A God of Many Tears (Hawker's Drift Book 4)

by Andy Monk

  There were many things in life she hated and not all of them involved an empty bottle, but one of the worst was waiting when you didn’t know what you were waiting for. Blane to be tracked down? The Scourge to show up? Amos to return? For life to go back to being safe and normal?

  The last one seemed particularly unlikely and, when the door swung open and a dark-haired woman dressed in black and overly adorned with silver jewellery strode in, it seemed to have retreated even further over the horizon known as Not-Bloody-Likely.

  Amelia stopped her scrawling and stared at the woman who smiled a feral hungry smile in return.

  She stood up and put herself between Giselle and the girls.

  “I don’t think we’ve been introduced,” she said, “I’m Giselle, I-”

  “See the future and the past. Yeah, yeah, I heard…”

  The smile faded from the woman’s face.

  She was sharply beautiful in the light streaming through the window, but it didn’t fool her none. She remembered reading about critters who ate their male after mating. The hapless horny meals-to-be no doubt thought their lovers looked beautiful too, right up to the moment they had their heads bitten off.

  Giselle looked just the type to bite her lovers head clean off.

  “What do you want?”

  She crossed the room and stood toe to toe with Molly, “I’m detecting… hostility?”

  “If you want your ragdoll back, I burnt it.”

  Giselle raised her chin a fraction, probably so she could have more of her nose to look down.

  “You should show more respect. Manners don’t cost.”

  “I know what you are.”

  “Really? I’d be very surprised if you do.”

  “You’re a monster in the cave…” Amelia had come to Molly’s side and taken her hand, the drawing she’d been doing on the floor clutched in her other hand.

  Giselle’s head snapped down to stare at the little girl.

  “You had better be careful, I might just gobble you up,” there was a playful note to her tone, but it didn’t come within a thousand miles of her cold black eyes.

  Amelia shuffled closer, but continued to look up at the fortune-teller.

  She wanted to grab one of the rifles sitting in the rack on the wall and chase the woman off. She was on a roll after all. She’d already shot one lunatic today.

  “I’m looking for the Mayor,” Giselle returned her attention to Molly, “to see if there is anything I can do to help given the… unrest outside.”

  “I’ll let him know you’re looking for him.”

  “Do you know what’s happening?”

  “There’ve been some attacks outside of town, people are worried.”

  “I’m sure everything will be well,” her voice was flat and emotionless and she got the impression the woman didn’t much care one way or the other.

  They stood in silence, she didn’t want to show she was scared so she stood her ground and tried not to let her tongue get the better of her, which was how she usually coped with fear.

  Eventually, Giselle gave a snorty little smile and turned to go.

  “Have a wonderful day,” she said with all the sincerity of a hangman fitting a noose.

  “Hope is coming…” Amelia’s flat voice didn’t sound at all like a small child’s “…but he’s bringing the Thin Rider with him.”

  Giselle froze. Dark eyes fixed on the little girl. Amelia held up her drawing. There was a horse, as always, and on its back was a stick figure of a man wearing a wide-brimmed hat and a long coat. There was another figure, running away from the horseman. The figure was a woman, with long black hair and a black dress.

  It was drawn with the crude simplicity of a child’s hand, but it looked a lot like the woman in the black dress was screaming…

  The Hired Man

  The Host moved quickly for such a large body. Not just men and horses, but wagons, women, children, cattle, slaves. There were even cannons. It wasn’t so much an army as a mobile town.

  It took a lot to impress Stodder Hope, who considered he’d seen just about as much as there was to see in the world, demons included, but his old friend Ezra Saalt sure knew how to organise. He had to give him that.

  He’d expected the Scourge to still be months away from Hawker’s Drift when he’d left the employ of Thomas Rum, but he’d found them only a few days out. A dark cloud of dust on the horizon.

