His Ragged Company

by Rance Denton

  “Then I’ll bury you as right as I can.”

  “Don’t you dare. I don’t want a grave up there, Elias. I don’t want to be remembered.”

  He reached down and gathered my hand in his. Then he placed my palm on the handle of the glowing knife.

  Another bullet winged by us.

  I heard the Magnate roar like a beast: “Don’t you worry, Elias Faust. I won’t let you die. Not until I pry those secrets right off your useless hide, and make you feel every exquisite ounce of agony.”

  I looked up, but Bisbin grabbed my face.

  “I’ve barred the entrances to this room and all around the mines with triangles,” he said. “They’re impenetrable, just the way they were in the killing room with you and Partridge. No flesh can pass; no bullet can break them. As the creator, only my hand can undo them.”

  “Then do that,” I said. “Let me out of this pit so I can make you feel better about yourself.”

  “Do you think I’m really going to be able to get up and walk over there?” He motioned to the single doorway of the Magnate’s chamber with his chin. “But the minute I’m gone, Faust, so goes the power I called on.”

  “So go the barriers,” I said.

  I heard the roar of a shotgun. Pellets snarled around us and vanished like a haze against the wall.

  I know I could have used the shotgun. The blade, though, felt right. It was meant to happen this close, this brutally, this personally.

  And any ammunition I could save would make what was already impossible a little more bearable.

  “Elias,” he said. “Don’t tell anybody about me. Please.“

  No more time. I wrenched the blade out and heard something crunch. My whole shoulder screamed with pain. I brought down the blade. You’d think it would’ve been harder. In the darkness I couldn’t really see the blood, but I felt it. I hacked again. And then a third time. I kept chopping.

  I screamed so I wouldn’t hear the noises he made.

  You don’t kill a man because he asks for it with words. You kill a man because he asks for it with his actions.

  When it was done, I stood up. The nervousness faded. I could have been sick, but I didn’t have anything to throw up. I buckled on the bandolier with the shotgun and the talon-blade.

  Just in time. The shadow that had swooped in ran in my direction. It had a face masked with white and black paint. Skull-like. Hiding golden skin. Behind the figure, a whole swarm of black-robed sandshades gave chase. A few muzzles flashed.

  The Magnate’s voice rang out through the cavern.

  “Enjoy the breath you have, Elias Faust. It’s the last gift I’m giving you.”

  Throbbing inside my head, and dancing like a surge of electricity along my wrist and palm – right where the Mark blackened my skin – I felt the Shattered Well speak inside me.

  RUN, it said.

  So I did.

  38

  I wasn’t getting out of the place without fighting. I knew that. And I was ready for it. As ready as you can be when you’re missing two fingers, silver-dollared by lightning, and suffering a brain full of smoke and visions.

  The nimble shadow ran straight for me. It planted a hand on the altar and leaped over it. When it landed, it grabbed me and pulled me down behind the cover of the stone table. Another hail of bullets buzzed through the air. We crouched together. Our eyes met.

  They blinked. Twice. The way normal eyes blink, then flick-flack, sideways.

  “Herald,” I said.

  A bullet screamed against the stone.

  “Dead Man,” she greeted.

  I didn’t know how she knew to be here, or how she’d even gotten here. Underneath all the pain, I tapped into some small well of hope. “Snowball’s chance in hell,” I said. “But hey, nice make-up.”

  She wiped a summoned knife on her black robe disguise. “I am clever.”

  “Think we can take a few before we eat dirt?” I said.

  She nodded.

  “I’ll give firing cover as we retreat to the entryway. You take any of them that get close. Funnel them through the doorway. Then we beat peat and find our way to the surface.”

  Silence.

  Good enough for me.

  We both leaped up at the same time. I unloaded both barrels over the altar one after the other, a little slower than normal since I had to use my middle finger. There was a wall of sandshades there. Pellets ripped into three in the front, staggering them and spraying sand.

  One of them leapfrogged over the others, launching into the air like an eagle. It bounded across the altar and came for us. Nycendera threw her knife underhanded. It clapped into the jumper’s forehead and stuck. He spun and fell to his spine on the floor, and the weapon was already back in her hand.

