by Sean Platt
Eventually they mounted a gradual rise (Clint saw it carpeted with neon green grass and studded with a bed of bright white flowers that were smiling up at him), and when they reached the top, Edward shook his head. A tiny red spark shot from his horn and struck Clint’s body. And when it did, the world snapped back to ugly and brown and desolate. But the music and the noise were gone, and no ghosts rose to confront them.
“We’re clear of the Missouri,” said Clint.
He said it like a fact, his stony demeanor reasserting itself with the bludgeon-like blow of a hammer. He was embarrassed by what he might have said under the influence of glee, like a regretful man who has consumed too much brew.
“Yar,” said Edward. “See that river?”
Clint looked. The river was wide, but didn’t seem deep. The path from the hilltop where they were standing sloped down toward it, into a kind of valley that rose around it on all sides.
“Yar.”
“In the old times, that river filled this valley. The dinosaurs couldn’t ford it, so after being funneled into this space, they died. But the river is now quite shallow, and it’s where we are headed.”
“And we can eat once we’re on the other side?” said Clint, still unsure of his bearings. He hadn’t felt like himself for a week, and was just a few chews away from starving.
“Yar. But there’s something else.”
“Nar. There’s nothing else mattering as long as there’s food.”
Edward started walking, still with Clint on his back. After a moment, he said, “You remember the Darkness?”
“No.”
“The Darkness from inside the sand dragon. When the dragon lost its form, you watched the Darkness disperse.”
Clint hadn’t understood what had followed their battle against the sand dragon a month prior. He knew only that he’d watched a huge black cloud emerge from the disintegrating dragon’s body. Edward had explained that dark magic sometimes escaped from the core, filtered up through the sand, and took on forms like sand dragons. But Clint hadn’t understood that, either.
“If Darkness is what I saw, then yar,” said Clint, slowly finding his familiar (and gleeless) rhythm of bouncing atop Edward’s back.
“Do you remember how I said that the Darkness wasn’t gone? That it would escape and find a new host or a new form? That it had become a dragon in order to lay its hands — its talons — on something in the physical world, and that it would surely return in a new form and resume its quest, and that we would face it again?”
“Sort of,” said Clint, though he still didn’t really follow.
“I sensed it in there,” said Edward, jerking his head toward the Dinosaur Missouri. “While you were gleed. I could feel its passage.”
“The Darkness must travel on foot, as we do?” said Clint. The idea seemed ludicrous. It was like saying that clouds could get sore feet.
“Yar. Do you remember nothing?”
“Very little,” said Clint, content to let Edward believe he had forgotten rather than admitting he’d never understood in the first place.
“Anyway,” said the unicorn, “I sensed it in the Missouri, as I sensed the others. But then I lost it.”
Clint cocked his head and adjusted his hat. “So what does that mean?”
“I don’t know,” said Edward.
They were already halfway through the river. It was barely deep enough to cover the unicorn’s hooves. Clint waited for Edward to say more, but he said nothing.
“Why are you telling me?” Clint finally asked.
“Because you are unfortunately the only one here for me to talk to,” said Edward.
They plodded through the rest of the stream, then climbed the rise on the opposite side. From the crest of the new hill, Clint could see that they’d reached a small town. Nearby was a well, with a bucket wound to the top of the crank. He could see the handle of a dipping spoon poking over the bucket’s top edge.
“Precipice,” Edward announced.
“And Mai,” said Clint.
“Maybe,” Edward replied. “The Orb’s magic would mask the pain I’ve been feeling from what Cerberus is doing to her, so I cannot be sure. But yar, I’d bet my pie that she’s here, and so are Kold and Cerberus.”
Clint cracked his knuckles.
“And the Darkness,” Edward added.
Clint stopped, his arms out and fingers intertwined.
“I can no longer sense it,” the unicorn continued, his lips drawing into a scowl. “But it’s here, all right.”
