"Then what?"

"I thought I saw somethin' there. Just by that ridge of light rock, over toward where that pond lies."

Ryan followed the man's stubby finger, seeing that he was pointing in the general direction of where he and Krysty had made love the previous evening.

"This was before Trader went or after?"

"Like after. I seen him walkin' away, and there was a good moon up, so he showed clear. I watched, and then I saw this thing up there, like it was waitin' for the Trader. First I figured he..."

"A man?"

"I'm tellin' ya, Ryan. I figured he might be one of the muties that done the feathers and skulls and stuff, so I get a bead on him, ready to ice him. Then I see the Trader lift a hand to him, and this old man lifts a hand back. They meet up and go under the trees and that's all I see. No danger, so I don't raise a warnin' for everyone. Then, the Trader... he don't come back."

"Tell me about this man. This old man, you said. What was he like?"

"He had silver hair in braids, one on each side. And a long coat with some fancy patterns on it."

"Anything else?"

"Yeah. Isaw it through the scope in the moonlight, in his hair, the old man had a long white feather."

Nobody ever saw the old man with the white feather in his hair. Nor was the Trader ever seen again.

Chapter Fifteen

The roads high in the darks were as bad as anything any of them had ever seen. Bucketing ribbons of twisted concrete vanished into rivers and never came out again. Whole slabs of the hillsides had melted during earth tremors a century ago. They were looking for the remains of a township shown on their tattered maps as Babb, but the devastation was so total that they had little hope of finding it. Lakes had filled in where there should have been dry land, and tiny feeder streams had become howling torrents of angry melt water.

The greater the elevation, the slower their progress. The farther they went, the worse the weather became. The night skies clouded over and the fearsome chem clouds of nuclear detritus billowed about them, with incandescent bursts of flame searing the tops of the peaks. The great northerly winds came screeching in from the desert wastes that had once been the fruitful prairies of Canada. It took them four grindingly oppressive days to get close to the treeline, finding that great fires had raged through the pine forests, stripping the land, leaving the soil to be eroded to bare rock and ice. The dials in the war wag showed a daytime high of minus ten Celsius, with the night temperatures dropping fast to minus thirty. Add in the windchill factor and you had a land where a man would be dead within minutes if he didn't have adequate thermal protection.

Ryan was dozing in his bunk when a particularly vicious jolt woke him. As he stood he was aware that they had stopped moving and the engine now ticked over in neutral. He was on his way to the control room before Ches started calling him over the intercom.

J.B. was there before him.

"End of the line," he said.

Ryan looked out the front screen, seeing only gray ice and swirling snow. The road, if there was one there at all, was invisible.

"Not even the war wag can get us farther," said Ches, leaning back in the padded seat. "The trail's gotten way too narrow. Looks like one track in and the same one out. So there's no point goin' back and tryin' some other way."

"How far from where the Redoubt might be?" asked Ryan, biting his lip in impatient anger. To have come all this way and fail so near to their destination only added to the concern he already felt about their supplies, and Ryan was angry. Gas would be running low in about a week, and way up here in the Darks there wouldn't be caches hidden away for them. The Trader had made sure that throughout the Deathlands there were plenty of such caches, buried deep and safe. But not this far north into the blighted country.

Cohn was hunched over his mapping table and he replied to Ryan's question. "Way I see it... from what you said and the redhead said and most of all from what that poor bastard Kurt said, it should be ahead about a day's climb. Someplace."

"That's a lot of hellfired help, Cohn. What the hell does 'someplace' mean?"

"Sorry, Ryan. Just that my map's all worn and patched. Looks like 'Grinning Glacier,' best I can see. Steep trail over where a lake used to be. Who knows what's there now?"

J.B. turned from the screen, "Time our feet earned their living, Ryan. Let's go talk."

Ten.

That was the final number for the party, reached after better than an hour of discussion. J.B. had wanted to keep it smaller, but Ryan had pushed for more to be included. And both of them wanted to come on the expedition, insisting that the other should remain in charge of the war wag.

In the end it was Cohn, the most experienced member of the unit, who was delegated to take command while Ryan and J.B. led the trek toward... Toward what?

Krysty had to come, and so, Ryan insisted, did Doc. Whatever there might be up behind the fog with teeth and claws, Doc seemed to know something about it. And something was all they had. The remainder of their team were Hunaker, Koll, Hennings, Abe, the man called Finnegan and a top blaster, Okie. She was a tall, silent girl whose skill with any firearm was legendary on the war wag.

Cohn's orders were simple and explicit.

"Keep in radio contact. Twenty-four-hour watch on the emergency frequency. Four guards out, turn and turn about each hour. Full alert all the time. Keep her locked up tighter than a Baron's cred chest."

And then the most important part of it.

"If we're back, then we'll be here in four days. Call it a flat hundred hours. Unless you hear from us to abort this command, after one hundred hours precise, you push the boot to the floor and give her the gas and get out. From then on you're on your own."

"What about a relief party?" Cohn asked J.B. and Ryan.

"There won't be one, you stupe bastard," snarled Ryan. "Hundred hours and we're not back, you go."

"Where?"

"Watch my lips, Cohn," interjected J. B. Dix. "We go. You stay. We come back in less'n a hundred hours, all fine. If not, then War Wag One is yours. And you'll be low on gas and supplies, so get out fast. Now just nod your head if you understand."

"Sure," Cohn replied with a nod. "That's fine. I'll be here like you say. And if there's problems, call it in."

Each member of the team carried a pistol and rifle of their own choice. Each carried four grenades on the belts, a mix of incendiary, stun, implosion, high-ex, shrap, nerve gas and smoke. Each of them had a knife or edged weapon of his or her choosing, ranging from Krysty's delicate throwing knives in her bandolier to Finnegan's butcher's cleaver that would take the head off a horse in one blow.

They carried enough food for five days, with a small supply of water-pure tabs. Ammunition supplied most of the weight to their packs, along with a radio operated by Henn. No spare clothes or sleeping gear. There was no room for that kind of comfort.

They agreed that the best time to leave was around dawn the next day. Koll was designated to take charge of Doc, whose mind still vacillated between extremes of brief clarity and long spells of catatonic madness. His only response when Ryan Cawdor told him that they were planning on going toward the hidden Redoubt was to smile and bow, his hat nearly falling off. Krysty had managed to sew some strong elasticized cord for him to use when they ventured outside into the gales. He'd refused any helmet or goggles like the others, saying that a scarf for his throat would suffice.

"Suffice" was the word he'd used. Now he just asked Ryan about the guard dog.