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He blinked as a dog stood atop the dune and wagged its tail at him.
During the time of the skydark the family dog had become an immediate source of food. Packs of wild strays that had taken to eating their former human masters had been ruthlessly trapped, shot and eaten in return. Ryan had seen pictures of predark house pets, and the idea of people keeping animals that couldn’t earn their keep, much less deliberately breeding so many useless mutations into an animal was beyond his comprehension. For the most part only dogs of the working, sporting and herding groups had survived into the age of the Deathlands. Whatever working specialty a dog might have, whether hunting, herding or hauling, their primary function was still guarding. They were both alarms and the first line of defense against mutant marauder and night-creeping norm alike. Most had been bred up in size and savagery, and all were trained to attack strangers on sight. This dog was a shaggy black color with a mop of hair falling over its eyes. At fifty pounds it was a bit runty by Deathlands standards but still had good lines. The strangest thing about the dog was its attitude. It gazed upon Ryan and Doc in tail-wagging, tongue-lolling, happy stupid expectancy.
Doc creakily pushed himself to his feet. “Cao da Serra de Aires.”
Ryan kept his 9 mm blaster leveled. “What?”
“An Aires Mountain Dog. A shepherd dog from the Aires Mountains, north of the Tagus River.” Doc nodded knowingly. “A Portuguese breed.”
“So why isn’t it trying to chill us?” Ryan shook his head in mild disgust at the happy dog. “It’s not even barking.”
“I suspect it does not regard humans as enemies.”
Rustling was alive and well in the Deathlands, and a herd dog that didn’t bark at strangers struck Ryan about as useful as bird shit on pump handle. He looked up at the sound of bells. The bleating sounds carried over the sound of the surf. A girl came over a dune being followed by a flock of snowy-white goats. The girl stopped at the sight of the two strangers, then shocked both Ryan and Doc by waving happily at them. Ryan observed her as she and her herd waded through the waist-high beach grass. She had long, unbound golden-brown hair, golden-brown tanned skin and golden-brown eyes. The effect was made more dramatic by the simple, chestnut-colored homespun shift she wore. Leather sandals shod her feet, and she wore a simple leather purse over one shoulder and a bota bag over the other. Ryan noted the corpse on the escarpment had been wearing the same outfit and kept his eye on the shepherd’s crook she carried. Looks were deceiving and he had been on both ends of a skillfully wielded piece of wood.
The girl approached them guilelessly. Up close her slim arms and legs belied a chest that strained at the homespun enclosing it. She smiled with big white teeth and in every way was the healthiest specimen Ryan or Doc had seen in quite some time. Doc nodded in a friendly fashion at the dog. “Cao da Serra de Aires?”
“No…” The girl’s nose wrinkled delightfully. “Boo.”
Ryan regarded Doc dryly. “I think the dog’s name is Boo, Doc.”
“Hmm…yes.” Doc scratched his chin. “Boo.”
Boo thumped his tail in the sand at Doc. The girl beamed and pointed to herself. “Vava!”
“Vava!” Doc bowed. “Dr. Theophilus Algernon Tanner, at your…” Doc trailed off as the girl stared at him blankly. He sighed and smiled as he pointed at Ryan and himself. “Ryan…Doc.”
The girl’s smile spread across her face like the sun. “Rian…Doke.”
“Doc?” Ryan shot the old man a look. “The dog doesn’t bark and the girl likes strangers.”
“I must admit it is unusual,” Doc agreed. “Even in my time a lone shepherd girl and her dog would be wary of strange men. Clearly neither has been exposed to any sort of predation.”
“Or it’s some sort of trap. I’m thinking—” Ryan wasn’t often shocked but even he was taken aback when the girl softly wrapped her hands around his. She ignored the blaster he held and raised the gaff wound to her lips and kissed it. The huge golden-brown eyes gazed upward at Ryan with an innocence that bordered on the erotic as she said something soothing in her own language.
Doc gave Ryan a wry look of his own. “All better?”
“Uh, yeah…” Ryan forced a smile onto his face. “Doc? You tell her to take her hand off my blaster or—”
The girl tossed her crook to the sand. “Boo!”
