by Andy Monk
He’d never met the savage and he’d never been much taken with the ones he’d met before, most were either drunks or thieves in his experience. He’d been surprised when, after introducing the redskin, Ezra had insisted he stand up and shake the man’s hand.
He had no trouble shaking a man’s hand, even a savage’s, but it had struck him as strangely formal and it did cross his mind that the savage was gonna pull a knife and slit his guts, but he dismissed it quickly. Ezra Saalt had no need to be sneaky and underhand with his killing these days.
Boy Crow had gripped his hand and met his eye and dropped neither for a goodly length of time. If the Colonel’s stare could make a man squirm he hadn’t been at all sure what to make of Boy Crow’s eyes. In the lantern light of Ezra’s tent, they’d seemed impossibly dark and impossibly deep and big enough to see his own distorted reflection in them. He’d felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise and his skin tingle as if a thunderstorm was about to break about them. Crow’s features were impassive and unmoving, no expression decorated his face. He couldn’t decide whether he reminded him more of a statue or a corpse. Whichever moved the least he supposed.
When he finally let go of his hand Crow had given a little nod and said, “You have a lot of anger in you Mr Hope, you should let it go. It is bad for a man’s soul.”
His temper had flared at the savage’s words. As was often the case he didn’t really know why and wasn’t much inclined to figure it out, but one look at Ezra had been enough to dampen it. Something important was going on, he just couldn’t see what it was.
He’d made to sit down, assuming Ezra wanted him to recount his tale to Crow, but instead he’d been dismissed and the Colonel had told him he’d think about it and let him have an answer in the morning. In the meantime, he’d been a guest of the Scourge and was given a couple of Brides to warm his bedroll. He hadn’t been so fussy about his women looking dead inside eighteen months ago for some reason.
The next morning Saalt had shaken his hand and told him was in. He’d move the Scourge slowly north-west towards Hawker’s Drift and he should meet up with them in the July of 2035.
And now here they all were.
The savage was still here, loitering at Colonel Saalt’s shoulder, generally not saying much, the same as when he’d ridden out from the Dark Carnival to meet him and his two unwholesome friends before Amos had done the world a favour and killed them.
The savage had just stood by the fire as he’d assured them everything was as it had been agreed, told them about the guns the town had and how it was likely to defend itself and confirmed when the carney would be leaving,
He’d said nothing about the engine that made gold or the demons. Ezra had told him to say nothing about either to anyone else. He hadn’t been planning to anyway.
By the time he’d ridden away the savage had said precisely nothing, but there was something about his eyes that said he saw a lot more than other men did.
He’d been meaning to ask him what had happened after he’d left the Old Geady place, how come the other two Scourge men had ended up hung over the back of a horse with flies buzzing around their cooling meat while he had returned to the Host fine and dandy.
How come Amos hadn’t killed him too.
He hadn’t though. Every time he saw the man around camp or as they pressed on towards Hawker’s Drift, he’d thought about it and found a reason not to. There was a distance about the savage, not just the fact he was always alone, even in the press and crowd of camp no one was ever near him. At first, he thought it was aloofness, but as he’d watched him he’d realised he wasn’t removing himself from the company of others as much as everybody else was avoiding him.
Maybe it was because he was filthy savage, but he didn’t think so. The Scourge accepted every kind of skin into its ranks and none of the others were shunned the way Crow was.
He’d asked around eventually and most times the men had just shrugged, pulled a face or downright ignored the question, which was the kind of ignorance that usually got his fires stoked. The best answer he’d got was from a wiry young negro covered in half-assed tattoos.
“People keeps away from that man cos he ain’t righteous…” the negro had said, eyes wide and sparkling as he’d taken a moment out from shovelling chow into his mouth to answer the question “…you let him get too close and he’ll see into your soul. See so deep he be able to tell everything there is about you. From the day you was born to the day you is gonna die. And every goddamn thing in between those to two sad occasions…”
Stodder Hope had never been a curious man. The world was as the world is. You find your coin by fair means or foul, you take your pleasures, you pay the prices due, one way or another. Beyond that, he’d never cared much. Even when he’d been travelling with the demons of Billberry’s Carnival he’d just gotten on with his business, gotten on with earning coin and gotten on with wasting it as soon as it hit the bottom of his pocket. Demons and killers, he’d rode with both and took them as he found them so long as they left him to his own vices.
But Crow gnawed at him. Not a lot. But enough. There was something about him that rung bells. Distant bells, but bells all the same. Something about the way he looked at people, the way the wheels turned in the meat, so different to how most folk ticked and tocked.
It had taken a couple of days of watching the man, mostly from the corner of his eye, before he made the connection.
Amos.
He had the exact same way of looking at people, like he was seeing something else besides a man’s skin and hair and eyes. Like he was looking deeper.
Maybe it was his imagination, but he didn’t think that was overly likely given he didn’t have much of one. And maybe it was just a coincidence Amos had killed those two Scourge assholes, but Crow had waltzed clean away and knew nothing about their deaths. But he didn’t believe in coincidences any more than he laid on his back and painted pictures in his head out of the clouds.
