“You’re late, Señor Cawdor,” Don Hector told Ryan caustically as the Hummer pulled up to the command post, which was a recreational vehicle on a hilltop.
It was noontime, and he hadn’t eaten since a handful of something he couldn’t even remember, gulped down before sunrise, but Ryan’s appetite for the cacique’s bullshit was strangely nil. “Chichimecs tried to bushwhack us two miles back, where you promised us we’d have a clear road. Took us a while to scrape them out of our way. Maybe you oughta chop the hearts out of a couple of your recon people to smarten them up a bit.”
Hector’s big square jaw jutted a bit more and the crow’s feet outside his eyes—that showed if you looked close he wasn’t as young as he liked to play—cut a little deeper into his dark skin. But he was good; he didn’t let anything show past that.
“Perhaps you are right,” he said smoothly and turned away. “Perhaps I shall.”
Don Tenorio appeared out of the command RV with Doc behind him. Tenorio had on an open-collared white shirt and was wearing his .40-caliber handblaster holstered. He looked fresh. He made a conspicuous point of embracing Ryan.
“It is good to see you, my friend,” he said. He already knew of the ambush on the road by radio. Radio communications were unreliable, and nobody was relying on them much, but made use of them as proved feasible.
“I was a little concerned about you and our friends,” Ryan said, nodding slightly at Hector, who had strutted over to speak to some of his Eagle Knights.
Tenorio had ridden up with Hector and his forces to this staging point, agreed on the day before, about five miles north of the lake. Supposedly it lay directly in the path of the approaching Chichimec horde. Ryan didn’t know how Don Hector knew that. There were a lot of things he didn’t know about this setup, a fact he could basically like or lump.
“We were in no danger,” Tenorio said. “Not even Hector’s so big a fool as to act against us before the great battle.”
He slapped Ryan on the shoulder. “Come, let me see to my people.”
WHETHER THE CHICHIMECS had jumped the gun, or keen-eyed Claudia had spotted their ambush, or whether they had simply misjudged the psychology of the scavvies and miscalled the way they’d react to seeing one of their own torn to pieces in front of their eyes, Ryan never knew and never would. As gentle and peace-loving as the scavvies were in everyday life, they weren’t loaded up with notions of mercy to foes. “Come for us and ours, you die” was the law they had lived by since Don Tenorio had led them or their parents into the halfsunk ruins a generation before. If any Chichimecs had tried to surrender, they’d been turned down terminally.
The scavvies’ notion of first aid to fallen foes was administered with knives, rifle butts, handy rocks, or in the case of a couple of wounded who dragged themselves into the roadway as the column moved out—one trailing his guts behind him along the ground—the tires of their support wags. Conserving ammo. No skin off any part of Ryan’s anatomy. It wasn’t all that different from the rules he’d grown up playing by.
The city contingent rested in a hollow near Hector’s war RV, not very well drained and so somewhat marshy. They were bitching about Hector sticking them there but were in generally good spirits. They were telling the story of the abortive ambush to their buddies who had come up with Tenorio’s and Hector’s bunch, and affecting to be matter-of-fact about the whole thing.
While Tenorio saw to the wounded and went among his people, speaking to them as if they were members of his family, Ryan, with Doc, J.B. and Jak, took stock of the forces assembled. Aside from his groundpounders Hector had three big wags mounting Browning M-2 .50-calibers, and several tripod mounted M1919A4 machine guns in .30 caliber, heavy suckers that needed to be carried in several pieces, then had to be assembled to be ready for action. Once they were properly emplaced, they were deadly. Ryan was glad he wouldn’t be trying to fumble one of the beasts together while muties were jumping out of the bushes at him with obsidian daggers in their teeth.
For the first time Ryan saw the multiple-rocket launchers, home-built on the beds of converted pickups, which Five Ax’s patrol had fired into the abandoned ville to spring the companions from Two Arrow that first day. The projectiles they launched were likewise improvised—not terribly accurate, but all the artillery the entire army had. Hector didn’t believe in it, himself. It wasn’t macho, apparently. There were also two more city supply trucks mounted with .308-caliber MGs.
“How did our friends bear up under their first trial of fire, Ryan?” Doc asked.
“They’re not true coldhearts, but they’ll do what needs to be done,” Ryan said. “They don’t fear the sight of blood, theirs or anybody else’s. Whether they can stand up depends on what the Chichimecs throw at us.”
“What about Hector’s gang?” J.B. asked.
“Less impressive than their leader’s bombast or the barbaric splendor of his bodyguards,” said Doc. “Still, some are well-seasoned. The rest will stand so long as they fear Hector more than the invaders.”
“And there you have it,” J.B. said, cleaning his glasses.
THE CITY TROOPS WERE set on the right wing of the army, such as it was, and the whole mob was sent on its way north, led by Eagle Knight pathfinders on motorcycles. Ryan kept his own motorcycle scouts deployed close to their own front and covering their own right, which was otherwise open all the way to the eastern mountains. Don Hector was apparently the executive sort of leader who watched the battle and directed it from well behind the action, rather than a follow-me type. Ryan suspected that was the only way to manage a force of this size.
Still, he wasn’t sure that was the only reason Hector was trailing along well behind the advancing force. The cacique was probably as bold as any man, one on one. But the prospect of being laid low by a blaster fired by some distant peasant would horrify him beyond endurance.
Tenorio was still back with his fellow baron, mainly to keep an eye on him. Doc had once again stayed at the alcade’s side. Ryan was just as glad. It wasn’t as if one blaster more or less was going to make much difference in what was to come, and the old man didn’t really need to go through the panic and exertion of someone else’s fight.