Boo picked up the stick and happily trotted off. The girl kept Ryan’s hand in one of hers and took Doc’s hand in her other. Ryan and Doc exchanged looks. “Doc?”
“Like lambs to the slaughter?” Doc suggested.
Vava gave their hands a slightly impatient tug. “Dunno,” Ryan said. He had learned the hard way to read a trap. The girl gave off nothing but wide-eyed goodwill. Boo the dog was positively anomalous. Then again, in the very best traps the bait had no idea it was bait. Circumstances decided it. They couldn’t stay here, and goats implied a hot meal. Ryan sighed and put his blaster in his other hand. He was almost equal with both. “Doc, give her your left.”
“What?”
“Give her your left hand. Keep your right on your blaster.”
“Ah, yes. I see.” Vava smiled happily as the hand- and blaster-holding was arranged and led them into the dunes. The goats followed with their tin bells tinkling. Ryan surveyed the countryside. The dunes gave way to rolling grassland, rock formations and thin, windswept forest between the hills. The island wasn’t a tropical paradise but everything was a healthy green and the needle on Ryan’s rad counter never moved as they walked. Golden-brown fields waved in the sea breeze and he spied a few thatched huts on top of some of the hills. Several times people in the distance waved at them. They cut through a field and Doc ran his hand through the heavy sprays of grain.
“Pearl millet. Wheat, rice and corn overshadowed millet in the Americas except as feed for livestock, but in Africa, India and Asia millet has been a staple cereal grain since ancient times. It is a cereal grain well-adapted to soil low in fertility and high salinity.”
“That’s real interesting, Doc,” Ryan said.
Doc frowned. “I assure you sarcasm is uncalled-for.”
“It’s not sarcasm.” Ryan tracked his eye across the breadth of the horizon. “This rocky soil isn’t bad, but it’s workable. These people are making the most of it, but I noticed one thing.”
“Good heavens, you are right!” Doc saw it. “They are not fishing.”
“That’s right. They’re growing grain, raising goats and wearing homespun, but I haven’t seen a boat, a pier or a net, and right across the water there’s a ville where they got buildings, sailboats and they’re eating octopus in sauce.”
“It is a conundrum,” Doc admitted. “And our Vava is wearing the same clothing as the poor girl by the mat-trans.”
“But Vava isn’t wearing a chron and I doubt she’s carrying a blaster.”
“Indeed.”
They came to a little valley. Sheltered from the omnipresent ocean wind the oaks grew tall rather than twisted and among them sat a little cluster of thatched huts. Ryan stopped just short of drooling as the smell of a goat roasting on a spit wafted toward him on the breeze. They descended the steep goat path and three young men around the barbecue pit rose to meet them. All wore homespun tunics and crude leather sandals like Vava and had the same tanned, golden-brown good looks. Vava and the man in front talked for a few moments. He was tall enough to look Ryan in the eye, looked as healthy as a horse and about as strong.
Vava waved at him by way of introduction. “Ago.”
Ryan remembered his meeting with Roque on the dock and spoke the only word of Portuguese he knew. “Olá, Ago.” He motioned at Doc and himself. “Ryan, Doc.”
Vava beamed.
If Ago had a tail he would have been wagging it with Boo. He grinned like an idiot instead and shoved out his hand. “Olá!” The other two men were introduced as Marco and Nando. Everyone shook hands all around. The afternoon sun was fading, and the islanders led Ryan and Doc to the fire. Others began gathering. Ryan counted a score of men and women in equal number. Most of the women had babies in their arms or small children clinging to the hems of their tunics giving Ryan and Doc wide-eyed looks. Slabs of goat meat and heaping bowls of millet gruel were shoved in front of Ryan and Doc without ceremony. Doc began picking at his food and making pleased noises. Ryan shoveled it down. He had burned off his two octopus arms hours ago, and he was ravenous. Vava told an involved story that Ryan gleaned was about her and Boo finding the visitors on the beach.
Ago handed Ryan a large clay bowl with a grin.