  And now they were here. Scouring the land, taking and burning with the same ruthless efficiency they displayed in moving, an unstoppable plague sweeping all before it. Cleansing they called it. Butchery seemed a better word, but he wasn’t about to pick no bones with Ezra Saalt.

  The man had a dream and dreams could do strange things to men. They’d turned Saalt from a ten a dime mercenary to a man with an army few could stand against. Some places could put more men in the field than the Scourge, but most of them hugged the east coast and had their own concerns more pressing than what the Scourge was up to. One day, he reckoned, they might come to regret that.

  As it was he thought there was a fair chance Saalt would hack and cleave his New Nation from the scattered statelets, republics and kingdoms of the Broken Union. With the demons’ gold machine, he might even build one that did stretch from sea to shining sea like he dreamed.

  If Saalt ever managed it, he hoped he’d be in a place far, far away. He wanted no part of other men’s dreams. His own dreams were small, but they were all that concerned him.

  He was riding out front of the Host as he wanted the stink of other men’s dust in his nostrils no more than he wanted other men’s dreams to sour his world.

  The land was as flat and empty as it had been every time he’d come this way with Billberry’s Travelling Carnival. Though with the enthusiasm the Scourge were going about their cleansing, it was even emptier now.

  They passed the smouldering husks of the farms and homesteads the Scourge’s outriders had already swept through. On the face of it destroying everything seemed a strange way to go about building something.

  “When you want to build yourself a new house,” Saalt had explained, “you first clear the ground, hack away the scrub, uproot the trees and level the land. That’s what we’re doing.”

  He hadn’t been much convinced, but had nodded at the Colonel’s wisdom and gone back to sipping his whiskey without further comment.

  He’d done his share of bad things. Weren’t proud of it. Never had been. Didn’t lose much sleep over it either, but even by the standards of some of the boys he’d ridden with the Scourge were a brutal bunch. Even a mad dog like Jacob Severn had walked away and left a man standing more often than not.

  The Scourge left nothing.

  The old and the sick and the infirm died under their boots, the children they took as children were as valuable as gold and as rare as virtue in this world. If the women were young, healthy and passable looking they took them as brides, young men could become slaves or even be given a chance to join the Scourge if it was considered they had something about them. Anything left behind was torched.

  One of the wagons carried a big metal cage and the Host would circle it and watch two candidates be put inside to fight with their bare hands till one was dead. The winner got given a black sash and a Bride of his choice for the night.

  Ruthless and brutal. But effective. The Scourge grew fast, a dark snowball gathering mass as it rolled through the world.

  All held together by momentum, the will of Ezra Saalt and his doctrine. Survival of the fittest. Only the strong can thrive. The fire makes us stronger. Crush the weak and what remains will inherit the Earth.

  Wasn’t exactly what it said in the Bible as far as he could recall, though he’d never been a religious man.

  And it seemed to be working.

  He’d been surprised at how many children there were in the Host, the older ones mostly obtained from Cleansings, but many young ones had been born to the Brides of the Scourge, far more than most towns co
uld boast and all being schooled in Saalt’s doctrine of the New Nation. All the kids were strong and healthy. He hadn’t asked why there weren’t any sickly ones. He could work that one out on his own.

  Part of Saalt’s doctrine forbad a man to take any woman as a wife. In the Scourge all the women were married to all the men and he encouraged the men to sow their seed as widely as possible. Saalt believed that way the strongest seed had the greatest chance of bearing fruit.

  The women had all been taken in cleansings as far as he knew, he couldn’t see too many volunteering to join, truth be told. Other than when they were with child or nursing a young one they were all available to any man who wanted them. From what he’d seen in camp they had to do a lot of availing.

  Didn’t seem natural to Hope. Men, even the worst, usually found some affection in their hearts for one woman or another. It was the natural order, to find a mate. But there was a different order here and a man spending too much time with any one Bride was punished. And punishment in the Scourge was never trivial.

