by Sean Platt
Slowly, minding his footsteps, Clint peered inside. There was a huge sphere of orange at the bar. It looked like a magical floating orb until he realized that it was the back of Stone’s head.
Clint’s hand fell to his gun.
“You can’t kill him,” said a voice.
Clint turned to find Edward behind him, the piece of pie still floating in front of his face.
“You heard what Havarow said earlier,” he continued. “They need to know about this man’s operation. He needs to go to The Realm and stand trial, and he can’t do that if he’s dead.”
“And he will stand trial,” said Clint, tapping his head with a long, bony finger. “I’m not as dumb as you think I am. I don’t know if you were in your stupidity when the machine mentioned a way they had to return to The Realm, but they have one, and I intend to see it.”
“And use it?” said Edward.
“Maybe they could use the help of a marshal in escorting their man, is all I’m saying.”
Clint nodded at the unicorn, then rotated his gun belt so that his left pistol was behind his back. He pulled a bandana from his pocket and casually draped it over his right pistol. Obscuring his sidearms was humiliating, but a common man could only carry one pistol, and the bandana would conceal the visible gun’s size and seven-shot cylinder. With luck, Stone would believe it to be ordinary.
The gunslinger entered the bar, leaving his unstable companion outside.
Clint and Stone were the only two men in the bar and the clack of Clint’s boots on the floorboards was loud. After a long moment, Stone turned slowly around to look at Clint — but when he looked, he looked, up and down. And Clint, keeping his scrutiny low-key, did the same of Stone.
Stone’s giant orange hairdo looked fake, but Clint could tell that it wasn’t. He had pale, freckled skin that looked entirely too fragile for the Sands sun and air. (Clint theorized that perhaps his large hair acted as a brimmed hat, shielding his face.) He wore two guns on his hips (illegal enough), but Clint could see right away that they were actually shotguns with the barrels and stocks mostly removed (very illegal), slung into oversized holsters like giant pistols. To make the illegality complete, Havarow had said that those two big guns were powered by magic — and sure enough, Clint could see a small device, like a reload capsule, buried in the grips of each. The magic capsules glowed in a steady, pulsing rhythm.
“Hi there, fella,” said Stone.
Clint looked at the man’s guns. They were in their holsters with the handles facing forward. It meant that Stone drew across his chest rather than straight from the hip. A cross-draw would be clunky with guns so large, so it had to be something he did for show, not unlike his giant hairdo.
“I saw you from a cliff in the desert,” said Clint. “You and some men with ropes.”
Stone smiled as if he were a celebrity meeting a fan. “Yar.”
“How can those men do what they do, with mere ropes?” said Clint. He was pitching his voice in an imitation of awe, as if he himself were aiming to learn to rope.
“Practice,” said Stone.
He took a sip of something from his mug. Whatever was inside was too chunky to be brew. His lips parted from the cracked porcelain flushed in a deep red. He wiped his mouth on a dusty sleeve and then looked again at Clint, taking him in. He paused at his single gun, draped with a bandana. He smirked, and his eyes rose to Clint’s face.
“And what, may I ask, is your interest in roping?”
“Just curious. As I’m curious about those sidearms you carry.” Clint tried cracking a tiny smile — a quiet promise to Stone that this was all just casual banter, that he was a shy man who’d found someone he admired.
Stone tapped the shotgun on his right hip. He smiled and was about to answer when he suddenly stopped, his eyes narrowing as a small noise broke the quiet.
Clint had heard it too, but he pretended he hadn’t.
Stone reached toward the bar. He pushed the mug away. They were standing in the middle of the saloon, a few feet from the bar’s polished edge, with Clint’s back to the door. Something in Stone’s expression had changed. Clint’s hand wanted to go to his (single) gun but he held it, some deep intuition telling him that no matter what, he must not engage until and unless he had to.
This man will be taken to The Realm, he told himself. Kold is going to The Realm. We want to go to The Realm. The third Orb is somewhere between here and The Realm, and so is Mai. Stay your hands. Whatever chance there is to reach The Realm, that chance rides with Stone.
