LITMIR.BIZ

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the wooden mask. The terrified mountain man raised his wounded arm as protection, and a flurry of half-arrows nailed it permanently in place.

      “Pax! Pax!” the Hilly cried. “I surrender!”

      “Tough,” Donovan croaked in a barely recognizable voice. He held out an empty hand, and somebody slapped an ax into his palm.

      Tightening a fist around the fish-hide grip, the sec chief swung the weapon with all of his might and buried the polished granite blade deep into the back of the weeping coldheart. Then shouting curses, Donovan began hacking at the Hilly as if chopping down a tree. Chips flew off under the brutal impacts of the granite blade, then leather padding came into view and finally human skin….

      When he was finished, Donovan wiped the cracked blade clean on his pants and returned the borrowed weapon to the bald sec man.

      “Thanks,” Donovan whispered.

      “Always got your back,” Hannigan said proudly, slinging the weapon over a shoulder. “Now we go after those others in the forest?”

      In a rush of anger Donovan tried to speak, but could only cough for a few minutes. Akhmed passed over a gourd, and the sec chief pulled out the cork to pour the contents down his aching throat. The shine burned like fire, then the tenderness eased and he took his first deep breath for what seemed like an eternity.

      “No,” the sec chief said, speaking almost normally. “There could be more tricks, more traps. We’re heading for home, and not stopping for anything until we have a wall around our asses again. Savvy?”

      “No need to rush, Chief,” Gene said, both hands on the reins controlling the horses. “Whatever those things were in the forest, they skedaddled the minute that Hilly started eating dirt.”

      “Hillies,” Rosemary snorted in contempt, resting a throwing ax on a shoulder. In spite of wearing the largest size of body armor available, her ample breasts were simply much too big, and deliciously muffined over the top. Every man privately enjoyed the delightful sight, but the sec woman’s dire expertise with a throwing ax kept them all respectful and courteous even when far away from the ville on patrol. “Think they knew what we’re carrying?” The woman glanced into the cart. Set among their piles of supplies, barrels of water and such was a wooden strongbox bolted to the floorboards. Without explosives, it would take a day to chop into the box, and the only way to steal it was to take the whole cart. This was the best the ville had, but what it contained was more valuable than black powder.

      Making a face, Hannigan grunted. “Shitfire, if they knew what was in that box, the bastards would have sent a dozen coldhearts after us.”

      “Can the chatter, and go collect your arrows,” Donovan ordered, passing the gourd back to Akhmed. “The damn things don’t grow on trees, ya know.”

      Chuckling at the very old joke, the sec men dutifully retrieved the spent arrows, carefully pocketing the fletching and stone heads found with broken shafts. Sadly, quite a few of the half-arrows were gone, lost in the forest.

      Reclaiming his crossbow, Donovan slung it over a shoulder, then hunted for the blaster. He found it in the bushes, undamaged, just smeared with blood and dirt.

      “Here, I got the lead back for you, Chief,” MacDouglas said, proffering a small disfigured blob of gray metal.

      “Thanks, Mack,” Donavan said, tucking the slug in a shirt pocket along with the spent brass.

      “Excuse me, sir?” a bald sec man asked respectfully.

      “What is it, Carson?”

      “What should we do about the others?” the man asked, looking forlornly up the roadway. The herbal smoke was almost completely gone now, and the bodies of the fallen sec men could be clearly seen.

      “We’re short on time,” the sec chief began, but then relented. “But we’ll wait. Take a shovel and bury your kin. Save their crossbows for the baron, but you can have everything else for their kin.”

      “You want a hand?” Akhmed asked, tucking some loose fletching into a pocket.

      Shaking his head, Carson got a shovel from the cart, then trundled off to drag a tattered corpse into the bushes and perform the odious task in private.

      Shrugging his crossbow into a more comfortable position, Hannigan scowled at the aced Hilly lying mutilated in the churned dirt. “That was a hell of a scary mask,” he said, speaking as if the words had a bad taste. “Ya think the bastard based it upon a real mutie? Something from one of the outer islands? Those got hit a lot worse than us in the endwar.”

      “Makes sense,” Akhmed replied, clearly unconvinced. “Unless the ocean currents have changed again. Remember when that mutie that looked like a man but was covered with suckers washed ashore from the mainland?”

      “Oh, don’t be a feeb,” Gene snapped impatiently. “There ain’t no mainland anymore. The whole damn world got nuked during the Big Heat. There’s only this chain of islands, nothing more. Baron Griffin says so.”

      The unflappable sec man shrugged in dismissal. “If you say so, cousin.” Thunder rumbled above and Donavan climbed into the back of the cart to drape a tarpaulin over the strongbox. It didn’t really need the additional protection, even if it was acid rain coming, but he felt it wise to be cautious with this cargo. A slave had found the treasure on the shore, of all places, and immediately turned it over to Baron Griffin for the promised reward of freedom. It was granted, the baron always kept his word. However, once the former slave was outside the ville where none of the civies could see, the sec men on the walls had shot him down in cold blood. Slaves were not allowed on the beach under any circumstances, and the punishment was death. The ancient laws ruled supreme on Royal Island, even when their transgression yielded the greatest treasure in the world.

      Metal. A big jagged chunk of rusty, corroded, glorious metal. Almost a full ten pounds. None of the sec men had any idea what the irregular lump had once been, but soon the ville blacksmith would convert it into a new hinge for the front gate, edging for a dozen knives and deadly tips for a hundred war arrows, vital protection needed by the ville against the hairy-ass barbs in the west, and that tricky bitch Wainwright to the far east. Anchor ville sat smack between the two, cursed with a baron more interested in dance and song than chilling. They were thankful for his wife. Lady Griffin was more of a warrior than any ten sec men in the ville.

      Including me, Donovan grudgingly admitted in private. Plus, the busty woman was also a lusty sex partner. The woman fought like a sec man and fucked like a gaudy slut. Now, that was a real woman! A proper ruler for any ville. It was just bad luck that the Book of Blood had decreed she had to marry that smiling feeb from Northpoint ville. But then, the Book had to be obeyed. End of discussion. Only the throwbacks, barbs and Hillies screwed whomever they wished, which was why so many of them were born…different.

      Dragging the dirty shovel behind, Carson returned from the bushes, looking years older. Shoving the wooden tool into a leather boot set alongside the cart, the sec man wordlessly assumed his position alongside Gene on the front seat. His shoulders were slumped, but his rapidfire crossbow was primed, and Carson looked hard at the foggy bushes and trees, as if eager for an attack on the group so that he would have an excuse to chill something, anything at all.

      “All right, mount up,” Donovan commanded, sitting on the treasure box and placing the loaded crossbow across his lap. “Let’s go home.”

      High over, the cloudy sky was alive with the multicolored radiance of the daily aurora borealis. Softly in the distance, thunder rumbled, warning of an approaching storm.

      Chapter One

      The thud of a heavy bolt disengaging echoed in the Stygian gloom. Then with squealing hinges, the oval portal in the rusty wall ponderously swung aside, resisting every inch of the way.

      Holding road flares and blasters, two men stepped through the opening and warily looked around the darkness, ready for any possible danger. The sputtering flares gave off a wellspring of light, but there was

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