  For the most part, the Brides seemed flat-eyed and empty, save for possibly those with young children to pour what little love the Scourge allowed into. Saalt had encouraged him to enjoy the Brides, but when he’d seen them up close he’d found no lust in him, which was unusual. He’d had his share of whores and had taken any number of women against their will in the past. Maybe he was growing soft, but the women huddled together awaiting men to come for them had seemed like hollow figurines, devoid of life, just meat that still had breath inside them, but nothing else.

  In the end, he’d taken his bedroll and found a quiet spot to sleep away from the noise of the camp and watched the stars turn around the sky instead.

  What if Saalt made his dream come true?

  What would his New Nation be like? A world without love. Where every woman was a cross between a whore and a broodmare and every child could recite the Doctrine of Ezra Saalt by the time they were seven. Children who’d grow up to be men who worshipped only strength.

  He knew he was a bad man. An evil man even. Propelled through his life by an anger he neither understood nor could contain. The evidence of his black heart was writ clear across the pages of his memories, but the world the Colonel was trying to build would be even worse than the one he’d cut a bloody swathe through during his life.

  No, he wanted no part of it.

  He just needed them.

  He sat in the saddle, eyes fixed on the burnt remains of a distant farm. Crows and buzzards were thick on the ground. Feasting on the weak the Scourge had left behind.

  Giselle had told him about the demons’ gold making machine as they’d lain in bed one night on a visit to Hawker’s Drift two years before. He’d laughed at her at first, though she’d never demonstrated much of a sense of humour before.

  She had levered herself up onto her elbow and looked down at him, her eyes dark pools that glistened like the black fluid they squeezed from their bodies to addle the weak-minded.

  “You don’t believe me?”

  “If you have a machine that makes gold why would you be trundling around the world performing tricks for coins?”

  She’d snorted, “We don’t do this for money, you know that, don’t you?”

  Yeah. He’d known that. They did it to find the kids, the special ones they occasionally sucked the life out of but usually put in the Black Wagon to take back to Hawker’s Drift.

  He’d nodded.

  “I can prove it.”

  “How?” he’d sighed. He didn’t like being teased and as he’d been all done with his fucking he’d just wanted to sleep but couldn’t be bothered to find his way back to his own tent in the dark.

  “Name something and I’ll get it for you. So long as it’s small and made of gold.”

  “A million gold coins.”

  “One item. Don’t be greedy.”

  He’d decided she wasn’t going to let him sleep till he humoured her. Women could be like that. Even the ones who were demons.

  “A gold ring… flattened on the top with an eagle spreading its wings stamped into it.”

  “You’ll have it tomorrow.”

  “Sure…” he’d yawned, rolled over and didn’t think about anything else till he woke up in the morning and wanted to fuck again.

  He pulled his eyes away from the blackened carcass of the farmhouse and twisted the ring on the middle finger of his right hand. The sunlight caught the eagle’s golden wings as he moved it back and forth.

  His Daddy had given him the ring on his deathbed. Pretty much the only thing Old Man Hope had owned of any real worth, save for his advice never to turn your back on a fight or trust a woman with your money. His Daddy had been a mean sonofabitch, but he’d loved the bastard all the same. Probably the only person he could say that about and the ring had been his most prized possession right up to when he’d lost it in a poker game five years later.

  Looking back, he shouldn’t have thrown it into the pot, but he’d had a full house and the guy across the table was a fool. He’d walked away from the table without his opinion of the man much changed, he’d just been a fool with a better full house. And a nice new ring to go with the pile of money he’d gleefully pulled across the table.

  He’d walked down the road to the next saloon, stood at the bar drinking whiskey till he found someone to pick a fight with and had fled the town after beating him half to death.

  It had been the second stupid thing he’d done that night. He should have waited for the fool with the new ring to leave the saloon, beaten him half to death and got his Daddy’s ring back instead.