  When we were about five yards away from the entryway, two others rushed toward us. The Herald met the one that came for her toe-to-toe, deflecting a talon-blade with her jade knife. With inhuman speed she sidestepped another stab, ducked a slice, then jammed her blade up into the hooded bastard’s chin. She smacked the hilt of the blade with her palm, a final take that, then wrenched it out.

  The one that came for me had lost its hood. The hair was stringy and wet. It had a black hole in its throat that looked like it’d been made by a bullet. A memory nagged me as I took aim…

  When the sandshade’s two silver eyes were only a few feet away from my barrels, I got a chill.

  And I’d seen her get shot before. And die.

  Her name was Knox.

  The right barrel of my sawed-off boomed. She ducked down just in time. Behind her a sandshade’s face blew up into a fleshy mist. I tried to readjust to find her, but she’d vanished back into the crowd. Three more came for us, rippling and black.

  Nycendera spun and dove through the entryway. It didn’t refuse her. Bisbin’s spell had fallen. I kept backpedaling and fired off my other shot. Right before I passed the threshold, I looked down and saw a black triangle drawn on the floor.

  I had no problem stepping over it.

  Relief distracted me. Another sandshade was in front of me. Before I could reload, he had me by the throat. His fingernails dug into my skin. Blotches of colors started flaring in front of my eyes.

  I slammed the handle of the shotgun down on his scalp. It crunched in like a dry sponge. He went at me with his talon-blade, right for my eyes. I wrenched my whole body to the left. I rammed my boot into his stomach and pinned him to the wall. I cracked the barrels of the shotgun open.

  No time to reload it. I improvised. I smashed the open breach against his throat then pushed forward to close it. The mechanics weren’t forgiving – they out a whole chunk from his throat. Sand started spilling out of him.

  A flare of blue light from within the cavern caught both of our eyes.

  The Magnate had his hands in the air. His thumbs and forefingers touched in a triangle shape, Illemone’s Heart between them. A stream of cobalt fire sprayed into the air, jumping over the sandshades. It dove toward me.

  Nycendera grabbed my arm. She pulled me back through the door and out of the cavern. When the fire hit its mark, I wasn’t there. The magical flame turned on its closest target and swallowed the throatless sandshade alive. He went up like oil and ran around with his arms flailing.

  The flaming robes fluttered off him like burnt paper. When he got near some of the other sandshades, they lunged away. The burning one blindly stumbled into the altar.

  Nycendera tugged at me. I shrugged away.

  “Wait,” I said, sliding two shells into the shotgun.

  The Magnate’s barrel of magical sand was only a few feet away from the altar. I watched it until the burning sandshade came dangerously close to it. Then I raised the shotgun and squeezed the backmost trigger. Most of the spray got him. His smoldering arm flopped off. He wailed, then pitched right over against the barrel.

  Not sure what kind of minerals were in that sand, or why they were so flammable. But once one grain in the batch had gone up, the
rest of them flared. It was almost like black-powder – there was a hot whoosh as the heat spread. Then, like a bunch of fireworks, the whole barrel ignited.

  In such close quarters, the explosion deafened. A wave of force hammered Nycendera and me to the ground. There was an orange flash, then smoke. Several other sandshades were consumed by the spreading flames. Several chunks of stone started splitting away from the cavern’s ceiling and smashed to the floor, crushing several others beneath. A wave of smoke and dust billowed into the corridor.

  We turned and fled.

  Every time we passed a torch on the wall, the Herald waved a golden hand. The fires died. Leaving darkness behind us meant making it a bitch to be followed. We’d also know where we’d already been.

  “You know how to get out of here,” I said. “Right?”

  The caverns were like the guts of a snake, winding up and down, leaving someone to wonder which way was up. Sometimes the ribs of the rocky caverns got too tight and we had to slide through sideways. When we came to a wide opening, we hugged the opposite walls. The cave beyond was brightly lit, and while it wasn’t as elegant as the Magnate’s chamber, it sure was a sight. It was the storeroom I’d been escorted through earlier. Bags of grain, kegs of beer and whiskey, sacks of tobacco leaves. Anything you could think of was there.

