Doc remained in the deserted ville, with seven fresh corpses for company.
"It's a hard run all the way, and then a sprint for life afterward. Some of them might come after us." Ryan corrected himself. "Willcome after us. Then it'll be the haul through the zigzag path toward the ridge. Enough moon to see by."
"I could cover a retreat," Doc suggested.
"No time to argue this. Stay here. Listen out. Soon as the crap jams the silo you take off up there. We'll catch up with you."
"What if, perchance, you should fail in this venture?"
J.B. slapped him on the shoulder. "Then you're on your own, Doc. Good luck."
"And you, my friends."
Then they were gone, vanishing like wraiths into the darkness around the ville.
The long ceremony was approaching its climactic finale. There had been songs and speeches, and an endless incantation from the old wisewoman, which drew on the names of every Norse god Mildred Wyeth had ever heard of, and a lot more she hadn't. A kind of resinous incense was burned, and the scented smoke drifted around the arena, hanging beneath the dark lower branches of the trees.
Jak had been drawn gradually toward the center of the ritual. A knife had been pressed into his hands, the stubby blade streaked with silver moonlight. With an effort Mildred had been able to squint around and see the teenager sipping from the antique goblet. His eyes were half-closed and he was swaying on his feet, supported now by Jorund on one side and young Erik Stonebiter on the other. Mildred had no doubt at all that the ichor probably contained some opiate to dull the boy's senses.
From her point of view it didn't really make that much difference who slit her throat or what state that person was in. Her blood would still flow over the cold altar stone and down into the waiting earth beneath.
"Odin, great father of our people, we beg you to take this offering at these our hands!" The voice belonged to Jorund Thoraldson.
There wasn't much time left.
Despite the muffling screen of the forest, Ryan could faintly hear the bellowed, echoing words. The friends were off the main track from the village, running fast along the narrower side trail. "Not much time," he panted.
Timing had always been the most difficult element of Ryan's plan. Move too soon and they wouldn't be able to hit the crowd when they were locked into their ritual. Move too late and they'd only be able to mop up the blood. And spill a little in revenge.
The unexpected appearance of the old man by the warning gong had thrown off the timing, and by the sound of it, the ceremony was more advanced than Ryan had hoped.
"Slow down," he said.
"We gotta get there quick," J.B. argued.
"Going t'be shooting. Way I am this second, I couldn't hit a shithouse door, even if I was inside it at the time. Slow down. Jog in careful."
"Will they have sentries?" Krysty asked.
"No reason to. They figure we're sealed up tight. Muties got their asses kicked all the way out. There's no threat to them."
They moved forward more slowly, picking their way between the trees, hearing the sounds of the ceremony growing gradually closer and louder.
Mildred looked up into the glowing coals of Jak Lauren's eyes and read her death in them, knowing at that moment that rescue wouldn't come and that her race was run.
"Into thy hands, O Lord, I commend my soul," she whispered through dry lips.
The small red-hilted knife was poised above her exposed neck. Jak's body was trembling, and he looked as if he might faint at any moment.
The wisewoman had plucked a small bird from a tiny wicker cage and brought it to her lips as if to kiss the sharp beak. Then, with no change of expression, she ripped the head clean off, smearing the creature's blood over her own face.
Now it was Mildred's turn.
"Take her evil spirit, Odin, and let your people go free of pain and of the shadow of the grave. Take her, take her, take her!"
Mildred closed her eyes, wondering, oddly, which of her friends back in her earlier life would have acquired her collection of books on movies.
"Now, godling, now!"
The voice of the wisewoman was an eldritch screech that filled the arena, causing every man, woman and child to hold their breath. Jak gripped the knife, high above his head, completely motionless.
If he'd had time to think about it, Ryan would probably have figured it as the best shot he'd ever made in his life.
At more than fifty yards, in shifting moonlight, his target was the four-inch blade of the sacrificial knife. The laser-enhanced sniper scope was steadied, the rifle rock-still, stock against his cheek. Ryan held his breath and squeezed the trigger. The Heckler & Koch was set on single-shot. In the silence, the crack of the assault blaster was shockingly loud.
