Chapter Thirty-Three

Sec Trooper Baker was in charge of the main gateway into the ville, with young Sec Trooper Lesser as his companion. They were two of the dozen or so guards left behind when Baron Cawdor had ridden out to hunt an hour past noon. They'd watched him go, each man rigidly at attention, carbines at port arms.

The ville was quiet. Word had quickly gotten around the small settlements that surrounded the main house — word that the long-lost Lord Ryan had returned and been captured; word that during the day, he and his companions would become the victims of the hunting pack of crossbred hounds.

It was something over an hour later — neither man was sufficiently high in the rankings of the sec men to merit his own chron — and they were talking quietly about the merits of a two-edged knife against a single blade.

Then the explosion came with a shock wave that fluttered dried leaves on the cobbles leading to the drawbridge, rippling the surface of the filthy moat.

The noise was like a hundred distant peals of thunder collected into one great booming crash.

Baker jumped, nearly dropping his M-16. "May Blessed Ryan save us!" he exclaimed, the words out before he could stop them. But his companion was too startled himself to notice the treasonable utterance bursting from Trooper Baker.

A cloud of smoke gushed straight up. It was dark and oily, and Lesser's sharp sight picked out black shapes that rose within it and then fell again into the trees. The light breeze tugged at the toppling crown of the smoke, tearing it into ragged streaks of gray. Within a couple of minutes the wind brought the faint smell of gasoline to the two men, overlaid with another scent, oddly familiar, yet elusive. It reminded Lesser of something in the kitchens, but he couldn't say what.

Neither man knew quite what he should do. The explosion certainly had come from the direction of the Oxbow Loop, where the hunting always took place, and it had been a truly awesome explosion. But what it portended?.. That was the question.

Neither man even knew who was supposed to be in charge of the ville. The baron was gone, and he'd taken virtually everyone with him, including the senior sec officer. Lesser wondered, nervously, if one of them ought to go and tell Lady Rachel about the explosion. But that meant going all the way to her suite of rooms and risking her anger if she was sleeping. Or "busy." And both men knew what "busy" might mean to the Baron's wife.

So they did nothing.

About half an hour later Baker heard a horse coming toward them at a fast canter from the general direction of the Oxbow Loop Road. And they could hear shouting — a man roaring in a hoarse voice.

With barely a dozen men in the whole ville, there was no question of turning out the guard. All they could do was move cautiously back inside the main gateway, readying their M-16s for whatever might be approaching them.

"It's the baron," Lesser said.

"Lost his hat."

"Cloak's torn."

"Gone stark crazy," Baker suggested, "shouting like that."

The horse was lathered, rolling from side to side with utter exhaustion, stumbling as it reached the far end of the drawbridge, nearly tipping Harvey Cawdor in to join his son. He hung along the neck, eyes wide and shot with blood, mouth open. It was difficult to make out any words in the harsh raging.

"Nevermore... all... all fucked. My brother comes and..."

Once inside the courtyard, Baron Harvey Cawdor slithered from the saddle and fell to the cold stones, lying on his face, weeping. The two sec men were joined by two more from the guardhouse.

"Bastard smell of gasoline," one said.

"And he's drenched in blood," Lesser observed.

"Where's the others, my lord?" Trooper Baker asked. "They coming, my lord?"

Harvey turned, and they all took an involuntary step backward. The face they saw was scarcely human. The eyes were frozen, the pupils like the pricks of a needle. The color had gone completely, and there were deep furrows etched around mouth, nose and eyes. Hundreds of tiny specks of crusted blood dotted his cheeks, matting the scorched hair. His whole body trembled.

"Coming? Who? Brother Ryan? Nevermore. Never ever more more."

"Where's the rest of the men and the dogs, my lord?" Baker asked, showing amazing courage to press the madman. Or incredible foolishness.

Lesser went back on the drawbridge, shading his eyes with his hand. The wind had freshened, veering to the east, with the promise of colder weather and some rain within the next day or so. The roads all around the ville were deserted. "Nobody coming," he called. "Not a sight of 'em."

"The rest?" Baker repeated.

Harvey Cawdor rose to his feet, drawing the remnants of his tattered dignity around him. "The rest, my good fellow, is gone. Are gone. Chilled. Blown to a better place or world or whatever. Each dog and each horse and each man are here, in my face." He rubbed at the congealed blood. "Each spot a life. And all chilled by my brother. I think he will be here shortly. So keep good watch." He clapped Baker on the shoulder and then kissed him on the cheek, turning on his heel and waddling crookedly away into the main body of the great ville.

Baker gathered together the remaining sec men, talking in whispers of what had happened. Their lord was utterly insane. His wife a jolt junkie and his son disappeared in a bloody mist. All of their fellows were slain in some gigantic explosion, and the ville was surrounded by hundreds of villagers, all waiting for the moment to rise against Front Royal and take their vengeance for the years of bloody oppression. And that vengeance would also spill against the sec men who'd helped the Cawdors keep their hold on that part of the Shens.

"And Lord Ryan will come..." Lesser said. "And he will hold us for..." The sentence trailed away into the late afternoon sunshine.

It took only four or five minutes for the dozen sec men to reach their decision. Within fifteen minutes they had gone and changed into civilian clothes, out of the ville's hated uniforms, making their way by ones and twos into the surrounding woods.

Most were recognized and murdered before they'd gone five miles.

Rachel Cawdor met her husband in one of the maze of corridors that wound through the upper floors of the rambling house. She had woken from her drug-frozen sleep, calling for her servants, finding the ville was inexplicably deserted. The air carried the taint of roasted meat and gasoline. In the silence she began to wonder whether the jolt had finally scrambled her brains and transported her to some different world, familiar, yet oddly altered in detail.

Then she met Harvey, and the feeling of alienation intensified. His eyes stared at her, bloodshot and blank. There were spots of mud all over him, and his hair and eyebrows were grizzled to stubble. His clothes were torn and stained, hanging from his limping body like an ill-fitting and ornate shroud.

"Where's everyone? What's happened? Tell me, damn you!"

"Dead, my dearest dove," he said in the hushed tones you might associate with some great church.

"Dead? Ryan and the others? All the prisoners dead?"

He smiled with a surpassing gentleness, frightening Rachel more than any rage might. "No, my pearl of the Orient. I think they all live. It is us who are chilled. Chilled forever more, nevermore."

She shook her head, feeling a band of icy steel tightening around her temples. "If Ryan and the others live, then who is dead? And where are?.."

Harvey nodded to her, still smiling. "He is clever, my little brother. Led us on and in and then... Boom!" He clapped his chubby hands together. "Boom. They all died at once. It was wonderful. Fire and noise, and they were gone. More witchery, like Jabez."