Iron Rage (11 page)

He turned his face to the side so he could roll one eye up to the sky. It was still black, although he could see some shadowy streaks where a few high lines of clouds were blotting the stars. Dawn looked as if it was still far away, even if it felt as if they'd been crawling along the water for roughly ever.

From somewhere ahead and to his left, a harsh voice barked, “Hey! Who goes there!”

* * *

“F
IREBLAST
,” K
RYSTY HEARD
Ryan say under his breath.

Ahead to port a light suddenly glowed alive, not twenty yards away from them. It showed hints of firelight-yellowed faces and a peculiar-looking superstructure.

Her heart sank. It could only be a New Vickville patrol boat. Somehow they'd almost run into it without even seeing it. It wasn't just the darkness, she realized. The craft's shadowed shape blended seamlessly against the larger shadow-masses of the fleet behind it.

“Speak the password,” the angry-sounding male voice called out. “Or we'll open fire, you P'ville cocksuckers!”

From the right and almost abeam, a second light appeared, reaching out at them across the rolling Sippi waters. It was only a lantern, and its beam was feeble, but it was strong enough to shine upon them faintly. Mostly, it signified the presence of a second patrol boat.

“We're lost,” Myron groaned, burying his face in his hands.

Krysty turned and put her arm around him to comfort him, but mostly in hopes of shutting him up. They didn't need to go out of their way to attract more attention. Although it was hard to see any way in which they weren't caught.

“Ryan,” Abner said, “it's your call.”

“Take her as fast as you can for the near boat,” Ryan clipped out. “Pass close as you dare to port of her. On my word, cut power. Then when I tell you, accelerate, keep turning to port until you're near the bank and head back up Wolf Creek to the
Queen
.”

Krysty saw the man's eyes widen, but he bobbed his head. The noise of the motor increased and the caravan slowly began to pick up speed.

Despite their initial threats, the crew of the first patrol craft didn't seem to know what to do. Krysty heard them shouting at each other about “raising a head of steam” and “orders.” The chug of a much larger engine than the launch's came from the other boat, though.

A new voice bellowed from the near vessel. “Open fire, you stupes! Blow the P'ville taints out of the damn water!”

The deck cannon went off. It seemed to Krysty as if the muzzle-flare would envelop them. But although the noise of the cannon firing struck her in the face as if she'd been flung into a board fence, and seemed to deafen her, the shot flew high over their heads. High enough that she dared hope it missed their rafts and dinghy, as well.

Then she was choking on dense sulfurous smoke.

The bow of the patrol boat loomed like a peak over
them. “Cut the throttle!” Ryan commanded. With the powerful drag of the heavy-laden craft in tow, the launch rapidly lost way.

Ryan laid his longblaster on the plank seat between them. “Ryan, what are you doing?” she asked as he stood up into a pantherish crouch, steadying himself with hands on the gunwales.

“I'll be back, Krysty,” he said. “Full power now, Abner!”

Then Ryan launched himself toward the enemy patrol boat.

I'm going to feel like the biggest stupe on Earth if I miss my handhold. The words flashed through Ryan's mind as he flew through the air above the darkened waters of the Sippi.

He barely had time to finish the thought before he struck the New Vick patrol boat's hull. His hands by sheer dumb luck found the scuppers. Behind him he heard the growl of a small motor rising as Abner, following Ryan's last commands, turned the launch and her tow-train and ran hard for the bank.

He hauled himself up, boot soles scrabbling against the wooden hull. He got enough of a purchase to push up and grab the rail. Then he got the toes of his boots into the drain holes at the base of the gunwale.

Holding on to the rail with his left hand, he drew the SIG from its holster with his right. A man with a billed cap and a beard stood to his right, not three feet away. He was already starting to turn.

Ryan shot him twice through the back. The shots were loud even over the ringing in his ears left by the deck cannon going off almost in his face. The sailor fell.

The one-eyed man vaulted the rail and landed in a
crouch on the deck. Somebody emerged from the cabin, to his left, and he sensed the man grabbing for him.

