Sunrise Lands

A dozen of them rode into I

It looked like the final collapse here hadn't come at once the way it had in Boston; there had been an effort to get the streets clear by pushing the vehicles off, and peeling, faded paint on a big warehouse-looking building read, EMERGENCY FOOD DISTRIBUTION CENTER.

That one had been inhabited more recently; you could tell by the stink, stronger than the silt-salt of the nearby sea, and the flies. And the crude wooden rack outside with the rows of skulls was a giveaway.

Dead giveaway, he thought mordantly. But it feels dead now, uninhabited.

"Check it out," he said.

They waited, bows ready, eyes traveling to the roofs on either side; the horses shifted nervously under them. Singh and Kaur swung to earth with their shetes in their hands; when they came back out they both looked disgusted, but relaxed and with the steel sheathed.

"Nothing, Captain," the man called. "They were here, but they cleared out last night. I think you were right-they fought among themselves a little when they got back from rushing us."

"Nothing?"

"Nothing living, and nothing I wish to remember having seen," Singh said, and spit.

Considering some of the things he'd seen Singh do himself in the war, he decided he really didn't want to look inside-no point in putting things like that in your head unless you had to. Instead they cantered down to the water's edge. There they found what they wanted; an old time warehouse for boats, where they were stacked up several layers high in metal racks. He'd seen that be fore in the ruined cities on the Lakes, and the guide-books listed several here.

The ground floor was smashed remnants where small animals scurried amid the tendrils of shade-loving vines, hiding as the humans dismounted and looked the place over; storm surges had come up the town's narrow cen tral harbor several times in the past decades. Beams of sunlight lanced down from holes in the rippled plastic of the roofing, catching on a chain, turning the bulks of cabin cruisers and catamarans into shadowy vastness. Birds flew in and out, tending to their nests.

Ingolf sighed and did some climbing-not easy in armor, but he certainly wasn't going to take it off. His limbs felt heavy after little sleep and a bad fight last night, but he was used to working while he was exhausted; it was a requirement in both the trades he'd followed since he left home. A lot of the boats were made of the old time material called fiberglass. He was familiar with it; some bowmakers used it instead of horn on the belly of a saddlebow, though it was getting rare back in civilized country. It had the advantage of not rotting if kept out of the sun, and at last he found a good sailboat with a folding aluminum mast.

"This one'll do," he called down.

More birds flew up at the echoes. Everyone in the Villains was used to working with pre-Change ma chinery, and more than one of this group had dealt with boats before, on the Lakes. It was still long hours of nightmare work to get the rusted slideway work ing, with only the spells of watch duty to break the hot monotony. He had barked knuckles and a sweat bath worse than the usual summer in-armor by the time the boat was in the wheeled cradle on the ground. Scavenging had found them enough Dacron and cord to rig the simple lug sail.

As the others were stowing the supplies, Jose drew him aside and spoke softly, with a glance at the Bossman's agent.

" Capitan, this cabroncito wants to go to that Nan tucket place really bad, let him go. So he's close to the Bossman, close enough his farts don't make no sound anymore, but that don't make him no friend of ours."

Ingolf smiled at the other man's worry. "And which friend of ours would I pick to send with him, to do something I'm afraid of, Jose?"

The Tejano blew out his lips in a gesture of frustration. "OK, I know what you mean. I still don't like it."

" I don't like it. Doesn't mean it doesn't have to be done."

Then Jose gri

"That's why I'm taking them! And you know they don't work apart. It's the smallest number that'll do the job-me, the Sikhs, Kuttner."

Unspoken went: And the least loss if we don't come back. Losing three more wouldn't fatally weaken the Villains for the trek back to the living lands. He clapped his second-in-command on the shoulder and nodded back towards the wagon camp.

"Just keep it together for ten days. If we're not back by then, then break camp and head west on the eleventh day. That's an order. We've already got all the stuff the sheriffs and the bossman wanted, apart from this, and enough gold to start a mint. We'll catch you up, but you move. You hear me, trooper?"

" Si. Doesn't mean I have to like it either."

The harbor mouth hadn't silted up quite enough to catch the sailboat's keel, possibly because it was protected by the half sunken hulk of a great ship whose bow reared out of the water like a dull-red hill. There was a little lurch of contact as the four of them labored at the sweeps they'd found, and then they were over the bar and out into Nantucket Sound.

Ingolf found himself relaxing as the green-brown shoreline faded. That wasn't very logical-drowning killed you just as dead as a sharpened shovel in the brain, and if they were shipwrecked anywhere around here it was right back into the stewpot. The fresh breeze and clean salt air and bright sunlight must have something to do with it, and the fact that he was finally out of his armor; it was bound up with a couple of cork life vests, like all their gear. They had enough smoked venison and biscuit to last them for a few days, fishing line and hooks, map and compass, and their weapons.

Birds went by overhead, gulls and some sort of pigeons moving in a big flock. Not far away a whale breached; he couldn't tell what kind, except that it blew its spout forward in twin jets.

The wind was from the northwest, just off the star board quarter. He looked at the map again, at his com pass, and then up at the sun. Spray came in over the rail and flew backward, stinging his eyes with the salt, and he squinted into the brightness over the blue water and its white-topped waves.

"Should be there just before sunset, unless it moved," Ingolf said, lolling back with the tiller under his arm.

Neither Kaur nor Singh spoke, which was fairly typi cal. They were ready at the lines, with the care of people who liked to do things right but weren't entirely sure they could; their experience in boats was more limited than his, and he was no expert, just competent enough to set a straight course in not too bad weather. Kuttner didn't speak either, which wasn't like him. He usually had some order or observation or complaint. Now he was tensely silent.

Ingolf shrugged. I like him better this way, except that he looks like he's about to snap like a lift beam under too much weight. I suppose it was too much to hope he'd get seasick and call the whole thing off.