His hand twitched, wanting to make murder. But he held it. He waited.
“These are magic guns,” said Stone. A small smile twitched at the corner of his mouth. “Here,” he added. “I’ll show you.”
Stone’s hands moved fast.
Clint, repressing every urge in his honed gunslinger’s body, stilled his own hands and dove for the floor.
CHAPTER FOUR:
BY THE SEVEN SPICES
OF CHILI
As Clint suspected, Stone’s draw was, by marshal’s standards, slow and clumsy. His sawed-off shotguns were at least three times as long as Clint’s seven-shooters and easily five times as heavy. Clint saw every rattle and shake that the giant guns made as they emerged from their holsters. Alloy clattered on rivets. The barrels flicked the leather, not coming out clean. Stone had to fumble and adjust his grips during the draw, and as the guns crossed — that big, showy double cross-draw — they nearly collided. The guns were so long that Stone couldn’t rotate their barrels toward his targets until they were clear of each other, which was something a straight draw would eliminate.
Despite all of that, Stone’s draws were by most measures clean and fast. Within a flicker of a second he’d aimed and pulled both triggers, shouldered two incredibly large kicks, and blown matching holes in the saloon walls — one on either side of the swinging batwing door.
Of course, Clint had seen this coming.
He’d seen Stone’s eyes flick toward the door as he’d heard the tiny sound from outside. He’d known Stone anticipated an ambush, and he’d known that Stone was right. He’d known that although Clint was a wildcard in the bandit’s eyes, the targets outside were for-sure. Clint was counting on a hunch that Stone wasn’t intending to fire on him, and that he’d leave the stranger alone as long as he didn’t seem like a threat. But if he was wrong, he’d be dead. Edward was right outside, but he was flickering in and out of awareness. He might not be able to help if Clint got himself wounded or dead.
Stone’s shotguns flashed. They belched forth two swirls of purplish smoke in the saloon’s dry air (Clint was relieved to see the smoke wasn’t the pink of a marshal’s weapon, so at least there hadn’t been a total breach of taboo) as his targets — two lawmen crouching outside — evaporated into a churning green mist. Then Stone moved again, turning a third lawman into mist as he tried to enter. Then, immediately after the third shotgun blast, a volley of shells crashed into the saloon. Stone fell to the floor as lead slugs blew splinters from the wooden bar. Then he came to his knees, knocking two stools down in front of himself as a makeshift bunker. The stools were meager cover, but they stopped at least one shell, which annihilated a cross-brace and narrowly missed his leg.
Clint, who found himself nearly in the line of fire, crawled away from the door and made his way to the side, now more or less behind Stone. Stone was crouched low, almost in a ball. All Clint could see were guns and a giant sphere of orange hair. Purple haze filled his eyes as Stone continued to fire.
The front wall of the saloon exploded with tiny holes as splinters tumbled to the floor. Distantly, Clint wondered just what the lawmen were thinking. They couldn’t see what they were shooting at and their shells wouldn’t spin true like a gunslinger’s rounds, so they could hit anything. The bartender, who’d been in the back, was safe. But was that just luck, or had they known the saloon would be empty?
Or did Havarow not care if the bartender — or Clint, for that matter �
� were struck?
Low on the ground, Stone had the advantage. A fourth and fifth Nazareth Shiloh lawman stormed into the saloon, immediately ducking behind large alloy signs advertising chili. But they’d either forgotten that Stone’s shotguns were magic or Havarow hadn’t told them, because the outlaw stood tall and blew twin holes in the signs. Green mist puffed from around the edges.
Clint could hear Havarow outside, yelling at the others to go in and do his job for him. The marshal felt his irritation with the paladin — with paladins in general, based on his experiences — grow. Havarow was commanding other men to go into his conflict, to apprehend his responsibility, and to be killt so that he could live. It was just like them. Bullies and cowards, all.
