s [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

He fell forward, like a man sliding headfirst off a breakwater into shallow
waves.
"Teddy? Teddy!"
Ryan had considered charging at the surviving brother, while he was still in
shock. But he was too far away for the gambit to have much hope of success.
"I'm reloading, Robby," Ryan said, snapping back the hammer and carefully
priming the beautiful Parker pistol with the powder horn.
"You lying bastard." The voice was taut with an icy rage.
"Putting the ball in now." Ryan removed the ramrod and pushed it down the
nine-
inch, smooth-bore octagonal barrel. "Nearly done."
Robby was totally confident, stepping slowly toward Ryan's crouching figure.
He passed the blood-sodden corpse of his stepfather without a single sideways
glance, the chromed revolver in his hand.
"Wasting your time, outlander."
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"Keep coming," said Ryan.
Robby stopped and sniggered, standing still, less than twenty feet away from
Ryan, his blaster steady in his right hand. Behind him, Teddy's death-rattle
told that his race was run.
"You did me a favor, one-eye. Our plan was to share the barony between us.
Blame you and your companion for the murder of poor Hamish. Chill you both.
Now it's even better. I'm the sole baron, with a dead brother to add weight to
my tale of woe. Thank you, outlander." He laughed again as Ryan leveled the
dueling pistol at him. "An empty gun frightens nobody," he said.
Ryan pulled the trigger and the powder fired, shooting the ramrod at Robby. It
struck him in the throat, smashing through his windpipe and severing the
spinal cord, protruding three inches from the back of his neck.
There was a choking, gargling sound from the mortally wounded man. He fired
his own gun once, the bullet disintegrating one of the tall windows of the
tower.
As Robby stumbled backward, drowning in his own blood, he tripped over his
brother's corpse and fell dead on top of him.
Chapter Thirty
J.B. lay facedown, blood seeping from his right ear, nose and mouth, forming a
small puddle on the dusty carpet. His glasses had fallen off and were glinting
a couple of feet away from him, close to his fedora.
Ryan checked first that the two brothers were indeed chilled, pressing a
finger to
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the arteries in the neck. In the case of Robby Tenbos there wasn't very much
artery left.
Then he knelt by J.B., doing the same, finding a slow but steady pulse. The
blow with the baseball bat had been ferocious, but it now looked like the
Armorer might have spotted it coming at the very last second and just managed
to dodge enough to deflect the worst of the impact.
Ryan rolled his friend onto his side, making sure he hadn't swallowed his
tongue, picking up the glasses and the hat. Below him he caught the sound of
boots mounting the staircase toward the top of the tower.
Not wanting to get chilled by a trigger-happy sec man, Ryan called out.
"You can come ahead. But there's a lot of death up here. Baron and both his
stepsons caught the last train west. My friend's injured."
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"Who did the chilling and the injuring up there, you?"
"Brothers wasted the baron. One of them decked J.B. I chilled the brothers."
"Both?"
"Both."
"You got a blaster up there?"
"Not of my own. I used a flintlock pistol. It's empty now. There's a panga of
mine down the stairs someplace. Look out for it."
"How bad's your friend, outlander?"
"Knocked out. Needs some care."
There was a muttered discussion. "We're coming up. Just stand by one of the
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windows and keep your hands where we can see them and don't make any sudden
movements."
"You believe me?" Ryan shouted.
A pause. "Yeah. I guess we do, all right. This has been coming for a long
time."
"I'm waiting for you," Ryan said, moving to look out through the shattered
window, breathing in the cool, fresh air of the morning.
THERE WERE six men in the sec team, moving through the carnage with an
exaggerated care, trying to pick their way around the sticky blood, and the
shards of splintered glass, shaking their heads over their dead leader. One of
them spit into Robby Tenbos's open eyes.
"Bastards. They were sack-jack bastards, Cawdor. You done real good here.
Shame is that the baron had to get himself snuffed as well."
"Can you get help for J.B., here, before you start shifting the bodies? They
can wait. He can't."
The local medical help turned out to be a wise woman from one of the wrecked
condominium buildings nearby. But, by the time she came fussing into the
bedroom where J.B. had been carried, the Armorer had recovered a sort of
consciousness.
Ryan called for a large bowl of clean water and some linen rags, bathing away
the crusted blood from his friend's face, gently probing the duck-egg swelling
on the side of his narrow skull. The wound felt hard, without the unmistakable
softness that meant a fracture.
Touching the spot brought J.B. around, his eyes blinking open, trying to focus
on the figure looming over him. "That you, Ryan?"
"Yeah. Lie still." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]