Wolves (23 page)

“Most,” the master says, though now he is looking at Huxley differently. He points a finger at Huxley, and begins to wag it. Then he steps onto the gangway and begins to descend, a knowing half smile spreading across thin, greasy lips. “You. I know you.”

Huxley looks away, feeling his face beginning to burn as the man gets closer to him. It is difficult. It is so difficult to stand in front of this man with two loaded revolvers in his waistband … and do nothing.

“You don't know me.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I do.” The master reaches the bottom of the gangway, his reptilian friend hovering behind him. The master reaches into a pocket in his jacket and withdraws a thick-looking piece of paper. He unfolds it and holds it up officiously. The sun catches the paper the way the master is holding it, and Huxley can see what is written on the other side, though he sees it imprecisely.

A drawing. A drawing of a face.

“The spitting image,” the master says with a whistle. “Usually these drawings are terrible, but this one bears a striking resemblance.” The master looks at Huxley, then turns the paper around to display it to him.

Huxley is staring at an ink drawing of himself. He feels his heart spasm in his chest. The breath catches. He stares, and cannot believe it, but it is there, just as plain as day, no matter how surreal it seems. The drawing is not perfect—they've missed him in the eyes—but the likeness is unmistakable.

In the back of his mind:
Nadine could've drawn better than that … 

A WANTED poster,
he thinks, but there is text below it, and it does not offer a reward to anyone else to catch Huxley. The instructions are written boldly below his picture, and they are very clear, and they twist his insides up as he reads them.

GIVE THIS MAN NO QUARTER. HE GOES BY “HUXLEY.” HE IS SOUGHT BY THE BLACK HATS OF THE RIVERLAND NATIONS, TO BE EXECUTED FOR CRIMES AGAINST THE NATIONS. ANYONE FOUND HELPING THIS MAN WILL ALSO BE EXECUTED AS A PARTNER IN HIS CRIMES. STAY AWAY AND OFFER NO HELP.

It's says nothing of Jay, nothing of Rigo, nothing of Gordon.

It's only me that is marked for death. And anyone found with me.

This isn't right. This isn't right. It was Captain Tim who was wrong. He was the murderer. He was the torturer. He was the evil one, not me. I wouldn't go along. I was framed. I'm innocent. This can't be. I'm not a murderer. I'm not a criminal at all … 

“Shocked you speechless, huh?” The master folds the paper up and puts it away. “Being marked for death by the Black Devils will do that. Those boys don't fuck around, I can tell you that. So now we have an issue. You have become very dangerous cargo to be caught with. A Black Hat himself gave me this little drawing of you, so I can't even say that I didn't know. If he finds you with me, he'll definitely kill me. And if he learns of it after the fact, he'll probably still take an eye or a limb. That's Riverland justice.”

What about you?
Huxley wonders.
What about all the atrocities that you've committed? What about all the stolen lives chained to your boat? Why are you not wanted by the Black Hats?

The master continues: “Luckily for you, I had a cousin who was once killed by the Black Hats, so I have no special love for them. In fact, you wouldn't be the first man I've hidden from them. But you would be the first man that I've hidden from a Black Hat that's about five hundred yards away.”

Huxley looks over his shoulder again, chest on fire. In the market, he can see two figures on horseback, skirting the crowd. White cowboy hat. Black boonie hat. He turns back, feeling lightheaded. Now it is desperate. And now the master knows that they are desperate. Huxley's options have slipped away. Now the only thing he can do is either make the deal, or surrender himself to the Black Hat. Which will mean his life, and the life of Jay, Rigo, Don, and Lowell.

The master smiles. “I'm a man who's known to take risks, but it must be worth the reward. And I don't think you'll like the terms of my reward.”

“Name the price,” Huxley says resolutely.

The master smacks his lips. “How much gold do you have between the lot of you?”

Huxley tries to sound confident. “Seven pieces.”

