More thunder and lightning issued from a swirling sky that now glowed red in the west. Ryan waited, picking the moment when all of the enemy would be out in the open at once.

At thirty paces the sec men stopped and the leading figure turned around, pointing toward where Ryan waited. He tensed, even though he knew they couldn't possibly make him out in that weather and light. The pointman turned back, throwing off the shiny black hood. Another slash of silver lightning showed Ryan the face. And the hair.

Green hair.

"Hunaker! Hun, over here!"

The woman stared through the rain, mouth sagging with surprise. "Ryan? Ryan, you old bastard! Ryan!"

She ran toward him, then stopped and stared at him, and to their mutual embarrassment, she began to weep.

Chapter Twelve

Dawn was about an hour away.

The rain had stopped and the electrical storm had passed, grumbling its way to the south of them, leaving a quiet night. All the new arrivals had been fed and found bunks in the war wag.

Only J. B. Dix remained awake, talking to Ryan, telling him what had finally gone down in Mocsin. Around them, in the slumbering forest, the sentries still patrolled. They would all be on the move by first light.

J.B.'s report was characteristically terse.

"Convoy blew, knocked us all to hell and back. Sam an' Hun was laid out colder than a ten-year winter. I got my shoulder bruised some. Figured it was broke, but it's not. Girls came around and we got out. Koll found the old man, Doc. Gotten scrambled brains, Ryan. I don't know about him at all." J.B. stopped and shook his head, the glowing embers of the dying fire glinting off the steel-rimmed glasses. In the half light, his face looked more sallow and pinched than ever.

"Where d'you pick up Charlie and the guy they was huntin'? Kurt? He looks near dead, Kurt."

"Him and the Trader both. I looked in on him. Can't be more than days now, Ryan."

"Yeah."

"Fishmouth Charlie and Kurt was on the edge of Mocsin. She was near carrying him. We stopped with them to draw breath. Kurt was mumbling about when he was a blaster with McCandless up in the Darks. Claimed he knew the way to find the fogs. Said there was a big, big secret up there. A Redoubt, he called it. Figured we'd bring him. We liberated these clothes from some of Strasser's killers. There's been a small fight. Few bodies around."

Ryan guessed from J.B.'s taciturn description that it had probably been a desperate battle, but there was no point in pressing J.B. for that kind of detail. It was the results that mattered to the weapons master, not how they were obtained.

"I figured you'd gone this way," Dix continued. "Strasser's bound to come after us. He went ape-crazy. Saw him twice but I couldn't get a clear shot at him. I think our bombs fired the whole town. A rising wind did the rest. I looked back and Mocsin was most gone."

"You made good time," Ryan said. "Another few hours and we'd have been gone and in the hills. You'd never have caught us."

"Rock and a hard place, my boy," Dix said cheerlessly. "Managed to beg a couple of buggies from some sec men who didn't need them anymore. Ran out of gas three, four hours ago. Been on foot since then. Had to be the Darks."

"Yeah," Ryan replied with a nod. "It's the Darks."

They sat in silence for some minutes. J.B. had retrieved one of his favorite thin cheroots from his locker in War Wag One and reclined on the cool earth, gazing into the smoldering coals of the fire.

Ryan broke the silence. "Strasser will guess it's the Darks."

"He can't have much of a force left," Dix muttered. "Either he catches us real soon, or he doesn't catch us at all."

"I'll rouse everyone. They can catch up on missing sleep over next day or so, if we keep out of trouble. I'll get 'em out and start the show."

The sky was noticeably lighter to the south and east, but it was streaked with dark, oily smoke that showed up against the red tinge of dawn. Something big was burning out of control. That would be Mocsin.

Behind him, Ryan heard the familiar noises of the war wag coming to life. Everyone knew his task and his place. Inside the vehicle there would be little talk, beyond the routine checks of switches and contacts. It was something that J.B. had introduced to the Trader, stressing the importance of everyone knowing not only his own duties, but the jobs of at least two other members of the crew. And time and again that insistence had saved all their lives.

Standing outside the vehicle, Ryan knew precisely where they were all positioned and what they would be doing. Ches in the driver's seat, eyes ranging over the dials, automatically checking fuel, pressures and temperatures. O'Mara in the MG blister, dry-firing the piece, making sure of the ammunition. Even Loz would be busy, stacking away all the pots and pans, seeing that in the heat of a fight there would be no cooking knives or cleavers flying around inside the armored cabin.

And the Trader?

Normally he would be at the helm, here and everywhere. A gruff question perhaps, and a firm hand on a shoulder. His eyes flicking all about, giving a word of praise or a word of criticism. But now he was lying on his bunk, asleep from the drugs Krysty had given him. It was the first time in all the years that Ryan had known him that the Trader had agreed to take any medication. Which said a lot about his condition.

The out-ranging guards had fallen back from their perimeter and had been joined by a man and woman from the war wag. Each of them stood watch at a corner of the huge combat vehicle, scanning the blank walls of the forest all around them.

Ryan found Fishmouth Charlie changed from the black uniform into a pale fawn coverall, a brown denim hat pulled down low over her thick, curling hair. In the first pale hint of dawn's light, he could make out the tiny, pouting mouth and the goggling eyes that had given the woman her name.

"Ready, Charlie?" he asked.

"Sure am. Regular little army the Trader's gotten his-self. Didn't find 'em too friendly at first, but they kind of accept us."

"How's Kurt?"

"Not good. Figures everyone's out to kill him. He knows you're headin' into the Darks and he keeps mumbling 'bout the fogs there."

Ryan rubbed a long forefinger down the side of his nose, glancing back over his shoulder at the nearest entrance to War Wag One. It was about time they were off and moving in case Strasser...

Blood and splattered brains blinded him for a moment. Sharp fragments of bone from the shattered skull stung the side of his face.

"Hellblast," he hissed, half turning, ducking as he did so. He was conscious of the sound of the gun. A high-velocity rifle, fired from a couple of hundred paces away, among the screen of trees. It had fluked a hit on poor old Charlie at his side. Probably one of the countless M-16s he'd seen around Mocsin, hefted by the sec men.

Such thoughts took him a splinter of frozen time. More lead ricocheted off the side of the war wagon, leaving a splash of silvery metal to the right of the nearest door.

"Lights!" Ryan yelled, realizing what a great target the golden rectangle was. But someone inside, no doubt J.B., was quicker, and the lights went out even as he shouted the warning.

The firing became heavier, all concentrated on Ryan's side. In the false dawn he saw the muzzle-flashes and he snapped off a burst from the LAPA, not waiting to see if they had any effect. Charlie's corpse was still at his feet, twitching, arms and legs flailing in the residual movements of death mimicking life. The bullet had hit her through the right side of the cheek, angling upward, dislodging one of her bulbous eyes, exiting near the top of her skull, and flipping the cap off in a welter of blood.