Deathlands 107 - No Man's Land by James Axler

Author:James Axler [Axler, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2012-07-08T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Sixteen

“Quo vadis, domine?”

Jed Kylie looked in frank irritation at Snake Eye, who had without ceremony—much less permission—just taken his place riding his gleaming black gelding flank-to-flank with the baron’s chestnut stallion in the very midst of his cortege. The baron of Hugoville rode at the head of the Grand Army of the Des Moines River Valley Cattlemen’s Protective Association, although he had a cavalry troop out scouting the way ahead.

“I’m not even gonna ask how you managed to get past all the aides and sec men who are supposed to keep the rabble away from my skinny august ass,” Kylie said. “But I will ask what the glowing night shit that was you asked me?”

“It meant, ‘Whither goest thou, Lord,’” Snake Eye said. “A classical allusion. A weakness of mine.”

“I’m guessing you’re not just along to help me enjoy the morning sunshine,” the baron said.

“No, indeed. Although it is a fine, fair morning.”

It was. The sky was blue and brushed with fluffy horsetails of cloud. The only off note was a line of cloud above the Western horizon, black with an ominous orange tint that the sun was just too high in the sky to explain away as dawn light. It might be that the valley was due for a thunderstorm, if not one of its infrequent acid-rain storms.

“Well?” Cody snapped from the baron’s other elbow—his left.

He was visibly not pleased by Snake Eye’s sudden appearance out of nowhere. Although Snake Eye found it hardly mysterious, to his own private amusement. The aides and sec men all knew the tall, lean man with the black hat, the yellowish cast to his skin and the black eye patch was the baron’s personal hired assassin.

And there was that in Snake Eye’s manner that didn’t encourage forwardness of any sort in those whom he encountered.

“I came to ask a question,” Snake Eye said. “Which I have duly asked.”

“Let me ask a question,” Jed said sternly. “Why haven’t you chilled that bastard coldheart Cawdor and his murdering friends yet?”

“That is no easy task, Baron,” Snake Eye said with his standard calm. “How successful have your shiny sec boss and all your brave soldiers been on that front of late?”

“Impertinence!” Toth hissed. “General, one word. One word and my men will have him down and be peeling the scaly hide right off him!”

Snake Eye bent his head forward to show the man a smile. “Feel free to try that, Colonel,” he said, tipping his black hat.

An uncharacteristic grin warped Jed’s rumpled features.

“I feel too good to take offense at what he says, Bismuth,” he said. “Which is true, anyway. Not that that’s anything a man should count on as an offense. A baron’s privilege is the foundation of an orderly society. Without it we’d have anarchy.”

“We certainly can’t have that, Baron,” Snake Eye agreed.

“As for what I’m doing, isn’t it obvious? I’m leading my troops to put paid to the Uplands Alliance once and for all. Or hadn’t you heard? Their commanding

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