But not from her.
In her they still lived and ran and fought and fucked and called to her to come play with them in their vanished eternity.
He said, “Ah … ah, shit, come on, don’t …”
She fixed him with her ice eye, and something in the back of his life broke open and left all of him naked to the winds of forever. They curled and twisted and raked his existence with whispers of razor-edged ice.
“Stop it. Stop it, please.” He covered his eyes with his hands but it didn’t seem to help. “Don’t do that.”
“Years mean nothing.” Her voice was warm and human again, and when he saw the invitation dancing playfully in her eyes, warm and cold together, something inside his chest lurched again. One more time might break it altogether. “We’re on horse-time.”
“I don’t know what that is.”
“Sometimes eating an apple can last all day.”
“So that’s, like, a metaphor for sex?”
“Do you want it to be?”
“Uh … Shit. All right, I get it. Maybe. So I, ah, I mean—doesn’t sex usually come up after we’re, like, actually introduced?”
“I know you. You’re getting to know me.”
“I don’t even know your name.”
“What name?”
That one he wasn’t even going to try to answer.
“I’ve been told I’m skilled,” she said. “At sex.”
“Uh, okay.”
“Uniquely skilled.”
“I can’t even imagine.”
“That’s true.” Her smile broadened. “It’ll change your life. For the better. That’s only an opinion, but it’s informed. Well informed.”
“Listen, uh—” He rubbed his eyes. He’d had some kind of lie ready, he was sure he had, but now he couldn’t even guess what it might have been. He sighed. “When I look at you, sex is not what I think about. When I look at you, I don’t really think at all. I sort of can’t.”
“Thank you.”
“I didn’t mean it as a—” He stopped himself, because he realized he had meant it as a compliment, and she knew it, and trying to deny it would just make him feel even stupider. “I like you. I do. But I’m not a, y’know, a casual sex guy. Besides, I’m kind of in the middle of something right now, okay? My life is a complicated place.”
“You misunderstand what’s happening here.”
“You’re not making a pass at me?”
“In your world, people say things to test, persuade, seduce, manipulate, deceive, or dominate others. But this is my world. I say things because I think they’re true, and because I want you to know them. I want you to know that I like you, and that if I still like you when you decide you want to have sex with me, we’ll be happy. Both of us. For a long time.”
“And if I, like, decide to have sex with you sometime when you don’t like me?”
“Then one of us will die.”
“Um …”
“I can’t be forced. Into sex, or anything else.”
“Not that you need to worry—”
“I don’t.”
“But really? You can’t be forced? Like in general?”
“Submission is not what I do.” She gave him the winter eye. “People who try get hurt. Many die.”
“But you don’t.”
“Sometimes. But I’m never dead, so I don’t really mind.”
“Just so you know? If you get killed today, forget about the sex. No matter what people say about me, I’m not into cold.”
Her brows drew together just enough to hint that a line could someday develop there. “All right,” she said. “Usually it’s less trouble to let them kill me. But you might be worth it.”
“Flatterer.”
“I said might.”
He smiled at her. She smiled back. The whatever-it-was inside his chest lurched sideways one more time, and this time it cracked, and he knew this was going to end in tears.
Being old enough to know better but still too young to resist mostly sucks.
He shook it off. “First, we need to find these fuckers. Orbek’s a pretty good scout—”
“They’re over there,” she said, waving vaguely eastward. “Three dry washes come together. Lots of rocks.”
She saw the inquiring look on his face, and shrugged. “The herd knows. Orbek is the ogrillo?”
“Yeah.”
“Then he’s already found them.”
For the span of a breath or two, the wind shifted east. When it did, Jonathan Fist heard an irregular scatter of distant coughs, and saw flares of power swell upward from behind the hills that made an open question of who found whom, and without a word he lurched into a sprint. As he took his first steps, three blasts erupted over there, painting the sky with fire and shattered rock, and then the whole mouth of the ravine blasted into a living wave as the witch-herd boiled out and galloped for the open savannah.