Stone raised his guns to fire again, but they clicked empty in unison. He rushed to reload, frantically ducking back behind the barstools and fishing shells from his pockets.
He got one into the chamber.
Two.
Three.
He hadn’t closed the chamber and was unprepared when the batwings burst open and Paladin Havarow, finally showing his face, entered with what had to be the only three lawmen left in town. All four ducked for cover. Stone, finally loaded, racked one of his guns and raised it, leaving the other on the floor. Havarow drew, but Havarow was slow. Stone was faster… but there were too many lawmen, too many targets, too many guns turning toward him.
He held his fire. Havarow, a half-second behind, held his. A moment later all five of the battling men found themselves with their firearms pointed at each other in a standoff.
Everything stopped. One heartbeat passed. Everyone saw who had the drop on whom. Stone had a bead on a man who had a bead right back on him. But very close by, Stone had two others — including Havarow — dead in his sights. It was possible that the man who Stone was centered on could kill Stone before Stone killt him. But it was more possible that Stone would win the exchange between the two — and if that happened, the three lawmen and the paladin would never fire their guns in time.
“You can kill me,” said Stone. “But rest assured, at least two of you will go with me.”
One lawman looked at Havarow. Havarow looked back. Stone shifted his gun, seeing who was in charge, and focused his barrel on Havarow’s chest. Now only one man on the side of law was in danger, but it was the one who was giving the orders.
Havarow slowly lowered his gun and set it on the floor. Then he waved for the others to do the same. A moment later, one man with one gun held four others at bay, their eight hands held high in the air.
That was when Clint cocked the gun he’d set against the back of Stone’s skull.
The room exhaled.
Across the saloon, the lawmen reclaimed their guns. Havarow crossed to Stone and placed him in shackles, but Stone, instead of looking at Havarow, turned to look at Clint. He smiled, giving the gunslinger a small, congratulatory nod.
Stone was in shackles and being led toward the batwings by Nazareth lawmen when two ropes entered the saloon, seemed to turn at right angles through the door, and grabbed the lawmen by the necks.
The lawmen fell as the ropes tightened, dragging them toward the door. Their hands went to their necks, digging fingers under the ropes, gasping for air. Then all of a sudden there was a flash of yellow light from outside. The ropes went slack. And at the same time, two men screamed.
Clint ran for the door, passing Havarow (who’d manage to pin Stone) and the two lawmen (who were unroped and breathing again). Outside, he found a group of four men grasping at their chests as if they’d been punched. Someone had disarmed them, just in the nick of time.
Edward.
Clint looked around and saw the unicorn across the street, eating grass from a small patch near a trough. Edward never ate grass. Eating grass was something horses did.
Clint sighed, unsure whether to be thankful for the rescue or frustrated by the reversion. Edward had stopped four of the bandits, sure. But it seemed that his switch had already flipped back.
Four bandits. But that wasn’t enough, was it?
Clint looked around for the rest of the gang (by his count, there had to be at least seven more), but the streets of Nazareth Shiloh were nothing but dust. The rest of the gang was gone or was hiding.
The men on the ground had dropped their ropes. As Clint watched, they got up and began reaching for them again. They had their hands on the ropes and were already starting to form new lassos when Clint removed the bandana at his waist and rotated his other pistol into view.
“By the seven spices of chili,” whispered one of the men. “He’s a marshal.”
The man immediately dropped his rope and raised his hands, backing away. Another watched him and did the same. Then both men, seeing that Clint wasn’t moving, turned and ran.
One of the two remaining bandits — a scrawny man with the alabaster skin of an albino — continued to work his lasso. He wielded the rope like a weapon that was already drawn and aimed. It looked as if he thought he could rope Clint before the gunslinger could shoot him. Or as if he thought he could catch bullets.
The remaining bandit looked at the albino. “Teedawge,” he said. “Don’t.”
“Yeah, Teedawge,” said Clint. “Don’t.”
