The Shotgun Arcana

by R. S. Belcher

  “Nice job, getting her set up for the shot,” Kate said. “How did you know I was still alive out there?”

  “I didn’t,” the Scholar said. “It was a calculated risk.” He looked at the little girl nuzzled deeply into his wounded shoulder and chest, and smiled. “That,” he said to the little girl, “hurts a great deal. Please stop.”

  “I’ll send off the signal,” Kate said. “You old softy, you.”

  * * *

  The tabernacle was being demolished by the fury of the battle. The town elders—Brodin Chaffin, Rony Bevalier and Antrim Zezrom Slaughter—were tied and against the far wall, sitting on a long bench.

  Victory Ferrell had a pair of tomahawks, one in each hand. He swung wildly at Black Rowan as she tumbled, dived and leapt, seeking a way past his slashing wall of death. She held a bell-guarded saber in one hand and a short, narrow dirk in the other, and whenever she closed in it took both her blades to keep the lightning-fast wild-eyed soldier’s hand axes from striking her. Ferrell was all instinct, rage and speed, but Rowan had to admit that his sheer ferocity was more than a match for her training.

  Harry was picked up off the ground and thrown into the far wall, narrowly missing the elders, who ducked as he flew past. The impact made him see stars. His spine throbbed even through his holy breastplate. The Sword of Laban clattered to the floor and Harry struggled to rise as Liver-Eatin’ Douglass shambled toward him. The mountain man was well over seven feet tall and a lumbering wall of muscle and madness. Douglass grabbed Harry by the leg, intent on using the mayor like a club and smashing him against the wall again and again. Pratt snagged the sword with his fingers—it seemed to slide into his hand of its own accord. He slashed down on Douglass’s wrist and the giant roared as he drew back a spurting stump of a left hand. He shuffled backward. Douglass bellowed and clutched his stump, more like an animal than a man might. Harry slid his bloody, gleaming sword gently over the bonds of Elder Slaughter and they fell away, cleanly severed. Slaughter began to untie his feet as quickly as he could.

  “Get the others free and get out of here,” Harry said. “Use the hidden passage, the one we came in through.”

  Harry’s father had insisted on the tabernacle and the other formal buildings of the church having concealed entrances, secret exits and hidden passages. They hadn’t been used many times over the years, but Harry was thankful today that his father had drilled him on their locations and access.

  “What about you and the young lady?” Slaughter said.

  Harry glanced over to see Rowan matching Ferrell blow for blow, sparks flying off the killer’s axes as they clanged against Rowan’s blades.

  “We have this under control, I think,” Harry said.

  Douglass’s remaining good hand suddenly smashed into Harry’s side. The giant tried to grab Harry and rip his liver out; the breastplate held against Douglass’s immense, preternatural strength, but the force of Douglass’s attempt threw Harry against the wall again.

  “See?” Harry said to Slaughter. He spun and moved the sword to try to force room between himself and the giant. Slaughter quickly began to untie his comrades, while Harry kept Douglass busy and distracted.

  Rowan had established a pattern now of strikes and parries that Ferrell was locked into it, following her dance, at least for the moment, and that was all the time she needed. Rowan snapped open the hidden compartment on her jeweled ring with a gentle squeeze of her fingers, turned the dirk into the parry of Ferrell’s tomahawk and then pushed hard against it, sending a spray of finely ground glass into Ferrell’s eye. The soldier gasped and involuntarily blinked, pushing more of the deadly dust into his eyeball. He started to scream, but Rowan broke his disrupted parry, knocking it aside, and ran him through with her saber. Ferrell slid off her blade and slumped to the ground, dead.

  Harry felt Douglass grab him by his long coat; he turned his arm as best he could and rammed the magical blade backward, into Douglass’s side. Douglass grunted as the blade sunk up to the hilt in his guts and pierced his liver. He released Harry’s coat as he staggered back. Pratt spun, grabbed the hilt of the Sword of Laban with both hands and wrenched it upward with all his might. The sword opened Douglass from his prodigious gut to his throat and lodged finally in the man-monster’s brain. He made a final, instinctual grab for Harry’s neck as he tumbled forward. Pratt braced his boot and bended knee against Douglass’s chest. The weight of the man was incredible. Harry felt the mountain man’s fingers slip from him and he kicked back, knocking Douglass’s lifeless mass to the floor in a widening pool of his own blood and entrails.