The master makes a raspberry noise, condescension thick in his voice. “Hardly worth it. Of course you don't have enough gold. You're Wastelanders. You trade in beads and knickknacks.” He looks at Lowell. “The boy, then.”

“What? No!” Huxley blurts before thinking.

Lowell steps back, looking alarmed.

“Is he family?” the master says with a chuckle. “Is he kin to you? No? Then why do you care? Young, strong man like him will get a good price at the auction—enough to pay for the rest of you. We'll even run the cost up high so only councilmen will be able to afford him, and then he'll live a good life as a councilman's porter or something. He'll be warm and safe and well fed. You'll never have to worry about him. He'll be happier than he is running with you, and less likely to get a bullet in the brain when you're all caught by the Black Hats.” The master looks up toward the market. “Ah. Here comes your friend now. Might want to make your decision quickly.”

You can't do this. You will not do this.

Huxley glances up toward the market, where the two men on horseback are descending out of the mash of people. The townsfolk and marketeers move out of the way of the horses, making a lane for them. He sees them and then he looks down at Lowell, but he doesn't see the boy. Again, his memories plague him and he sees the girl … 

Not just the girl.
Your
girl.

Your daughter.

Nadine. My sweet girl.

He closes his eyes, wishing for calm, wishing for the good memories, but they are gone, destroyed, whisked away like sandcastles in a rising tide. There is nothing in his mind but blood and smoke and fire, and through all of that he can only see a dying woman, covered in blood, crying out for her child.

Our child.

Because it had all been ripped away. By a man just like the man that stands before him now. It had all been destroyed, Huxley's entire life, his entire being, by a man that made his coin in living flesh, bought and sold and traded to the highest bidder, like any soulless inanimate object. A man just like this one, who stands before him demanding this boy, demanding this unfortunate creature that Huxley has found, and orphaned, and adopted, and for some reason clings to like the ghost of his old one.

My child.

Huxley looks again to the market, his mind scrambling about for answers. There isn't much time. He senses the moment receding. He senses the decision on the part of the slave master being made, the doors closing. And then he will be stuck. And in this place where he will be stuck, there is only death. The Black Hat will kill not only Huxley, but everyone that is with him, including Lowell.

Sell Lowell and save yourself?

Or save your soul and sentence everyone to death?

There's a third option here … 

Huxley snaps his teeth together, as though he is biting down on the idea, not letting it flee from him. It's a bitter fruit, but even a bitter fruit can sustain you, though it might turn your stomach. “Fine,” he blurts out quickly, very conscious of how close Captain Tim and the Black Hat are coming.

Perhaps close enough to recognize him.

The slave master sticks out his hand with a smirk. “Deal?”

“Deal,” Huxley says, the word coming out like a cough.

“No,” Lowell backs up another step, his hands coming up, terror in his eyes, maybe some disbelief that strikes down to the core of Huxley, but doesn't strike hard enough to make Huxley take back the deal that he has just made. Besides, he has shaken hands. A gentlemen's accord.

“Please,” begs Lowell. “Don't do this, Mr. Huxley …”

Don grabs the boy before he can retreat much farther. His hands close around the boy's arm and he pushes Lowell toward the slave master's henchman, the man with the lizard eyes. “Don't run off the dock, now,” Don says. “Get on the boat, boy. The man's right. You'll be safer as a slave than runnin' around with these jackasses.”

Lizard Eyes grabs Lowell and hauls him up the gangway, roughly.

The boy looks over his shoulder, stumbling along in shock. His eyes locked with Huxley's the whole way.

Don't be weak,
Huxley tells himself.
The strong will survive.

The slave master is not wasting time. He steps out of their way and waves them up the gangway. “Well, get on the boat, Mr. Huxley. Don't want that Black Devil recognizing you and putting my sweet
Misery
to the torch.”

