by Dean Wells
The ancient witch had already turned away.
Something brushed behind Jacsen then, soft and furred and clever. The raccoon tugged on his bindings and after a minute of tugging, the ropes fell away, first his wrists then his ankles. Then it pressed something familiar into his palm and it took Jacsen only a moment to know his own knife, the knife he’d given the boy.
The prentice, shoulder deep with blood, came and knelt next to Jacsen ready to cut.
Jacsen gave him no chance. He lunged for the prentice’s wrist and twisted cruelly as he could. The prentice yelped and dropped the knife and Jacsen swung him around and staggered to his feet, swaying still hazy, clamping an arm around the prentice’s throat and pressing his own knife beneath his jaw hard enough that blood slicked down.
The witch had a derringer aimed at Jacsen. He thumbed back the hammer.
And the towheaded boy stepped into the light, standing uneven, hips askew because of his foot but legs apart and two hands on the revolver like he was made for it.
They held that triangle, Jacsen, the towheaded boy, and the witch. None of them could miss.
The witch stared down at the revolver.
He grinned wide.
“Throw down the gun,” Jacsen said. “Throw it down! I said—!”
The witch pulled the trigger and fire spat and he flicked his empty hand toward the revolver. The bullet slammed through his prentice’s skull and into Jacsen’s chest. Jacsen stumbled and let the dead prentice drop and shouted in wordless horror, expecting the blast of six loaded chambers igniting and blowing the revolver to shrapnel, shredding the towheaded boy’s arms to the elbows.
But nothing happened. The revolver didn’t explode.
The boy pulled the trigger and the hammer fell against an empty chamber in a ridiculous, mocking click.
And in the moment of the witch’s stunned silence, Jacsen leapt forward and buried the raccoon’s knife in the old bastard’s throat.
Outside, the first of the blessed cannons fired. It sounded like the end of the world.
* * *
Jacsen’s chest hurt like hell, but he could breathe and his heart still beat, and as long as he kept his eyes squeezed closed he could manage the pain. The boy was cradling his head. “Look. Look!” he was whispering, “Look!” and he tapped Jacsen’s forehead to get him to look.
So Jacsen opened his eyes.
There were all the raccoons. The one had freed another and so on until they were all of them free, and now they crouched around Jacsen and the boy. They were piled one on another to get a good view, some standing upright, all small bandit-eyed faces pressed in, hackles up and bushy ringed-tails twitching, cringing with every ear-splitting cannon shot, but all focused intensely upon Jacsen.
Seventy raccoons waited.
“Talk to them!” the boy said.
I can’t, Jacsen thought. I don’t know how. He could only stare. He could feel the cannon fire through the ground.
“Tell them what to do!”
So Jacsen struggled to sitting, and feeling damn foolish, feeling like a child, he told the raccoons what they should do.
* * *
Fuses flashed and sputtered. Powder barrels and ammunition stockpiles all over the camp erupted in flame and smoke. One by one the blessed howitzers were thrown into the air on columns of fire, falling back to the earth heat-warped and useless.
The last thing to burn was the witch’s wagon. Its flames were blue and utterly silent.
* * *
X
South from Cesler Grange the horizon was jagged with blue mountains. There was gold and silver there, they said. And closer by, the high plains fields were pale as the boy’s hair.
“Got something for you,” Jacsen said and he dropped a deformed bullet into the boy’s open hand. “Keepsake,” he said. “Still’s got some of my blood on it. Don’t go washing it. They tell me it’s lucky.” The surgeon had said he was lucky. The skull of the prentice had slowed the bullet. It had come to rest just within the muscle of his chest.
The boy strung it on a leather cord and wore it around his neck.
And when Jacsen was healed enough to ride, they started north.
Copyright © 2012 Don Allmon
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Don Allmon is a computer technician who spends his spare time working toward a master’s degree in nineteenth-century English literature. He lives in Kansas with many animals. None are raccoons. This is his first published story.
Read more Beneath Ceaseless Skies
COVER ART
“Bandits Assault a Stagecoach,” by Ignacio Bazán Lazcano
Ignacio Bazán Lazcano has worked for major game companies around the world (Sabarasa, NGD, Global Fun, Gameloft, Time Gate) on numerous titles for PS3, XBOX, and PC (Section 8, Section 8 Prejudice, Aliens: Colonial Marines) and has authored publications in journals and books such as Digital Painting Techniques, 2dartist Magazine, 3DTotal, and Digital Art Masters. View more of his work online at deviantArt.com.
Beneath Ceaseless Skies
ISSN: 1946-1046
Published by Firkin Press,
a 501(c)3 Non-Profit Literary Organization
Copyright © 2012 Firkin Press
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