  Covered in blood, Harry climbed to his feet, groaning. He looked over at Rowan, who was nursing a nasty hatchet wound to her leg. She waved and Harry nodded, panting. He looked over the see Slaughter freeing the last of the elders.

  “Look what they’ve done to our tabernacle!” Bevalier shouted.

  Harry shook his head.

  “We need to send the signal,” Harry said. “I just hope we’re not too late.”

  The Fool

  They led Bick and Highfather out into the blinding noonday sun from the cool confines of the Paradise Falls. The crowd was mostly silent; a few catcalls and boos greeted the sheriff and the saloon owner, but by now most folks in town had come to see Zeal and his crew for what they truly were and their support was sullen and at gunpoint. Those who still cheered and supported Zeal were the most callous and vicious inhabitants of Golgotha, a few hundred strong at the most. They were here to see blood and spectacle.

  Both men were clothed to hide the majority of their injuries, save the evidence of beatings on their faces. Bick was marched up the stairs to the platform, where two large posts had been secured. He was lashed to a post with rope while Zeal addressed the crowd from the platform, where everyone could see him.

  “Good people of Golgotha! I hope you enjoyed your day of Thanksgiving and return now reinvigorated to dedicate yourself to the great tasks that lie before us! This man, Malachi Bick, has stolen from you and from me. He has lied, swindled and cheated you and me and he has drained the very lifeblood of our town!”

  The crowd murmured and more boos and shouts came from the assembled mass. Even those who feared Zeal and wanted him gone could agree that Bick was evil.

  “Why ain’t I up there too,” Highfather mumbled from puffy, swollen lips. He was ringed by guards. Snake-Man and several mercenaries stood near him.

  “Bick is the appetizer,” Snake-Man explained. “You will be the main course, the sacrificial lamb. Once he gets those people riled up enough to kill Bick, once they taste blood, then it will take just a little push to get them to tear apart their beloved sheriff, and then they are ours, with us in body and soul.”

  Zeal continued, calling out to the crowd, a smiling beatific voice of strength and purpose. It was hard not to nod in agreement with him. “Since he has wronged you, harmed you, dear people, you shall be the instrument of his punishment, you shall lay this evil man low.”

  A group of Praetorians rolled a large mine cart into view. It was filled with hard, jagged rocks. They stopped it near the edge of the platform, looking up at Bick, tied and beaten.

  “Those of you who feel wronged by this man, who hate this man and wish to do to him as he has done to you, step forward now and show him the true meaning of divine justice.”

  Zeal smiled at Bick. The crowd rumbled with debate, agreement, dissent. Gradually a small group of men and women began to step forward and walk toward the cart. “There is your answer from God, Biqa,” Zeal said.

  Three men and one woman lined up and were given stones by the guards and Zeal himself. “Here you go Mrs. Jackson,” he said, handing the stone to the woman.

  Somewhere, far across the town, three gunshots rang out. A moment later, two more gunshots rang out, also a distance away.

  In the crowd of onlookers, Auggie Shultz and his bride, Gillian, held hands and watched in disbelief. They had been dragged from their honeymoon bed by the same Praet
orians that had gathered their neighbors and friends to observe this nightmare.

  “This can’t be happening,” Gillian whispered to Auggie. “I know Malachi Bick is a bad man, has done bad things, but this is barbaric!”

  Auggie got an odd look on his face. He kissed Gillian, released her hand and began to push his way through the crowd.

  “Augustus!” Gillian shouted. “What are you doing?”

  Auggie looked back and smiled at her, then shrugged. “What is right, ja?”

  An audible gasp rose from the whole town as Augustus Shultz walked out of the crowd and made his way to the platform. Zeal offered Auggie a rock. Auggie looked at Zeal and a little bit of the smile left Zeal’s face. Auggie took the stone and walked past Zeal and the soldiers, who Zeal gestured to allow him to pass. He climbed the stairs slowly. The thump of each step echoed across the now silent Main Street.

