Hath No Fury

by Melanie R. Meadors

  “Then we go get him,” Rob said. “Another half hour and it’ll be pitch dark. We can slip out through the stable door, cross the street, and come around behind the building.”

  “That sounds like a good way to get killed,” Bill said.

  “It also sounds like about the only idea I’ve heard that might get us somewhere,” Dogs said. “You volunteering, Rob?”

  “Yeah,” Rob said, not looking at Bill.

  “How many you want? Somebody’s got to stay with the captain.” The big sergeant grinned. “An’ I wasn’t made for sneaking around in the dark.”

  “Maybe three more,” Rob said, suddenly nervous. “John, will you help?”

  John Plainsman nodded. “Bring Little Barrow, if he’s willing. He’s good in the woods.”

  “I’ll go,” I said.

  They looked at me again. Ben said, “You sure, Nellie?”

  I shrugged. “I’m small, and I know how to move quiet. Better than any of the rest of you, at least.”

  “Right,” Dogs said. “Head out once it’s dark. John, keep an eye on the house and say if he leaves.”

  John Plainsman nodded and turned back to his vigil. Rob got up and went to talk to the Barrows, who were sitting together on the other side of the room, watching the track side of the building. Ben got to his feet.

  “You need us for anything until then?” he said.

  Dogs looked from him to me, then gave a wicked grin. “Not unless the Neffies come knockin’. I’ll give a shout if we see ‘em.”

  “Ben?” I said, but his hand was already on my wrist, tugging me toward the stairs.

  BEN FUCKED ME HARDER THAN he ever had before, shoving me down on the dusty bed before I’d even properly gotten my shirt off and pushing into me with a furious intensity. I could see he had something on his mind, so I let him take the lead, and truth be told I can’t say I minded it much. I left a couple of nice welts on his neck before we were finished, and a neat semi-circle of tooth marks when I bit down on the meat of his shoulder to keep from screaming.

  “Did you have to bite me?” he said afterward, probing the tender spot with a finger. I hadn’t broken the skin, but he’d have a bruise. “What are you, a wild dog?”

  “It was that or shriek loud enough to bring the roof down.”

  “Go ahead and shriek,” he said. “It’s not like the rest don’t know what we’re doing. You hear the noises Bill makes some nights?”

  That brought us both back into reality. Bill was downstairs, bandage sodden with blood, wrapped in a blanket and still shivering. Wound like that, it was even odds he’d lose the arm, if we made it to a surgeon. Jude and Liz were dead. And Captain Hays, who’d always been the strongest of us, had looked so frail with his eye closed and his face pale.

  “This is it, isn’t it?” Ben said. “Even if we get away. It’ll be the end of the Red Riders.”

  I thought about what Liz and Hays had said, that the war was as good as lost. It would be the end of the Red Riders one way or another.

  “What if it is?” I said. “You still want to go on to Totterhollow, sign up with General Wick?”

  “I would.” Ben shifted beside, his hand sliding across my bare chest. “I mean…it depends.”

  “Depends on what?”

  “On what you were doing,” he said. “I thought…maybe even if the Riders split up, it doesn’t mean we have to. Does it?” He sounded anxious. “What would you do, if—”

  “I ain’t thought about it,” I said. “And I won’t until we get out of here.”

  “But after—”

  “Leave after for after. Is that what’s been eating you?”

  “Nothing’s eating me,” he protested.

  “Liar,” I said, wriggling against him. “I can tell by the way you fuck. You’re not usually in such a hurry.”

  “Nellie…” he breathed, then stopped. “Just be careful, all right?”

  I snorted. “Like I’d be skipping along singing at the top of my lungs if I didn’t have you here to tell me.”

  Leave after for after as all well and good as a thing to tell Ben, but it didn’t stop my mind from working as I got dressed, cinching my belt tight and double-checking for anything that might clank or make noise. If we did get away, then what? Back to the army? I had no idea if Wick’s army would even take a girl, though if Hays was right about the way things stood I guessed he’d take anyone with two arms and two legs. But if Hays was right, then maybe joining the army was as good as taking my last shot. I hated the Centrals and their Neffies, but that didn’t mean I wanted to die in the last ditch for the Defiant.