Ryan dealt him a sharp elbow strike. It struck hard against the man's chin, momentarily numbing Ryan's left hand. The sailor reeled back with a cry. The initial blow was followed by a side kick that slammed the man onto his butt on the deck. Ryan pivoted slightly and fired a single shot. Just as the sailor was starting to bound forward to his feet, he collapsed to the deck with a hole in his forehead.

Drawing the panga with his left hand, Ryan rushed forward and was among the still-confused crew like a tiger among sheep.

The man attending the surprisingly little deck cannon looked up in amazement as Ryan appeared around the corner of the mostly open cabin that lay in front of the vessel's exposed topside boiler. Ryan delivered two shots that drilled though the blasterman's throat. He emitted a sort of croaking sound and toppled backward over the rail, leaving his wet mop stuck down the fat smoothbore barrel.

A second man in a peaked cap stood behind the cannon in a spill of yellow shine from the lanterns mounted at the front of the wheelhouse, in front of Ryan and to his left. The Deathlands warrior chopped him at the base of the neck from behind with a backhand swipe. The officer went down.

That left two crewmen in sight, one to the right of the cannon, turning to face Ryan with a bag of what had to have been premeasured black powder in his hands, and the other on the cannon's far side, bending over a
low crate that contained several softball-size iron balls. Ryan shot the nearer man, the one with the powder bag, twice through the chest. He collapsed in a heap beside the cannon.

Abruptly Ryan felt himself caught up from behind by a pair of arms snaking beneath his own. Then hands interlocked behind his head, pulling both his arms up while his neck was forced inexorably forward. His attacker, who had to have been bigger than he was, hoisted his boots off the deck.

Sparks began to pop like tiny muzzles-flashes behind Ryan's eye. He was in a beyond Code Red emergency. That full nelson neck lock could crank his spine far enough to put him out, cause permanent injury up to paralyzing him, or leave him staring up at the stars through the fleeting wisps of clouds above. All of which would mean he'd failed in his mission to cover his friends' slow-motion escape from the armored battle fleet.

The other gunner came at him, his bearded face a twist of rage. He held one of the cannonballs overhead in both hands, preparing to smash it down on Ryan's exposed and helpless head.

But while his skull was definitely exposed and vulnerable, Ryan was far from helpless. He'd been here before.

As the cannon-loader lunged at him, Ryan whipped up his lower body and pistoned both his boot heels into the man's gut—neither a solar plexus nor a nut shot, but between the hip bones, midway from navel to nut-sack. It was a blow meant to unbalance, not stun.

It did. The gunner was already leaning forward. As Ryan intended, the man's legs whipped out from under him. Though the motion almost made him black out, Ryan torqued his own hips rapidly counterclockwise, twisting his own legs out of the way.

By sheer luck the falling cannonball hit Ryan's captor somewhere between the same spot Ryan had kicked his pal and a thigh. Ryan had never counted on that—he had other means of getting his attacker to loosen his death grip—but he was certainly taking the gift that chance had given him. He got his right hand turned down and in far enough for his blaster muzzle to clear his own torso. And bear on his enemy's.

He fired a shot. He didn't care where it hit, only that it did. The burly crewman howled. The dreadful pressure on the back of Ryan's neck stopped as the sailor's interlaced fingers started to loosen their grip. Ryan managed to pull both arms far enough to get a boot down and turn his hips farther, enough to jab his left elbow into the man's ribs and gain even more slack.

He pressed the blaster under his left armpit, pressed it into flesh and triggered three more shots, fast as he could.

The New Vick sailor choked out a scream and fell to the deck, gagging on his own blood. He managed to take Ryan down with him, but was unable to keep any kind of hold on him. Ryan fell on his back across the man he'd double kicked, who was starting to push himself up, moaning from what was most likely a deck-smashed face. The man went down again with a fresh crack of face bone on wood.

Putting his left hand, still clutching the panga, on the prone man's neck to keep him down and help himself up, Ryan scrambled up to one knee. He raised the big blade, then slammed it into the cannon loader's neck. Blood gushed from the crewman's mouth and spurted from the wound. His neck broke with an audible crack.

The other patrol boat's engine was chugging rhythmically now. “
Yarville
, what's going on?” a voice bellowed. “Sandoz, Whateley—somebody answer me!”

