fifty, from north, veering east. Some hail in it.'
Ryan rubbed at the stubble on his chin. 'Sounds a fine day for a short walk in the Darks. Be seein' you, Cohn.'
'Good luck, Ryan. Give the bastards broken teeth.' The two men shook hands and the main entry port slid open, letting in a flurry of snow and a biting wind. Ryan pulled up his goggles and exited with a jump, waving for the others to follow him. Ice crunched beneath his boots. While he waited he glanced down, seeing the mark on the right toe where a rabid dog had tried to bite his foot off. It had taken a 3-round burst from the LAPA to blow the mongrel away.
Between his feet, in a small hollow sheltered among some scattered pebbles, he noticed a tiny bunch of flowers. White petals, with a heart yellow as butter. Surviving in one of the least hospitable places on earth. For a reason that he couldn't explain, the sight of the frail plant lifted his spirits.
He tucked the weighted silk scarf around his neck, trying to fill the chinks where the wind was thrusting icy water. He took a quick finger count to make sure the group was all there. Nine. With J. B. Dix bringing up the rear as ten.
After fifty paces Ryan turned around, bracing himself against the driving gale, squinting back at where he knew the war wag was. But it had already disappeared in the general whiteout. Without a compass he knew that they had absolutely no chance of ever finding it again.
The track was very rough, often barely visible, and the weather was worse than he had anticipated. But after a half hour they rounded the massive corner of an overhanging bluff and the wind dropped dramatically.
'Way Kurt called it, there's a half day's walk to get to where the fog was waitin'.'
'I am of the decided opinion that the fog will still be here and waiting for all comers, Mr. Cawdor,' said Doc. His cheeks were almost blue from the biting cold of the wind, yet beads of perspiration hung in the deep furrows of his cheeks, glistening in the stubble on his chin.
'You know that?' asked J.B.
'It is an axiom of some veracity that a good guard dog never sleeps. Cerberus was assuredly of the best, Mr. Dix.'
'Every piece cocked,' instructed Ryan. 'Round under the pin. Fingers...'
'On triggers,' finished Okie, unsmiling. 'We know that, Ryan.'
They went on.
The road, if that's what it had once been, wound and twisted like a broken-backed adder, clinging to the edge of the ice-sheeted cliffs, a dizzy abyss plunging away to their left. At one bend Ryan held up a gloved fist, halting the party, waving them forward.
'What do you see?' asked Hennings, his dark skin pallid against the black fur hood.
'Down there,' replied Ryan, pointing to where the tumbling waters of a river in flood tore over gray boulders. Visible now and again through the gusted clouds of snow were the red and brown metal bones of several vehicles. Torn and twisted, spotted with ice and blown spume. It was impossible to make out what they might once have been, but there could have been three or four of them. One large rusting chunk of iron might have been the rear suspension members of a large truck.
'Someone didn't make the turn,' said Finnegan.
'Dolfo Kaler,' suggested J.B. 'Kurt talked about broken trucks an' all. They're what's left of Kaler's expedition after the Redoubt up here.'
'Which means the fog that has teeth and claws is around just a couple more corners,' said Krysty Wroth. She stood close against Ryan, shivering at the cold.
She was nearly right.
It was only one corner.
Waiting, quiet and immense. As Ryan cautiously waved the others forward to his side, the words of Doc came back to him. It
'There is Cerberus,' whispered Doc. Behind them the wind still howled and the air was still filled with needled chips of ice swirling from the leaden sky. But on this stretch the wind was gone, echoing behind them but not before. Here it was preternaturally quiet.
Ryan gazed at it, filled with an awe that came close to fear. In all his life he had never seen anything like it. The fog squatted on the road, at least the forward part of it did, and behind it rose vastly above them until it