The Scourge pushed on towards Hawker’s Drift and Stodder Hope rode with them, turning over in his head what he’d ask the quiet gunslinger if he saw him again.
After all, he did still owe the man a dance…
The Songbird
Bumping into old lovers had always been particularly traumatic.
After she’d split up with Scotty King at the end of her freshman year she’d spent most of the next twelve months avoiding campus social functions for fear of running into him again with whatever piece of feather-brained fluff he’d decided was less “intense” than she was. It was awkward and it was embarrassing and it was something she’d long since decided was worth going to an awful lot of trouble to avoid.
And here she was, out on this endless carpet of grass with not one, but two men she’d agreed to marry, neither of whom she now wanted to be within a thousand miles of. One who’d turned into a mass murderer and the other who’d poured some otherworldly narcotic down her to make her fall in love with him.
Awkward didn’t even begin to cover it. She’d take Scotty King and a harem of his bimbos a hundred times over rather than this.
She stood staring towards the horizon, her back to the others. The Mayor’s ranch was away over the northern horizon and maybe, just maybe, there was a way home there. Probably not. Almost certainly not. But maybe. And that was all she had to cling to, otherwise she was here, forever. With the new improved mass murdering Quayle, date-rape Sye and a world full of killers. And Something Else. A big fat Something Else that squeezed black candy out of its nipples to get the whole fucking world dancing to its tune.
It was curious of course. She was, still, a scientist after all. She should want to know. If he was Something Else then… well, that was the biggest discovery in the history of anything. A bone fide Something Else.
Though a fat lot of use that would be in a world that hadn’t even invented the combustion engine. Maybe she could stand up in front of the unshaven, unwashed, semi-illiterate masses in Jack’s and give them a
lecture about quantum mechanics and the multiverse. Perhaps if she wore a low-cut top they might even listen to her. But probably not.
She looked up and found Amos at her side. He took off his hat and run a hand through the coarse stubble covering his scalp.
“He doesn’t remember anything.”
She didn’t reply, instead she watched her other ex-fiancé prodding corpses with his boot. He hadn’t found one that was still alive yet.
“The Mayor… he took Sye’s memories,” the gunslinger added.
“So, that makes it alright?” she snapped. Not meeting his eye.
“Dunno… the Mayor plays with people’s minds. Maybe Sye didn’t have much to do with it in the first place.”
“Why would he do that?”
“I don’t know… but whatever wrong he did, the boy’s suffered a lot these last few days.”
She went back to not saying anything.
“The Scourge killed his Ma, took him prisoner. He got beat to shit trying to stop them raping one of the girls he was with. Whatever faults he has, it took some guts to go up against armed killers without a weapon and his hands bound.”
“Guts or stupidity?”
Amos pulled a half-smile, “Both, probably. I’m just saying… don’t hit him again.”
Sure. Why not. She could be magnanimous. Hopefully she’d be a long way from all of them soon.
“Ok. I forgive him.”
Amos’ eyes narrowed. He didn’t look a whole lot like he believed her.
It wasn’t her concern.
She turned and walked over to the girl, Laura, who lay stretched out next to a dead horse. A young woman with short tousled tawny hair sat cross-legged in the grass, holding her hand and stroking her sweat-drenched hair.
Sye was sat on his own, one hand still clamped to his injured arm, watching her warily. She ignored him and stood over the girls.
Dorry looked up and forced a little smile onto her face. She was skinny and boyish and her eyes looked like they’d seen too much for one so young.
“We need to get her out of here,” Dorry’s eyes flicked between her and Amos, who’d followed her over.
“We need a wagon,” Amos said, “there’s no way we can put her on a horse with her leg busted like that.”
“If we can find a farm the Scourge haven’t hit…” Dorry offered.
“By the time we find one, bring it here and get her back to town… even assuming we can avoid any more of the Scourge…”
She turned away and walked across the grass toward Quayle before Amos could say any more. He didn’t need to. Even if they could find a wagon and the bone-jarring journey in the back of it didn’t kill her, there was a fair chance the Scourge would catch up with them and finish the job they’d started. And given the kind of medical care available here, even if she made it back to town…
Quayle was standing over one of the corpses that formed a scattered ring of death around them, a point of stillness amongst the shivering grass.
“Amos killed them all…”
“He’s a talented guy…”
“The girl, Dorry, said he crawled off into the grass as the Scourge spread out to surround them. And he killed them one by one. How the fuck did he do that?”
She didn’t know. Or care. She was more interested in saving lives than taking them.
He bent down and with a grunt rolled the body onto its back to reveal a single bullet wound in the man’s forehead. He sported an unkempt beard and a face that would have made her cross the road at a hundred paces. A black sash crossed his chest and he still clutched a rifle.
“The guy was belly down in the grass. How’d Amos even see him through the undergrowth, let alone put a bullet between his eyes?”
“Best be grateful he’s on our side.”
“We have a side?”
