"Leave... him," Harvey stammered. "He can... he is... Why not a knife each? One hunting dagger for each man, and for the redhead witch."

Ryan dropped a deep bow to his brother. "One knife against all your men and dogs. Still the white-bellied coward, brother."

"I could have you all torn and burned," Harvey Cawdor protested, his voice a petulant squeak.

"That would show your fear even better, fool," Rachel whispered. "Close your mouth and let us go to our rooms. I have..." The sentence dangled in the dusty dawn light of the long, vaulted hall.

To have a knife was better than anything Ryan Cawdor could have hoped for.

He'd sensed a new spring in the steps of his three friends. J.B. nodded to him almost imperceptibly as they parted company in the upper corridor. Jak whistled a song Ryan had heard before, something about feeling on fire. And Krysty recovered from the horror of the dark night that had seared her soul. She almost glowed as she walked away from the hall. To be burned alive had faced them all. Now they had a chance.

Four blades against thirty or so men who had M-16s, horses and dogs.

That was their chance.

The Trader used to say that if you found yourself with no hope, or odds of a million to one, you took the long odds.

"Long odds," Ryan said to himself as the sec men slammed the door of his room, having chained him once more to the wall.

The meal was soup and fresh bread. Good soup, rich with vegetables. And half a loaf, still warm on the outside, sweet and crumbling on the inside. They freed his hands to eat but left the chain around his neck.

One of the guards stared curiously at him. "You're truly Lord Ryan Cawdor, aren't you? My father spoke well about you until his death."

"It was speaking well cost him his life," the other young sec man mumbled. "Baron set him waltzing on air on the river road, these five years past."

"If Harvey is such a blood-eyed chiller, why not rise against him?" Ryan asked.

"Would you swallow the barrel of a blaster? First man to say treason dies. And then the second. The baron is careful and ruthless. It would take a great rising and his death. And his lady's."

The sec man was nudged by his friend. "Enough. Too much. Lock him again and let's get out of here 'fore we do the oxyjean jig like your father did."

Ryan could just see the edge of the rising sun through the window. His guess was that it was around eleven o'clock. The sky was a light blue-green, tinted with flecks of orange cloud. Far below him he could hear the excited yapping of the hunting dogs, sensing that they were to be set free on a hunt. Ryan closed his eye and tried to relax, but the sound of the door opening disturbed him.

Oddly he wasn't all that surprised to see that his visitor was Lady Rachel Cawdor.

She stepped toward him, eyes bright in the sunlit room. The lady had obviously been enjoying several lines of jolt, and her whole body seemed to tremble with an eager anticipation.

"Your life is measured in short hours, brother-in-law," she said.

Ryan nodded, wondering why she had come yet again to see him.

"Don't you realize you're going to die?" she asked, drawing nearer to him.

"We all are," he replied.

Rachel sighed. "If we could... But that's all water under the mill. You're twenty times the man your brother... that blubbering pile of lard... It can still be done. I can have him done to death. Half the ville would dance on his grave."

"Replace him with me?" Ryan asked. "The long chill is sweet compared to that."

"But now Jabez has been taken by... By who, Ryan? Not wizards. Tell me how it was done. Where is the boy's corpse?"

"Hell, bitch. I hope."

She nodded slowly. "You and I could rule the Shens and beyond, Ryan. I picked wrong with Harvey. And now he... I came for a last chance for you. Will you join me?"

"If I'm going't'die before dark, then I can go with that. It's paying the price to live with yourself on your own terms. Not something a murderous slut like you can understand. Just fuck off, and leave me be, Rachel."

"You scorn the chance to be one of the lords of life, Ryan. Then I leave you..."

A line of verse came back to Ryan that Doc was fond of using: "To the pleasure of my high vices, that I'll have to pay for at higher prices."

"You think dying in the jaws of his dogs is going to be funny, you double-stupe? I wish I could ride to watch, but Harvey'll take his funning, then come back for the yellow-head girl in the cells. And life, Ryan Cawdor, will go on."

She stooped over him, and he felt the brush of her lips against the stubbled skin of his cheek, as cold as the tomb, her breath carrying the sharp flavor of jolt. Then she straightened and walked quickly to the door. She paused a moment with her hand on the latch, as if she were about to say more, but she turned away without another word and left him alone.

Krysty buckled the sheathed knife onto her leather belt.

Jak drew his and tossed it a few times into the air, feeling for its balance before sheathing it at the small of his back.

J.B. tested the edge against the palm of his hand, stooping and pressing the steel against the stones of the courtyard, trying out the tension of the blade.

Ryan also drew the dagger that he'd been given. It had a handle of narrow strips of hide, bound around a steel hilt. The blade was single-edged, very sharp, around eleven inches in length and two inches broad at the haft. It was a workmanlike hunting knife.

He thought that it would probably do.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

The sun rode high in the heavens, its brassy glare beating down pitilessly on the forests and streams of the Shens.

Ryan was the first one out of the rattling cart, jumping down, stretching, feeling the freedom in his shoulders and wrists. His eye was caught by a flicker of movement high in the wrack of lemon-yellow clouds. He stared up at it and saw it was a massive mutie hawk with a wingspan of about twenty feet and a hooked beak that would take the arm off a man.

J.B., Jak and finally Krysty stepped onto the dusty lane. The mounted sec men gazed blank-faced at them, their rifles slung across their shoulders on webbing straps. The sergeant with the damaged mouth was in charge of the patrol, and as they had clattered along from the ville, he told Ryan a little of what to expect.

"Oxbow Loop's where the baron does his man-hunting. It's 'bout two miles across. Be men blocking off this end, so the only way's in. River's too fast and wide to swim. Muties on far side, if'n you want to try it. Rain we've had'll make it swollen and twice as fast as usual. Lotta trees in there. Streams. No buildings. One trail to a gas store for the ville's main generators. Nothing to help. Nobody to help. And nowhere to go. Nowhere. Best time was a breed, coupla years back. Made it for better'n two hours. And killed a dog." There was a note of grudging admiration in the sec officer's voice.

Ryan knew his brother would be along with the pack of hounds in about a half hour. And more sec men. Dinner had taken longer than Baron Harvey had anticipated, and the hunt would now begin as soon as the sonorous bell in the tower of Front Royal tolled once for the hour after noon.

Lori Quint laid back on the narrow bed, knees tucked up to her chin, watching a gray-brown spider as it wound its way across the ceiling. She was wondering who that immensely fat man had been who'd appeared for a moment in the doorway, licking his fleshy lips and muttering in a monotonous and obscene whisper. She'd only managed to catch the words "Later, pretty bitch."

It was more than enough to make her restless and fearful. The sudden booming of the bell in the tower above made her jump and cry out in shock.