The Savage Horde

Chapter 33

Rourke understood it now—why no one had come in response to the shots.

The chanting and screaming would have drowned out any noise.

The wildmen chanted, men and women, dressed in the same curious mixture of tattered conventional clothing, animal skins and rags.

The shore party Cole had risked did the screaming. Men—all of them hung on crudely made crosses of limbs and scrap timbers—were being tortured in a variety of ways. Pyres were set about the bases of each cross and Rourke watched now as one of the wildmen reached a faggot into the bonfire which crackled loudly in the wind in the center of the ring of crosses, the ring of crucified men and their torturers.

The faggot glowed and sparked in the wind—it was now a torch. , "Holy shit," Rubenstein murmured, Rourke feeling the younger man's breath beside him.

"You might say that," Rourke observed.

"What are we gonna do?" It was Cole's voice, his whisper like a blade being drawn across a rough stone.

"That's an odd question for you to ask me," Rourke noted, not looking at Cole, watching the progress instead of the wildmen who held the torch. "We left one man dead on the beach—well, that isn't really true. We sent his body back with the other two and the two prisoners. And one of your two men was wounded. Now even if Lieutenant O'Neal had his shore party in the boats, should still be ten minutes before they'd even hit the beach. Then another fifteen minutes' climb up here. I'd say that leaves only the three of us."

"The three of us against them," Cole snarled. "You're crazy—there must be a hundred of 'em—all of 'em with guns and more of those damn knives."

Rourke turned and looked at Cole, then at Paul Rubenstein. "I guess that doesn't leave three of us then—'nly leaves two of us. You guard the rear, Cole—your rear. Looks like you're pretty damned experienced at it anyway."

Rourke pushed himself up over the rocks, feeling Cole tug at him. He looked back at the man.

He didn't have to say anything. Paul whispered, "What he meant was—save your ass—seems you got a lot of practice at it."

Rourke finished moving across the rocks, hearing Rubenstein beside him as he slipped down onto the grassy expanse below, hiding in the shadow there while he watched the man with the torch stop in front of one of the crosses. "Ohh, boy,"

he whispered to himself.