His Ragged Company

by Rance Denton

  “Curtis,” I shouted, because for a minute I forgot words ain’t as fast as bullets.

  I stood there with one hand out. Two dead bodies, one on the other, lay right in front of me. Burnt powder. Scorched hair. A few shards of skull like broken porcelain littered the floor around him. A half-lidded eye, blown out, still fluttered.

  The Magnate came to me like a lightning-storm, crashing into my mind.

  What have you done?

  The room swam. Heat pressed into me. Heat and stink and there was so much blood and his head was just a crushed gourd. I fell back against the wall and closed my fist around the silver ball-bearing, trying to blind the Eye with the darkness of my hand.

  “I tried to stop him,” I said.

  You didn’t.

  Illness coursed inside my gut. Curtis hadn’t had another option. Torn between obedience and choice, he’d taken the worst third option of the two. With Rufus dead and the Magnate’s access to this Well destroyed, he’d no place in Gregdon’s syndicate. As I looked down at the mangled remains of a still-warm man, wondering if any part of him still clung on, numbness washed over me.

  Curtis had wanted him to watch.

  This, the Magnate said, changes everything. You understand that, don’t you?

  “Did you know? Did you know this was a possibility?”

  Curtis…never functioned within the rules. Billy knew his place. Billy paid attention. Billy saw the larger possibilities. He trusted in me, in the Well, and in what could be accomplished with it.

  A morsel of anger sprang up in me for the boy laying in pieces on the floor. A boy I’d damaged and then sought to deliver from damage.

  Curtis suffered perpetual myopia. It limited him. It limited us. If I am to function within a cage, Faust, then I’ll make that cage for myself, break it, and bend it as I see fit when the time is right.

  “Your son is dead. Did you see? Your son is dead.”

  I’m growing used to it.

  “Is ambition worth this blood?”

  I’ll need to make new plans, certainly. But the Well’s worth every drop. This is a distraction, but I’ll not abide having my attention divided. Elias Faust, know my gratitude—

  A hail of gunfire ripped through the side of the shack. I felt a pull at the front of my duster, ripping through one lapel and launching out the other. I dropped to the floor. A steady rain of bullets chewed through the shack’s wooden wall.

  You have my truest thanks for your willingness to help my boy, lost as he was. You could have turned your back. You didn’t.

  While I was on my stomach next to the two corpses, I heard an occasional warning shot ring and felt the whole shack shudder as the bullets bit away at it. The stream of fire soon slowed. I kept my head covered. Something trickled down my arm like a warm razor.

  “What the hell is this,” I asked the walls.

  The next step. Improvisation. A little something to push us forward. We’re bound now, Faust. You and me. Circles and circles and circles…

  29

  What a day. Me, sprawled next to two bags of human leather talking blindly to the voice in my head about Arbiters, Wells, and fatherhood. Gunshots stopped. Down below the shack, somewhere near the train-tracks, I heard the metallic noises of guns being reloaded. Someone spoke, but the voice was wet and ragged, as rough as a scorpion’s tail. “We should check to see if it’s taken care of. The Magnate will want proof.”

  “He will have his proof,” said another, struggling over what sounded like a throat full of phlegm.

  “You sent them to kill me?” I whispered into my shoulder.

  Please. I’m not that spontaneous. My neonate sandshades have been on your tail since your run-in with the coyotes.

  One said, “Did you check their horses?”

  “A repeater and a shotgun. A bit of ammunition for both. Slit the necks when I was done.”

  Damnit.

  The first cleared his throat. A repeater racked below. “Go up, see what you can find. I’ll cover you from down here.”

  I elbow-crawled closer to Curtis’s body. I grabbed his .44, stuffed it in my belt-loop, and began to sift through Oarsdale’s clothes to see if there was anything of use.

  I pulled up his shirt. Tucked against his cold skin and expanded belly was a white bone handle. There were designs on it, inlaid with something shiny, probably gold. I grabbed the handle and yanked it out of his pants. Rufus Oarsdale’s so-called lucky pistol hadn’t done shit to keep him from getting shot in the back. It was an antique, a flintlock that looked more for decoration than for practical use, though my leg knew otherwise.

