Wretched Earth (10 page)

He stepped up and shook hands with each newcomer in turn. He
met Krysty’s eye and his gaze lingered for a moment, as did his grip.

“It’s a real pleasure to meet you, Ms. Wroth,” he said. His
handshake was firm if not indicative of great physical strength. When he
released her hand, he did so abruptly and almost convulsively.

He seemed almost afraid of Ryan, but after only the briefest
hesitation shook his hand and looked him in the eye, as well.

Colt Sharp struck Krysty as a not unintelligent youth trying to
break free of chubbiness and uncertainty. Would he be equal to the terror the
not-too-distant future seemed to hold for himself and his ville? She saw, sadly,
no evidence that he would.

Give him time, he’d learn, she thought. Triple-shame the one
thing he didn’t have was time.

“So you’re mercenaries?” he asked, stepping back to his
mother’s side. She loomed over him, although much of her height was due to the
high heels of the laced-front, knee-high boots she wore.

“You’re not ready to handle such matters yourself yet, Colt,”
Miranda said, with a pleasant smile and just a hint of a whip crack. “Watch and
learn,
mijo.
”

I see, Krysty thought. I know that story. She recognized a
mother who loved her son—perhaps mebbe too much—but not more than she feared
loss of control over him. Or, judging by what they’d heard of events in
Sweetwater Junction, over any tiny little element of life in the ville.

“It is true you wished to discuss employment?” the baron asked
Ryan.

“We heard you were having a bit of a set-to with your former
sec boss,” Ryan said. “Thought you might be able to use three more blasters at
your side.”

Eyebrows arched, Miranda swept the trio with her dark, intense
gaze. “You all three are handy with blasters, then?”

“We all know our way around them,” Ryan said. “Don’t let Doc’s
appearance fool you. You could do worse than have him at your back when blasters
start talking.”

“What a bunch of crap,” Jenkins said. “I could mop the floor
with all three of them at once.”

“If you think that, you’re a bigger fool than I thought,” the
baron said without turning. “Now, keep silent. Or I’ll force you to try to make
good on your empty-headed boast.”

The darkly handsome face got a lot darker. If the man had been
glaring hot death at Ryan before, now it was a wonder just the side-scatter
didn’t set the antimacassars ablaze.

Miranda glanced to where the travelers’ packs leaned discreetly
by the baseboard, behind a china cabinet.

“So, Mr. One-Eyed Stranger,” Miranda said. “Do you really know
how to use that very big rifle of yours?”

“He’s
masterful
with it,” Krysty
almost purred.

I know it’s naughty to say it that way, she thought. But at
least I didn’t say “and the longblaster, too.”

Chapter Eleven

“Ryan,” Doc said from behind him. “Krysty’s back.”

“Ace,” Ryan said. As intensely focused as he could be when
chilling was at stake, he had had trouble concentrating the whole time Krysty
was out on the bitterly contested streets of Sweetwater Junction doing
recce.

He sat in an uncomfortable wooden chair beside a heavy wooden
table, both of which had been shellacked within an inch of their lives. The
varnish had long since started to discolor in shades of yellow and brown, and
crack. Perhaps that was why no one had bothered scavvying the furniture from the
fourth floor of the ancient redbrick office building on the northern side of
Sweetwater Junction’s central square. Or perhaps they were just too heavy and
uncomfortable to lug down so many stairs. He wasn’t sure why they hadn’t been
broken up for fuel if nothing else, in this timber-poor, fuel-poor
desolation.

The room smelled of cold brick, wood, varnish and the dust that
floated in the ocher afternoon light coming through the unglazed, south-facing
window. The desk was set a yard back from that window. On it rested Ryan’s Steyr
Scout Tactical longblaster, propped on some water-damaged throw cushions Baron
Miranda had donated from the palace for this mission.

Whether scoping out a target or lining up a shot, you didn’t do
it from the window itself. The target would spot you, sure as stickies loved
hurting norms.

By the time they’d sneaked into the old office building and
climbed the dusty stairs to the fourth floor, the sun had passed far enough west
not to shine directly into the room. The gloom was good cover if you didn’t make
sudden moves.

Ryan didn’t take his eye from the Navy longeyes focused on the
five-story wooden tower two hundred yards away across the square. The big scope
atop the longblaster would let him look into a man’s ear hole at this range. But
it was too unwieldy and its field of vision too restricted for him to go to it
until he was ready to take a shot or needed to be prepared to do so on an
instant’s notice.