CHAPTER FOUR:
A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS
They walked up to the well, their throats dusty and their waterskins near empty. Clint unpacked a shallow dish that Edward used for drinking and set it on the ground near the stones of the well. He removed the dipping spoon and lowered the bucket to the well’s bottom, filled it, and wheeled it back up. Then he took a long, slow drink from the spoon before spilling the bucket’s contents into Edward’s dish. And finally, while Edward drank, Clint drank more, then began to refill their water supply.
Clint had the dipper to his lips when he noticed movement in the otherwise still town below. A child of maybe ten years spilled through the door of a ramshackle mud brick structure, stumbled, and fell to the dirt. A huge figure wearing criss-crossed bandoliers and a wide-brimmed hat came out after the boy, yelling at him in a local dialect Clint didn’t recognize. The boy, penitent, tried to protest, but the big figure kept coming. He delivered a kick to the kid’s side and yelled more. The big man wore guns on his hips — six-shooters, tarnished nearly brown. He was fat and slow, but had the unmistakable bearing of co-opted authority.
The kid held up his hands and said something. The man yelled a string of hollers clearly meant as a threat, or a warning. The kid came to his feet and scampered away, toward a building from which a thin man had emerged. The man held his hands out to the kid, who ran into them.
Then, looking up, the thin man did not walk out to confront the bandit. Instead, he said something in the strange language that sounded almost like an apology. The fat bandit yelled something back and waved an expressive, warning hand. Then the thin man, with the child clasped against his abdomen and legs, vanished inside the building.
Clint still held the water dipper to his mouth. His lips were cracked, and his stomach was rumbling. They still had their supplies, but they’d agreed it would be more appetizing to break their fast at the town’s saloon rather than with dried-out jerky and wraps.
The man with the bandoliers took several steps toward the building where he’d emerged, then noticed Clint and Edward at the top of the rise two hundred feet away. Clint finished his drink, returned the dipper, and met the bandit’s gaze. Then, because there’s always town business in which a stranger nar should interfere, Clint let his eyes drop from the bandit’s and turned to retrieve Edward’s empty drinking bowl. By the time he’d looked back up and re-mounted, the big man was gone.
Edward, with Clint on his back, began to plod unhurriedly down the shallow slope toward Precipice.
“The magic here is incredibly strong,” said Edward. “Can you feel it?”
Clint scanned the buildings as a bell rang nearby. His eyes found the bell, atop a three-story tower that barely rose above the dull and monochrome one and two-story buildings surrounding the main street. It was an old-fashioned bell, pivoting in the middle with a rope tied to its top. Somewhere below, someone was ringing the bell by hand. To herald what, Clint couldn’t imagine.
“It’s a hole,” said Clint. “All I feel is poison. Look at this place.”
Edward did, but his glance was perfunctory. Apparently the unicorn was awed by something the gunslinger couldn’t sense.
Clint felt himself overwhelmed by the town’s desolation. A few of the buildings were boarded, and the rest might as well have been. Clint’s sharp eyes could see people watching him through windows as he passed, trying to hide behind draperies. Closed doors with peep-through slots had their peeping
slots open, displaying glaring sets of fear-stricken eyes. The street was silent, with no foot or carriage traffic to mar it. No children playing. No sounds of working. Nothing at all.
“It is poisoned,” Edward agreed. “But it’s also magic. To me, the strength of magic here is like a cloying odor that masks everything else. Cerberus could be violating Mai’s soul right around that corner and I wouldn’t be able to feel the pain that we’ve been following for years. In a way, it’s a blessing… but in another, it’s disorienting. I don’t like to be surprised. And there’s still the matter of the Darkness. Its presence here frightens me most of all.”
“How do you know it’s here?”
Edward’s lips curled. Clint could barely see it from his position on the unicorn’s back, but saw it he did.
