by Sean Platt
The other two paladins broke their paralysis and drew their own scimitars — slender cylinders at their sides which burst into long weapons of bright blue light. But instead of charging, these two ducked behind the stitching machine, dragging the two workmen with them.
Ropes flashed, shooting like bullets behind the fleeing men.
The man who had already lassoed one of the knights gave a tug and the rope returned to him, leaving the knight in a pile. From the cliff, Clint couldn’t tell what had happened to the paladin, but he wasn’t moving.
The man with the orange hair had his great pistols pointed and, as they watched, fired a shot at the commissioner. Clint almost laughed. Realm alloy was impervious to such as bullets. But then the almost-laugh caught in his throat as the gunslinger saw a spray appear behind the thinking machine. Whatever the man with the red hair was firing, it was strong enough to pierce the skin of a commissioner.
The machine fell. The man with the orange hair re-aimed his weapons. From the dirt, the machine raised its arms then sat up, looking around as if mildly inconvenienced. But commissioners, in every instance Clint had ever heard of, were beyond docile. It was not a threat. If the entire human complement of the stitcher crew were killed, the commissioner would likely offer to clean the gang’s boots before they rode into town.
“If they’re smart, the knights will stop trying to slash those men and will use projectiles instead,” said Clint, still peeking through the spyglass.
They did. Still hiding behind the stitching machine, the two remaining knights began to fire what looked like balls of light from the ends of their scimitars. The first projectile shot straight at one of the roper’s chests, but the man sprung into the air and flipped backward, allowing the light ball to pass directly below him. Then, when the ball circled around and homed back at him, he cartwheeled to the side, jabbing out with his rope. The rope grabbed a rock and flung it toward the ball of light. The light struck the rock and the rock exploded. The man sprung away on one hand, his rope still moving.
The knights continued to fire projectiles, but the rope gang continued to weave and dodge. It was like watching a circus. While the paladins and workmen cowered, the eleven remaining rope men sprung around them like acrobats, effortlessly evading the light balls and using their ropes to grab objects to deflect them.
The rope men circled the machine. Their ropes found the workmen and dragged them out and began using them to deflect the paladin projectiles. The paladins couldn’t recall the projectiles once they’d been launched, and the balls of light struck the workmen. The workmen fell.
The two remaining paladins, finding themselves alone and outgunned by men without guns (the orange-haired man had re-holstered his weapons and was now leaning against a rock, watching the battle while smiling from behind a toothpick), ceased fire. From the dirt, the commissioner stood then scooted off, eventually hiding behind a large rock outcropping far from the stitcher.
The rope men surrounded the paladins. The paladins climbed into the stitching machine.
“I guess they’re going to drive away,” said Edward.
But then the rope men all started to strike out with their ropes at once. The ropes slapped the the stitcher’s side, twitched, then seemed to fall to the dirt. One rope looped itself around a handle used to climb to the machine’s top. The man pulled and the entire side panel came away.
They were somehow using ropes to disassemble a Realm machine.
Within minutes, the stitcher’s side panels lay on the sand. The treads were pulled away. One of the men used a long throw to pull off the canopy of transparent alloy at the thing’s top, exposing the two cowering paladins. Then the paladins, to their credit, stopped cowering and leaped out into the dirt and, all restraint gone, began firing ball after ball of light at the rope men. But the eleven rope men parried effortlessly, picking up and using pieces of the disassembled stitcher to deflect the projectiles.
It looked to Clint like the rope men were playing with the paladins. They seemed amused, not actually trying to end the fight.
One of the knights broke out and charged at the closest of his opponents, his scimitar wielded like a sword. He almost made it, but before he reached his target — who didn’t attempt to defend himself — three ropes circled the man and three bandits pulled, and the man fell to the dirt.
The last paladin, defeated, suddenly stood, tossed his scimitar aside, and held his hands high.
Three ropes circled the man.
Three bandits pulled.
