Unfettered III

by Shawn Speakman (ed)

  With the same speed that had brought the attack, the predators fled into morning mist.

  Lisa’s body sagged. She wasn’t going to die. Not today.

  Horses and riders all around her. She glanced up, confused, relieved, shocked. Men in cattleman hats and dusters. Cowboys. Some holding tomahawks, some with long spears, some with crossbows . . . two with witchglass blades, one a deep red, the other a light amber.

  “Well, slap my ass,” Fish said, smiling his few-toothed smile. “If I ain’t happier than a discount whore what fell into a drunken rancher’s lap. Y’all picked one hell of a time to save our skins!”

  A cowboy on a black horse, wearing a red shirt with a black rope tie. He held the red blade—it blazed a dark orange when hit by the rays of the rising sun. The cowboy pointed at Jimmy, who was still tucked into a ball, his hat off to the side, blood staining the shredded arms of his duster.

  “Get that man up,” the cowboy said. “If we get him to the ranch fast, maybe Kwallan can save him.”

  Two men slid off their horses and ran to Jimmy.

  “Miss?”

  Lisa glanced up, dumbfounded that she wasn’t being torn to shreds. The man with the red blade stared down at her.

  “Miss, are you all right? Did they get you?”

  She couldn’t find her voice. How was she still alive?

  “This here is Lady Lisa,” Fish said. “They didn’t get her, I got to ’em before they could.”

  The rider ignored Fish.

  “Miss, we need to get your friend to our shaman, right now. We can’t leave you here.” He slid the blade into his back scabbard, a smooth and practiced motion. He extended a hand. “Can you ride with me?”

  Lisa was aware of Fish looking at her, but she couldn’t process that, either. She took the rider’s hand; he pulled her up behind him. Her ass reminded her she’d been riding for far too long, but she didn’t care—anything to get out of there, away from the beasts lurking in the trees.

  The man turned the horse, looked down at Fish.

  “Mister, your horse looks all right,” the man said. “Follow us.”

  Lisa felt the cold wetness in her pants, down her legs, just before she heard the red-shirted rider sniffing the air.

  “I guess the dead one must have pissed itself,” he said. “Or the horse did. Come on, boys, let’s get out of here before some other critter shows up.”

  The horse beneath her galloped down the path.

  Lisa held on to this man, this stranger, and wondered if she’d rather die from the pitter’s bites, or from embarrassment.

  Lisa sat in the nicest chair she had ever seen. A throne, really—at least that was the only word she had for this cushy, leather affair studded with polished wood brads on the arms. The feet, ironically, were carved to look like pitter claws.

  “You two are lucky,” the bald man said. “Real lucky.”

  His name was Gary Duran. The man in red worked for him. Duran owned this house, this ranch, and, apparently, everything within eyesight of the ranch keep’s log walls.

  “Well, we sure do appreciate this,” Fish said. “Pitters is mean bastards.”

  Fish downed the cup of brandy—his second—in a single pull, smacked his lips noisily, and wiped his mouth with the back of his duster sleeve. He sat in a chair that was exactly like Lisa’s. The fanciest chair she’d ever seen, and the bald man had two of them. The chairs were matched in elegance by the big wooden desk, behind which sat Duran. His shaved head and the desk’s polished lacquer both gleamed with the sunlight filtering in through the windows.

  Glass windows. How rich was this man? It wasn’t just the house, it was the clothes he wore. Black leather vest, with roses trimmed out in emeralds on the chest. Teak rings dotted with diamonds. A silk tie, tie pin gleaming with black witchglass that seemed to massage the light.

  Black witchglass—as far as Lisa knew, the most valuable material there was.

  His fine clothes made her feel ridiculous, because the clothes she wore weren’t hers. A servant’s maybe. Loose tan cotton pants held up by a rope belt. A rough white hemp pullover with a low-cut collar, the material so thin it was almost see-through. She kept shifting in her chair, reaching up to make sure the pullover hid the rattlesnake skull and tail that hung from her leather necklace.

  The red-shirted cowboy’s name was Rowan. During the short ride here, he must have realized the true source of the piss smell. When they’d arrived at the ranch—a cluster of buildings including this house, barns, stables, work sheds, and more—Rowan had quietly guided her to the back of the house. He’d led her into a room, where the clothes Lisa now wore were waiting. Also waiting was a big bucket filled with soapy water.

