Chapter Thirty-Five

In her black skirt and jacket, the wisewoman was almost invisible among the lowering wall of pine trees. But the razor caught the filtered silver of the moon, giving a moment of warning of the threat behind the screeched attack.

Ryan spun around and Jak, coming next in line, also tried to grab at the wisewoman, missing her by scant inches.

Mildred was able to knock the cutthroat aside with the edge of her hand, but the impetus of the attack bowled her over and she fell down, tangled with the old Norsewoman.

Ryan stepped in closer, the panga glittering coldly in his hand. But Mildred saw him. "No!" she gasped. "Mine!"

It was a short, almost silent fight. Despite the lingering effects of the long freezing, Mildred was an unusually strong woman and quickly managed to shake the razor loose from her opponent's grip. She slapped the hag several times across the side of the head, ringing, jarring blows that quieted the woman and left her like a limp doll in Mildred's hands.

Mildred stood, keeping a hold on the side of the Viking seer's neck, pressing her fingers in just below and behind the ear.

"You evil, blood-eyed old bitch," she hissed, tightening her grip.

None of the others tried to interfere in the chilling process, which was very swift. Mildred's practiced fingers located the arteries and choked off the supply of blood to the brain. The hag's eyes protruded and her tongue, purpling, thrust between her swollen lips. There was a harsh rattle from her throat and she went limp. Mildred opened her hands and allowed the shrunken corpse to drop to the dirt.

She straightened and looked around at the faces of the other four. "She deserved to die."

"Surely," Krysty agreed.

Then the tears came, flowing down Mildred's cheeks. She shook her head, refusing comfort from any of them. "No, I'll be all right. It's delayed shock. Oh, God, but this Deathlands is a dreadful place. Dreadful. I've just killed a woman with my bare hands!"

"But she deserved to die," Ryan protested.

Mildred rounded on him. "But I'm a doctor, for Christ's sake!"

They saw and heard no one as they moved at their best pace down the main trail toward the deserted ville.

The corpses lay where they'd fallen, and the bonfire had slumbered to glowing ashes. Mildred had recovered some of her composure, but the sight of yet more bodies upset her.

"Do flowers die where you set your foot, Ryan Cawdor?"

His anger, short-fused, flared. "Your world wasn't so great, was it? Don't utter your stupid moralizing here, Mildred! These people, like many in Deathlands, dislike outsiders. Outlanders. So far we've been lucky on this jump. None of us have been chilled. But I've lost friends... too many to count. When it comes down to it, you either pull the trigger or you swallow the bullet. That's all there is."

His tirade was followed by silence. Mildred met his gaze and nodded slowly. "Maybe you're right, Ryan. And you saved my ass back there so... so I thank you. But I don't know if I'll ever get used to Deathlands."

Jak was staring past the smoldering ruin of what had been their hut, toward the far hillside. "Coming," he said. "Hear them."

Ryan's worry was that the surviving Norsemen might try to cut them off before they could reach the ridge, or that they knew a quicker route that would bring them into the tropical jungle toward the redoubt faster than the companions could travel.

There hadn't been time to carry out any sort of check on who had been chilled in the brief firefight, but he was sure that the Viking baron, Thoraldson, had escaped. So had the young warrior Erik Stonebiter. He guessed the better part of twenty able fighting men could pursue them.

Then again, after such a devastating defeat and so many lost, it was even more possible that there would be no pursuit at all.

"By the three Kennedys!"

"Hi, Doc."

"Upon my soul, Ryan, I swear that I nearly jumped out of my skin. I never heard you approaching."

"Just grabbing a few seconds of eye-close, were you, Doc?" J.B. asked, his teeth gleaming white in the moonlight.

"When I need your common insinuations, John Barrymore Dix, I shall most certainly ask you for them," Doc snapped.

"What was that?" Mildred asked. "Was that John BarrymoreDix? Boy, no wonder you stick with J.B. Gotta remember that."

They'd met up once again with Doc Tanner on the steep, snaking trail that rose crookedly from Markland toward the distant ridge. With the trees closing in around them, it was impossible to see more than a hundred yards in any direction. Both Krysty and Jak were agreed that they could no longer hear any sounds of pursuit, which could mean that the Vikings had chosen to remain behind in their ville and mourn their dead.

A heavy shower of rain began, which in no time soaked them all and dampened their spirits. It also turned the path into a treacherous mud slide. Only Jak and Ryan avoided falling in the greasy furrows, picking their way through virtual darkness. The moon had waned, disappearing eventually behind swooping banks of thick chem clouds that had ridden in from the north.

Another problem that slowed their progress was fog. It lay like a wide ribbon of silver-gray velvet across the expanse of the great lake, below them. But it was also gathering itself above them, near the ridge. It seeped over from the wide valley on the farther side, spilling silently between the trees, softening the stark silhouettes and dropping visibility to close to zero.

Though Jak's eyesight wasn't that great in the brightness of day, he saw better at night than any of them, even better than Krysty with her mutie-enhanced vision. Now he took the lead, making his way cautiously up the slippery track, followed by the rest, who were guided by the beacon of his white mane of hair. But it was painfully slow progress.

After Doc had fallen heavily, nearly spraining his ankle, Ryan called a halt.

"Double-stupe to go on," he said. "Rain's starting again. Can't see properly. Trail's dangerous. Best wait up for first light."

"What about the locals?" J.B. reminded, leaning against a tree and trying to wipe clotted mud off his boots.

Ryan brushed rain from his forehead. "Yeah. Worries me, too. They'll know this place a lot better'n us. They'll know we're making for the top of the hill. Follow our marks easy in this mud."

"Wait ambush fuckers," was Jak's suggestion.

"No. If we were sure — real sure — they were coming this way, we could do that. Chop them down from cover. But we don't. Likely there's plenty of hunting trails up and over the top of the mountain. Who knows which one?"

"Only the Shadow knows," Mildred said in a sepulchral tone.

The combination of rain, driven from over the water on the teeth of a rising wind, and drifting slabs of bitter fog, made it a thoroughly miserable night for all of them. The temperature fell sharply after midnight, and Ryan insisted that they huddle together for warmth and protection.

"If those mad Vikings want to come up in this weather and try and take me," Mildred said through chattering teeth, "then they're goddamned welcome to me."

The dawn's early light brought virtually no improvement to conditions. The wind was close to gale force and carried the stinging bite of acid rain. Not the most acidic Ryan had ever experienced, but bad enough to irritate the eyes and taste sour on the skin. The fog had cleared, but the sun wasn't able to cut through the swaths of dark cloud.

Parts of the path were sheeted in orange mud, and it took the companions another three hours to get close to the top of the hill.

The tight mass of conifers had gradually thinned, and mud was replaced by loose stones. Out on the exposed flank of the mountain, the wind had risen to a ferocious howling that plucked at the clothes and made breathing difficult.