But Teedawge did. He whipped his arm forward, and the rope shot at Clint far, far faster than the gunslinger would have imagined possible. It circled his right gun and began to tug it from its holster. Just in time, Clint got his big hand around the pistol as well, fighting to pull it back. His face twisted into indignant rage. Whether a man used a rope or his hand, it was death to touch a marshal’s guns.
While his right hand fought the rope for a grip on one gun, Clint dealt death with the other. Teedawge hit the dirt. The rope went slack.
The other bandit looked briefly at Clint and then ran.
Clint freed his right pistol from the slack rope, shaking a little at how easily the man had almost disarmed him. He looked at the rope, expecting it to be magical. But no, it was just a rope. Nothing fancy.
From the doorway, Sly Stone — still in both shackles and Havarow’s custody — chuckled. Then Havarow twisted the shackles, turning Stone’s chuckle to a sharp groan of pain.
Then Buckaroo walked up to Clint, steam belching from behind his neck.
“Thankoo for assisting us with apprehending our man, sir,” he said, giving a small bow to the gunslinger. He turned and gave a deeper bow to Edward, who was still chewing grass and not paying the slightest bit of attention. “And thankoo, sire,” he added.
Edward was silent, save for the munching sounds coming through his large teeth. Clint nodded. Havarow grunted.
“What will you do with him?” Clint asked the machine.
Buckaroo tittered nervously, checking his pocket watch. “Take him to a shimmer, sir, in Aurora Solstice. Tomorrow. He will be returned to The Realm, where he will stand trial.” He looked to Havarow as if for confirmation, and got it from the paladin in the form of a small nod. The gesture said that Havarow was annoyed to be asked.
“A shimmer?”
“None of your concern,” said Havarow before Buckaroo could respond.
Clint let it go. Edward would explain it later.
“Pardon sir,” said Buckaroo, addressing Havarow, “but it may indeed be his concern, or perhaps it should be. Meeting a 3:10 shimmer tomorrow will be difficult as it is, given the hour. And there is also the matter of Mr. Stone’s gang, which is still at large. You are one man — be you noble and deadly of course, sir — but I am of little value in ambush. We could use the help, should trouble resurface.”
Havarow glanced at the body of the bandit Teedawge, then looked at Clint with something like heavy, sighing irritation.
“Where do your travels take you, Marshal?” he said.
Clint smirked. Havarow had called him “Marshal.” And Havarow, who was a minor knight of The Realm himself, would never call an exiled marshal “Marshal” lightly. Knights of all levels were proud and superio
r, and paladins and marshals had never much gotten along. He wouldn’t be giving Clint a title he didn’t feel Clint deserved if he didn’t need something — whether he was willing to admit it or not.
“We are pursuing a rider,” Clint replied. “We have reason to believe he may be headed toward —” He paused, then continued. “— toward Aurora Solstice.”
That was a bit of a lie, because they no longer held a definite trail on Kold and had last assumed he’d be heading through the Lakes O Plenty and on to Elf Meadows. But the bigger truth was that Kold was headed to The Realm, and where routes to The Realm were concerned, the fastest path — seemingly Havarow’s — was best. Havarow would never let Clint and Edward near whatever this “shimmer” was, of course, but Clint could deal with that particular problem when it arrived. One challenge at a time.
“Your passage back to The Realm. It’s tomorrow afternoon?” said Clint.
Buckaroo removed his pocket watch, on its chain, from the cavity that served as his vest pocket. He consulted it for the millionth time and replied, “Yar, sir. By my calculations, which I currently believe to be accurate, the window opens at ten minutes after three.”
“Opens at?” said Clint.
Havarow shot him a look. “You’d be an escort. Nothing more.”
“And what is my incentive to be an escort?” said Clint.
Havarow chewed his lip. He was a minor knight and had virtually no authority to offer Clint anything.
“Magic, perhaps.”
Clint nodded toward Edward. “I have magic.”
“Money, then.”
“I have no need for money.”
Havarow rolled his eyes. “Absolution. Forgiveness. They wouldn’t revoke your exile, I’m sure, but maybe they could… forgive you. Maybe.”