  “Leave your belt here,” was all he’d said. “You can’t have weapons on you when you meet Mister Duran.”

  Without another word or even a shameful, mocking glance, Rowan had left her alone. She’d stripped, quickly given herself a standing bath. She’d dressed in the clothes, shoved her filthy robes, shirt, and jeans into the bucket.

  And her underwear, of course. She’d peed those too.

  How humiliating.

  Was this going to happen to her every time she faced danger? If so, what more motivation did she need to avoid danger and go back into the mountains, to the warmth and safety of the Hovel?

  “This brandy sure is delicious,” Fish said. “Mind if I have another?”

  Duran’s eyes narrowed. His nostrils flared, just once. He glanced at Rowan, nodded. Rowan, stone-faced, brought a glass bottle from a cart against the wall that held several such bottles. He refilled Fish’s glass.

  “Thank you kindly,” Fish said.

  “Drink it slow,” Duran said. “The Goddesses’ rules of the road say I’ve got to give hospitality and assistance to travelers in need, but my hospitality has limits.”

  Fish paused midsip, locked eyes with Duran for a moment. Lisa felt a sinking sensation that Fish was about to say something stupid, but the former highwayman raised his small glass in salute.

  “Your assistance is greatly appreciated,” Fish said, then took an exaggeratedly small, loud sip.

  Duran turned his attention to Lisa.

  “You don’t like the brandy?”

  She looked at the glass, wondered why anyone would want to drink something that tasted so awful, that burned the tongue and scorched the throat.

  “It’s fine, thank you, mister. But maybe I can’t sit here and drink when Jimmy is dying.”

  Duran raised an eyebrow. “You seem more worried about the gentleman than Mister Fish, here. Have you known Jimmy longer?”

  Lisa looked down. “I barely know him at all. Don’t know either of them, really.”

  “Might say we’re recently acquainted,” Fish said. “Lady Lisa needed to do some traveling, Jimmy and I were in the mood for a little adventure, so we offered to escort her north.”

  Duran leaned back in his chair, a chair even more ornate than the ones in which Lisa and Fish sat.

  “Sounds to me like you had to get out of town in a hurry,” Duran said. “And on New Year’s Day? I’d think a young lady and her companions would want to stay and enjoy the sights and sounds of Frisco.”

  Lisa felt her face flush. She closed her eyes, but that didn’t stop the vision of the Laughing Man, the blood pouring out of his mouth, that awful choking sound he’d made just before he never made another sound again.

  Fish took another exaggerated sip.

  “To be honest, Mister Duran, our collective decisions mighta been influenced by alcohol. I mean, why else would we be riding a back trail through pitter land?”

  Duran squinted, nodded. “I can think of a few reasons,” he said. He sat forward, lightly slapped the top of his desk. “Let’s go check on the status of your friend.”

  He stood. Fish started to stand, paused, looked at his glass as if he wasn’t sure if he should leave it and come back to it, or slam it in case someone took it away from him. The debate didn’t las
t long. He drank it in one gulp.

  “Damn fine,” he said.

  Duran gestured to the door. “After you, miss. Are those pants fitting you all right?”

  Her face flushed. She glanced at Rowan, who showed no reaction.

  “They fit fine, mister,” she said. “Thank you for your generosity.”

  She expected Duran to smile, but he did not. Aside from Fish, she’d seen no one smile in this place.

  She and Fish followed Duran out of the office. She marveled again at his house. It was like the log cabins in the mountains, only much, much larger. Size-wise, it was nothing short of the castles she’d read about in storybooks. Many rooms. Two floors, the second story with a rail that overlooked an open center area beneath the peaked roof, an area filled with stuffed bears, mountain lions, porcupines . . . every form of animal she’d ever seen. And a few she had not. Stuffed pitters, too, even bigger than the ones that had almost dragged her into the trees. Fancy furniture. Paintings, mostly of Duran and a woman Lisa assumed was his wife. Sculptures. And everywhere, in art or burned into the hundreds of cow skins hanging from the walls, the seared image of the letters DR, the brand of the Duran Ranch.