  Highfather stood as still and entranced as everyone else did. Suddenly he felt a sharp knife sawing through the bonds tying his hands behind his back. He slowly looked over his shoulder and saw a thin, lanky man in a tattered suit and long, broken wooden mask now standing slightly behind him. Zeal’s men all seemed to accept him as one of their own and were too busy watching Auggie to notice that the masked man was freeing Highfather. The man behind the mask winked at Highfather and the gesture stirred a memory.

  Jim! Highfather suddenly realized.

  Up on the platform Auggie stood before Bick, the heavy rock in his hand. “I came to you, Mr. Bick, when I was desperate and had suffered great loss. You helped me but you were not honest in the price you would exact and you took more from me than you ever gave, yes? You have meddled in people’s lives. You’ve hurt good people to further your own schemes and you never gave a thought for what your actions would do to others, Mr. Bick, because you thought your life was more important than ours. You were wrong, Mr. Bick.”

  Even the wind seemed to be holding its breath as Auggie raised the stone above his head and looked unflinching into the dark eyes of Malachi Bick. Auggie lowered his arm and dropped the stone at Ray Zeal’s feet.

  “And I forgive you,” Auggie said.

  A cheer rose up from the crowd, swept across the citizens. Auggie turned to look at the four assembled executioners. “Shame on you,” he said. “This is not how we do things here, ja?”

  One by one the four dropped their stones as Auggie’s voice drifted out across the crowd. “We have law and a good man, a good sheriff, like Jon Highfather! This is not justice, and this is not right. We are good people, ja? We are better than this, we must be, yes?”

  The gunshot cracked like the hammer of God Himself. The bullet caught Auggie in the chest and he stumbled against the other pole on the platform. Screams and shouts came up from the crowd. Gillian gasped, horrified, and began to run to her husband. Auggie looked out and caught her eye as she cleared the crowd. He smiled at her, tried to speak, but couldn’t. His eyes fluttered and he fell onto the platform.

  “No,” Ray Zeal said, his pistol still smoking. “You’re not, and this is the price you pay for mercy.”

  Memory is a powerful thing, memories of free candy given to children, to jokes told on the front porch of Shultz’s General Store, memories of sick children given medicine when neither parent nor Auggie could afford it. A lifetime of small, decent, good deeds: the sum total of a man’s life.

  “That sumbitch done went and shot Mr. Shultz!” a man in the crowd called out.

  “Who the hell does that bastard Zeal think he is!” Another shout from the masses.

  “No one does that to Auggie!” another angry voice called out. “Let’s tar and feather these dirty dogs and run them out of town!”

  The crowd surged, an angry living thing. Gunshots began to ring out as Praetorians fired on the citizens who were pulling them off their horses. Shouts of the wounded and the unarmed dying were everywhere as the soldiers began to methodically pick off the locals. Those locals with irons on their hips fired back and Main Street became a battlefield .

  Bick shrugged and the ropes broke around him, not that anyone noticed. He knelt by Auggie’s still form. His eyes burned accusingly into Zeal’s red, furious face. Gillian reached the platform. Bick put a hand on the shopkeeper’s bloody chest. “Bless you and keep you, Augustus Shultz,” Bick said. Gillian knelt by her husband, cradling him in her arms, and stroked his face. The tears fell in hot, heavy drops on Auggie’s placid face. Bick looked for Zeal, but he was already gone.

  Highfather lashed out, his hands now free at the height of the distraction. He drove a powerful uppercut to Snake-Man’s chin, while Jim turned and shot two rounds, point-blank, from his pistol into a Praetorian’s belly. Jim handed Highfather a pistol and the sheriff fired and dropped two of the startled Praetorians beside them, while bullets splintered the wooden posts next to Highfather’s head. Snake-Man lunged at Highfather and Jon fired again but the Indian seemed to be made of smoke and lightning, and Highfather’s bullet missed him as the medicine man swung himself around the opposite side of the awning posts on the saloon’s porch. Snake-Man flashed down with one of his hooked finger blades to rip into Highfather’s vulnerable throat. Something struck Snake-Man at the waist and tumbled the medicine man onto the dirt of Main Street. Mutt stood, his blood knife in his fist, only a few feet away from Snake-Man.

  “Oh, thank God,” Highfather said, nodding to Mutt. “It’s the sheriff.”

  Snake-Man slowly got up, a smile spreading across his face. Mutt grinned, all yellowed snag and sharp, straight fang.