Chapter 6

The gangway is pulled up almost the instant Huxley's feet leave it, and the big slaver's barge is already pushing off from its berthing. Teams of slaves take hold of the giant oars and use them to brace against the side of the dock and guide the big, flat-bodied boat away from the pier and out into the flow of the Red River.

Descending the hill to the docks, Captain Tim and the Black Hat who had joined his company stop their horses and gaze out at the slave barge, their eyes shaded by the brims of the hats. Huxley stands there, wanting to look away for fear that they will recognize him even at this distance, but he keeps watching them, wondering what they are going to do. Raise an alarm? Order the boat to return to the dock so the Black Hat could inspect its cargo?

A hand on his shoulder.

The slave master pushes him toward the big box in the center of the barge, along with Jay, Don, and Rigo. “Might behoove you to get the fuck indoors. Those gentlemen seem to be taking a special interest in you.” The slave master shuffles them along, trying to get them into the cabins, but trying not to look like he is hiding anything.

Huxley looks up at the structure of cabins looming above, worm-eaten and moldered in places and otherwise dilapidated. An ancient houseboat that has been expanded and built onto with whatever materials were at hand. Even as he approaches it, Huxley can smell the unpleasant odor from it. The smell of unwashed people. The smell of them being held in tight quarters like cattle in a car.

This was a bad idea
, Huxley thinks, his stomach souring.
He's just going to put us all in the cages with all the other slaves and he's going to beat us into submission and then sell us to whoever will pay in Shreveport.

Huxley looks around for Lowell, but he has disappeared.

Like he was never there.

This is what the slavers do. They swallow people whole. And now I'm walking freely into their mouth.

The doors to the cabin structure are thrust open and then Huxley, Jay, Rigo, and Don are inside. The doors close behind them with a slam, like the closing of a jail cell, and in the breathless silence that follows, Huxley listens for a door locking, but there is none. He reaches for the door handle, to test if it is locked.

“Don't,” Don says. “I wouldn't push this guy.”

Huxley grinds his teeth and pulls his hand back.

They are in a large room. One long hall, with iron and wooden bars to either side. It reeks of filth. Piss and shit. Huxley can only imagine the disease. It is dimly lit by oil lanterns hanging at intervals of ten or fifteen feet. They swing back and forth with the slight pitch and yaw of the boat on the water, casting shadows this way and that, the movement of the boat exaggerated by the lanterns and making Huxley dizzy, though when he closes his eyes he can feel that they are barely moving. There is a brazier in the center of the room, but it is not burning.

The smell of the room makes it feel like it is stuffed to the brim with living misery, but in the swinging lantern light, Huxley can see past the iron and wood bars to the long holding areas inside, the metal rings mounted to the walls to secure these groups of slaves chained together at the ankles. The entire hall is empty. All of the slaves on this boat are outside, tending to work.

Why have deckhands that you have to pay when you can just make your slaves do it for you? It takes no training to pull an oar.
Huxley suspected that the heavy chains he'd seen on the groups of slaves also served to deter them from trying to jump overboard. Even if you were a strong enough swimmer to handle the weight of the chains, one had to wonder about the others that you were chained to, and whether they were strong enough to swim as well, or if they would just pull you down into the silty river bottom.

Huxley moves quickly through an open cell door. The ground underneath his feet is wooden, but it is slick and moldy. He can see daylight pouring through cracks in the walls and he presses himself to one of these openings, his nose against the cobbled-together wood, peering with one eye into the slat of light coming through.

He sees the dock. The streets of Red Water Landing.

He searches for the two men on horseback, but they are gone.

Huxley's hands are splayed against the wood. It is cold and feels slightly damp. They ball into fists as he stands there, peering out. He realizes that the silence in this place is not so silent. He can clearly hear the orders of the slavers being shouted, the grunt of the slaves handling the oars, the lap of water slapping the underside of the barge. The
Misery
is drifting away from the dock now, too far even to be touched by one of the massively long oars. Now, some of the teams are dipping the long oars down into the river, pushing off of the bottom like a pole boat, while other teams are seating their oars into large, brass oar locks.