The 4.7 mm round pinged off the steel, kicking the knife spinning from Jak's fingers, then ricocheted into the trees.
Mildred opened her eyes, staring straight into the teenager's shocked, bone-white face.
"What fuck was..." He shook his head in bewilderment.
Then the world exploded into bloody, screaming chaos.
After that first single shot, Ryan had slid the control on the G-12 to triple-shot. J.B.'s MP-7 SD-8 was also on triple, its silencer muffling the noise of the bullets. Krysty's P7A-13 Heckler & Koch pistol filled her right hand, and she was ready to follow the two men as they charged the mass of people.
In the first fifteen seconds, without a single hand being raised against them, they chilled more than twenty of the villagers. All three tried to avoid shooting the children, but it wasn't a time for conventional niceness. The killing floor wasn't a place for careful moral consideration. The Vikings would have wasted them if the roles had been reversed.
Ryan, firing from the hip, tried to shoot Jorund Thoraldson, but the warrior baron was quick. He dived for cover at the first shot, scurrying on hands and knees into the trees on the farther side of the large clearing. Erik Stonebiter half turned to Mildred, hefting the large, polished ceremonial ax he carried. For a moment she thought he was going to gut her with the heavy steel, but the clatter of the rifles disconcerted him, and he dropped the weapon, joining the screaming rush for cover.
Jak had drawn one of his own knives and stood staring at the naked, chained woman, as if he didn't quite recognize her.
"Jak."
His eyes still seemed blurred and unfocused, and he leaned over her, his breath spiced and bitter on her cheek. "You?" he said questioningly. "Who you? Who?"
"Stop sounding like a goddamned owl and get the chains off me, kid."
"Don't call..." He brandished the knife threatening, then his eyes cleared and a grin slipped into place. "Hey, know you. You're all right, Mildred."
"Sure. Get me out of here, Jak. Please."
"Use ax," he replied. He picked up the weapon that Erik had let fall and he hefted it to shoulder height, grunting with the effort.
Out of the corner of his eye Ryan saw the gesture and began to turn, thinking the albino boy had gone crazed and was about to hack Mildred apart. But he saw in the next moment what was happening.
"Get her free and dressed, Jak! Gotta get out of this place."
"I'll second that," Mildred said fervently, gritting her teeth as the ax blade howled off the iron chain, striking sparks from the stone altar.
J.B. saw the problem and sprinted over to the sacrificial block, hurdling the dead and the dying, blood splashing across his legs. He leveled his rifle and blew apart the links from Mildred's ankles and wrists. He grabbed her by the arm and helped her to stand.
"Good to see you guys," she managed to get out, leaning on the altar to recover her balance.
Miraculously the amphitheater was almost deserted.
Terrified by the sudden appearance of the three outlanders, their blasters providing instant tickets to Valhalla, the Norsemen and their families had fled into the forest. Ryan and his friends could hear them shouting and screaming as they ran deeper into the trees.
"Everyone okay?" Ryan called.
"In another couple of seconds I'd have been the first course in a Viking pizza feast. Jak looked like he was going to go through with it."
The boy nodded. "True, Mildred. Sorry. Gave drink. Fucked head."
"Better now?" Krysty asked.
"Yeah. Better. Where's Doc? Not chilled?"
"He's fine. We got out of the ville all right. Left him to watch out for us. Told him to start off up the trail. When these mothers realize they still have numbers on their side, I reckon they could come after us."
"So we should move more and talk less, lover," Krysty suggested with a smile.
Ryan gave her the finger. "Sure. Ready, Mildred?"
The freezie was dressed again, in the same clothes she'd taken from the cryo-center. "Ready. Any spare guns around? This Deathlands seems a place where the gun rules, yet I can't get my hands on a decent pistol."
"You will, Mildred," J.B. promised. "You will."
Ryan led the way out of the trampled, bloodied circle, leaving behind the moaning wounded. Mildred, walking second, was whispering to herself. " 'The woods are lovely, dark, and deep, but I have promises to...' "
The stunted figure of the wisewoman suddenly rushed out of the blackness at her, screaming, and holding an open, straight-edged razor.