Ryan brought the clay bowl to his lips. The sloshing contents were a foamy, unfiltered dirty blond and the smell of yeast was almost overpowering beneath his nose. Ryan tossed a swallow back. It was carbonated to the point of being fizzy and tasted like a train wreck between hard cider, ale and the gruel. The assembled islanders gazed on expectantly. Ryan tilted the mixing-bowl-size container of home brew and drained it.
The islanders clapped their hands happily.
Ryan wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. The bowl was refilled and Doc smacked his lips as he took a sip. “Millet beer.”
People filled their bellies and talk roamed about the common circle. All the shy glances pretty much indicated Ryan and Doc were the hot topic for the night. Ryan spoke quietly. “Doc, what’ve you learned?”
“I believe these people live communally. I get the impression this is but one of a number of hamlets scattered across this island. These few here could not maintain the fields alone. The islanders probably all gather for group planting and harvest of the arable land. Everyone seems to have a knife. They are all crude and of a kind, but I have yet to see a forge.”
“Trade knives.”
“My thought exactly. I suspect any axes, plows or other ironworks will have come from across the strait.”
It squared with everything Ryan had observed. “I haven’t seen any old people.”
“Dear Lord!” Doc stared around in shock. “I believe you are right!”
“Ask if they’ve seen any other strangers.”
Doc spoke a few words and got blank looks. “I am afraid the Portuguese word for stranger has wandered far from the Latin.”
“Talk around it,” Ryan said. “Use your hands.”
“Ah.” Doc began speaking very slowly in Latin and gesturing at himself and Ryan and pointing out toward the sea and the island housing the mat-trans. Ago sat upright and for the first time lost his smile. The islanders around the fire began a rapid exchange.
“Tell them we found a girl.”
Doc nodded. “Very well.”
“Tell them we found her on the escarpment and she was dressed like they are, but had dark hair, short, had something on her wrist.”
Doc made a show of touching his hair, Vava’s clothes and circling his wrist with his hand as he spoke words in Latin. Vava suddenly got very excited.
Ryan knew they were hitting pay dirt. “Tell them she’s dead.”
Doc stopped. “Are you sure?”
“Do it.”
Doc said a few words. Vava burst into tears and ran from the circle. Everyone else grew very quiet. “Doc, ask what her name was.”
Ago sighed unhappily at the question but answered. “Galina.”
“That Portuguese?” Ryan asked.
Doc shook his head. “No, it is a Russian corruption of the Greek name Helen.”
Ryan wasn’t surprised. “Ask if Galina had friends.”
Doc asked and Ago held up a single finger as he spoke, and that confirmed Ryan’s suspicions about the mat-trans. “I believe a man named Feydor, that’s Russian for Theodore,” Doc said.
“A Russian team tried to jump and the mat-trans here only let two through, just like us. Something happened and Galina and Feydor got separated. I’m thinking that something was the people on the other island.”
“So deductive reasoning would dictate,” Doc agreed.
“Ask them about the mat-trans.”
Doc spent long moments doing some very elaborate pantomime. The islanders stared uncomprehendingly until he finally dropped his hands to his sides in defeat. “I cannot seem to communicate the concept, and frankly I do not believe these people know of mat-trans devices much less what they do.”
Ryan agreed. “I think the folk in the ville do. They came quick as a bullet from a blaster when they saw our fire.”
“Yes.” Doc nodded. “And they were willing to sail straight into a storm to retrieve us.”
Vava returned with tears in her eyes and a basket laden with bundles of homespun and a collection of sandals, and began pushing them at her guests. Doc sighed sadly as he surveyed the garments. “I believe these good people want us to put on these clothes and try to blend in. I believe they intend to hide us.”
“Didn’t keep that Russian girl from taking the last train west, and we can’t hide here forever.”
“So, we journey across the strait and confront this Baron Barat?”
“In our favor that felucca went down with all hands chilled in the storm. With luck he won’t know we’re coming. We’ll do a recce to get the lay of things and then decide how to play it,” Ryan decided.
“And how are we to negotiate the strait?”
Ryan glanced around. “I doubt these folk have much in the way of boats. We’ll have to build a raft.”
Doc looked at Ryan steadily. “My friend, you are wounded.”