Red Water Landing slides away from them, more and more of it coming into view as it shrinks and begins to drift as the current catches the slave barge, headed south and east.

Still, Huxley cannot see Captain Tim or the Black Hat.

He has the discomfiting thought that they are on the boat with them at that moment.

Huxley pulls himself away from the wall, his hands still bound into fists at his side, and he looks about the dark interior of the cabins. He looks about it like a man that fears he will never leave it. “What are we doing here?” he says, looking to Jay. “This was a mistake. Was this a mistake?” Huxley shakes his head vehemently. “It was a fucking mistake. I shouldn't have … I shouldn't have let them take the kid.”

Jay is leaning casually against a wall of rusted iron bars. He seems not to care. He works spittle around in his mouth and he spits onto the dirty floor where an unknown myriad of diseases are mingling and growing. Maybe some form of plague that will begin in the belly of a slave barge and kill half the populace before the year is out.

But Jay still seems to have very little to say.

Rigo stands in the center of the room, regarding Huxley with his good eye, his hands held at waist level, the fingers picking at each other. What is he thinking? Is he judging Huxley?

Finally, Rigo breaks eye contact and looks away with a heavy-sounding sigh.

“You did the right thing,” Don says. “We're alive. That's what matters.”

“The boy trusted me.”

“He was a kid,” Don snaps back. “He was probably gonna die anyway. Sooner rather than later.” He fixes Huxley with a hard stare. “You want to explain why the Black Hats are after you? I think you've been very evasive about that. But I'd like to know. I think I deserve to know.”

“Deserve to know?” Huxley's eyebrows quirk up, then clamp down. “You're a murdering psychopath. You deserve to die.”

Don seems completely unperturbed by that assessment. “And yet you're the fugitive from justice who just sold your newly adopted sidekick for a ride down the river.” Don snorts. “I've killed, yes. I've murdered. And I have yet to feel bad about any of it, so maybe there is something wrong in my head. But at least I know who I am. You, on the other hand, are confused. You don't even know who or what you are. I've never seen a man fight himself so hard.”

Huxley regards the other man for a long moment, the shadows on their faces casting about at extreme angles like they are standing on a planet where the sun rises and sets every few seconds. How fast that planet would need to spin. Out of control. Spinning out of control.

Breathe. This isn't lost. You did all of this for a reason. And your plan is not lost.

“I didn't sell the boy,” Huxley says, his voice becoming quiet. He glances around the lonesome, empty darkness for prying eyes and ears but there are none. “And I've been wrongly accused by Captain Tim. The man is dirt. He's framing me for some shit he tried to pull, but I wouldn't let him. He already got one of us. Guy named Gordon.”

Don eyes him up and down, like he is trying to determine the truth of what Huxley has told him. He does not let on whether he believes Huxley or not, but he finally shrugs. “Fine. That can be your story. Might even be true. No one knows 'cept you yourself.” He points a finger at Huxley. “But you sold the boy. That much is true. Don't put that off on no one else.”

Huxley smacks the finger out of the way. “I didn't sell him,” he hisses. “We're going to get him back.”

Don raises his eyebrows. “Oh? Are we?”

Huxley turns away from the man, tired of looking at his face. He seeks Jay out in the gloom. The other man is standing a little straighter now, looking at Huxley with some interest. Huxley goes to him in the darkness, reaching out and pulling Rigo in by the sleeve. He stands next to his companions and looks over his shoulder, casting a few words at Don. “We need to talk quietly.”

Don hesitates for a time, then looks around, and finally takes the two long steps to join Huxley, Jay, and Rigo. He leans in and the four men huddle together, conspirators in the gloom.