The man found himself bound to what remained of the stitching machine, unable to move.
Then the bound man watched — as Clint and Edward watched from high above — as the orange-haired man walked to the open magic vein and lowered something into it.
CHAPTER TWO:
SLY OF THE FAMILY STONE
After the bandits had gone, Clint and Edward made their way down to the valley floor, to the mostly-disassembled Realm machine and the two remaining members of the stitching party. During the long descent, Clint and Edward took turns chiding one another for not intervening in the
(Assault? Robbery?)
events they’d just witnessed. Clint said that Edward should have folded them down to the valley floor so they could take out a few of the rope-bearers. Edward retorted that he’d be too weak after folding to help, but that Clint should have fired a few of his marshal’s bullets from up on the cliff. Clint claimed they were too far for shooting, even for marshal’s bullets.
But really, both knew the other hadn’t intervened for one simple reason: there was too much wrong in the Sands for any one man or any one unicorn to solve all of it. The facts of “right” and “wrong” were seldom obvious. A man — even a marshal — had to choose his battles carefully.
But perhaps most important in their decision not to intervene was the fact that the attacked party had been Realm folk. The Realm had exiled Clint. Edward distrusted The Realm’s decadence, and had often implied that The Realm’s manipulations sullied and exploited magic. Edward seemed to think that what the stitching crew had been doing to the magic vein bordered on a sort of sacrilege. So why should they stop anyone who stopped The Realm’s work?
So they waited. And after the bandits had gone, Clint and Edward went down to see what was what.
The valley was nothing but metal pieces and decay. There was a thin ribbon of pure blue energy pulsing through its center. As they drew closer, Clint inspected the rift. It looked like liquid fire. Now that Clint was near it, he fancied he could see it reaching up from the ground with snakelike tentacles. He had a strange thought that was close to fear: Might it try to grab him if he got too close? Might it suck him down into the ground?
The commissioner machine had begun to creep out from behind the rock, but it slinked back the second it saw Edward approaching with Clint on his back. The surviving paladin, who’d unbound himself, was picking around the scene with a sullen air. The gunslinger was reminded of a man who compulsively checks his pistol after missing a shot as if to imply the revolver was at fault. When the paladin saw them arrive, he didn’t bother to dive for his scimitar. He’d apparently been too distracted (Clint thought “incompetent”) to pick it up after the bandits had left, and now he seemed to decide it was too far away and that if the stranger was going to kill him, then kill him he would. That was how knights thought. At heart, they were all cowards and quitters. So Clint thought, anyway.
“I didn’t know commoners rode unicorns,” the man muttered without looking up. He was wearing an odd sort of a skull-cap helmet and a full suit of chain mail — both a shirt and long pants that belled at the bottom. The wide-bottom pants on paladins were just getting started when Clint was exiled. He was sad to see that they’d endured.
Clint drew his revolver, sighted down the barrel, then re-stowed it in his holster. He’d held it just long enough to show the man his sidearm, and let him see the seven chambers in its cylinder.
“Fine, don’t answer
me,” said the man.
“I’m not a commoner,” said Clint. The knight was stupider than he thought.
“Yar, yar… everyone is special in their own way.”
Clint was preparing to respond when a rapid clanking of metal came from one side. He looked over to see the commissioner machine running forward on stiff-jointed legs. Its makers had seen fit to paint blue jeans and chaps on the thing so it wouldn’t appear naked, but hadn’t seen fit to give it decent knee joints that would allow it to run in a natural way. Realm thinking at its best.
When the commissioner reached the circle where the ropers had first made their lassos, the machine fell onto one knee. Because of its stiff joints, this was awkward at best, but once it was settled, its position made it look like it was about to offer Clint a ring and propose a hitching. Its chest was painted to look like an open-throated trail shirt with a terrible approximation of a cowhide vest over the top. A Realm logo was painted on one side of its chest, on top of the vest. Its face was gold, like its hands and arms and neck, and its features were roughly humanoid. As a final absurdity, it had been fitted with an enormous alloy handlebar mustache, painted brown. A pocketwatch was painted on a chain, in its vest “pocket.”