“Yeah.” Ryan’s hand went unconsciously to his side. Vava instantly leaped up and her breath sucked in as she noted the rent material of Ryan’s coat. Ryan almost pushed her away but the hot fire, hot food and millet beer were beginning to have their way with his beaten, half-drowned exhausted body. Vava called to a girl named Eva and the two of them led Ryan to a hut. Doc followed as they sat Ryan on a straw pallet and began brewing things in a clay pot.
“Willow bark, chamomile and bee balm by the smell. Traditional herbals.” Doc looked askance as Vava and Eva began chewing mouthfuls of herbs both fresh and dried and then packing the dripping green chaw against Ryan’s hand and side. “I shudder to guess what that may be but I suspect it is the most effective treatment available until we can reacquire Mildred and Krysty.”
The goo stung. Ryan gritted his teeth as Eva and Vava pushed his broken rib into place and bound it with strips torn from their shifts. Eva shoved the steaming pot beneath Ryan’s nose. It smelled like a swamp and tasted about the same. Ryan drained it and sat back on the pallet. Vava undid the stained bandage on his hand, then washed the wound and took an iron needle and sinew and began to sew it. The sting and tug felt far away, and Ryan knew there was something in the brew stronger than chamomile and bee balm. It was cozying up to the bucket of beer he’d drunk.
“Doc, keep watch. I’m gonna shut my eye for a while.”
Doc laid his LeMat revolver in his lap. “You may rest assured.”
Ryan was asleep as his head hit the straw.
Chapter Four
Ryan awoke with his blaster in his bandaged hand. Dawn was rising gray out the open door of the hut. Vava and Eva were gone. Doc sat snoring in his sentry position. The one-eyed man checked his pack and found none of his belongings had been messed with. He sat up and did a quick self-assessment. His side and hand ached but far less than he’d imagined, and no infection or fever had set in. His stomach was growling, and he took that as a good sign. Checking the loads in his blasters, Ryan warily stepped out into the morning.
Ago, Nando and another man were standing around the coals of the previous night’s fire, passing around another huge bowl. They waved Ryan over and he took his turn slurping down leftover millet gruel that had been mixed with some kind of watery goat yogurt. Doc came out with a sheepish look on his face, painfully aware that he had fallen asleep on guard duty. Ryan simply handed him the bowl. “Tell Ago we need to get to the big island.”
The old man took a few swallows and handed the bowl to Ago. He pointed toward the big island said some words. Ago started talking excitedly and pointing inland instead.
“What’s he saying, Doc?” Ryan asked.
“I believe he wants to show us something.”
Ryan nodded. “Tell him we’re amenable.”
Ago nodded. He whistled, and Vava and Boo came out of a hut across the way. They spoke for a moment. Vava looked unhappy but she nodded, and they began walking inland. Ryan and Doc followed. The wind blew strong across the rolling hills and whipped the grassland as they came out of the vale. They walked for a quarter of an hour through fields and vales and passed more villages. They stopped in a gully. Ago and Vava began pulling apart a deadfall of twisted branches to reveal a skiff. Ryan ran his hand across the graying wood. The little rowboat had been sitting there for some time. The oarlocks were rusted and the oars themselves were warping. “What do you think, Doc?”
“I believe we would be safer building a raft.”
Ryan stood and shook his head at Ago and Vava. The two islanders looked crestfallen but Ago pointed farther inland. Doc rose from the rotting skiff. “I believe there is more they wish to show us.”
Ryan and Doc followed the islanders through more rolling hills and came upon an overgrown gravel path and followed it through another little valley. As they came out, they stopped and stared at the structure at the top of the hill in front of them. It was taller than it was wide. Four slender, two-story spires encompassed a high, peaked roof. The central spire was three stories. It was made of ancient gray stone that was worn but intricately carved. Ryan noted the wrought-iron fence with spear tips was of more recent manufacture and unrusted. “What’s that? A castle?”
“In a sense,” Doc said. “It is a church. God’s fortress on Earth. Sixteenth-century Gothic architecture, I would say.”
“Haven’t seen a church ever like that.”
