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took his place in clearing rubble and caught the expression on Mildred’s face as she examined Jak’s chem burn.
    There would be much to discuss later.
     
    B Y THE TIME THE SUN had sunk and the cold night chilled their bones, the companions were exhausted. They went back to where they had tied up the wag and horses.
    Almost everyone else had stayed in the center of the ville. A few stragglers returned to their homes; most wanted the security of staying close together. The house where the wag was tethered remained empty. Whether the occupant had been chilled, they did not know.
    And it didn’t matter, except that it gave them the privacy they needed to talk about what had happened, and how it affected them. Ryan began by repeating what the woman had told him. They listened in silence. When he finished, and without comment, Mildred added her opinion of the burn she had seen on Jak’s hand. She told them about napalm, and how she had felt when they first entered the ville.
    When she finished, no one wanted to be the first to speak.
    “I suppose the real question here is, do we see ourselves as knights errant,” Doc said eventually. “I suspect that is what has been playing on your mind, Ryan.”
    “You’re kind of right, Doc,” the one-eyed man replied. “I feel like we need to go after this coldheart before he comes after us. And I feel like if we do that, we can mebbe get what we need from here…the things we came here for in the first place.”
    “There’s not much left in the way of provisions,” Krysty said quietly. “From here, the next ville is who knows where? We couldn’t get far.”
    J.B. took off his spectacles and polished them. It was a habit, an indication that he was thinking. Eventually, he perched them back on his nose and started to speak.
    “We got two separate problems here. First, we’ve got nothing in reserve, so we can’t move on unless we trade with these people in some way. Now, they got jackshit, too. The only way they’re going to give us what we need is if we can offer them something they want. Like revenge. Second problem is that this stupe is riding ’round at random, blasting the shit out of villes. Who knows where else he’s been? Who knows where he’ll stop? We stay in this area for any time, chances are we’re going to run into him. So, do we do it now, or later?”
    The Armorer paused, then looked steadily at Ryan. “Seems to me that the only way we solve one problem is by solving the other. That simple.”
    “Nothing to do with wanting to get your hands on his armory?” Ryan murmured.
    A grin split J.B.’s face. “There could be that, too.”
     
    I T TOOK SEVERAL DAYS to help get the ville back into something approaching a functioning order. After the second day, the friends were offered food and water, so they could preserve their own. No mention was made of any condition. Rather, it was taken as payment for the work they were doing, which suited them fine at that point. The work was hard, and there was little demand beyond the immediate.
    Soon the time was drawing near when the friends would want to leave. Question was, would they leave with renewed supplies and a mission?
    The answer came on the fifth night. By now, the survivors had adopted a more communal style of living, pooling as they were their resources and their skills. It was while they were eating in the building that they’d adopted as their communal dining hall that Maggie, the woman Ryan had questioned on the first day, stood to address them all.
    “You know what we all been through,” she began with a halting tone, “and you know that these people—” here she indicated the friends “—have been a lot of help. But there’s something else. Something some of you know about ’cause we’ve discussed it among ourselves.
    “Ryan,” she continued, “you said you’d help us get the coldheart bastard who did this if we’d help you with what you wanted. You still stand by that?”
    “I