"Ryan! By Ysun, giver of all life, wake up! If I slap you any harder my hand'll fall off the end of my arm."

Slowly and painfully, Ryan eased open his right eye.

The pain was so severe that he closed it again. Fighting against the desire to throw up, he drew in several deep, slow breaths, his head swimming. After a few moments he tried again, squinting around him.

He could see the mantis figure of Donfil crouched at his side. They were in a small room, no larger than a broom closet, with chinks of light peeking through slits around a door in the ceiling.

Ryan's brain was still utterly befuddled. "Why's the door in the ceiling?" he croaked, aware that his throat was painfully dry and his voice was feeble.

"Come on, Ryan," the Apache urged, chafing his friend's wrists, trying to bring him to full consciousness a little more quickly.

"No. Why's the door...and why are we moving, and what's that smell like tar and fish? The creaking noise is... Oh, fireblast! Now I know. I can remember it all, Donfil. That fucking bastard Rodriguez!"

He sat up, moaning as the side of his head came smartly into contact with a protruding oaken beam. Donfil leaned back, folding his legs under him. "Yeah. We're at sea. The rad scum sold us out."

"Who?.. You don't think?.."

Ryan got the answer to his incomplete question. Overhead they both heard the hollow sound of something rapping wood at regular intervals. Something that could only be the iron ferrule on the end of a walking stick.

"Captain Pyra Quadde," Donfil said, his face a pale oblong blur in the dim light.

The Indian had only come around himself a handful of minutes before Ryan, so neither of them had any idea how long they'd been prisoners aboard the Salvation. Both of them felt appallingly sick, a condition not helped by the cramped, stuffy locker where they were being held and the tossing of the vessel. Ryan knew little about the ocean, but it seemed as though the ship were breasting long rollers, rather than the choppy, short waves encountered near the coast.

"What about the others?" Ryan asked.

"They didn't drink."

"If you'd gone up with them, then you'd have been safe. It was me that the old gaudy bitch wanted. Not you."

"Unless she wanted me for my skill with the whaling spear."

"Likely the others have been thrown out of the ville by now. Or set to forced slave work. Doubt they'll have been harmed."

"No. You reckon she'll chill us?"

Ryan nodded, finding that the nauseating swimming across his temples was easing. "Sure. Do stickies love fires? She'll mebbe work me first. No place to run on a ship, is there?"

"No. Not much hope in fighting. Must be twenty or more men riding here."

"Just keep quiet and do like we're told. That's about the best plan I can think of right now."

Locked away, Ryan was forced to take stock of his situation, and to try to find what hopes there might be for himself and his companion.

There wasn't much on the plus side. They'd both been stripped of their own clothes and roughly dressed in thick cotton breeches and dark blue woolen sweaters. Because of Donfil's inordinate height, his pants barely reached his knees and the sleeves of his sweater finished just below his elbows. Both men were barefoot and both had been relieved of their weapons.

There were coils of rope in the locker, stowed neatly away, and several small anchors, but nothing that could conceivably be used to fight with. Ryan felt his way around the darkness, on the off chance that someone might have dropped a knife. But there was nothing of any use. And every rope he touched felt slimy and slippery, from the whale oil that Doc had been talking about, he guessed.

"There's no point, Ryan. It's the way of my people to make the best of what is. And not to weep over what is not. We're trapped. If they want to chill us, then they'll chill us. We can maybe take a couple with us to the shadowland beyond. But they might not chill us. So, we'll live."

Ryan couldn't think of a smart answer, so he crawled to his corner and sat huddled on a coil of thick rope.

Every now and again a wave of the drug would come surging up in his throat, like an extra high wave on a sloping beach, and it would suck him back into the dimness of half sleep. As Donfil had said, there was little point in trying to speculate on what might happen to them in the next few hours.

When it happened, then it would happen. The only thing that worried him at all was what might have happened at the Rising Flukes, once he and the Apache had failed to join the others.

It was Krysty who'd found out that life had dealt a hand filled with spades and clubs.

While waiting in the bedroom, watching condensation trickling down the cold panes of glass, she'd begun to worry about Ryan and the Indian taking so long in their private word with the landlord. Like many people in the Deathlands, Krysty carried mutie blood in her. One of the effects of this was that she could sense certain things — see the future in a limited way, sometimes be aware of the presence of good.

And evil.

She'd rolled over on her side and sat, still fully clothed, waiting for them to begin their planned escape. She could see J.B., sitting cross-legged on his own bed, staring at her.

"I'm thinking..." the girl began, but the Armorer interrupted her.

"Yeah. Me an' all. I reckon I heard men moving in the alley. You see anything?"

Krysty closed her eyes. "I felt real bad down in that drinker there. Men by the door were waiting for... and Rodriguez was nearly shitting his pretty, tight trousers. Only... Oh, Gaia! I can seeit now! Come on!"

By the time she'd reached the top of the stairs, weapon in her hand, it was all over.

The bar was filled with sec men, all armed, muzzles of rifles and scatterguns pinning her in place. Rodriguez was behind the bar, wiping sweat from his face. Ryan's weapons and white silk scarf were on the bar, as were Donfil's Smith & Wesson Distinguished Combat .357 Magnum and mirrored sunglasses. Both men were gone.

"Don't move, outlander. Place is covered tighter than a sea gull's shit hole." The voice came from the sec man who'd first stopped them on the road into Claggartville. It was a calm, gentle voice, with no anger or arrogance. Just a man doing his job with a quiet efficiency. "Thou and thy friends had best come down and leave us your blasters. Then ye can all go back to your own quarters until morning. Nobody will harm ye."

"Ryan?" she said hesitantly, conscious of her four friends at her shoulder, frozen by the sec men's overwhelming force.

"Gone to seek the works of the Lord, outlander," intoned Rodriguez. "And His wonders in the deep." He paused. "And may the good Lord Jesus, our Redeemer, have mercy on his soul."