“I know,” he said. “Just as Mai and everyone else left parts of themselves behind in the Dinosaur Missouri, so did the Darkness. I saw its stuck memories and thoughts, and recognized its soul from when we fought it as the sand dragon. It wasn’t the dragon anymore… but in a way, it also was. I sensed something like what humans call déjà vu, where you seem to recognize someone you’ve never met. That’s what it’s like for me, and even though I can’t sense it, I can still sense it. It’s traveling. It’s here. Somehow, it is right here with us — in some form or another, since Darkness can’t act without a form.”
They were halfway down the length of the main street, moving slowly. Dust billowed up from Edward’s hooves with every step, but the dust failed to stick to his pristine white coat and hooves. To their right, a child sat on a building’s stoop. The door to the building burst open and an adult rushed out, pulled the child back inside, and slammed the door behind them. Clint watched the display, then turned his eyes placidly forward, between Edward’s ears and on the street ahead.
“Why would that frighten you more than Kold, who carries two marshal’s seven-shooters and the stolen power of a unicorn?”
“Because Kold is a man. The Darkness is not. It will have gone to great lengths, after losing the dooner shaman as its servant, to take a new form in order to do its searching. But both of our adversaries were headed here, and both are likely here now. The Orb of Malevolence is still in town; I can feel it on me like heat. Both Kold and the Darkness need the Orb, and the Orb is frightening in either of their hands. But if you ask, then yes — between the two, I’ll take Kold, because what the Darkness wants to do with the Orb is far more terrifying.”
“What does it want to do?”
Edward turned his head, trying to give Clint a scornful eye. “You never pay attention,” he said.
Before Clint could reply, a filthy man in chinos and stringy long black hair ran up beside them. Clint didn’t bother to draw his guns. The man seemed harmless, and if he turned out not to be, Clint could surely draw quickly enough to dispatch him.
“You are new in town!” the man yelled up at Clint in Clint’s language, ignoring Edward as if he were a common horse. “A man could get rich here; you will see!”
“Is that so?” said the gunslinger, still looking straight ahead.
“Yes,” said the man, trotting beside Edward’s flank. “Rich, or dead. One or the other.”
“Nar in between?”
“Not for a man who brings his own guns,” said the man. “You will see.”
Edward, tired of being ignored, paused and looked over at the man.
“And who are you?”
“I am the bell ringer,” said the man, turning his gaze to Edward.
“Quite the career choice,” the unicorn said. “How many years of schooling did that require? And does your specialized knowledge provide you with the job security you deserve?”
“I am the bell ringer,” the man repeated.
Edward turned his head toward Clint, who was dismounting. “We need food,” he told the gunslinger.
“Where’s the saloon?” Clint asked the dirty man.
“It’s around the corner there. But watch out, because Dean’s men sit outside. They won’t like you none. They are with the boss. They run this town, and will run you out.”
“The boss, huh?”
“Yar. They won’t like you and won’t want you in town unless you join them.”
“Or kill them,” said Edward.
“You will either end up rich or end up dead!” the bell ringer blurted.
“I think we get it,” said Edward. He resumed walking, now with Clint beside him.
The bell ringer followed them for maybe ten steps, then vanished.
“Do you think he’s the official greeter too?” Edward asked. “He’s so charming.”
“So the town has a boss,” said Clint, looking at everything around the dusty road with new eyes. “That explains the mood; it’s like Solace was when we arrived. How would Kold fit into this, do you think?”
“Maybe Kold is the boss, under an assumed name. Dean. Has a folksy ring to it.”
Clint shook his head. “It’s not Kold who runs the town. This town has been subdued for a while now. The question is, what happened between Kold and this Dean after Kold showed up?”
Before Edward could answer, they rounded the corner and found a carriage parked outside the saloon with three men perched atop it, drinking. A fourth leaned against the hitch, which had long ago been untethered from the horse that had once pulled the rickety box. The men all wore clothing that looked as if it had once been brightly colored, but was now muted beneath a brown sweater of sand and dust. Each man wore a gun — just one six-shooter, of course — on his right hip.
