LITMIR.BIZ

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smiled unpleasantly. It occurred to Toogood to wonder if he’d ever seen the man smile any other way.

      “Perhaps you gentlemen would be wise to take such lessons to heart, before you walk quite so perilously close to sedition. Wouldn’t you agree?”

      And cackling openly he turned and vanished into the darks depths of his lair.

      Myers’s bearded jowls shook as he vented a shuddering breath. “Brrr. The man’s unnerving sometimes.”

      “We, of course, appreciate fully how fortunate we are to find ourselves in Judge Santee’s strong and capable hands,” Toogood said loudly. “Of course, none of us harbor any thoughts but those of complete loyalty to our Judge and his vision!”

      He winked one eye furiously at his fellow grandees.

      “Of course!” Gein piped up. He nudged Myers in the well-padded ribs with his elbow.

      “Oh, very well,” the stockier man said. Then more loudly, he added, “Of course I know that the Judge’s decisions are wise!”

      “Better, gentlemen,” Toogood said, nodding and beaming vigorously.

      “The real shame is that this snipe hunt is slowing up our schedule for restoring the rule of law to nearby villes,” Gein said, in far more subdued tones. “Once we start consolidating our grip—that is, consolidating the rule of law and of the United States—we’ll have no trouble bringing in enough recruits to keep the rabble in their proper places.”

      “For now, we must agree to disagree, Donnell,” Myers said.

      He turned to Toogood. “What’s the next ville due for reintegration into our United States, Marley?”

      Toogood frowned as he thought about the question. “I’m not privy to strategy,” he said, and officially that was true. “That’s for the Judge and Cutter Dan to decide. But I believe it’s the ville of Esperance, to the southwest.”

      “Ugh,” Myers said. “A real nest of vipers and freethinkers. I know we rely on trade with them. All the more reason to bring them to heel. I can’t say I’ll be sorry to be able to free my employees from their pernicious influence and example.”

      “See, Munktun?” Gein proclaimed. “We’ll make a believer of you yet!”

      “Perish the thought,” Myers said.

      * * *

      THEFACTTHATRyan only had one eye severely restricted his peripheral vision. But, as he marched in the lead of his companions, he kept his head constantly turning, like a one-eyed tomcat in a ville back alley. Even before Ricky shouted his warning, he’d spotted the missile arcing toward him from the dense mutie growth atop the high wall to the left.

      His mind registered that it was a spear. Then it passed through the place where he would have been walking and embedded itself in the red clay bank to his right.

      He threw himself forward into the stream. He had been carrying his Scout longblaster. Now he held it up as he belly flopped clear to the bottom of the shallow running water. Then, rolling rapidly to his right, he brought the weapon to his shoulder and pointed toward where the spear had come from.

      He saw a creature gazing back down at him from the edge of the braid of thick, spiky vines. At first he thought it was another mutie animal, an outsized lizard of some sort, or mebbe a bird. It was about four feet tall, with a black-banded gray face and an off-white, streaked belly. It had a crest of turquoise feathers. He couldn’t see more of it for the growth.

      Then he noticed the thing had something like a bandolier slung across its chest. It looked as if it had bags and pouches attached to it, and a knife in a beaded sheath.

      A second one appeared, with an arm cocked back to throw another spear.

      By this point Ryan had his longblaster pointed in the right direction. He caught a flash picture through the ghost-ring iron sights mounted beneath the scope and gave the trigger a compressed speed break. The lightweight rifle bellowed and bucked. When Ryan pulled it back online, both inhuman faces were gone.

      “They’re on both sides!” Ricky shouted. “What are those things?”

      “Trouble,” Ryan yelled, rolling on his back in the stream and jackknifing to stand back up by the sheer power of his gut muscles. “They’re not just animals! They got hands and weapons.”

      Muzzle blasts buffeted Ryan’s ears as his friends opened up. He hoped they were picking their targets. They couldn’t afford to just bust caps, lost in the Wild like this.

      He got his boots beneath him and, first things first, quickly sidestepped. It got him out of the stream, onto soft and slightly slippery, but still more reliable footing, and also shifted him out of the target zone for any other arm-launched missiles that might heading his way.

      The vines atop both walls rustled with a seethe of drab-colored bodies, as the lizard muties appeared to throw stuff and duck back out of sight. After the first one missed Ryan, few spears seemed to be coming their way. The muties seemed not to want to waste their prime weapons. Mostly what came raining down on Ryan and his companions was hefty chunks of vine, many with long thorns still attached, tumbling end over end.

      He slung his Scout and drew his handblaster. Now that the enemy knew he and the others could hit back he wasn’t going to get many good shots. If he was going to waste ammo he preferred to burn the lighter, easier-to-come by 9 mm than the 7.62 mm his Scout used.

      To his relief the others had stopped their brief flurry of fire as they realized they were just busting caps. Now they were concentrating on spotting objects thrown their way, ducking and dodging, or batting them aside.

      Ryan looked quickly around. When in an ambush, he remembered, Trader always advised the best thing to do was assault right into it.

      The problem with that was, the most obvious way to do it in this case was to charge straight up one of the steep and wet-slick clay walls of the little canyon, which would almost certainly turn into a particularly grubby and arduous type of suicide. Likewise, charging straight ahead the way they’d been heading might send them straight into the heart of the nest. Or whatever the lizards lived in.

      “Back the way we came,” he yelled. “Triple fast! J.B., take the lead. I got the rear.”

      With his short, bandy legs, the Armorer was unlikely to set a pace that any of them couldn’t keep, and risk falling behind—fatally. Even Mildred could keep up with him.

      “What about the centipedes?” Mildred demanded.

      “Let’s all try to stay alive long enough to get back to them,” Ryan called back. “We can sort that out then.”

      For the first few moments, as Ryan trotted along the stream bank, he thought their attackers would be content to let them just back out of their domain. The hail of vine chunks tapered off rapidly.

      Then he had to yell a warning as another spear came zipping down from the right bank.

       Chapter Nine

      “Why would we help you?” one woodcutter demanded.

      Cutter Dan stood facing the two men, rubbing the side of his face. Then he snatched his hand away. The cut the coldheart bastard had given him had far from truly healed, and it itched like blazing blue death.

      “Fair question,” he said.

      He turned slightly, drew his big handblaster, and shot the man’s partner through the belly. He fell, clutching his ruptured guts, screaming and kicking at the bare red dirt yard of the ramshackle shack.

      “Now,” Cutter Dan said, turning back to the first man, whose sandy-bearded face was slack with shock and white behind its soot and grime. “I sure hope you know the Wild hereabouts better than this gentleman, my friend. What’s your name?”

      The

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