From its knees, the machine said in an artificially low, drawling voice, “A thousand thankoos for your presence, Marshal!” Then the glass spheres that passed for its eyes rotated toward Edward and it added, “And for yours as well, magical sire!”
The paladin looked over, vaguely interested. “You know these guys?”
Clint dismounted and looked Edward in the eye. Edward muttered, “I was wrong up on the cliff. It’s him you should shoot.”
The paladin finally did make a lunge for his scimitar, but Clint’s right gun was out so fast he barely had time to flinch. The knight had committed on the lunge, though, and when he stopped his feet, momentum carried him forward too far, and he fell.
“I’m not here to kill you,” said Clint. “So kindly don’t make me.”
“This gentleman is a marshal, Mister Havarow!” the machine called from its knees. “A marshal true, all the way out here in the Sands! We are saved!”
The paladin stood. As a gesture of goodwill, Clint re-holstered his firearm for the second time. He wasn’t used to drawing and not firing, so he muttered a silent apology to his pistol as he stowed it.
“Former marshal,” said Clint. “Now exiled to walk the Sands forever.”
There was a mechanical sort of whirring from the commissioner and a belch of steam wafted up from somewhere behind his head. The thing’s facial expressions were rudimentary, but Clint could sense discomfort no matter its source.
“Nonetheless, we thank you,” the thing drawled in its low, thick backwoods voice.
“Call me ‘sire’ again,” said Edward.
“Si…”
Clint interrupted him. “Get up. You don’t bow to us. What are you?”
“Timekeeper and commissioner for Stitching Rig 104, sir,” said the machine with what sounded like pride. Then he looked at the stitcher, which was in shards above the deep blue vein of fire that crossed the valley’s floor. “Now defunct.” Then he stumbled to his alloy feet and shambled a few feet forward, extending an arm toward Clint in a series of spastic jerking motions. “My official designation is Commissioner 104-13, but informally I am called Buckaroo.”
“Buckaroo?” said Edward.
Buckaroo’s face couldn’t convey emotion, but his manner and his voice could, and did. He made a small steam-gear noise and a puff of white vapor rose from the back of his neck. Clint felt suddenly sure the noise was Buckaroo’s version of a laugh.
“An appropriate nickname, sir,” said Buckaroo.” I am a Sands machine and I ride a —” He gestured toward the rig, as if he kept forgetting that it had been stealthily disassembled. “Well, I rode what used to be a mechanical horse.”
“Looks like a horse to me, all right,” said Edward, using his magic to poke at the pile of rubble from a distance. His horn sparked lightly. The paladin was watching, but nothing seemed to have clicked. It was as if he’d never before been in the presence of a marshal, or had never seen a unicorn.
“What are you doing out here?” said Clint, even though Edward had already told him. “With this… whatever it is?” Edward gave him a look, but Clint gave it right back, urging him to play along. Either Buckaroo would believe that a Realm marshal and a unicorn wouldn’t know what a magic vein looked like or he wouldn’t. The paladin’s thoughts (or lack thereof) didn’t concern either of them.
“Stitching, sir,” said Buckaroo, fidgeting and moving toward the wrecked pile of alloy, then deftly stepping over the chain-mail-clad figure of one of the fallen paladins. “And now? Oh, dear. We’ll never make the shimmer. This vein is exposed, and without a rig to stitch it.” He shook his head with a clank. “They’ll have to send out another.”
Buckaroo reached into what Clint had thought was a painted-on pocket in his side to retrieve what he’d thought was a painted-on pocketwatch. But the pocket turned out to be a real cavity in the machine’s side, and the pocketwatch appeared to be real. The chain on the watch was attached to Buckaroo’s chest, so it was probably a readout device rather than a watch true, but Buckaroo checked it like a train conductor. “Oh dear. Oh dear. And that was him who attacked us, you know. That was Mister Stone.”