The country rolled gently away from the lake, broken up by fewer lava flows than were common further south. Once they had a couple hills between them and Hector, Ryan summoned Five Ax, Miguel and a couple of the other English-speaking city folk.
“Spread the word to start dragging heels, just a bit. We want to let the main force get at least a couple hundred yards ahead of us.”
“What for?” somebody he didn’t recognize asked.
That was the price he had to pay, Ryan reckoned, for not having any official status. His orders could be questioned, because, after all, he had no standing to give orders. Of course, given what an independent bunch the scavvies were, they might’ve questioned him even if Tenorio had given him a shiny new uniform and a chestful of medals.
“I don’t like advancing blind like this,” he said. “Chichimecs already tried to trap us once. They might spring a bigger trap, try to bag the whole army. Whatever we run into, I want Hector’s people to run into it first.”
The scavvies spoke to each other in Spanish, but it was quickly apparent they agreed with his reasoning.
“But what will they say?” Miguel nodded toward the larger body of troops tramping along to the west. Their own officers were yipping at them like sheepdogs, trying to urge them on faster to the unseen foe.
“They’re such machos they’ll never notice we’re not keeping up,” Five Ax said. “Or if they do, they’ll just sneer at us for a pack of cowards.”
The scavvies laughed and spread the word. They didn’t shrink from a fight, but they weren’t going to go running to look for one, either. And it seemed the notion of letting the first blow land on the forces of the arrogant Don Hector struck them as a fine joke.
The look J.B. gave his old friend, though, was even blander than usual. “You sure about this, Ryan? Those Eagle Knights and sec men don’t mean a spent shell case. But what about when the big boys, the dons, tumble-wise?”
Ryan heard his friend. What he had done was nothing shy of revising the whole battle plan on his own hook.
“This isn’t really our fight,” he said, “but since we made it ours, I figure we should win. And I can’t go against what my gut tells me.”
“Never saw anybody turn down a victory once it’s won,” acknowledged the Armorer. “Not even a pissed-off baron.”
THE DAY REMAINED FINE, bright, warm but not oppressively hot. They made their way north a mile across green land and fields of crops, now sadly trampled, either by the defending forces or by the raiders. They had passed a burned-out ville maybe a mile to the east of them. Ryan kept the Hummer purring along slowly, pacing his troops, winged out maybe twenty yards to secure their own hanging right flank. The valley troops had moved out maybe three hundred yards in advance of the city contingent. As Ryan anticipated, nobody said anything to them about their tardiness. Don Hector was still in his manic phase, no doubt strutting and blustering for Don Tenorio’s benefit and his own, back on the hill by his RV. His subcommanders with his actual army were too busy snarling and screaming themselves hoarse urging on their troops, whose pace was noticeably slacking.
“Surprised he doesn’t just give his sec men whips to drive the draftees into battle,” Ryan said.
“No doubt he’ll think of it next time,” J.B. said.
“Notice our boys’re slowing to keep pace with them without my having to say so.”
“Wearing down,” J.B. observed. “Only thing runs a man’s battery down faster than marching toward a fight is actually being in it.”
He had three MG wags now, the fourth having stayed back with the mobile command headquarters along with about thirty city fighters, with half a dozen of Tenorio’s small corps of elite Jaguar Knights among them. They were serving as bodyguards for the alcade, and likewise a mobile reserve, that being something else Don Hector didn’t believe in. Between them Tenorio and the canny Doc surmised that Hector might have left as much as half of his armed strength back at his palace on Chapúltepec and among his subject villes, to keep the peons from getting notions about playing while the big cat was away. But everything he brought to the dance he was throwing straightaway at the invaders.
Ryan had two machinegun wags up at the front, right now winged out twenty yards each, as far as he dared given the Chichimecs’ propensity to lurk under cover and swarm. His scooter scouts circulated in front and to the flanks in hopes of spotting any infiltrators and ambushers, but staying close by so they wouldn’t get wolf-packed without hope of rescue as Claudia had. When the city fighters deployed into a rifle line the machine-gun wags would this time deploy properly, to anchor either end and cross fires to the front. That was the theory, anyway; whether the Chichimecs would give them time to deploy was a whole other smoke. The third MG truck brought up the rear. When the hammer came down, it would be Ryan’s reserve, which he could send to where its firepower was most urgently needed.
Also at the column’s rear, just in front of the machine-gun truck, were the two multiple-rocket-launcher wags, which could shoot over the heads of the foot soldiers. All told, while he would naturally have preferred to have the hard-forged and tough-tempered chillers from Trader days with him, Ryan was as well set up as he could hope to be in terms of his own forces. The kicker was that he knew nothing at all about the enemy, except there were thousands of them, fanatical coldhearts every one, that he didn’t know where they were other than out there somewhere—and that they disposed of some kind of fearsome mutie powers.
Off to the right maybe sixty feet a metal post jutted at a crazy angle from the grass. It might have been a fence post, or a sign post, in predark times; he couldn’t know. A meadowlark was perched on it, yellow breast with the deep black V-shaped collar glinting in the sun. He sang his distinctive trilling song as if nothing could go wrong in the world.
As Ryan watched him he took off and flew away south as if a devil were on his tail. From up ahead to the left came faint cries and the distinctive thump of shots.
“Here it comes,” J.B. said, jacking the charging handle of his BAR and shoving it out the rear right-hand window.
“Look,” Jak cried from the pintle.
A black shape in the sky to the northwest. A big shape, wings spread impossibly wide against the bright clouds high-piled above the horizon. It was bearing down on the valley force. Something in the way it moved told Ryan it was a beast, a mutie horror, not some kind of sky wag.
Coming to kill them.