Warlord's Revenge Read Online Free PDF Page A

the valley, where the bandits sat atop their various
     mounts. There were at least forty to the right, and two dozen on the left side of the valley floor, down which Stone and his
     crew had been heading.
    “Have you taken a good look at yourself recently?” Stone asked, pulling his hand back on the right handlebar so it rested
     near the firing trigger of the .50-caliber machine gun mounted on the front of his Harley.
    “No, I haven’t taken a look at myself,” the jowled tub of boil-ridden lard yelled back. “There isn’t too many mirrors around
     these parts on account of they’ve all been broken. People use ’em for knives. But I knows I ugly, anyway.” The man laughed,
     and his friends on each side howled along with him. “Shoot, everybody in these parts knows I is the ugliest man in Colorado.”
    “He so ugly, his mama puked all over him the second he popped out of her belly!” One of the nearby riders laughed through
     toothless lips. The leader of the group, apparently a devotee of humor only when it was originated by him, leaned to the side
     of his steed so that it almost toppled over and slammed out a bear-sized fist, sweeping the speaker right off his mule and
     onto the dirt. The man looked up, mortified, but didn’t dare say a word.
    “Say what you want about me, boys—but no one talks about my mama. Bless her soul.” He crossed himself, then, smilingly sweetly,
     he turned back to Stone.
    “Before I was so rudely interrupted,” the man went on, sweeping his arm toward Stone as if he were bowing, as if he had manners
     or etiquette, which was just about the most absurd thing imaginable, since the fat pig of a Warlord was covered with grease
     and matted food from head to foot. Flies buzzed constantly around his long beard, trying to suck out food lodged in there;
     snot caked his sleeves where he had been wiping it for years. “I was about to introduce myself. “I am Colonel William Beausmont,
     King of Cheshard. Welcome to my country.”
    Stone looked around him as if surveying the place. Then back at the “king” atop his overburdened packhorse, red sores all
     around the animal’s sides and ribs from the huge weight above it and the constant spurring of the animal with the obese man’s
     boots. “Place could use a little landscaping,” Stone muttered. “Looks like shit, if you want to know the truth.”
    “Ah, a man who speaks the truth,” the tub of lies burped back, as he almost spat up some of the food he had eaten that morning.
     “So refreshing when all those around me”—he looked around at his motley crew as if it were
they
who were foul and
he
covered with rose petals —”are bastards, liars, and double-dealing scum of the highest—or should I say, lowest order? Thus
     I will speak the truth to you, little man,” Beausmont went on, scratching at his beard, which hung down over his chest as
     if there were something trapped in there. Stone wouldn’t have been surprised to see something leap out and go slithering off.
     “I’ll let you live—we’re not murderers around here—but you’ve got to pay. You know what I mean—good old-fashioned American
     capitalism. I have a product. You buy it. Everyone is happy.”
    “And just what product are you selling?” Stone asked with a cynical grunt as he edged his fingers just a trace closer to the
     trigger of his hidden machine gun. Excaliber growled ominously behind him, and Stone hissed him silent with a sharp but low
     sound out of the corner of his mouth. The dog set down again, but Stone could feel him quivering the way he always did before
     an attack.
Don’t move, dog
, Stone commanded it mentally,
or I’ll kill you
. Whether it heard him or not, it quieted down slightly.
    “Selling these.” The king of lard laughed good-naturedly, taking out some sort of medallion from inside his jacket. He held
     it up to Stone to show him it wasn’t a bomb or anything, and then threw it across the fifteen or so yards