“Stone?” said Clint. “Not Hassle Stone, surely…” He was thinking of the bandit he’d left to the people of Solace — the man he’d driven out of the dusty town before meeting Mai, then faced again just before Kold had ridden off with his almost-bride. Was it possible that this was Stone again, and that he’d made a fatal mistake in letting him go? Should he have left him killt?
“Of the family Stone,” Buckaroo clarified. “Hassle is this man’s brother. This is Sylvester, though he goes by Sly. You’ve not heard?” Buckaroo made fussy, nervous gestures while the remaining paladin, who still hadn’t formally introduced himself or reclaimed his weapon, looked at him with scorn. “Oh, no, dear, of course you wouldn’t. How long have you been exiled? Oh, I’m sorry, that is insensitive of me to ask. But you wouldn’t know, would you? Of Sly and his roving rope gang?”
“I’ve not heard,” said Clint.
“He’s been raiding our operations. We have to open the veins before we can stitch them, see?” said Buckaroo, gesturing and talking more rapidly, his stiff legs pacing the site. “It’s like setting a bone — sometimes they have to break it open further before setting it. And seven times over the past five years, this gang has sabotaged operations like this. He’s stealing magic.”
Edward gave the machine a condescending look. “You can’t travel with magic.”
“Oh, but you can, sire,” said Buckaroo, now shambling toward Edward. “With Realm technology, you can. Stone has a set of casks. He dips them in, see, and he uses the magic he takes in his guns and possibly in other…”
“Realm technology,” Edward muttered, turning away.
But Buckaroo was either too obtuse to read moods or simply didn’t know Edward, because he continued to explain, still coming closer. “Yar! It’s an amazing age. Except that you have to refill those casks from source, and out here, source is rare. The only way to access source out in the Sands is to draw directly from the veins, but you need a rig to do so. It puts us in a difficult position, sire. We must stitch these fractures, or else in less than a thousand years, they may spread to The Realm. You are familiar with the phenomenon of cancer, in humans?”
“I am very familiar with human cancer,” said Edward, but Clint was sure he was speaking figuratively. He was looking out along the blue rift with its spilling magic. His face wasn’t visible. Buckaroo shambled up beside him.
“We have to fix the rifts to contain the spread, see, sire, but every time we do, we do exactly what Stone’s gang wants — we open a rift to expose the source magic. We were just about to begin the stitching when his gang fell on us. And now, look!” He gestured at the wrec
ked pile of Realm alloy. “Worse than it was. Now it’s not only opened; it’s exposed. But we cannot simply ignore the fractures, sire!”
“That’s why we’re here,” said a voice beside Clint. He looked over. The paladin had stopped pouting. Clint had been keeping an eye on him, and he’d seen the man strip the weapons from the two dead knights while retrieving his own.
“Good thing you were here,” said Edward. “Look how much you helped.”
“Yar,” said Buckaroo before the paladin could respond to Edward’s sarcasm. “Used to be, stitching crews were just a commissioner and two cleaners.” He gestured at the two plainclothes men in the dirt. “We added guards to all operations. But…” He trailed off. “Soon we’ll need to start sending marshals, I suppose.”
He looked up at Clint as if Clint were the answer to his mechanical prayers. A puff of steam plumed out from the back of his neck. The giant brown-painted handlebar mustache on his gold face rose and fell — probably some machinist’s attempt to add an outward expression of humanity to a machine’s hotly debated soul.
Buckaroo had re-stowed his pocketwatch, but now he pulled it back out and consulted it. The behavior of looking at the watch had to be something the engineer had programmed into him, because Buckaroo was a machine. If a machine couldn’t recall what he’d read only a minute before, nothing could.
“This is intolerable,” said Buckaroo. “The shimmer! We’ll never make it. We can’t seal this vein. We can’t take the stitcher with us.”