  Lisa smelled amazing things drifting out of an unseen kitchen. Bread, soup, and meat. Judging from the hundred or so head of cattle they’d passed on the way into this house, meat wasn’t hard to come by here. Hopefully, Duran’s hospitality would include a meal.

  “Mister Duran,” Lisa said, “can I ask you a question?”

  “Of course,” the bald man said as he led them out of the house and onto the wide porch.

  “How many people live here with you? In the big house, I mean.”

  Duran didn’t break stride as he stepped off the porch onto a walkway paved with flagstones.

  “Just me,” he said. “Servant quarters are over there”—he pointed to a log house on the right, big, but not as big as the main house—“ranch hands over there, by the stables.”

  He pointed ahead of him, to the stone building they were approaching. “And this is Kwallan’s place.”

  The way Duran said it, Kwallan’s place, it sounded like Duran didn’t own it, even though it was on his grounds.

  A palisade of weathered logs surrounded the entire compound. Rain barrels lined the wall’s inner walkway. To put out fires if someone attacked the walls, maybe. Three bowmen up on that walkway, spaced evenly around the wall, keeping a lookout across the clear-cut ring surrounding the small fortress. The area encircled by the palisade was almost as big as the entire Hovel.

  Cows were everywhere inside the walls. Holsteins, she knew, their black-and-white hides so distinctive. Many more outside the walls—she couldn’t begin to imagine how many head Duran had. He was rich, of that there was no doubt. Easily the richest person Lisa had ever met.

  They reached the stone building—the only stone building in the compound. The stones were rough and natural, not smooth-cut blocks like the buildings and walls of the Hovel, or some of the buildings she’d seen in Frisco. The building had a single wooden door. No windows. It felt . . . dark. There was something off about this place.

  She shivered.

  “This is where they took Jimmy?”

  Duran knocked on the stone building’s wooden door. He had a big hand, a big fist, but the knock made little noise, evidence of the door’s heavy, thick wood.

  Fish spit on the ground. “You got a Whitey in there, I bet. Only a Whitey could help Jimmy, the way he was all tore up.”

  Duran didn’t answer him. Instead, he turned to Lisa.

  His eyes flicked down, to her chest. She crossed her arms. His eyes flicked back up.

  Finally, he smiled.

  “You’re not from around these parts, are you.”

  She shook her head. “From the mountains.”

  Duran nodded. “I suspected as much.”

  The door opened.

  Lisa hissed, took a step back and dropped into a fighting crouch, hands reaching for sleeves that weren’t there, for slivers that weren’t there.

  “Take it easy,” Duran said, holding up a hand toward Lisa. “I should have warned you about what you’d see. My apologies.”

  A woman. Naked. Her breasts had been cut away, leaving gnarled scar tissue. A square of black glass covered each eye, anchored into her skull by yellow glass screws, her flesh puffed up around the posts. So skinny, like a skeleton draped with loose old skin.

  Her head turned quickly, this way and that, like the head of a cautious little bird.

  “Who seeks Kwallan?”

  “I do,” Duran said.

  The woman’s head flicked toward Duran, but she didn’t look directly at him. Maybe she couldn’t see through the black glass. Maybe she was blind.

  Or maybe she didn’t have eyes at all.

  “The man you brought lives,” the woman said. “Come in.”

  She stepped backward into the stone building, which was thick with shadow.

  Duran led the way in. Fish gestured gallantly for Lisa to go first. When she shook her head, he shrugged and followed Duran.

  Lisa stood in the doorway, afraid to enter. The woman was a nightmare . . . would Kwallan be even worse?

  “It’s all right.”

  She jumped away from the voice behind her, turning and again dropping into her fighting stance. Rowan stood there, tall, expressionless, the handle of his sword peeking out from his back scabbard.

  He tipped his hat.

  “Sorry to scare you, miss,” he said. “Kwallan works for Duran. You’re Duran’s guest, Kwallan won’t do anything. Just don’t insult him, that’s all. Make sure you don’t insult him.”

  Lisa stood straight. She hadn’t even heard him approach. If he’d wanted to stab her in the back, she would have been dead.

  Victim training left much to be desired, it seemed.

  “I don’t like it here,” she said, quietly. “I want to leave.”