  But what else was there? It wasn’t as though I had a trade to speak of. Go off into the country with Ben and bear his children, turn into a fat farmer’s wife? The thought made me giggle.

  “Nellie?” Rob said, from the stairs. “We’re almost ready.”

  “Coming,” I said.

  I glanced back at Ben, who looked at me like a puppy in a cage. I snorted again and went out into the hall. One of the guest-room doors was half-open, and from the blood on the floor I guessed that’s where they’d put Jude. I wondered what had happened to Liz, if the Neffies had bothered to take her body away or just left it in the dirt. I wondered what Tzolk would do if he caught me, if he was serious about ordering all the Neffies to have a go. I swallowed, and promised myself I would take my last shot if it came to that.

  The others were waiting downstairs. They’d traded their carbines for long knives, which the two Barrows and Sergeant Dogs always carried several of. I accepted one from the sergeant and thrust the sheath through my belt, and checked my revolver in its holster.

  “John Plainsman will take the lead,” Dogs said. “Stay close to him and stay quiet. Any shooting’s going to be like kicking a hornet’s nest.”

  “If we hear a shot, we’ll open up,” Big Barrow said. “Might confuse ‘em.”

  “Just get back here as quick as you can,” Dogs said. “Even if this works, we still got Tzolk to think about.”

  I looked from the sergeant to the captain, still unconscious under his blanket, and then to John Plainsman. Rob looked a bit pale, and he was staring at Bill. Little Barrow, a short young man with a mop of curly brown hair, had his thumbs in his belt and was pointedly not looking at his brother.

  John Plainsman caught my eye. “You remember the hand signs?”

  I nodded.

  “Good. Let’s go, then.”

  We went out through the door into the stables, a warm, smelly cave full of shadows and the soft sounds of still-spooked horses. There were no lanterns here, and the sky had gone from purple to black in the time that Ben and I had been fucking. The moon was up but still low, visible only in patches between the buildings of Hawk Hill.

  John Plainsman led the way out into the street. Once he started off, I had a hard time keeping my eye on him. He moved slow and smooth, like a stalking cat, watching the patches of moonlight on the dusty ground and keeping his shadow from falling across any of them. Little Barrow followed, not quite as smooth but nearly so. Rob and I were clumsy by comparison, but we could follow in their steps and stay out of the light, and I managed not to trip over myself.

  The building we were heading for was a two-story house, painted a soft lavender with white trim, the boarded-over windows and overgrown garden spoiling the neat image. John went to his knees beside the front hedge and pointed for us to follow him along toward the back. The hedge went all the way round, and in the rear was a covered porch, in deep shadow.

  John Plainsman stared for a long time, then pointed at the porch and held up one finger. It took me a moment to see what he meant; next to the back door, where the shadow was deepest, there was a tiny gleam of metal, reflected moonlight tracing the edge of a rifle barrel. A Neffie, on guard.

  Little Barrow pointed at himself, and John nodded. Barrow crept forward in a crouch, through a gap in the hedge and across the weedy lawn. Somehow he managed not to make a sound, not even a rustle. I re
alized I was holding my breath, and let it out, slow and regular, so as not to gasp. Little Barrow reached the edge of the porch and gripped it, boosting himself up and slithering forward on his belly. When he was a few feet from the Neffie, he lunged with the speed of a striking snake, knife glittering for just a moment. There was a muffled thump, and then his shadowy form waved us forward.

  He was good at this. Ben had told me the Barrows had been poachers before the war. The way he used the knife made me wonder if they’d been thieves and killers as well.

  We climbed up to the porch, in single file. The Neffie lay on his back, a huddled shape in the coarse gray shirt and trousers the Centrals give them. He’d been a young man, with a wild beard and mustache, probably untrimmed since he’d given his body to a demon. He stank, too, the sour smell of his body mixing with the metallic tang of blood. Neffies only bathed if someone bothered to order them to. Dead, he might have been a tramp or a beggar, except for the rifle still clutched in his hand.