  “Don’t know what you’re grinning about, lick-finger,” Mutt said. “I kicked your ass in your daddy’s hidey-hole. Now I’m going to kick your ass up here on my turf.”

  “Nuga Togu,” Snake-Man said, and it began.

  Both men were blurs, moving faster than the human eye could track, a storm of violence with lightning flashes from hooks and knives, sparks erupting: jumping, ducking, spinning, turning, driving fists into each other when their weapons could touch only blurring air. Coyote and Snake warred in the dirt of Main Street, their blood burning in their sons’ veins.

  Highfather and Jim dropped the other soldiers near the platform, grabbed their rifles and moved out. The sheriff and deputy paused, then fired back to back, clearing the street around them. Jon saw Bick run down off the platform and disappear inside the Paradise Falls.

  “I was worried about you, boy,” Highfather shouted over the din as he squeezed off a round from a Winchester rifle, dropping another Praetorian on horseback who had been threatening some civilians, south on Main. “Glad you made it home.”

  “Me, too, sir,” Jim said. “Sorry I’m late.” Highfather laughed.

  “We’ll discuss job attendance after we win the war,” Highfather said. “By the way, where is Constance, before Maude skins you alive?”

  “She’s safe,” Jim said. “Safe” was the easiest way to explain right now. Easier than telling the sheriff that a fourteen-year-old girl who could whoop a bear in a fair fight was off alone in the desert, avoiding Zeal’s patrols, riding like a she-demon for Virginia City and help. “We’re still seeing the Elephant here,” Highfather shouted. He dropped the empty rifle and blasted a Praetorian sniper off a rooftop with his six-gun as the sniper’s bullet tossed up the dirt near him. “A lot of folks are going to get themselves killed, unless we get them organized.” Jim suddenly saw a crew of Praetorians rolling out the Gatling gun, off at about seven o’clock from his and Highfather’s position, and preparing to open fire on a wide swath of the rioting crowd that was being led into battle by Gordy Duell, the hotel dick.

  “Aww, dammit!” Jim said, and ran straight toward the cluster of soldiers starting to crank up the gun. He fired Pa’s pistol and whooped like a rebel, like his pa had taught him to. Three of the crew fell, dead or wounded. The other men took bead on him, dead bang, when hatchets with green ribbons attached to them materialized into the soldiers’ backs and necks, dropping them where they stood.


  Ch’eng Huang’s Green Ribbon soldiers joined the fray, striking quickly and silently against the Praetorians from the shadows and the fringes of the crowd, where they had been waiting for the right time to strike. Jim reached the Gatling gun and Highfather fought his way over to him.

  “That was the stupidest thing I ever saw,” Highfather said, slapping the grinning boy on the back. “Good job. Let’s get this thing spinning and pointed at the right folks.”

  The gun clattered like a telegraph, blasting holes in the Praetorians’ crumbling lines. Highfather jumped on a riderless horse and galloped to the north end of Main, killing Zeal’s men as he rode. He found a cluster of armed citizens, led by Alton Sprang, owner of Sprang’s Rooms for Rent, pinned down and being squeezed by organized Praetorian fire. Highfather barked orders to the men while angry slivers of lead whined inches from him and his horse.

  “You fellas, focus on that group over there behind the water troughs,” Highfather shouted. He cocked and fired another rifle he had acquired from a dead Praetorian. “And you all start picking off that mounted group that keeps riding by, once their cover fire is jammed up. Focus, now breathe, and make each shot count. It’s like shooting a fence post.”

  Even as Highfather began to secure North Main, Jim found that Zeal’s troops on South Main were beginning to rally. The street was littered with bodies, but most of the noncombatants were in hiding now. The Praetorian commanders began to direct fire and whittle away at the armed citizens and Chinese hatchet men. Slowly, the momentum of the mob began to turn as the trained and well-armed soldiers cut down the rebelling townsfolk.

  That was when the ropes dropped out of the sky, behind the Praetorian lines, and the pirates began sliding down them, firing and screaming as they came, many with burning fuses in their long, wild beards. They dropped from baskets beneath gray spherical orbs that hung silently in the cold, bright sky, approximately a dozen of the bizarre craft, each with a four-man crew. Some of the pirates dropped small black powder grenades into the ranks of the mercenaries from above. Explosions ripped through the Praetorian lines from the small bombs.