He ran hard.
Those bluffs were barely over half a mile away; some tinkering in his blood chemistry with Monastic Control Disciplines would get him there flat-out. He’d be winded, but he’d be there, and he wouldn’t have to catch his breath to pull a trigger.
Thunder rolled behind him, and when he remembered there hadn’t been so much as a cloud in the sky for three days, he looked over his shoulder. The thunder was the big bay that carried the horse-witch, coming on at a gallop.
She extended a hand toward him and he had just long enough to get a really vivid picture of the bay, the horse-witch, and him hitting the scrub in a full speed face-plant, because she didn’t have a saddle or a bridle or even fucking stirrups or any of the shit that makes this kind of bullshit maneuver possible, but she caught his hand and threw herself the opposite way over the bay’s withers just enough to keep the horse and herself perfectly balanced as she swung him up behind her and he caught her round her slim hard waist and hugged her exactly as tight as he would have if he hadn’t been thinking about having sex with her.
She nodded to him over her shoulder, and raised her voice to be heard over the wind and the bass-drum pounding of the bay. “What friends do for friends …”
He answered her nod with one of his own, and hung on.
Tight.
Apparently the herd had a good fix on the location of everyone in the area. The horse-witch brought the bay to a halt on a sunlit slope, just below the rocks that would force them to proceed on foot, and Jonathan Fist hadn’t seen so much as a wisp of the raiders. “This way.”
She led him on a winding course over the shoulder of that hill and up the southern slope of one that was taller, and rockier, and Jonathan Fist heard the sharp clatter of the SPAR-12 on autoburst. “Orbek!” he shouted. “Orbek, goddamn you sorry fucking excuse for a broke-down assbitch, what do you think you’re doing?”
There came a brief interval of silence as the echoes died away.
“Um … hey there, little brother. Um, sorry.”
“What part of stay out of sight do you not fucking understand?” Jonathan Fist strode up through the tumbled boulders. The young ogrillo lay prone in a natural barricade of jagged rock, still with his eye to the scope as he aimed downhill. “Put the goddamn rifle down.”
“One second, little brother.” Crack and somebody down there yelped. “Fucker.”
“Orbek.”
“Time to shift anyway.” Orbek snaked backward from the firing point and rolled into a sitting position, rifle across his knees. “Hey.”
“Fucking right hey, goddammit.”
His grey-leather cheeks darkened. He looked down.
“They sneak me while I’m watching you, coming up downwind. Shifty breeze, though, good for me. If the breeze don’t shift, I never know they’re there. Can have take me with a knife. How’s that for suck? Who wants to die embarrassed? But instead I nose ’em and shuck off for high ground, and one comes out and says We got thirty guys down here! What you got up there? and since he asks so nice …” He shrugged. “I show him.”
/> Jonathan Fist rubbed his eyes. “How many dead?”
“None. I’m an amateur now?”
“That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”
“Winged some. What you humans call, you know, kneecapped? Three, maybe four, before they work their Shield. And then this fucker just now.”
“Terrific.”
“It’s a nice shot on that bowman back there, hey? Pretty shiny, you gotta say.”
Fist didn’t answer. He moved toward a position among the rocks that might not get him killed.
“And hey, human lady—? Excuse my no-fucking-manners little brother. Orbek Black Knife: Taykarget.”
She nodded gravely. “The horse-witch.”
“Pleeztameetcha donwannahaveta eetcha.”
“Likewise.”
Fist worked his way around the outcroppings to take in the fire zone. The guy who’d crept Orbek would have most likely been another bowman like Tanner, flushing Orbek by accident while working his way up here to stand lookout. Now the ogrillo—who was gifted with any weapon, but especially with firearms—was up here with the SPAR, with clear shots for a long damn way down each of the three washes that were the only way in or out. The place was the sort of trap even a smart guy can fall into, if he doesn’t know he might need to worry about such things as selective-projectile assault rifles.