  Though his skin had turned to grotesque rubber, I noticed a curious etching on his stomach: a wild, unnatural scalework, all scarred symmetries and shapes, a galaxy of geometry sprung up from underneath his skin. Nothing about it was organic. It reminded me of the branding on a cow’s flank. It trailed up, up along his skin, until I discovered, right at the meeting of his ribs, a coin-sized pustule. Not round, the way you’d expect a swollen abscess to be, but shaped like a jagged cube pressing up from beneath his skin.

  “Can you see this,” I asked the Magnate. “This scar?”

  Show me with the Eye.

  I opened my palm. A long pause. Then:

  The Arbiter’s Mark. The Well chooses as it desires, even if the justification for candidacy appears…unclear.

  Unsteady boots crunched up the stony hill, getting closer to the shack. I crammed Oarsdale’s flintlock into the back of my pants. Was this what they were after, then? Kallum and Magnate and, hell, Curtis, too? To have this brand, be this so-called Well’s chosen piss-boy? I didn’t know what kind of power or influence such a mark would have afforded them, but it was clearly enough to die over, or destroy families and towns and livings and lives over.

  “Call off your men,” I said.

  That would be disingenuous.

  There were at least two – the one coming up to the shack and the one still down below it – and that meant I was already outnumbered. If Goon Numero Uno opened the shack door and found me, he’d unload, and the rain of gunfire from below would start again. I’d be cooked, dead as my two new bunk-mates. Couldn’t let that happen. And they had my guns. I swallowed down all the little bits of sour fear in my throat, weighed my options, and—

  Well, I went with the idea that would get things over quickest. Could’ve meant the situation. Could’ve meant my life.

  The wall of the shack faced the train-tracks and the hill below it. Just a few seconds to act, to make a good first impression. “Let’s get this over with,” I said, drawing both of my Colts.

  Breathe.

  I sprinted for the shack’s brittle wall.

  I smashed through the bullet-weakened wood and shouted, throwing myself out and over the down-slope of the hill. I was in the air, my legs circling wildly. The world around me spun in a blur of color and scenery. One of the gravelly voices barked in surprise. The slope was too steep to get footing on, so I slid, spraying wood and dirt everywhere. Goon Numero Uno was just in front of me. He raised a long, silver-mouthed revolver.

  I careened into him. Him, and all his strange-shaped limbs, more bone and spur than skin and muscle.

  Several black-clad figures at the base of the hill reared their horses around to face the commotion. Their guns came with them. They all fired blindly. Goon Numero Uno started to convulse as bullets clapped into his back. Bullets meant for me. He made a few choking, gagging noises in his throat. I grabbed the chest of his black clothes and yanked him with me like a shield as I readjusted my momentum and threw myself behind an outcropping of stone.

  Bullets in search of me slammed against the boulder I hid behind, throwing little white chips down on me from above.

  Goon Numero Uno, still laying on the hill, started to crawl up to his feet, despite the holes in his back. His body, all exaggerated and wrong, occupied some space between human and shadow. His pointed chin turned. His eyes, both silver as nickel, fell on me.
>
  There it was, that wave of discomfort inside me, coming to life.

  Sickness. Dread. Acid bubbled into my mouth.

  I leveled my guns on him. “What the hell is so wrong with dying lately?”

  After his lead backrub, I was starting to think bullets were taking a holiday. Without a pistol, he had to dig into his coat to find another option – though his coat wasn’t a coat at all. It was long, black, and layered like loose robes and tattered upholstery. I couldn’t see his legs, and my assailants’ pale faces seemed to float in darkness underneath their brims. Their heads were covered on the sides and backs with fabric, sort of like nuns.

  Uno wrenched a sawed-off shotgun out of his robes. “Say your prayers, Faust, because—“

  I shot him in the forehead.

  The bullet blew him back, a black dot stuck between his eyes. I shot him again. His skull caved. The black hat went flying. I chambered, shot, chambered, shot. Puffs of dirt from his skin shot up into the air like little geysers. He fell, robes fluttering in the wind.

  I reloaded as quickly as I could. The second voice, Goon Numero Dos, came up over the rocks. “Faust, we can do this simple or we can do this hard. It’s all up to you. Throw out your guns. There are three of us left and one of you.”