“I won't do this,” Huxley says, his voice barely more than a whisper, but all the ire and hatred coming out nonetheless. “I won't sell someone to the slavers. I won't do it, no matter what. I made the deal because that was what we needed right then and there. Now we're on the boat, and we need to figure out how this ends. But I can tell you right now, I've no intention of playing nice with slavers.” He looks at Jay. “How many slavers on the boat with us?”

Don makes a thoughtful noise and begins to answer, but Huxley holds up a finger to silence him. He gives the other man a glare, but holds back a tongue-lashing.

Jay looks between the two men, then rubs his hands together, staring at them as he does. His pale skin appears dusky with the dirt and soot that coat them, as do his hair and face.

“Six, by my count,” Jay says. “Including the slave master.”

“I saw a few long guns,” Huxley observes. “A few scatterguns.”

Jay nods. “They're more likely to use the scatterguns on the deck. Long guns for escaped slaves. A few of them had revolvers, but not many.”

Huxley rubs his face. “Do you think they plan to disarm us?”

“I imagine they would have done so already. In any case, if they try, we simply refuse.”

“What happens when we refuse?”

Jay shrugs. “We'll have to cross that bridge when we come to it. What's your plan here, Hux? Spring the boy and make a swim for the eastern shore? Is that the big plan here? Because I don't think we'll reach the shore.”

“I'm not getting off this boat,” Huxley says. “We're going to Shreveport. And when we get there, we'll own this boat.”

“You plan to take the boat?” Don nearly coughs.

Huxley looks at him and nods. “I do.”

“Don't fuck with slavers,” he is shaking his head. “You just don't do it. That's how your jaw becomes an ornament …”

Huxley grabs the man by the face and slams him into a rack of wooden bars that creak and rattle treacherously. He digs his fingers into the other man's face, feeling the man's teeth through his flesh, thinks about ripping the jaw off then and there. “This jaw?” he says. “This precious jaw right there? You fucking coward. Well, let me explain something to you, Don. You're just a fucking drifter. Me? I'm a calamity. I'm a goddamn plague. You led me to water and that kept me alive, and for that reason I'm choosing not to kill you. But you're hanging by a thread here. These slavers? They're just men. They're just flesh and bone, like you and me. And flesh and bone dies when you shoot it. I've taken out slavers before, and I'll do it again, do you understand me? And if I have even an inkling that you are going to betray me, I'll just flat out kill you. And trust and believe when I tell you that the slavers will kill you, too. They'll use you to betray me, but in the end your jaw will hang from those pikes outside, just like mine. So what's it going to be, drifter? Are you going to help me or should I gut you right now?”

For once, Don's insolence has fled him.

Perhaps it is the Black Hats who seek Huxley, perhaps it is the mysterious nature of his crimes, or perhaps it is something that he sees in Huxley's eyes that stirs some primal fear in him, but Don's eyes are no longer those of a jackal, but those of cornered prey. He believes that Huxley will kill him.

Huxley is thinking about it.

If he shoots Don dead, the slavers will not care and likely Huxley can make up a story to cozy himself with the slavers and put them further off their guard. In the moment, standing there with Don's head rammed back against the wooden bars and Huxley's hand gripping hot and tight on the handle of his revolver, Huxley thinks that maybe he should just kill the man and get it over with. Maybe it would be best.

Don's hands pat rapidly at Huxley's shoulders, lightly, like fluttering birds.

Weak, you are weak, you worthless drifter. You are weak and I can smell it on you.

“Okay, man,” Don says, his voice shaking. “Just … Jesus Christ, just calm down.”

The answer is unsatisfactory. Huxley slams his head against the bars again. “Are you going to help me?”

Don winces as his head bounces off the wood. “Christ! Yes, I'll help you. I won't betray you. I promise.”

Huxley removes the pressure from Don's face, but keeps his hand on the man's jaw. He looks him in the eyes when he speaks, so that Don can know the truth of it. “No matter what, if this goes bad, your jaw is hanging with mine. Do you understand that?”

Don nods. “Yes. I understand.”