Time Castaways by James Axler

Author:James Axler,
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Harlequin Enterprises Ltd.

Chapter Ten

Chapter Ten

Slowly the old healer rose from the tattered form lying on the churned earth, and reverently laid a white fur coat over what had once been a living, breathing woman.

“She’s gone, lord,” the healer said, bowing his head.

“No…impossible….” Baron Griffin whispered, dropping to his knees. His clothing was torn and dirty, a great chunk of fur missing from his cape. His left arm was nestled in a crude rope sling, and a crimson streak was smeared across a cheek from the barrage of shrapnel that exploded from the destruction of the Wendigo.

“My love?” the baron whispered, reaching out a trembling hand to stroke the bloody arm of his wife. But there was no reply, and he knew there never would be again.

Opening his mouth to speak, the healer decided it was better to say nothing and moved away, looking for anybody his seaweed potions and cloth bandages might be able to help. Nearly half the people in the ville had wounds of some sort or another, but most of them had been caused by the sec men shooting blindly at the escaping outlanders. However, that was the sort of comment that got a man hung and fed to the crabs. With every wound he stitched shut, the healer wisely cursed the cowardly outlanders and praised the brave sec men.

Seeing one of his wife’s favorite plastic rings where it lay near her body, Baron Griffin reverently slipped it back on the stiffening finger, the wild maelstrom of raw emotions inside the tormented man too complex and powerful to ever put into simple words. Gone, Barbara was gone forever.

A long time passed, but none of the sec men surrounding the tableau dared to speak and disturb their mourning baron. There was only the background cries of the wounded, the wail of civies over their deceased husbands and wives, and the steady crackle of the burning log cabins. Arrows stuck out of the ground like winter weeds, the spent brass of the outlanders’ blasters clearly showing their escape route through the ville. The smoldering wreckage of the Wendigo lay scattered across the ground for a hundred yards. A thick column of black smoke rose from the roiling inferno of the annihilated still, the cooking bodies of the shine crew sizzling horribly inside the raging fire, the meaty smell both oddly appetizing and utterly repulsive at the same time.

“What should we do now, lord?” sec chief Donovan demanded, thumbing live brass into his blaster.

The chest of the big man was covered with tight leather wrapping to ease the pain of his broken ribs. A fat bandage sat on his wounded shoulder like the pet bird of a sailor, a rivulet of red seeping out from underneath to trickle down his arm. His once handsome face was covered with blisters from the spray of red- hot coals, but there was a fierce determination in his dark eyes.

“Do?” Baron Griffin repeated, as if he had never heard the word before. Then withdrawing his hand

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