  And it all belonged to Blackpeak.

  Tried to keep the whole place from spinning inside my head. My sweat was like ice. I could feel my limbs shaking. My whole body and brain ran off a single desire: the need to live. Nycendera steadied me.

  “I ain’t dying,” I said. “Not yet.”

  She did not seem convinced.

  Behind us, thundering up through the caverns we’d come from, a rumbling like a train shook all through the stone. The odor of burnt flesh and gunmetal blew up through the corridor like it was a funnel.

  No time for dying. They were coming.

  Panic pinned me to the floor, but just for a second. We could run to the other end, maybe get free, but I didn’t know one damn way from the next.

  Running will only get you so far, the Magnate said.

  We skittered behind a bunch of boxes just as the figures poured into the storage chamber, some running, some floating up like wraiths on the strings of power.

  I see what they see. I can sense you, Faust. This is futile, even with your...friend.

  I peeked around a box. A skeletal, long-dead face grinned at us from on-high, leveling a Henry rifle at us from twenty feet up.

  A cold hum of fear exploded in me. It fired.

  A lance of pain shot across my cheek. A bullet snarled into the rock behind me. I fell flat.

  The rest of them came pouring in.

  A rain of magic and gunfire tore the boxes to splinters. Reeling from the graze, I was slow as hell. Nycendera wasn’t, though. She shoved me toward more cover and flapped her golden hand in my direction. A crackling ball of energy splashed against a blurry barrier thrown up between me and a casting sandshade.

  Henry already had a bead on us, I was sure. I dove for the nearest cover – a pile of grain-bags that looked like they’d already been riddled with bullets – and dropped flat after I fired Red’s shotgun at him. A rifle-round popped into the grain-bag behind my head.

  “Harman,” Henry shouted. “Scare that scoundrel out so I’ve got a shot.”

  A younger shade wielding a pistol obeyed. I heard hammers get pulled back. I hugged my shotgun to my chest, breathing hard.

  Footsteps to my left. About to come around the bags…

  If I fled, Henry’d have a clear shot, unless—

  I leaped up and blindly fired. Don’t know if I hit Henry or not, but I only needed a second to distract him. It must have worked because I didn’t get shot. The sandshade that had been sent to hunt me down was right there.

  “I’m gonna kill you, Faust. You,” he said, “and then that Fulton bitch that ended me the first time.”

  When silver-eyed Harman grinned, I thought I saw pastry-powder on his rotten beard. I swung the sawed-off at him. It cracked off the side of his skull and sent him staggering. Then, without thinking, I leaped for him, grabbed him by the hair, and started trying to choke him with the sawed-off by pulling it back against his neck.

  “You think that’s gonna do anything, you dumb shit?” he laughed.

  “Only what I need it to.”

  I spun him around and hid behind him. Split-second later would have been too late. Henry let go another shot, but it lanced right into Harman’s chest. He jerked in my arms. I pushed him away from me, but before I did, I grabbed him by the cold-skinned hand. I pushed the shotgun against the inside of his elbow and pulled the trigger.

  I was left holding his limp arm and the revolver he’d shot at me.

  I pried the dead fingers off the revolver.

  Then I swung the severed arm left and right like a floppy sausage at the rest of the sandshades, who stared at me like I’d gone absolutely crackers. “En garde,” I said, which, as far as last words go, were dogshit.

  The Well sparked to life in my brain. TRUST HER, it said.

  Wasn’t bad advice.

  “Come on,” I said to the group. “Come on.”

  So I hucked the arm at them.

  I fired Harman’s revolver, unsheathed Red’s talon-blade, and took them all on.

  Well, not exactly. The sandshades came at me and just overwhelmed me. Their hands burnt with fire and power and I guess out of interest to preserve my skin for the Magnate, they didn’t rip me apart instantly. I stabbed and sliced; I fired until the revolver emptied. It was enough time, though. A golden flicker shot through the air above and crumpled Henry in half in a flash of airborne power.

  Nycendera tore the crack-shot sandshade apart, stole his Henry, and before she even landed, started firing.

