Devil's Vortex. James Axler

that what his friend was engaging in was not self-deprecation. Rather, in the Deathlands, where swaggering braggarts were plentiful, that kind of understatement was just a good sales pitch.

      Baron Hamar clearly took it as such. “Good,” he said, emphatically nodding his square head. He had close-cropped bronze hair and a well-tended beard, both liberally streaked with white. He wore a soiled apron over a simple flannel shirt and denim pants, with a blaster belt strapped over it and a Model 1911 handblaster riding in the holster, hammer back and held in by a thumb strap.

      “Got use for men and women who know how to handle themselves in a fight,” he said, “you betcha.”

      “We don’t do mercie work, Baron,” Ryan said. “Got to make that clear up front.”

      “Oh, no, no. I’ve got a sec team, and my people can fight, too, if anyone makes trouble for us. We do business. We do not look for trouble.”

      “Ace on the line,” Ryan said. “What do you need, then?”

      “Come, my friends,” Hamar said. “Walk with me.”

      He turned and nodded pointedly to what J.B. took to be a handful of his staff and a couple of young, gaudy sluts standing on the elevated plank walkway in front of the gaudy house. It was called Sailor’s Rest, according to a weathered board sign, obviously hand painted with some care and skill. What a sailor might find to be doing here in this thoroughly landlocked part of the world, J.B. had not a clue. He suspected resting was a good bet, though, since according to Doc they weren’t far from the spot farthest from any coast in all of North America.

      The employees took their boss’s hint and vanished back inside. Hamar guided the companions west at a brisk walk along the main street toward what was clearly the turpentine distillery, from its size and appearance. Not to mention its ever-increasing smell.

      “Hard times have come to this part of the Plains,” Hamar said.

      “That’s not exactly breaking news,” Mildred muttered.

      Ryan turned his head back toward her, ever so slightly. “Shutting up now,” Mildred said.

      J.B. loved the woman, but she did have a tendency to run her mouth. It was a good thing Baron Hamar had a solid rep for being as easygoing as his manner suggested, or almost. Mariah told them that the patriarch of the Baylah clan considered it a scandal just how liberal he was. But the calluses on Baron Hamar’s strong square hands made it clear that, baron or not, he was no stranger to doing hard work.

      And the condition of his knuckles told J.B. loud and clear that Hamar was also no stranger to bouncing them off the odd skull, which might have just been how he delivered gentle warnings to gaudy patrons as the step before hanging their hides out on his stockade wall to dry. Whatever the case was, even the most scandalously liberal-minded baron was still a baron and unlikely to be well disposed to getting back talk.

      “We’ve got coldhearts,” Hamar said. “Of course we do. Every five, ten years, they’ve got to make a run at us. Just to learn.”

      J.B. saw Ryan nod appreciatively. They had to teach some pretty tough lessons in that subject hereabouts, if the learning lasted that long among the Plains bandit bands.

      The Armorer kept his eyes roving from side to side, taking in the surroundings—and the onlookers. Jak, as always when he found himself surrounded by anything that might even attract the accusation of being civilization, walked as warily as an old trading-post tomcat who stumbled into a coyote conclave.

      “But we’ve got a new bunch moving in,” the baron said. “Muscling in on the other gangs. Getting bigger, stronger. Even enough to start worrying the Plains nations.”

      That got J.B.’s attention. From what he knew of the area, the Native Americans could be spiky to deal with on their own. Though they generally gave grief to each other more than to any outlanders, depending on who was allied with whom and who was currently blood-feuding, none of them were the sort of people a man would care to rub the wrong way.

      “Heard they roughed up Red Knife’s Arapaho crew pretty good on the Mussleshell two or three weeks ago. No pushovers, that bunch.”

      They reached the end of the street. J.B. would not have minded an invitation to inspect the turpentine-distilling equipment, fragrant as it was. It looked mostly like a random collection of pipes and boilers. But it was still something that had been built and fixed with a person’s hands. As such, it caught J.B.’s interest.

      But apparently Baron Hamar had just felt like stretching his legs. He stopped in front of the operation, far enough away not to interfere with workers wheeling barrows of wood chips from the water-wheel-powered grinder and such to the hoppers.

      “Not just bold for coldhearts, but genuinely badass, then,” Ryan said. “Have they got a name?”

      “Bloods, they call themselves.”

      “Fireblast! You mean, the Blackfeet are doing this?”

      That signaled that it would be an ace time for them all to turn right around and shake the dust of the whole district from their heels triple-fast. The Confederation was one of the biggest and strongest tribes. If they were making a hard move south, it meant that this whole part of the Plains was on the verge of bursting into a wildfire that could easily consume Ryan and his companions. The companions knew the area. The bands that already roved here, such as the Absaroka and the Lakota, would be looking to teach the invaders some hard lessons.

      “Not the Confederacy, no,” Hamar said. “Nor the actual Blood band. Freelancers who are using the name.”

      “Black dust!” J.B. was moved to say. “Real Bloods aren’t likely to cotton to that.”

      “Mebbe that’s the point,” Hamar said. “Rumor says these new Bloods’ boss man is a Blood renegade, a young firebrand who calls himself Hammerhand.”

      “You can just tell he’s a people person,” Mildred said under her breath. J.B. started to frown at that, but then Krysty gave a half-stifled snicker.

      Ryan showed no sign he’d even heard her, although J.B. didn’t doubt he had.

      “They give you any trouble yet?”

      “No. It is just a matter of time, I’m sure. But we weathered such storms before. No, they haven’t even been reported within three days’ ride of here. But they’re starting to hit trade harder and harder.”

      “So where do we come in?” Ryan asked.

      “Do you want us to help guard your caravans as part of your sec force?” Krysty asked.

      “Oh, no,” the baron said. “It’s not goods I want to deliver. It’s information!”

Chapter Six

      In a single panther-like leap, Hammerhand sprang into the bed of the rebuilt pickup truck. For all his bulk he landed lightly enough that the Buffalo Mob sentry, leaning over the roll bar onto the Tacoma’s cab roof to enjoy a smoke under the cold, starry sky, was only alerted to danger when he felt the vehicle rock on its spring beneath his feet.

      By then it was too late to dodge. Or even to scream.

      Hammerhand felt the man’s bearded chin dig into his biceps as he wrapped an arm around the coldheart’s throat. He snatched hold of that chin with his free hand and violently torqued the sentry’s head to the right.

      His thick neck snapped with a sound loud enough to turn even Hammerhand’s bowels briefly to ice water. He froze as he felt the dying bandit convulse and his nostrils filled with the rich, wet reek of his sphincter letting go in his camo pants.

      Inside the circle formed by the score of power wags parked on the nighttime prairie, the Buffalo Mob’s rowdy reverie continued unabated around a dozen or so campfires. The woman playing on a harmonica with surprising skill never missed a beat. Neither did the pair