Chapter One

      Moaning softly, the child baron hugged himself tightly and began to rock in the wooden chair. The motion made it creak slightly and he shuddered at the noise.

      Tightening the grips on their longblasters, the two sec men in the throne room of Broke Neck ville exchanged nervous glances.

      “Baron?” the corporal ventured, advancing a step. “Is there anything we can do to help?”

      Drooling slightly, the youth looked at the guard with unseeing eyes. “He has the secret,” Baron Harmond whispered, the words slurred slightly. “But he doesn’t know it. Not yet!”

      “Secret, sir?” a sec man dared to ask, tilting his head. “Who has what secret?”

      “Vermont!” Harmond screamed, grabbing his temples as blood began to trickle from his nose. “He’s here, but also back there! I can see him in a hundred places! A hundred times! But Tanner has stayed too long! There is a new future! A different casement! The universe is ripping apart! Time is healing itself!”

      Worried, the corporal looked at the window, but could see nothing wrong with either the sill or the concrete casement. What was the doomie baron talking about? Harmond had accurately predicted future events a dozen times before, and saved countless lives, both civie and sec men. But had the young baron finally crossed the line of sanity?

      “Should I fetch a healer, Baron?” the sec man asked, starting for the doorway.

      “Too late!” Harmond screamed, both of his hands clawing at the empty air. “He is the disease and the cure!”

      “Sir?” a sec man asked, puzzled, starting to sweat. An insane baron. He knew of villes with those, and it was never good.

      “Cold, so cold,” Harmond whispered, hugging himself tightly.

      “Would you like a blanket, Baron?” the corporal asked. “Or we could make a fire.”

      “Yes, cold…fire,” the baron wheezed, fighting for air. “The cold…is a fire…consume us all…” Lurching to his feet, he stared at the open window and pointed a shaking finger at the empty air of the north.

      “Coldfire is here!” the baron shrieked, then shook all over and collapsed to the floor.

      Rushing to his side, the guards turned the child over and pressed fingers to his throat to see if their baron still lived. Or if this was the long-ago prophesized day of death and the second end of the world had finally begun.

      “Y-YOU HEARD ME, outlander,” growled the young sec man standing in front of the ville gate. With a double click, the guard cocked both hammers of the homie shotgun. “All of you, j-just move along now, and there won’t be no t-trouble.”

      Masked by the night, the six people on horseback gave no reply to the warning. There was only the low moan of the desert breeze mixing with the sound of the panting horses and the jingling of the metal rings in the reins and stirrups.

      Looking down at the nervous teenager from the back of his stallion, Ryan Cawdor tried to control his growing temper. Dark clouds covered the moon, so the only light came from the sputtering torches set on either side of the wooden gate. However, Ryan could still see that the huge wep held by the sec man was obviously not scavenged from predark days, but a homie, built from iron pipes reinforced with layers of steel wiring wrapped around each barrel. The wooden stock was hand-carved and the firing mechanism seemed to be taken from another blaster, perhaps a handblaster. Yet the double barrels of the scattergun were worn from constant use, plainly stating the wep was in good working condition and had seen plenty of action.

      Even if the guard hadn’t, Ryan decided. There was dried blood on the sec man’s clothing, but none of it was his, and his face lacked the hard expression of a person who had taken the life of another. There was determination, and even bravery, but not the slightest sign of combat experience. For all Ryan knew, this was the teenager’s first shift of standing guard at the ville gate.

      “Now, look, friend…” Ryan began impatiently.

      “I said, keep moving!” the teenager ordered, grimly leveling the deadly blaster. “We don’t want your kind around here!”

      “And what kind is that?” Ryan asked gruffly, leaning over slightly in his saddle to pat the neck of his horse.

      The sweaty chestnut stallion nickered at the touch and shuffled its unshod hooves in the dry sand. Heavy saddlebags were draped across the muscular animal’s withers, and on its flanks was the brand of Two-Son ville, a lightning bolt set inside a circle. Even though covered with dust from the long ride, Ryan was well-dressed, wore good boots, pants without any patches and a heavy coat trimmed with fur. A shiny longblaster was hung across his shoulders and a slim handblaster rested in the holster of a predark gunbelt. A bandolier of ammo clips crossed his chest, and at his side was a large knife of unknown design.

      Licking dry lips, the guard gave no reply. But he kept stealing glances at the left side of Ryan’s face.

      Touching his leather eye patch, Ryan grunted in understanding. Yeah, he thought so.

      It had been a week since the companions had left Two-Son ville in the south and charged across the Zone, going from ville to ville, chasing down the rumors of the chillings of one-eyed men. But they were always one day behind the ruthless coldhearts who jacked everybody with silver hair like Doc’s, and chilled any man with only one eye like Ryan’s. Left or right eye, it made no dif.

      It had been three long days of finding nothing but death and dust, until now. So Ryan as sure as nuking hell wasn’t going to be turned away from a ville where the chillings were so fresh that a green sec man still had dried blood on his clothing.

      “Move along, rist,” the guard said, tightening his grip on the scattergun. Behind the teen, two small hatches in the thick wooden gate swung open and dark metal glistened in the dim torchlight.

      In spite of the poor lighting, Ryan caught the subtle motion with his good eye and shifted his position to get a clear shot with his handblaster at whoever was standing at the hatch. If trouble came, it would be from the snipes hiding behind the gate, and not this nervous kid.

      “And how do you know we’re not the ones doing all of the chilling?” J. B. Dix asked, adjusting his wire-rimmed glasses.

      Sitting astride a chestnut stallion, the short, wiry man was dressed in loose denim blue jeans, a T-shirt and a heavy leather jacket. A pump-action scattergun was strapped across his back, a 9 mm Uzi rapidfire rested on his thigh and at his side hung a large canvas bag bulging with lumpy objects.

      “W-we don’t want no more trouble,” the teenager stated roughly, stepping away from the gate to give a clearer field of fire for the folks at the blaster hatches. “So just git. And I m-mean now!”

      This boy was terrified, Krysty Wroth realized. But not of us.

      “Go fetch your sec chief,”