  The door was locked, but John Plainsman did something to it with a knife, and it opened with a soft crunch. It let in to the kitchen, which had been stripped bare, empty racks and shelves and a great wood-burning stove as cold as a corpse. From there a hall led to the front of the house, while a narrow servants’ stair led upward. John pointed Little Barrow and Rob to the hall, then gestured for me to follow him up.

  The stair was a tight, cramped switchback, and let out into an upstairs hall. A single lantern burned around a corner, its light throwing the shadows of at least two people on the wall. Neffies, I guessed, not people—they both carried rifles.

  John Plainsman slipped forward, and I followed. From the shadows, the two were standing on either side of a doorway. He drew his knife, tapped his chest, and pointed left, and I nodded. My own knife came out, a bulky, unfamiliar thing I’d borrowed from Dogs. John held up three fingers, then two, then one.

  He moved, twisting around the corner, and I followed. The Neffies were farther away than I’d thought, a few extra steps that threw me off balance. The one John had picked for himself was a tall man, gaunt like all Neffies, his beard matted and filthy. The other was a middle-aged woman, her face wrinkled and sagging, long hair studded with twigs and leaves like a woods-ghost from a fairy story.

  It was the eyes that gave her away as Neffie, even without the stench. They were blank—no surprise, no emotion, nothing human. She didn’t startle as we came around the corner, only raised her rifle to her shoulder. I barreled into her, slamming my shoulder into the gun to get clear of it. She let it fall with a clatter, hands reaching for my throat. Her nails were long and cracked at the ends, and they left bloody scratches as she tried to get a hold. I twisted inside her grip, getting a mouthful of the sour smell of her and nearly gagging. As she pulled me close, I jammed the knife in her chest. It was harder than I’d thought, and I felt the blade grate on something tough, but the Neffie stiffened. Her hands tightened for a moment, and I thought she might never let go of me, but then she fell away with a sigh of escaping breath. She blinked, and for the briefest moment I thought I saw something in her eyes, an instant of recognition or humanity. Then she shuddered, and her eyes dulled.

  I wondered what she’d done. The Centrals made Neffies out of criminals, debtors, Defiant prisoners—anyone whose body was fit enough to hold a demon and carry a rifle as part of the Central war machine. This woman didn’t have the look of a Defiant soldier. She might’ve been a whore—Central preachers were death on whoring—or just a widow whose debts had gone bad. No way to know, now.

  Tearing myself free of her hands, I saw that John Plainsman had opened his opponent’s throat with a slash, stepping back to avoid the spray of blood. The body hit the floor with a heavy thump, sprawled over his rifle. Something moved behind the closed door of the room, and I heard a young woman’s voice.

  “What’s going on out there?” She paused, then sighed. Footsteps. “Open the door.”

  Neffies couldn’t talk. The gift of speech was something God had granted only to His favored children, the priests said. It was one of the reasons the demons hated us so much. So whoever was inside was human, and wouldn’t be expecting a spoken response. On the other hand, if she was authorized to command these Nephilim, they would obey without hesitation.

  I motioned to John Plainsman to flatten himself against the wall, and thumbed the door latch. The woman moved, just a step or two, but she was wearing boots and the footsteps let me place her inside the room. As the door swung open, I pulled my revolver from its holster. It was the first that she saw as I stepped around the door, and her eyes went wide.

  She was in her late teens, I guessed, with pale skin and pretty blonde curls. She was in Central Army uniform, gray trousers, a starched linen shirt, and a dark burgundy jacket, but she’d draped the coat over the back of a chair, and there were a dozen garments of various descriptions spread out on the bed. The closet door was open, and more clothes lay in a pile on the floor.

  The revolver and my ragged looks seemed to provide all the explanation necessary. Her belt, with sword and revolver, hung on the chair underneath her coat. I gestured upward, and she raised her hands, lips twisting as John Plainsman slipped into the room behind me.

  “If I scream,” she said, in a very quiet voice, “there’s no way you’ll make it out of here.”

  “The same goes for you,” I said, stepping forward. John began to circle around behind her, and I saw her nervous eyes flick between us.

  “You’re going to kill me anyway,” she said. “Why else would you be here?”