Ryan saw the craft's prow swinging toward his boat. The lantern's beam swept a yellow path across the placid waters of the great river.

There was enough side-scatter light for Ryan to get both hands to brace his handblaster in a classic kneeling Weaver position. He got a hurried picture of the lantern's glow, then fired two shots. The light went out with a clatter and tinkle and a confused curse from the man who was holding it. It was rapidly drowned out by confused and panicky shouting as a spreading blue-and-yellow glare showed that oil spilled from the shattered reservoir had taken light.

Ryan caught a glimpse of somebody emptying a bucket of something other than water into the fire-pool. It made sense that a war craft would carry sand to use to fight a fire, especially when its main weapon or weapons were flame-belching monstrosities.

That didn't bother him. He had a new plan in mind. In a fight his mind was always working at high speed, even while his well-trained and experienced body did most of the work of minute-to-minute keeping him
alive. He was up on his feet at once, holstering his 9 mm blaster, and darting a few steps toward the bow.

He yanked the wet mop out of the wide, stubby cannon barrel and chucked it over the rail. He grabbed up a bag of black powder from the little stack to the starboard of the cannon. It was surprisingly small—they had to have access to good powder mills in New Vick. A baron who had the means and mind to create a powerful war machine by the standards of the day would make sure he or she had the best supply of powerful and reliable black powder possible.

He cut the bag with his panga and dumped it willy-nilly into the bore. Even though it was several inches across, it looked almost small by comparison to the thickness of the tube surrounding it. Not more than three-quarters of the dark grains went down the black hole, but neatness didn't count, nor did full power.

It wasn't
his
nuking boat. If he could use it to make his own getaway, fine. If not, he didn't intend to leave it in a condition to be used by anybody else.

He stuffed the empty hemp bag into the cannon to serve as wadding. Then he sheathed the panga, ran to the other side of the cannon and picked up a ball, which he could tell by the heft was about four pounds. He stuffed it into the barrel, where it fit just easily enough to make a bit of rattling sound on the way down, until the powder bag wadded enough to halt it.

Again, perfection was not an issue here. It so seldom was when the shit and lead began to fly. But while Ryan didn't load and fire black powder cannon on a regular basis, he'd seen the drill often enough to know
the salient points. And though optimum power didn't play into what he was fixing to do, the ramrod lay in carved-wood brackets on the same side of the weapon he was on, and Ryan grabbed it.

As he straightened, a blaster banged from the other patrol boat, a black powder longblaster from the sound. The ball didn't come close enough to hear, nor did it strike anything that made enough of a noise to be perceptible.

He ignored it. If they shot more small arms at him, they'd likely miss, too. If not—well, then he'd either deal with it, or he wouldn't be worrying about it anymore.

As he jammed the ball the rest of the way down the smoothbore, and tamped it once hard against the powder charge for good measure, he heard the steam engine of the boat he was on begin to chug. The boat slowly began to gather way up the river.

Ace on the line, he thought. They just keep making my job here easier.

Yellow flame flared from inside the cabin, right next to the spoked steering wheel.
That
shot zipped by the right side of his head.

“Fireblast!” he said, ducking. The best and closest available cover was the squat cannon itself. Unless the crew of this boat were more stupe and less trained than seemed likely, they would not have primed the initiator with powder, nor stuck a cap on the nipple before loading the cannon. But it still did not give him the best feeling to crouch in front of the bore of a loaded cannon.

Another shot blazed from inside the cabin. Time was
blood, and he was bleeding it out triple fast. He fired two quick shots toward where the flashes had come from. Both came from the same spot, so far as he could tell. He might have lowered his aim and punched the slugs through the thin wood of the wheelhouse, but he had no idea how the shooter's body was positioned, nor what ironmongery lay between the two of them. So if he couldn't chill the bastard, at least he'd make him keep his head down.

And in no way did Ryan intend to make himself an easy target. He moved from in front of the bow cannon in a forward roll, jettisoning the SIG's spent magazine as he did. He was likely going to lose that mag, and they were hard to replace, but it was small potatoes compared to catching the last train west.