  As it was he never got the chance. The friends of the guy he’d beaten senseless had chased him a long way and he never did get the chance to go back for his Daddy’s ring.

  The ring the rather smug looking Giselle had presented him with the next night wasn’t exactly like his Daddy’s; in truth, it was much nicer. It wasn’t tarnished and dull like the old ring. It gleamed. The eagle was clearer, it wings more widely spread, its head raised rather than turned to the right.

  But it was close enough.

  He paid a lot more attention to Giselle’s talk of machines that made gold after that.

  Maybe there was a jeweller in Hawker’s Drift who could knock out shiny new gold rings at the drop of a hat. But he didn’t think so.

  The demons had all kinds of tricks, but he couldn’t see why she would go to the trouble of making up the story and then conjuring the exact ring he’d asked for out of thin air.

  He’d stared at that ring for a good long while before putting it on. It was snug, but it fit his middle finger real damn good.

  “Don’t think we’re married or anything now,” Giselle had said.

  He’d grinned, tossed her on the bed and fucked her hard the way they both liked it.

  Afterwards he’d lain awake while she slept, twisting the ring back and forth on his finger and thinking about what he could do with a machine that made gold…

  He’d asked a few discreet questions, but she’d never given much detail other than it belonged to the Mayor and it was why the town was so prosperous despite being in the ass end of nowhere.

  He’d let the matter drop when it was clear she wasn’t going to say more. They’d gone off trundling around the world and he’d never mentioned it again. Letting her think he’d forgotten. But he hadn’t.

  Six months later when the carney was meandering through the plethora of tinpot republics that made up what had once been Georgia, he’d told Thomas Rum he needed to take a couple of months away. His mother was sick. Rum had shrugged and let him go, telling them where they’d be in two months and if he wasn’t there then not to bother coming back.

  He'd tracked down the Scourge which he’d heard was doing its work south of the Cumberland River, which had been effectively ruled by no one since the collapse of Kentucky in his Granddaddy’s days.

  He’d feared the Colonel would either laugh at him or string him up for bring
ing him such a ridiculous tale. But they’d fought together and both owed each other their lives a couple of times over, he was as close to a brother as he was going to get since he’d killed his real one in a fight over a whore whose name he couldn’t even remember anymore.

  Saalt knew him well enough to know that, for all his faults, Hope was no fool.

  He’d listened to the tale in silence, just the two of them in his big tent with furnishings fancier and most folks’ homes. When he’d handed him the ring Saalt had turned it over and over for a good few minutes before looking up and staring him in the eye.

  Ezra Saalt had always had the kind of stare that could make a man squirm if he kept it levelled long enough. The kind of stare that made a room seem hotter and the air thicker than it really was. The kind of stare that might make a man think it was a long, long way down to the bottom and one small step in the wrong direction would mean he’d already sipped his last drink and kissed his last whore.

  “You shitting me?” he’d asked, still turning Giselle’s ring over and over in his fingers.

  “Sounds like it, I know. But I come a long way to see you and I ain’t got no reason to bullshit you.”

  “Maybe, but plenty would want the Scourge destroyed or least to go someplace else. A wild goose chase way out west would work just fine for the ignorant masses who don’t want to see the New Nation born.”

  “We go back a long way Ezra. You know what kind of man I am, the things I’ve done, the things I’m capable of. Not much of it has been good, but I’ve never crossed you. Not once. And we been through some hard times as I recall. So, I know this sounds like bullshit, but I ain’t lying to you. I seen things Ezra, trust me. I seen some damn things.”

  Saalt had stood up and tossed the ring at him before sticking his head out of the tent and speaking to someone. When he’d returned he’d poured fresh shots into their glasses.

  Boy Crow had turned up a few minutes later. They’d been a long couple of minutes too. Ezra had done nothing much but swill his whiskey around the glass and stare into it as if the way the lantern light was reflected in it might tell him whether he was being bullshitted by an old friend or not.