heartbeats the dreadful monster had completely gone, leaving nothing but the cold wind and driven hail.
'Cerberus was a sentient creature, and designed precisely thus, Mr. Cawdor. Yet it was weak precisely where it needed to be strong. Now it is gone, my dear sir, and taking that poor fellow with it. Who cried so loud, did he not?'
Koll had disappeared with the double implosions. At least most of him had.
His right arm, two fingers missing, with the shoulder and neck and much of the right side of the lower skull, still lay in the middle of the mangled roadway. The survivors walked up the trail, pausing by the remains of the corpse. The missing fingers had been sliced away as though with a razor, and the rest of the torn flesh was cleanly severed. Both eyes were gone, as had the top of the nose. The jaw had been hewn through by an unimaginable force, and the flesh of the cheek and chin was laced with a pattern of tiny burns and scorch marks. The teeth were splintered to powder in the jaw.
Taking into account the massive injuries, there was very little blood.
'We goin' to leave him here like this for the wolves and bears?' asked Sukie, trembling with shock.
'No. Can't bury him. In the river, J.B.?'
'Best we can do.'
As gently as they could, the two men stooped and gathered up the remains of the man who had been one of the strongest of the crew of the war wag. Swinging the dismembered mass once and then heaving it as far out as they could into the singing void, they watched as it fell into the river and joined the waters that flowed from the glacier way up above them.
They stood mutely for several seconds. Ryan broke the spell by turning to lead them up the trail. Now that the fog had vanished, he noticed a peculiar thing. On their side of the barrier, the road was in terrible condition, puckered and scratched. A hundred paces or so higher up it was in perfect condition. Smooth and flat, unbroken by the century of neglect, untouched by weeds. It went straight for a while, then curved sharply to the right, as though it ran into the face of the cliff.
Neat, rectangular white stones lined the side of the road, marking off the edge of the ravine. There was even the remains of a white line painted down the center of the trail. The nine men and women walked slowly along, cautiously checking all around them. Ryan stopped when he heard Doc start to chuckle.
'What in the big fire's so funny, Doc?'
'My apologies, sir, but the sight of us all stepping as if we walked upon the shells of eggs is risible. You see, the fog with its claws and its teeth will have kept everyone out for a hundred years. And those within are surely deceased. So where is the threat?'
'We're in. Someone else might be in,' replied J. B. Dix.
'Only if they were watching and have followed us. And I doubt there are many people in this part of the Darks.'
'What about them feathers and the skull and all that stuff? 'asked Abe.
That silenced Doc's laughter.
Though the wind kept howling about them, the ferocious cold of the past few days was gone, and none of them put up their hoods again. Doc kept one hand on his ancient hat. The air was notably fresher and Ryan noticed that none of them was sweating now, as they had been in the presence of the fog.
Okie strode forward to join Ryan at the front of the group. Her dark hair was tied back like Abe's and she kept one hand always near the butt of her pistol. When she spoke her voice had a distinctive Eastern twang to it.
'What d'you figure we'll find in this stockpile? Gas? Bombs? More guns?'
Ryan grinned. '
'What?'
'Means who knows. Picked it up from a Mex mutie down south. But whatever's there has to be good to be guarded like that.'
'And nobody to stop us,' she said.
There was a faint hissing and a dull thunk. A gasp. Ryan spun on his heel in time to see Abe dropping to his knees, hands to his throat. His neck was pierced clean through with the shaft of an arrow, tipped with bright red feathers.
Chapter Sixteen
Hennings and Krysty were first to the stricken man, while the others, weapons drawn, faced around, their blazing eyes seeking the enemy. But there was nobody to be seen. The cliffs towered above them, with pockets of snow scattered here and there. The road wound beneath them, and the sheer drop to the river was still at their other flank. Ahead, somewhere, was the mythical Redoubt.
'Where?' snapped Ryan.
J.B. pointed up and behind. 'Arrow came from there. He's behind us. Or they're behind us.'
'How is he?' He moved to stand where Krysty cradled Abe in her arms. The shaft, with its barbed tip, still stuck through his throat at a grotesque angle, blood trickling from both sides. The shaft was made of some sort of aluminum compound. It was streaked crimson. The feathers were the same kind as they had seen on the warning totems.
Henn looked up. 'Bad, Ryan. Bad.'
Abe was fighting for breath, fingers moving convulsively on Krysty's sleeve. Her bright red hair framed his pale face. His eyes flickered, seeking Ryan, finding him.
'Doesn't hurt...' he said, voice muffled with the blood that was now seeping through his lips. 'But a blasted arrow, for nuke's sake! Be funny...' he coughed a great gout of arterial scarlet '...funny if...'
Another shaft came slicing through the air, pinging off the road and vanishing over the edge into the gorge beyond. A third arrow came, striking a spark as it struck the stone, missing Krysty by a hand's span.
'Got to move, Ryan,' J.B. barked. 'They'll pick us off.'
The rules of the war wag had always been simple. If you can save the wounded, then you do it. But if you can't...
'Leave him,' Ryan said. 'Sorry, Abe.'
If it had been some muties, especially stickies, then Ryan would have put a bullet through the man's temple. It looked as if Abe was dying, but there was a chance the attackers might save him. Better than no chance at all.
'Go,' called Ryan, then strode ahead to lead the way in a zigzag, dodging run up the road.
Immediately the arrows came whispering after them, biting into the track. But by keeping moving and swerving, none of them was hit. Ryan risked a glance over his shoulder at a bend in the trail, seeing to his shock that there were about forty or fifty men after them, most with bows. Oddly, not a single one was carrying a rifle. If one of them had a light MG or even a machine pistol, they could have sprayed the road and wiped half of Ryan's force away.
They appeared to be short, squat men, wearing what looked at a glance to be leather.
'We could hold 'em here!' shouted J.B., pointing to where a fall of white rock had half closed the road.
'They might get above us. Keep goin'!'
Another hundred paces and the arrows were less frequent. And around another turn of the trail, there it was.
The trail widened to a huge plateau, wide enough for a dozen war wags to turn in comfort, with the stubby remains of a metal fence ringing it. And at the far end was a gate, made of gleaming metal, showing through peeling paint. All around, on posts, on the walls, and on the gate itself, were the faded, illegible remains of notices.
'That's it.'
Ryan had seen enough Stockpiles in his time to be certain that this was what they were after.
The gate was corrugated metal, showing that it folded back. Okie was there first, reaching and tugging at