  Heads, skulls, and rotten brains blew up in a wild confetti around me. Some collapsed on me while others went for cover – the baby shades among them, still holding onto whatever human instincts for survival they possessed.

  I stabbed one right in the cheek and yanked up until its head fell apart into porcelain-like pieces. Scrambling free of them, I started to run, trying to find my bearings. Nycendera bounded down a pile of boxes like a deer. There was another corridor on the other side, leading into other sectors of the old mine. It was our only exit.

  Elder sandshades, with their rattier robes, their gray and flaking skin, their yellowing teeth, called terror out of their palms and tossed smoking bolts of power at us that seemed to tear the air in two. Bottles of whiskey blew apart. Grain coughed into the air. A white flash snarled by. Every one of my hairs leaped to attention. My eyes nearly boiled in their sockets.

  “Flee or die, Dead Man,” the Herald said.

  So together, we jumped out from behind crates and barrels. Bullets flew by like leaden bees. Nycendera stopped now and then, set her feet, raised the rifle, and gave off a shot. Even with all that, she still managed to keep up to me. She tossed me a rusty six-shooter.

  I fired the revolver twice behind me.

  The fact that we kept standing meant we weren’t dead.

  But luck only favored you so long as it deemed you were worth the effort.

  Next to the exiting corridor, I saw a crate that piqued my interest. I slammed my boot into the wooden side. One of the panels came free. Inside were a series of glass jugs with cast-iron tops and handles, each of them filled with a yellowy liquid that sort of looked like piss.

  Among goods for trade, tobacco and beer were both fun and necessary. But lamp oil, that was a midnight vanity. And anything flammable was a godsend. “Boom,” I told her.

  Nycendera’s gaze fell to the jug, then me.

  “Bring it,” she said, and then darted for the nearest exit.

  I hugged the jug, as if shielding it with my body would protect it from one slip-up of a well-placed bullet. The supports in the mine-shafts flew past us as we ran. The air was getting damper, heavier. The tunnels narrowed and curved like
knotted snakes and the walls gleamed with an ever-running wetness that rubbed the stone smooth and shining. Just as we passed another tunnel, my foot skidded through a streak of mud.

  Nycendera, neck bent, examined the low ceiling.

  A few drops of water fell from it, clean and crisp. She let one drop fall to her palm. Condensation rolling right off the stones above. Underneath our boots, chewed by what must have been years, was a divot gnawed into the earth, and in it, a tiny stream of water that crawled on the floor toward some unseen destination.

  “You know where we’re going?” I breathed. “Please, tell me you know where we’re going.”

  Shouts and an errant shotgun-blast roared down through the tunnel behind us.

  She licked her palm. Seemed satisfied at the taste, whatever it was she tasted.

  “We go,” she said.

  We tumbled like a pair of kids into the damp offshoot. Our shoulders and elbows smashed against rocks. Their voices rolled behind us in a wild wave.

  Right behind us…

  When the tunnel opened up like a mouth, first thing I noticed was the cool whiteness of natural light pouring in from a ceiling that only time itself could have carved. This chamber wasn’t like the others: no picks or stone-hammers had formed this place. This wasn’t work done by dedicated miners, but instead chiseled out by the power of the most patient element.

  The cavern’s floor might as well have been a smooth mirror. Water, silver as a polished dollar, splashed beneath our feet.

  And in the ceiling, perfectly round, was the source of the ambient light.

  A hole. Ascending up, toward freedom.

  A ladder, all rope and old slats of wood, waited for us.

  The Herald jerked her head toward the ladder, shouldered her stolen Henry, and stepped into the corridor. Her first shot lit the whole place up. For just a quick flash, I saw everything.

  Including the figure leaning in the darkness, waiting for us.

  The body smashed into me and sent me sprawling to the wet floor. Hair like musty seaweed clogged my mouth. The attacker was on me, hammering punch after punch into my jaw. My jug almost slipped from my hands. “Should’a known there’d be somebody waiting for you, Faust,” Knox said, her voice coming out of her neck-hole with a wheeze. “You don’t know all the tunnels in this place like we do.”