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"Now we know where we are," Ryan said, indicating the area with a chipped and
calloused finger, "this'll be a bastard place to move through without a wag of
some kind. We need to get back into the redoubt for transport or a jump.
Otherwise we're stuck here, and it's a long haul out."
Mildred looked over her shoulder. Abner was making a poor show of trying not
to eavesdrop.
"But we don't move until we're through here," she said slowly and firmly.
Ryan guessed whom she was looking at, and smiled wryly. "We've got unfinished
business, and so have they. A bargain's a bargain."
MILDRED WASN'T SURE if it was the antibiotics or the poultices that Krysty had
slaved over, marshaling the ville dwellers into the collection of herbs before
boiling and straining them to make the stinking poultice. Something, though,
had been working. In two days J.B. had come out of his fever, slept so much
that they feared he would never wake and had opened his eyes to show a
glittering, biting edge to his gaze.
"Ryan," he murmured softly, catching sight of his old friend first, "what's
been going on?"
Ryan filled him in. The Armorer, more taciturn than usual in his just awakened
state, contented himself with a muttered "Dark night!" as his only comment. On
Mildred's recommendation, he didn't try to get out of bed right away, although
it was obvious from his restlessness that he was itching to get into action.
By the following morning, J.B. could stand it no longer. Yelling at Dean to
help him until the youngster gave in, J.B. got up and hobbled out of the shack
and into the center of the ville, where he sat on an upturned box and watched
in disgust as
Jak attempted to teach some of the local fighters the finer points of
hand-to-hand combat. Even pulling his punches, Jak had in the past hour
injured two of them enough that it would take them several days to recover.
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The Armorer pulled his fedora down so that the snap brim shaded his glasses
from the ever present swirl of dust. Watching Jak, and remembering something
Dean had said to him as he assisted him into the wan sunlight, J.B. commented,
"Now do you see why Mac was allowed to live?"
Dean nodded. "I do now, seeing this bunch of stupes." He kept his voice low so
as not to antagonize the ville dwellers, but it didn't change the way he felt.
"It just seemed weird, 'cause Dad's drummed it into me that you never leave
enemies alive. And don't tell me the story of the little girl who ripped out
someone's jugular with her teeth, 'cause I've heard that one too many times,"
he added with a grin, preempting J.B.'s launch into a Trader story.
The only advantage of J.B. telling it rather than Ryan was that the Armorer
was more terse in the telling, and it was a much shorter story.
"Trader was right, though," J.B. said softly in reply. "Then there's always
one exception to any rule. Being too rigid can be as dangerous as being too
slack."
Without answering, Dean knew what the Armorer meant as he watched Mac take on
Jak.
The fat man outweighed the slender Jak by almost double, and was several
inches taller. His head was still scarred by the blow he had taken outside the
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shack, and from the look on his face he was expecting to get some revenge in a
one-on-one fight.
They circled each other, watched by the crowd of men and women who were there
to learn. The tension grew as they circled, until it seemed that no one in the
crowd could draw breath until the first strike.
It came from the blue, still unexpected despite the close attention and
anticipation of the crowd. Jak feinted to the left, drawing Mac's attention,
then followed up to the right with a kick that took the sec man's legs from
under him.
Instead of falling heavily, as would be expected, the awkward-looking sec man
let
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muscles to avoid the rigidity that broke bones. He rolled as he hit the dirt,
out of the range of Jak's follow-up kick. Instead of connecting with his jaw,
the albino's foot carved a space in nothing but air. It was only Jak's immense
control and balance that stopped him falling flat. Instead he used the
momentum of the kick to pivot, taking him out of range of the thundering
roundhouse blow Mac aimed at his body. The sec man was more powerful and agile
than he looked, but his notion of fighting was basic he aimed for the body
with a succession of kicks and blows designed to cause maximum damage.
Jak avoided all of those with twists and turns of his body, staying out of
range and letting Mac expend energy. Then, when the sec man was puffing and
blowing, slowing slightly, Jak darted in beneath one of the blows and
delivered a hard jab with his extended fingers, sinking them into the soft
flesh above the sec man's ribs.
Mac shot backward through the air as though a jolt of electricity had been
forced through him. He tumbled over, falling naturally by instinct. Jak stood
back, waiting for the sec man to get up.
"Less& more," he said simply as Mac shook his head to clear it.
The sec man gave him a vulpine leer that passed for a smile. "I hear ya,
whitey,"
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