But Orbek had a dragon by the tail; if he bailed, he couldn’t hold them in the wash, and they could swamp him in seconds. Kneecapping instead of killing meant they’d have nonwalking wounded to look after, which would slow them down. It’d also make them kind of motivated to inflict harm of their own. “Christ, what a sandpaper clusterfuck this turned out to be,” he said. “The grenades?”
“They got thaumaturges. Thaumaturges got Shields. Gotta knock ’em down somehow,” Orbek said. “How come other guys always got thaumaturges?”
“For spare toilet paper. How the fuck should I know?”
“How come we never got thaumaturges?”
“Because I can’t stand being around them. Shut up.”
“Since when you can’t? You marry one—”
“Did you not hear me say shut up?”
“And you’re ass-pals with Emperor Deliann, who’s just about—”
“Orbek.”
“Sorry. Yah yah. Sorry.”
Jonathan Fist rubbed his eyes again, then rubbed his forehead, then scratched all the sand out of his hair and finally he just said, “Screw this anyway.”
He moved away from Orbek’s last firing point. “Danny!” he shouted. “Danny Macallister! You down there?”
A distant voice echoed off the rocks. “Who the fuck is Tammie Mick Lassiter?”
“Danny, it’s Hari Michaelson! Come on, man. Talk to me.”
There followed a span of silence, which was finally broken by a different voice, deeper, and a lot closer. “No shit?”
Jonathan Fist nodded to himself. “You got Liam with you? Lee, hey, Hari Michaelson. Sing out.”
A third voice, closer still. “Yeah, sorry, woulda said something already but I had to unswallow my tongue. Fuck me upside-down and sideways, Hari fucking Michaelson! Can somebody come wipe shit outa the seat of my pants? You’re supposed to be dead!”
“I’ve heard that,” he said. “Danny, Lee, we need to talk.”
The horse-witch said softly, “You know these men.”
“Not personally,” Fist said, low. “By reputation. They know me the same way.”
Danny’s deep voice echoed up the hill. “What do we call you?”
“Jonathan Fist. You’re going by Red Bannon, right? And Lee, you’re this Good-Time Charlie I’ve heard about?”
“That’s what the girls call me.”
“Only ones who don’t know you,” the horse-witch muttered.
He decided not to ask how she knew. “Listen, Bannon, Charlie, there’s no reason to go bringing our other handles into this, huh?”
“Depends. What is ‘this’?”
“It’s a situation that’s gonna go better for all of us if we keep who we used to be out of it.”
“Sounds fair. So. You wanted to talk? We’re talking. What can we do for you?”
“It’s more like what I can do for you, Red. But maybe you don’t want what I can do shouted all the way to the fucking coast, you know what I mean?”
Orbek leaned close behind Jonathan Fist’s shoulder. “Aktiri, hey?”
“Yeah.”
“What’s these other names of theirs, hey? Ones I maybe hear before?”
“Fucking be quiet.” Fist turned to the ogrillo. His face was bleak, and he looked a decade or two older than he had earlier in the afternoon. “Good-Time Charlie? That’s Morgan Blackwood.”
Orbek’s yellow eyes bulged, and a thin choking noise came from his throat. “Grh? So the other—he must be—”
“Keep it down.”
“I’m shooting at Lazarus fuck me Dane?” Orbek’s eyes rolled white. “Born lucky, I must be. Holy shit.”
“Now you might understand why you better settle the fuck down while you still have a down to fucking settle.”
“But—but Lazarus Dane, holy shit. Lazz Dane can take off the whole top of this top! Bottom too, and everything between, hey? Why’s he wait?”
“The rifle,” Fist said, grim and low. “He doesn’t want to damage the rifle. Or the grenades. Or any other Artan gear that might be up here. He didn’t know suchlike crap exists on this world. Now he does.”
Orbek thought about it. He sagged against the rocks. “Shit.”