  “Then why haven’t you screamed?”

  She clamped her mouth tight, but her eyes said everything. Because I don’t want to die.

  John was behind her, out of her field of view, sliding whisper-quiet over the floor. His knife was out, and I didn’t doubt he could take her before she could make a sound. When she made to turn, I shook my head and waggled the gun. A bead of sweat formed on her forehead and rolled down her cheek.

  Something was bothering me, but I didn’t get it until it was nearly too late. John was only a foot away from her when I said, “What’s your name?”

  “Why do you care?” she said. Tears glistened at the corners of her eyes.

  Those golden curls. I’d seen Tzolk and his son the last time they’d nearly caught up with us. Both blonde as the sun, a rare thing in the Central counties. “You’re his daughter, aren’t you? Tzolk’s.”

  Her chin rose, just a little. “Colonel Tzolk is my father. And he’s going to kill every one of you scum—”

  “Quiet,” I snapped. She halted, swallowed hard. “Tell me your name.”

  “Ephinia Tzolk,” she said, in a barely audible whisper. “They call me Finny.”

  “Ephinia Tzolk,” I said. “You willing to co-operate, if it means you might get out of this?”

  John Plainsman raised an eyebrow, knife still poised over her back.

  “I…” She stood a little straighter. “I won’t hurt my father, no matter what you do to me.”

  “We won’t hurt anything but his pride. If you come with us, we’ll trade you to him for a pass out of here.”

  She licked her lips. “I’m not sure he would take that deal.”

  “I think he will. He’s lost two sons going after Hays. I doubt he wants to add you to the pot.” I shrugged. “It’s worth a try, anyway. But you have to come along quiet. Otherwise…”

  “I’ll come,” she said.

  “You sure about this?” John Plainsman said. Finny startled at the sound of his voice so close.

  I wasn’t sure when it had become my decision, but I nodded. “It’s the best chance we’ve got of getting everyone out of here.”

  John stepped forward and tapped the knife, still stained with the Neffies’ blood, against Finny’s cheek. Her eyes went very wide as he brought it down to the level of her kidneys, then put his other hand on her shoulder. I holstered the revolver and backed up as he pushed her through the door.


  As we reached the top of the stairs, there was a gunshot, loud as a cannon in the silence. All three of us froze.

  “Revolver,” John said.

  “Rob and Barrow,” I said. “You get her back to the station, I’ll go find them.”

  “But—”

  “Just go!” I shouted, pounding down the main stairs while he headed for the back.

  No point in silence now. Everyone in town had heard that shot. From the direction of the station, I heard carbines crack, Dogs and the others providing the promised distraction. Answering shots came from the Neffies, the firefight starting up again in an instant, like a blaze sparked in dry tinder. At the bottom of the main stairs was the hall, leading to the open front door. A Neffie was sprawled in the doorway, and I pulled up short as several more shots slammed into the lintel, splintering the wood. A second Neffie ducked out a moment later and fired his rifle down the hall toward the kitchen.

  He disappeared a moment later, chased by more revolver fire. Rob and Barrow were in the kitchen, too far to rush the door before the Neffie reloaded, but I was only a few feet away. I sprinted forward, sending up a silent prayer that the pair of them would recognize me before they shot me in the back. My luck held, and I yanked my revolver out and spun halfway out the door to confront the Neffie, who was just closing the bolt on his rifle. I shot him in the chest, the revolver bucking like it wanted to jump out of my hand. Dust puffed off his clothes, and he took a step back against the wall, letting his weapon fall. I shot him again, and he collapsed.

  “Nellie?” Little Barrow said.

  From the front door, I could see the station, windows blazing with the muzzle flashes of the Red Riders’ carbines. Most of the rifle fire was aimed their way, but some of the Neffies had noticed me, because two bullets blasted chunks out of the house’s siding not far from my head. I ran back inside, toward the kitchen, where Rob and Little Barrow were crouched on either side of the doorway.

  “Where’s John?” I said.

  “Out the back,” Rob said. “He had a girl with him—”

  “Come on,” I cut him off, “let’s get after him. Move!”