  “That is simple.” My heart slammed. “You’re outnumbered.”

  An echoing shot. A bullet smacked against the boulder behind me. It ricocheted, howling off into the hills. “Gregdons,” shouted Dos to his associates. “Go drag that hiding pig out from behind his rock. Let’s get bloody.”

  So much for negotiation.

  Hooves thundered up the stony hill, grabbing hold with almost human precision. Dos sent his two other henchmen – Tres and…Seis, let’s say – up toward me. Being hunkered behind the boulder left me only one exit.

  Had to move. Had to move, or had to die.

  I rushed out from behind the boulder and onto the hill, which rolled like a beige carpet down to the train-tracks. Goon Numero Tres, mounted on a horse as dark as night and gleaming like a streak of thoroughbred oil, thrust a bony hand out in my direction. His fingers snapped into odd shapes like broken branches. I dove. A hum rattled in my teeth. I heard a sharp crack and squinted against two rapid flashes of white light.

  The ground right where I’d been standing smoked like a stifled candle. My hair stood at attention.

  His lips peeled back so far, the skin split wide and wet. Teeth the color of cork formed a jagged smile. The skin of his fingertips, sooty and black, continued to smoke.

  “Did you just shoot lightning at me?” I roared.

  I scooped up Uno’s sawed-off from the dirt and unloaded both barrels not at Tres directly, but at his mount. A fat, fist-sized hole blasted in the mount’s chest, spewing oily blood onto the dirt. It fell.

  Tres landed on his feet. He drew a small revolver.

  I threw the sawed-off at him.

  He whipped his fluttering sleeve. Unseen wind deflected the weapon and sent it crashing across a nearby stoneface.

  Tres’s revolver burped fire at me as he took off, meeting up with Seis, who still stood atop his horse with a rifle. I squeezed off two rounds from my sidearm as I skittered down the hill. Stinky dust sprayed off his clothes. Flecks of gleaming sand splashed out of the wounds as he dropped to the earth. He didn’t so much fall as he seemed to fall apart like a burlap sack torn apart at its edges.

  I was on him in a breath. I wrestled the repeater out of his hands. I slammed my boot into his jaw. My mind screamed at me, told me to turn and run. But I racked the rifle instead and loaded a round from the magazine.

  Like Uno before him, Tres wasn’t done yet. I whirled toward him. He stood, as firm as a half-deflated mannequin. He raised his hand, preparing some destructive force.

  The rifle-shot hit him in the left side of his chest, knocking him back like a sledgehammer. His spine smashed against the rocks behind him.

  Which is when Seis flew in on me.

  “Pain in my ass,” I said. I pulled the rifle back, grabbed it by the barrel, and swung it at Seis’s chin before he reached me. The chin and neck snapped. Mismatched teeth scattered across the sand.

  Beneath, I felt a tattoo pounding against the sand like a drum, getting closer and louder. A shrill, happy whistle cut through the air from somewhere far off. The chug-chugging of the pistons got louder.

  The seven-fifty from Crown Rock. Just like Gregdon said.

  An escape.

  I dropped Seis’s rifle and reached up to grab the reins of his confused horse. If I could get into the saddle in time, I might be able to intercept the train, might be able to hitch a ride…

  Goon Numero Dos, though, had other thoughts.

  He didn’t shoot at me. He didn’t even raise a hand. Instead, with mountain-cat speed, he launched himself at me. I swear to God the bastard covered ten to twelve yards in less than two seconds. He was a flash of black like a soaring crow. He crashed into me. His forearm cracked across my throat. My feet went wild in the air; my back smacked flat across the sand. A flash of steel glinted in the sun. He swept a talon-shaped knife down at me.

  I rolled. The knife hooked into the side of my duster and shredded it. When I came up, I swung for Dos’s chin. He came up underneath with the hilt of his knife, crushing my teeth together as he smashed my chin. Little universes exploded in my eyes.

  “You’ve dodged death way too much, Faust,” he said. “You’re losing steam. Getting tired. You don’t have much strength left.“ His form flickered again with insane speed, swinging the knife down.