Edward said, “Maybe we could ask these fine gentlemen?”
One of the men looked into his cup, then to the man beside him. He said, “Did that horse just talk?”
Edward started to reply, but Clint extended a hand and placed it on Edward’s chest to stop him. His look said, Let me handle this.
Clint walked around and stood in front of Edward in his most non-threatening posture: hands clasped with fingers intertwined, hovering in front of his buckle. Other than surrendering his guns or raising his hands over his head, entangling his fingers was the most encumbered and hence slowest a gunslinger could appear.
“I’d like to see the boss,” Clint announced.
“And who the sands are you?” said the man leaning against the hitch.
“I’m a stranger.”
“Don’t you have a name?”
“Sure. I’ll tell my name to the boss.”
The man, whose body language told Clint that he was the leader of the men on the carriage, set down his cup and took a step forward. His hand rested on the butt of his gun. Clint’s hands stayed clasped in front of him, encumbered and unthreatening.
“That’s a big gun you carry,” said the man.
“You like it? Because this one is the same.” Still with his hands clasped, Clint shrugged his left shoulder. His waterskin had been covering his left gun, but the shrug shifted the waterskin enough to expose it.
All of the men gave a satisfying reaction, but the man who almost fell from his perch on the wagon’s top earned the bluest ribbon. That one almost choked on his drink, then grabbed the carriage’s seat to regain his balance, suddenly looking like he was made of rubber.
“They’re big because they have seven chambers,” said Clint, his stoic expression giving no indication of just how much he was enjoying this dramatic reveal.
The leader’s face shifted into a sort of snarl. His hand was already brushing the butt of his gun, but now his index finger began tracing circles on the stock.
“You have some nerve violating taboo, mister,” he said.
Clint lowered his head about an inch and peered into the man’s eyes. He was watching all three of the men, of course (each was fondling a gun), but the leader was the most important out of all of them. As the head of this particular beast went, so would its body.
Behind Clint, Edward began drinking from a trough. He wouldn’t interfere unless Clint needed him, understanding t
hat this was a matter of men.
“The trick to firing such big guns is to have big hands.” Clint unclasped his hands, then held up his right in admiration. He did the same with his left. “But as to taboo, have you ever heard the rumors about how only a marshal can fire marshals’ guns? Well, yar it’s true.”
“You ain’t no marshal.”
“What if I was? What if I was a rogue who left The Realm in search of… of better employment?”
“But you ain’t,” the man repeated.
“If I were, though,” said Clint, the tiniest of smiles flirting with the corner of his mouth, “I’d be able to prove it. I’d be able to draw on you even if, say, my hands were up — like this! — and yours were on the butts of your guns. I’d be able to take you all down before your fingers found the triggers. And what’s more — and this is just for example, you understand — I’d be able to brag to you about it first, and explain what I was about to do.”
The man who’d called Edward a talking horse suddenly blurted, “You won’t find no work with the boss if you kill us!”
The man beside him shot him a look, but the first man was undaunted. He hissed, “Look at those hands!”
“We’ll go for a trick shot, then,” said Clint. “Do you think you could fire a gun without a grip?”
The front man squinted. “What?”
Clint’s hands dropped to his guns and drew. He raised them and fired each twice within a second, pulling both triggers at once. What sounded like two single shots rang out through the empty streets. He’d re-holstered both pistols before the first man’s hands dropped to his side and found his gun handle missing. He’d have to hold a skinny metal protrusion with a few splinters clinging to it if he wanted to attempt to return fire.
Slowly, carefully, the lead bandit said, “You want to see the boss?”
“Later,” said Edward, shoving his way past Clint and into the saloon without slowing. “I’ve been without food for a week, and right now, I want pie and brew. And because there can only be one brain to this outfit, what I want is what the marshal wants too.”