“We’re caught between the Mayor and the Scourge… I know we’re not supposed to interfere…”
The Facility had taught them not to get involved. She was an observer, mapping the fissures fracturing space/time, noting the local culture and the splintering of its history since this timeline had diverged from their own. Observe and note. Do not interfere, do not meddle, do nothing to draw attention to yourself and disclose who you were. It had been drilled into her from day one.
But The Facility didn’t exist anymore. The bombs Quayle had left behind him had incinerated its rules.
“Think you burnt that playbook.”
“I-”
She shook her head and stared out across the grass. Nothing moved save for the horses the Scourge had left behind and crows beckoned by the fresh meat Amos had served up for them.
One of the Scourge men had gotten away. Would he be back with friends or did they have softer game to hunt down? There was nothing to keep the two of them here of course. They could just ride off to the Mayor’s ranch and leave Amos and the others to their fate. It was their world after all.
“I have my medi-kit,” she said, not pulling her eyes from the horizon where a scattering of cotton wool clouds softened the searing blue sky.
“Be a hard one to explain to them.”
“Science is indistinguishable from magic in places like this. Think they’ll burn me at the stake?”
“We’re not supposed to interfere. Not with our tech anyway. It’s dangerous.”
“I’ve already interfered. With Amelia, remember? You sent Amos to me for that.”
He stretched his jaw and sighed, “She’s not from this world.”
“Still. I interfered. We both interfered.”
“She’d have died without the stabilising meds, she was phasing in and out.”
“The girl back there is probably going to die too.”
She looked across and held his eye until he nodded.
“On one condition.”
“Which is?”
“You can explain to them how the fuck you cured a broken leg…”
*
Amos was talking to Dorry about who should go and find a wagon for Laura. The gunslinger clearly wanted Dorry to neither go off on her own or stay and guard the others, but being in two places at the same time was a trick that was beyond even him.
“We need to set her leg,” she announced.
Amos nodded, “Guess we should do that before finding a wagon.”
“We won’t need a wagon.”
“We won’t?”
She shook her head, “I’ll fix her.”
“How?” Dorry demanded.
“Trust me. I know what I’m doing.”
“You don’t look like a doctor.”
“You’d be surprised at what I can do.”
Quayle looked pained, but didn’t say anything.
“Ok…” Amos said over Dorry’s reservations, “…I saw a doc do it once, I think…”
“John and I can do it, just cut me a strap of leather we can put in her mouth, I don’t want her biting her tongue off.”
Amos' eyes flicked between the two of them, as far as he was aware the two of them barely knew each other.
“She knows what she’s doing,” Quayle offered.
The gunslinger said nothing, but his eyes continued to move back and forth between them. She felt a sudden chill despite the heat of the sun. Someone, somewhere, had put on their boots and started marching back and forth across her grave.
“Yeah,” he said finally, “I think she does…”
“Amos-”
He shook Dorry’s protest away, “Go get a belt off one of the Scourge.”
The young woman’s eyes flared but she spun away without further comment.
“She’s fiery…” she muttered, watching her go.
“He probably thinks much the same about you,” Quayle nodded towards Sye who remained sitting in the grass watching them.
She snorted and turned her attention to Laura who was still laid out next to the dead horse they’d used as cover when the Scourge had attacked. Flies were buzzing around both the horse and the gir
l. Laura was ashen and her skin slick with sweat.
Her stomach turned at the sight of the splintered bone. The best the girl could hope for in this world was losing her leg, but given she’d been laying out in the heat and the dirt surrounded by flies for several hours infection seemed almost inevitable and they didn’t even have antibiotics here, let alone the kind of meds she carried in her satchel.
“Go and see to Sye,” she said to Amos and Dorry once the girl returned with a thick coarse leather belt that one of the Scourge raiders would never need again. There was no blood on it at least.
“Won’t you need our help?” Dorry insisted, her feet staying right where they were until Amos gently put a hand on her arm.
“No, I don’t think they do,” the gunslinger nodded at them before leading her over to Sye.
“You ever tell him anything about us?” she asked once they were out of earshot.
“I pointed him in your direction when Amelia was phasing, but nothing else. Why?”
It was her turn to shake her head, “Dunno. Just the way he looks at us. Like he knows…”
“So, is he Something Else too?”
She could hear the tease in his voice and she bit down on it. Annoyed at her own irritation as much as anything else.
“Doesn’t matter. C’mon, we’ve got work to do…”
*
One thing she didn’t have was a painkiller.
Her own augmentation, in the form of tiny bioengineered glands behind her ears, dealt with that so she had nothing to give Laura. Luckily the girl was unconscious, though from the way she mumbled the occasional incomprehensible word she wasn’t that far out and the pain of setting her leg would probably be enough to bring her around, but the broken bone needed to be put back into place before the nanomites could do their work. They could repair the wound without it, but it would take a lot longer and time was something they didn’t have a premium of.
Her eyes kept being drawn back to the eastern horizon. Distant columns of smoke still soured the sky, but, so far, no more riders had appeared.
Quayle placed the belt between Laura’s teeth and then held the girl down. When he was set he looked over his shoulder and nodded.