  I caught his bony wrist in my left hand. The knife-tip edged close to my eye. I couldn’t place the smell, but it made my nostrils flare and the gorge rise in my stomach. Breathing him in made me hurt.

  “The Well won’t be yours,” he said.

  “I don’t want the damn thing.”

  The knife-tip pressed against my cheek and started to bite.

  With a desperate heave I pushed the sandshade’s form aside. I jumped for Seis’s horse, grabbed the saddle-horn, and threw myself up onto its back. I was barely in the stirrups before I kicked it into a run. It shot off with insane speed. Every sinew in the horse seemed to be made for running, and it did exactly what I wanted it to. Along the back of its neck, a whole line of bony protrusions stuck up from the sleek, hairless flesh, breaking the field of blackness with spines of white.

  I ran out parallel to the train-tracks, looking behind me. The engine was a monstrous snake rolling through the arid fields. Its steam carried high into the sky.

  I wondered if Curtis knew we were being followed. Maybe it was his plan, not surviving, but he didn’t intend for me to die. The train wasn’t dropping anything off. It was just passing through. I just needed to be quick enough to grab it.

  Other hooves thundered behind me. I looked behind and saw both Seis and Dos on a single black horse, leaning heavy over the reins, giving chase. Behind them, Treis was running, his robes flaring out behind him like wings in the wind.

  Let me repeat:

  Tres was running. I distinctly remembered killing him. All the rules governing most living beings just didn’t seem to be matching up lately. These sandshades and this Well were starting to rise to the top of my piss-me-off list. A bullet kicked up sand into my face from the left. On the right, the train picked up speed, almost overtaking me. Another thin pop trailed me – another shot – and it snarled past harmlessly.

  I wrenched the reins to the right. The horse skidded. We leaped over the tracks just in front of the train. The whistle shrieked again. I looked behind me and saw Seis’s horse manage to leap just the same. He and Dos were keeping up surprising well, driving their horse even harder than mine. Seis fired again. No success, but soon enough he might get lucky...

  Tres, however, never did.

  Surviving several gunshots to the chest finally caught up with Goon Numero Tres. God must’ve taken back all the extra chances. Tres was almost all the way across the tracks on foot when t
he front of the engine crushed him like a massive metal fist. His black hat flew off into the wind, his robes got plastered to the train’s grinning grill, and he just…exploded. There was no blood, no cry of pain.

  Sand sprayed into the air with a hiss. Tres vanished in a cloud of fluttering fabric and dirt, disintegrated by the engine’s brute force.

  Was that all they were? Sand in a skin-bag?

  Seis and Dos, the saddle twins, were about fifty yards back. I went for my Colt, tightened my grip on the reins, and turned in the saddle. A round whisked past me, purring like a hummingbird. When I fired, I pulled the shot. It bounced off the side of the train.

  Shit. I needed to make it count.

  I flexed my fingers around the Colt’s grip. For just a second, I stopped breathing. Loosened my arm to work with the gallop. Squinted an eye. Took aim.

  Waited for them to get closer. Twenty yards. Seis called fire from nothing, burning in his palm like a torch. It splashed across the side of the train. Fifteen yards. Ten…

  I fired at center mass.

  I caught the mount right in its chest between where the muscles of the front legs tirelessly pulsed. The surprise of the shot sent the horse barreling face-first into the dirt. Seis vanished under its body, crushed by its weight. Sand blew into the wind.

  Dos didn’t meet so similar a fate.

  Goon Numero Dos leaped. When the horse crashed, he had to have been twenty feet in the air, looking like he was shot from a cannon. He wrenched his talon-knife out of his sheath and plummeted from the sky right at me.

  He collided with me. His black cloaks choked me. Darkness came. He surrounded me. He didn’t so much join me on the saddle as much as float over it, swallowing me into his hideous robes. In that compact pocket of stinking darkness, he bent my head back, a hand of bones and flaking skin across my mouth.

  He was some crude, stitched-together mash-up of living and dead. Being this close to him – to it – threatened to unravel me altogether. Like I wasn’t supposed to be this near. Like the wrongness inside it awoke wrongness inside me. I choked on death. On that damn horse, running alongside that train, Dos manhandled me. Dark power crackled around him.