  She was confiding in him. Why? He couldn’t he trusted. None of these men could be trusted. She knew Fish wanted her. Duran had looked at her breasts.

  But Rowan had not. Every time he’d addressed her, he’d looked her right in the eyes.

  He nodded toward the doorway.

  “If you want your friend to leave this place, you need to go in,” he said. “If you’re too afraid to go in and parley with Kwallan, then we should have left your friend for the pitters. There’s worse things than death, miss.”

  No expression, but his eyes . . . haunted, empty. Lisa wanted to know more about this tall, red-shirted cowboy, and at the same time wanted to be away from him forever.

  Worse things than death. What did this man know?

  She wasn’t about to piss her pants in fear again. Never again. A strange woman wasn’t going to scare her.

  Lisa turned away from Rowan. She stepped into the stone building.

  Rowan didn’t follow: he shut the door behind her.

  All darkness at first. Her eyes adjusted. A single, large room. Dozens of candles in a candelabra hanging from the ceiling, their light locked in a losing fight against the shadows clutching tight to the room’s edges. In the center of the room, a flat stone altar surrounded by tall candle stands. On top of the altar, Jimmy, flat on his back, unmoving. A white cloth covered him from the waist down. Red, puffy wounds on his right shoulder, lined with fine black thread. Black stitches on his forehead, his cheek. A plaster cast on his left arm, from the wrist to the elbow. The pitter bite had broken the bones in his forearm.

  Movement from the edges of the room, where the candlelight didn’t reach. Lisa looked left, right, saw shapes sliding through the shadows. People? Animals? Something else altogether? They made noise when they moved, like wet fur sliding across rough wood.

  She shouldn’t have come in here.

  From behind the altar, a man in a hooded white robe stepped into the candlelight. Stepped, or appeared, she wasn’t sure, as he seemed to melt out of the darkness and into reality. The shadow of his hood hid
his face, but just like the things at the edge of the room, something seemed to be moving in that oval shape.

  “A Whitey,” Fish said. “I knew it. Didn’t I tell you, Lady Lisa?”

  She nodded absently, wished Rowan had come in with her.

  “Kwallan,” Duran said, “will this man live?”

  The man in white spread his hands through the air above Jimmy. Hands that seemed too fat for the body hidden by the robes.

  “Yes,” the white-robed man said. His voice . . . like a grave shovel sliding into dirt. “He will live. But the cost was high.”

  The things in the shadows writhed. Lisa glanced at them, still unable to make out exactly what they were. She took a step toward Fish. He smiled at her. Something about that smile made her skin crawl. She took a step away from him.

  Evil things . . . some hid in the dark, others stood in the light.

  “Thank you, Mister Duran,” Fish said. “I didn’t think Jimmy would make it, what with the way those pitters tore him up.”

  Duran gestured to the door. This time, Lisa was first, not last. She saw the things in the shadows reaching toward her. Dim candlelight played off of arms and hands that weren’t quite human, skin pale and crusted with dots of hard color, oranges and reds and yellows . . . almost like the skin of a snake.

  The woman with the glass-covered eyes opened the door. Sunlight flooded in; the reaching things snapped back into the shadows.

  Lisa had never been so relieved to see the open sky.

  Several steps outside, Rowan was waiting. In his arms, he held Lisa’s folded robe, jeans, shirt, her weapons belt curled up atop the stack of fabric. And on top of the belt, her boots.

  Including the one the pitter had ripped off her foot.

  “I sent men back for it,” Rowan said. “Our cobbler stitched up the holes. You’re lucky to even have a foot, Miss Lisa.”

  The hospitality of the road, or something more? Was it possible Rowan was just nice? No . . . he wanted something from her. Outside of the Hovel, everyone wanted something from her.

  Without a word, Lisa went to him, snatched her robe out of his arms and pulled it on. Under it, she removed the borrowed shirt and handed it to him. She’d dressed enough times beneath the robe that she knew how to do so without showing any skin. She put her own shirt back on, marveling, for a moment, that it smelled like lilacs instead of sweat, then the rest of her clothes, then her boots. She tied off her belt, let the robe hang down, slid her hands into her wide sleeves—the welcome feel of sliver handles in their hidden pockets.