The sun rose into a sky of brilliant blue, with only a handful of scattered, purple chem clouds to mar its perfection.
Ryan, J.B., Doc and Jak had talked quietly until late in the night, trying to formulate some sort of plan. There'd been general agreement among them that Markland surely wasn't the kind of ville in which to pass the rest of your life.
The conclusion was simple, and Doc voiced it best. "A rad-sick, brutalized, antiwomen, primitive and lost community. To visit here is like visiting the dark side of the Middle Ages on a bad day."
"So we get out." Ryan's words weren't any kind of question.
"Today," Jak agreed.
"Tonight," J.B. offered.
Ryan hadn't been so certain. And now, as he stood with one hand on the crudely carved door frame, looking out across the great lake, he felt his worries were justified.
The setting of the ville made it difficult to break clear and run. The bowl of wooded hills were a maze of twining paths, and the Norsemen would know and hunt along all of them. Once the crest of the ridge was reached, there was the perilous descent into the hothouse tropical world that hid the redoubt.
Some of the Vikings were obviously sickly, but there were enough healthy warriors to make escape hazardous. Though Mildred looked as if she could wrestle a grizzly, she obviously wasn't anywhere near fit yet, after the long freezing. And stamina over rough backcountry had never exactly been Doc Tanner's strongest suit.
J.B.'s idea to creep away at night was the best, but since the muties' sneak attack, Jorund had announced that there would be extra roving guard patrols after dark.
They'd even talked about trying the lake. In addition to the dragon-head long ships, the ville possessed smaller boats. But there was little prospect of getting far in those without the faster ships catching them.
On the far side of the steading, beyond the big central fire, Ryan glimpsed Krysty's dazzling hair. Mildred was only a step away, as she'd been ever since they arrived at the Norse ville.
Ryan glanced around furtively, then beckoned to the women. There was no doubt that they had seen him, but they kept walking at an angle, cutting around the side of the longhouse, ignoring him. Nobody noticed them. The ville went about its business: men worked on one of the boats and a hunting party readied itself to go out into the woods; women carried water and wood and began the preparation of the evening meal.
Ryan looked back into the hut at his three friends, who were finishing off a jug of buttermilk. "Women are off some place. I'm going to meet them if I can. Stay here."
"Would it not be possible for the rest of us to accompany you, Ryan? A stroll through the pine trees would be most beneficial in purging my mind of the unpleasant scenes of yesterday. I would be most obliged, Ryan."
"Sorry, Doc. If anyone comes, try and cover for me. Don't straight out lie. Kinda hint I'm inside resting. Be back soon as I can."
He left the rifle inside, carrying only the pistol at his hip and the sheathed panga.
It was a fabulous day, one of the finest that he could ever remember. The air was free from the taint of dust and death that still lingered, century-old over so much of Deathlands. The gentle wind that came sighing in off the lake stirred the topmost branches of the big pine trees as he walked among them.
Krysty and Mildred could only have taken one trail, which meandered gently toward a razorback ridge, some fifteen hundred feet above him.
The ville shrank beneath him, like a picture he'd once seen in a scorched and tattered mag. It had had the remnants of a bright yellow cover, he recalled, and had contained photographs of different places taken from a hot-air balloon. That was what Markland looked like from a turning of the trail, across a flower-spotted meadow.
There should be a guard somewhere along this track. Ryan wondered whether Krysty and Mildred would have cut away from the path before they encountered him, and if they did, what kind of a marker would they have left him?
He'd met men with better woodcraft than he possessed. But not many. Krysty would know he'd be coming slow and cautious, on the lookout for her sign.
It was easy.
A small branch had been snapped off a little more than head high, broken in two and laid at the edge of the path. It pointed away into the gloom under the branches. Perhaps one man in ten thousand would have spotted it for a deliberate sign.
There was only way the women would have gone-onward and up. Once Ryan was off the well-trodden track, the marks became easier to follow. Pushing between the pines had snapped off small twigs, and in the moist places Ryan could see clear impressions of their feet.
Shortly after entering the forest, he heard the sound of someone whistling behind him, and guessed that it must be the guard.
After another ten minutes or so, he glimpsed two figures ahead of him, both wearing dark clothes. Only Mildred's white sneakers showed up in the shaded gloom. Ryan pushed on faster, and almost immediately he saw Krysty turn around. He knew she couldn't possibly have heard him. But she'd "felt" his closeness.
The women stopped and waited for him.
"Hi, lover. How goes the thrilling life of the warrior?"
"Beats standing neck-deep in a cesspool, I guess. How about on the female side?"
Mildred answered him, her eyes flashing angrily. "It's not funny, Ryan. This place is like Boston in the 1800s. A woman's position is not just in the kitchen, or under her husband. She's a very poor third after the dogs and cattle!"
"Keep your voice down," Krysty warned. "Trees muffle sound, but the sentry's not that far away from us."
Ryan looked around. As far as the eye could see there was just the limitless expanse of trees, blurring eventually into a solid darkness. The forest would be an easy place to get lost.
"Best get the talking done. Don't want a hunting party coming after us."
"We think we should get out. Soon. Sooner. Soonest. Preferably yesterday."
He looked at the black woman, whose brown eyes were fixed to his face. Ryan sensed the great strength of character that Mildred possessed.