The same pair of men he’d been watching for two hours were
still up there. By the visual evidence they were just smoking and joking and
taking regular hits of something Ryan didn’t think was water.

Not even in a ville whose prosperity was mostly built on being
the only large-scale source of clean, pure water for fifty miles in any
direction would they carry it in square-sided glass bottles, he reckoned. Nor
that the ville would be called Sweetwater if its namesake was that shade of
brown.

He also didn’t think for a moment it was predark whiskey the
Jacks-faction snipers were tossing down their throats over there. He judged it
was most likely Towse Lightning with brown dye or even tobacco spit mixed in for
color.

A soft footfall made the bare hardwood floor creak behind him.
He lowered the glasses and turned. Krysty stood in the doorway. Even he scarcely
recognized her in the bulky quilted jacket and the billed, big-crowned cap that
contained her hair and half obscured her face.

“Ace,” he said. “You’re back.”

Below the bill of her green cap her grin was radiant as always.
The fresh-air smell of her livened up the room.

“Did you ever doubt, lover?” she asked.

You bet your sweet ass I did, he thought. I worried every
second you were out there alone. Just like I wasn’t triple-comfortable with
moony old Doc being my only sec while I’m lost in the glass.

He longed to have Jak, elusive as a living ghost, doing the
scouting. Or at least watching Krysty’s back while she scouted the ville around
the plaza with its big public fountain. Ryan wished he had the steady,
unflappable Armorer keeping guard while he watched their targets. He wished
Mildred were there to patch them in case they got shot.

But he had chosen to split the companions. And life had taught
him early on he had to live with the choices he made.

“Shall I take up surveillance of yon scapegrace inebriates,
Ryan?” Doc asked.

Setting the longeyes on the table next to his Steyr, Ryan shook
his head. “No. I’ve been trying not to look at them too long at a stretch. Man
can sense when somebody’s staring at him too keenly.”

“Surely that’s mere superstition.”

“No. It’s true. Happened to me on both ends, plenty times. And
to everybody I ever talked to who’s hunted humans, or been hunted himself. You
can
feel
eyes on you.”

“It’s true, Doc,” Krysty said. “I’ve felt it, too.”

Ryan got up to catch her in a brief, strong embrace. He didn’t
want to show how nervous he’d been, for fear she’d take it as evidence he didn’t
trust her competence. Which wasn’t true. She was as solid as they got, smart,
shifty and resourceful, and never lost her head. The thing was, what she’d done
was nuke-red dangerous for anybody, no matter how expert in skulking. And she
was his woman.

But she insisted on carrying her own weight, no matter what. It
was one of many reasons he loved her.

He kissed her forehead and cheek. In her dancing emerald eyes
he plainly read that he didn’t fool her for a millisecond. And that she was fine
with his concern as long as he didn’t say anything to show her up.

“What’d you find?” he asked.

She shrugged. “Only two people up there at a time. Nobody saw
any different today. They got about two hours left on their shift. They’ll
switch around sunset.”

She’d been wandering around trying to talk to the ville folk.
Better, trying to find ville folk talking so she could eavesdrop.

“People on the north side of the line say there’s just two up
there, day and night,” Krysty said. “They have longblasters.”

“And why do the ville folk keep such close tabs on them?” Doc
asked.

“Because they shoot at anyone from the north side of town who
tries to get water from the fountain.”

“So, it’s all just like Miranda told us,” Ryan said, sitting
down and picking up the longeyes again.

* * *

B
ARON
M
IRANDA
S
HARP
and her son may have lost their sec boss when Jacks
turned his coat, but she retained a core of loyalist sec men, backed up by the
palace staff and servants. The quiet people who came and went to do the new
baron’s bidding had the air of having done so for a spell, Krysty thought.

She also had an adviser in the form of a hard-bitten man on the
grizzled side of middle age who went by the name Perico. He was middle height
and seemed to be made of burnished hardwood, with steel wool for hair, growing
in tufts from the sides of his bald head, on his thick forearms and the backs of
his hands, and encasing his wolf-trap jaws.

“When that bastard Jacks, may he suffer, made his play,” he was
saying as he smoothed a hand-drawn map of contemporary Sweetwater Junction
across a round drawing-room table cleared of bric-a-brac for the occasion, “he
got most of the sec force, plus some malcontents from the ville, to back
it.”

Perico put what looked to be a small, ancient iron on one side
of the map to hold it in place. On the other side he put a square, cut-crystal
dish holding various trade-good candies. Baron Miranda stood by looking
competent and forbidding in her tight black pants and lavender silk blouse. Colt
hovered by her side, half eager and half scared he might get whipped. Like a
mistreated pup, Krysty thought.