“He can do a lot of shit just with magick, but quietly putting a shatterslug into somebody’s skull at two thousand meters isn’t one of them.”
“Yah …” Orbek echoed Fist’s sigh. “Still, helluva shot on that bowman, though, hey?”
“Ask me again after we live through this.”
“Hey, Michaelson, if you’re just looking to walk out of here, we can dicker,” Bannon called out. “Must be a nice rifle.”
“It’s a work of fucking art. Forget it. I’ve got something better.”
“I could be interested in better, I guess.”
“Crossed paths with your bowman Hack Tanner a span or two back.”
“His momma’ll be sorry to hear that.”
“He’s alive.”
“Really?”
“So far.”
“Well, that’s the most you can say for any of us, I guess,” Bannon said. “If it doesn’t seem too cold-ass to ask, why didn’t you kill him?”
“I didn’t have to.”
“Don’t recall hearing about that stopping you before.”
“Maybe I decided to start acting like a grown-up.”
“Well, shit down the back of my neck. Everybody gets old, I guess. Even you.”
“Guys like us don’t get old,” Fist said. “We get slow, then we get dead. And I’m already slow.”
“And aren’t you just a bushel of sunbeams.”
“Your guy Tanner, he peeled the slim on you and your Count Fartface or whateverthefuck, and I’m thinking, Well, this Red Bannon we got here sounds game enough, but somebody pooched the pitch. I’m thinking, I might know who Red Bannon used to be, and I might know who his pal Charlie used to be, and if this Bannon and this Charlie know who I used to be, we could all aim higher than working as some assclown’s fucking cowboys.”
“Well, you know, yippee-tie home on the range and shit,” Bannon called back. “The payout on this job sparkles all year long.”
“So? It’s still a fucking job. Come on, Danny—sure, there’s money to be made doing other people’s shit work. I’m thinking a smart bastard like you might want to be the guy who pays some other shithead to do your shit work. Am I wrong?”
Somebody else called out, “You ain’t listening to this asshole, are you? I don’t think the Count is gonna like finding out—”
The growing shadows in the dry wash were blasted away by a streak of green fire and a detonation that rang among the roc
ks for what seemed a very long time. There followed a silence that rang even longer.
“Anybody else?” Red Bannon said quietly.
Another long silence.
“Really,” Bannon said. “Anyone else want to tell me how the Count’ll feel when he finds out?”
A longer silence.
“Michaelson?”
“Fist,” he said. “Still here.”
Bannon switched from Westerling to English. “What’s the proposal? You looking for work?”
Fist did the same. “Yeah, no offense, Danny, your corporate disciplinary policy is a little fucking harsh.”
Bannon laughed. “The deal?”
“You probably heard about me and the Studio and shit, right?”
“Something like it. I hear after your wife took the drop, you blew up half of Ankhana. And made ’em line up to kiss your ass for it.”
“Something like that. I don’t think any of us is going home. Ever.”
“It’s been three years. I’m inclined to agree.”
“There’s none of us getting younger, Danny. Guys our age, we should be looking for someplace to retire.”
Silence.
Then: “I’m listening.”
“So, this Count Fartface, I hear he’s got a pretty nice spread. Villages, handful of towns, nice capital. Big enough that he doesn’t need any more land, he’s just stirring shit up because he’s an asshole.”
“Yeah, but who isn’t?”
“Well, there’s assholes and assholes. There’s assholes like him,” said Jonathan Fist, “and then there’s assholes like, y’know, us.”
“Us.” Bannon sounded thoughtful. “Well.”
“Here’s the thing: for two hundred miles around there’s maybe only a handful of guys who know who I used to be. I could be the only guy down here who knows who you two used to be. Knowing what we know, I’m thinking that between us, we can persuade Fartface to settle his Count ass right down. Without hesitation, reservation, or fucking conversation.”
“Do you practice that shit?” Charlie drawled, also in English. “Or are you just naturally verbalicious?”
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