"I kind of agree. But it's not that easy."
"Krysty said the same. I don't see it. We have overwhelming firepower."
"Look around, Mildred. What's the good of having a rifle that'll rip off fifty rounds in a coupla seconds in this kind of terrain? Come on. One guy with a decent black-powder musket and a good eye could take us all out."
"So what've you men decided, Ryan? Do tell me and Krysty. I'm sure it would be nice to be told what we have to do. And how long we have to keep carrying firewood and washing greasy pots. Dotell us, Ryan. Please."
He looked at her without speaking for several seconds. "Don't fuck with me, Mildred."
"Sorry. Bit O.T.T., was it? That means 'over the top,' Ryan. Point taken. But we'd still like to know what you plan."
Ryan hunkered down, his back against a tree, relaxing on the soft carpet of pine needles. He listened to the distant song of a bird, enjoying the calmness. Mildred and Krysty sat down close by.
"We talked it through last night," he said. "Yeah, we all feel like we have to get out. But in a ville like this, isolated, the locals have the edge. I figure we stick it another day or so. Then we break close to midnight. Try and pick a clear time. Go fast and hard as we can for the ridge and into that swampy jungle. Hold up there and watch for pursuit. If it comes, we can try for an ambush. That's the plan." He looked at them. "Well?"
"Two days?" Mildred said.
"No longer, lover? There's something about this place I truly don't care for."
"And there's the radiation sickness," Mildred added. "We've seen a dozen or more of the folk — mainly kids — with too many symptoms."
"Yeah. We've noticed some of the men don't look well. Sores around the mouth and nails missing from fingers. That kind of stuff."
"So we wait for you to give us the word?" Krysty asked.
"Yeah."
"Best get on back."
Ryan led the way, ducking and weaving among the trees until they struck the main trail toward the ville. They kept together, passing a couple of narrower side tracks, one of which snaked away toward a steep outcrop of granite.
Krysty suddenly grabbed at Ryan's sleeve. "Someone's coming."
"Up or down? Front or behind? How many?" His questions machine-gunned out.
"Up. Front. Four or so."
Ryan hesitated, glancing to the woods on both sides of them. Here the trees weren't quite so densely packed, and there was a risk of their being spotted, even if they went some distance undercover.
"Back to that last cutoff. Quick."
Neither Krysty nor Mildred stopped to argue. They followed him up the hillside for a hundred yards, then onto the side trail. It snaked to the left and right, working its way up the steeper part of the mountain, zigzagging like a broke-back cottonmouth.
Ryan stopped and held up a hand for silence. He bent to try to peer through the pines to the main trail, but the foliage was too dense. However, they could all hear the sound of men's voices, raised in bellowing laughter. The noise grew momentarily louder and Ryan reached for his pistol. But then it faded again as the Norsemen continued up the main track.
"Carry on, lover?" he asked.
Krysty shook her head, the flaming red hair star-bursting around her shoulders. "This path... there's something up here that..." Her green eyes were clouded and puzzled. "Don't know. Don't like it. We got time to take us a look?"
Ryan glanced at his wrist chron. "Tight." But he saw the concern on her face. "Let's go a ways and look. Watch the time."
Mildred was beginning to pant with the exertion of the climb. "Wouldn't think I used to hike the High Sierras, would you? Spent three weeks up in Glacier Park one summer. Grinnell Glacier — what little was left of it — went there and back in a morning. Most beautiful place on God's earth up there. Now I'm bushed in five minutes."
"Wait here. Me and Krysty'll go up and take a look. Be back inside twenty. You be okay on your own, Mildred?"
"I'm bushed, Ryan, not totally senile. Maybe Krysty should leave me her shooter."
"No." Ryan shook his head, smiling at the look of disappointment on her face. "We'll get you a blaster as soon as we can. But we aren't directly threatened. Worst'll be they make you go back to the ville. Not killing time. Not yet."
A marmot scampered across their path as they neared the top of the climb. It was the only wildlife they'd seen, though there were old deer tracks everywhere. The trees thinned out, and they could see the silvery water of the lake stretching below them.
"Quiet up here. Thought there'd have been more signs of fresh game," Krysty said.
"The boy, Erik Stonebiter, told us that hunting was getting harder. Their fathers talked of hills that teemed with deer and rivers that brimmed over with trout and salmon."
"Could tie in with what Mildred suspects. Another good reason for moving on."
Ryan glanced around them. "Path leads over there toward that flat rock. We got time for a look."
Krysty hesitated. "Something bad, lover. Something up there."
"Danger?"
"No. Not direct danger."
"What?"
She reached out and touched him on the cheek with a long forefinger. "Better go and look."
On the far side of the high rock was a kind of natural amphitheater, the turf trodden flat by hundreds of feet. Ryan and Krysty stood together, looking up at a block of granite that was about ten feet long and five feet wide. The pale stone was streaked with glittering seams of quartz, and its flanks were heavily carved in ornate, swirling, interlocking patterns. A heavy ring of black iron on a short chain was inset at each corner. Long, thick stains of something black or dark brown had run down the sides of the rock that were exposed to them. The clotted streaks were unmistakably old blood.
Neither Krysty nor Ryan said a word. They turned away from the sacrificial altar and retraced their steps to where Mildred waited for them.