Hedders, who seemed nice enough for a sec man, had withdrawn.
Jenkins stood by and sneered. Krysty already mostly discounted him. He could be
dangerous, like a scorpion in a boot. But he didn’t count.

Likely he knew it, too. And it made him angry.

“Geither Jacks favored his goons and toadies. Otherwise he was
a pure bully—sucked up to his bosses, rained pain on everyone beneath him.”

“Not a new story,” Doc murmured.

Perico raised a brow to stare at the old man for a moment. “Be
surprised if it was,” he said after a moment. “While Jacks got some of the key
richies in town, like Morgan the cloth trader and Delgado the spice guy, most of
the ville folk supported the old baron, and after they found out he was gone,
Baron Miranda and Colt. Got to admit it wasn’t so much out of love for the Sharp
family as knowing what a vicious stoneheart Jacks is. Your pardon, Baron.”

Miranda’s flushed face was knotted in anger, but her scarcely
checked rage wasn’t aimed at her plainspoken adviser.

“Some on this side harbor treachery in their hearts,” she said,
her voice a hiss of fury. “We’ll root them out and destroy them like the snakes
they are! Then we’ll put an end to this stickie in man’s clothing, Jacks.”

Ryan raised his unscarred right eyebrow at the baron’s display.
She was too preoccupied to notice, Krysty saw with relief.

If we held out only for employers who weren’t even a little
crazy, she reminded herself, we’d’ve starved to death years ago.

“Now the ville’s split pretty much in two,” Perico went on in a
voice like a heavy wag driving down a gravel road. “There’s a no-man’s-land runs
right through the middle of it. Smack in the center is the big public
fountain.”

“How does anybody get water?” Krysty asked.

“Every other day there’s a two-hour truce. Starts an hour
before noon. Anybody with a chit can draw water from the fountain. We still get
traders coming through. Even a mad dog like Jacks knows that’s gotta continue.
Also the ville folk from both sides can draw their water rations.”

“That’s how you keep the palace supplied?” Ryan asked.

Perico shook his head. “We’ve got wells dug in a few key
buildings,” he said. “Here in the palace. Also on the south side, in Sinorice’s
gaudy, where all the drovers and wag draggers went. When we ran his traitor ass
out of here, Jacks took his coldhearts straight there. They chased out poor Brad
Sinorice and made his place their headquarters. Sinorice is bunking with his old
pal Bill Itomaru the carpenter in no-man’s-land west of the square.”

“It is forbidden to dig wells for private purposes,” Miranda
declared. She had recovered her composure and with it her hauteur. “Those who
attempt such selfish acts are publicly drowned in glass vats for their
crimes.”

“Don’t get offenders more’n once or twice a generation,” Perico
said. “There’re wells in some other locations. Jacks’s headquarters has
one.”

The sec man rapped the map with hairy knuckles. “Anyway,
there’s your tactical situation.”

“And the gig you want us to do for you?” Ryan asked.

“There’s a square wood tower,” Perico said, stabbing the middle
of the map with a blunt forefinger, “on the south side of the square. Gives a
commanding view of the fountain and everything around. They keep a team of
snipers up there.”

“It is an intolerable provocation,” the baron declared. “I want
them destroyed.”

“They’re a royal pain in the ass,” Perico said. “If we can
seize that tower, it’ll be a major coup for our side. Be a long first step
toward recovering the whole ville.”

“I beg your pardon, Mr. Perico, Baron, young master,” Doc said,
“but as adept as we are, we are but three. Storming an enemy tower is much to
ask of us.”

“That’s not what we’re asking,” Perico said. “We just want you
to take down the blasters. You do that for us, Jenkins here will lead an assault
team to do the rest.”

“You will be handsomely compensated if you handle this for us,”
Miranda said. “Do it well enough, and we shall discuss longer-range
employment.”

“Fair enough,” Ryan said. “When you want it done?”

“Today would be good,” Perico replied with a grin.

Ryan polled the others with a glance. Krysty nodded once, while
Doc smiled slightly.

“Get your strike team ready,” Ryan said. “Give us an hour or
two to scout and set up, and we’re good to go.”

“And we’ll do the
hard
work,”
Jenkins said. “Remember that, money-fighter.”

“Keep telling yourself that, son,” Ryan said. “Now, what do we
have on this side of the line for vantage points?”