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rugged fastness and survived. So who had put up all the decorations?
They were made out of branches of trees that Ryan believed were called aspens.
"Quakers" they'd named them. Poles had been hewn from the silvery-green wood,
with its criss-crossing black scars, then tied into shapes like the tepees
that some of the double-poor of Deathlands lived in.
There were three of them, stretched across the crumbling relic of a road. The
one nearest the edge was covered in a sprouting bunch of feathers. Red and
yellow and golden-brown; hundreds of them. And topping it was a narrow-bladed
knife of rusting iron, its haft wrapped in strips of what looked like dried
leather or skin.
The right-hand tripod was leaning to the front, set close against a cliff of
moss-
streaked stone. Melt from a glacier, farther up the mountain, came cascading
across the road in milky turquoise torrents. Tufted pink flowers decorated the
poles, some of the flowers dead, drooping and falling on the damp earth.
But it was the center set of branches that caught Ryan's eye.
It was much the tallest, well over a tall man's height, blocking the trail.
Ribbons of material were festooned all over it, tied in place with rawhide
thongs. Small metal stars of brass and copper dangled from the silks and
satins, chiming against one another.
And on the top, held in place with circling strands of green wire was "A
human head," said J.B.
The eyes had gone, and half the teeth were missing. The lower jaw dangled in a
macabre leer, kept by a thread of gristle. There were still a few shreds of
leathery skin clinging to the yellowed bone.
"What's that on its forehead?" asked Hun.
"Bullet hole," replied J.B.
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"Looks like a warning," said Ryan.
"Do we stop, or go on, or what?"
"We go on."
War Wag One rolled forward again as Hun engaged the gears, driving straight
for the center of the sets of aspen poles, crushing it beneath the heavy
wheels. Ryan watched through the front screen, imagining he could hear the
brittle crack as the skull was splintered, but through the armor he knew that
was absurd.
In the next hour they came across three more sets of the weird signs. Both J.
B.
Dix and Ryan Cawdor stayed in the main control cabin, keeping the combat
vehicle in a state of full fighting readiness with everyone on alert.
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"How far?"
Hun threw the question over her shoulder. The trail ahead was becoming
steeper, and the gauges showed a sharp temperature drop as night closed in on
them.
Ryan eased the white scarf around his neck. "Not sure. All we can do is put
together everything we know and add in Kurt's ravings an' what Krysty knew.
Best map we have don't show us much. But if there's this Stockpile or Redoubt
up there, then it's close to a place called Many Glaciers. Near as we can
figure."
"We stoppin' soon?" Hunaker asked.
"Yeah. Give it another ten, then pull on over. That looks like a meadow along
that river. Trees far enough back to cut down an ambush."
"What d'you think about those poles?" J.B. asked him, blowing out a perfect
ring of smoke from the dark, evil-smelling cheroot.
"Warnin'. Some mutie religion trick. Maybe we're on someone's home turf. I've
heard nothin' on any townies movin' up here."
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Within a few minutes the huge war wag had finally pulled over for the night,
and the usual sentries had been posted. Supper was cooking, and around a fire
most of the men and women in the team were making and mending-cleaning
armaments and repairing clothes.
Unusually in the Deathlands, the water was good. Ryan walked down and sat down
on a large boulder, riven by the frosts, and flicked pebbles into the river.
Alongside the rocks were patches of creamy Indian paintbrush and splashes of
golden vetch, absurdly rich, their colors still bright in the last shards of
the evening sun. The sky was a sullen red, streaked with wind-torn clouds in
gray and purple. Over the tops of the highest range of mountains there was the
usual silver lace of lightning.
Ryan Cawdor was not a man given to endless agonizing and self-doubts. But on
this beautiful evening he felt a rare sense of melancholy. Things were
changing.
The majority of his friends had been chilled within the past week, and now
Trader's race was damned near run. Whatever happened up in the topmost trails
of the Darks, it would mean an ending of the old ways of life that had been
his ways for over ten years.
"You look like a prickless mutie in a gaudy-house, Ryan."
"Hi, Krysty. Guess Trader's sickness has really gotten to me. He was almost
like a father, if that don't make me sound like a stupe."
She sat down by him, stretching out her long legs, staring at her own
reflection in the polished leather of her boots. "You don't sound like a
stupe. I've only known the Trader a short while, but he's& somethin' special."
On the farther side of the valley, up a slope of rough scree, Ryan caught a
flicker of movement. His rifle was still in the war wag, but his pistol flowed
into his fingers without any conscious thought, only to be bolstered again
when he recognized the white blur as one of the hardy mountain goatlike
creatures that thrived near the tree line in the Darks.
A bright blue bird with a spiky crest came to drink near them, dipping its
beak
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into the water in delicate, jerky movements. The smell of cooking stew came on
the breeze to them.
"Hungry?" Ryan asked, turning his head quickly, finding that Krysty was
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sitting closer than he'd thought. So close that their noses almost touched and
her veil of crimson hair brushed lightly against his cheek.
Her green eyes drilled into his and she half opened her mouth, saying nothing.
Despite the cool of the evening, Ryan was perspiring.
It was utterly inevitable that they should kiss. And having kissed should kiss
again, and again. His hand was holding the back of her neck, and her hair
seemed almost to caress his fingers. His tongue thrust between her parted
lips, and her sharp teeth nipped him, so gently. His right hand slipped down
the rough material of her overalls, finding the zipper, lowering it in a
whisper of movement. He felt the warm swell of her breast as his palm cupped
it, and the nipple harden like a tiny animal. Her own hands were delving under
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