Darkwalker: A Tale of the Urban Shaman

by Duncan Eagleson

  They spent the next half hour with Morgan coaching Robles through some of the moves she’d used, and some other techniques. Robles was a fast learner, and despite the fact that much of what Morgan showed her was very different from the fighting styles she was used to, she took to it instinctively.

  Later, their hair damp from the showers, Robles and Morgan stood in the locker room dressing, the Railwalker in her tunic with the crow patch on the shoulder, Robles into civvies for her lit class.

  “So,” Robles asked, “you’re married to Railwalker Rok?”

  “Uh-huh,” Morgan confirmed.

  “How long?”

  “Twelve years.”

  “You must have still been at the Academy when you married.”

  Morgan nodded. “Yep.”

  Nita sighed inwardly. After the workout session, she’d thought she might be able to establish a connection, get some friendly camaraderie going with Morgan. That might still be possible, but she could see the Railwalker was going to make her work for it. “Are there many married Railwalker couples?”

  “A few.” Morgan looked at the guardswoman, then sat on the bench stuffing her workout clothes into a small duffle. “Not many of them are out on the routes, though.”

  “So how’s it happen you guys get lucky?”

  The look the Railwalker shot her suggested Nita was on the verge of prying, but after a moment she answered. “I was a couple of years behind Rok and Wolf at the Academy. We got married just before the two of them took over the north shore route, with another Prof, a guy named Sparks. A year or so later they lost Sparks in a firefight outside Redmond. You probably know, numbers are down in the order these days...”

  “Yeah,” said Robles, “you don’t see Railwalkers around that much. Not like in my Dad’s day.”

  “Right. There’s not many full teams left, and the order doesn’t pressure a team to replace a lost member.”

  “They don’t get assigned by the order?”

  “The order makes recommendations, but it’s up to the team to make a final decision. Wolf and Rok waited until they could request me.”

  “So, the other guy, Wolf, what’s his story?”

  Morgan chuckled and raised an eyebrow. “Depends on what you’re looking for.”

  Robles looked away, embarrassed in spite of herself. She hadn’t thought she was being that transparent, but she should have known better.

  “You’re not exactly his usual type, but I’m sure you could catch his eye if you put your mind to it. Question is, do you really want that?”

  “Why? What’s his usual type?”

  “Blond, busty, and brainless. Disposable. He likes to fuck ’em and forget ’em.”

  Robles’ chin went up. “Yeah? Well, that gives us something in common, I guess.”

  “Really?” Morgan looked at the other woman with a question in her eyes.

  “Well, you must know how it is,” Robles said. “Career guards don’t usually do too well with marriage. I forget the exact numbers, but something like eighty, ninety percent end up in divorce. No surprise, really. It’s gotta suck, being married to a guard. Civilians never understand us, no matter how hard they try. They don’t know what it’s like, being in this life. And it’s the same thing with us as with you. It could all end in a second. With you, married to your partner, at least the chances are you’ll be with him when it happens. Could you stand it if you were sitting at home, never knowing when you’re gonna get that call, knowing you could be going to a funeral tomorrow?

  “Anyway, I figure the odds are against me. No percentage in looking for Mr. Right. If I did find him, it would probably end up a disaster. So I became the queen of one night stands.”

  “Yeah,” Morgan said. “I guess that’s one way to deal with it.”

  “Ooh,” said Robles. “Do I detect a tone of bitterness there?”

  Morgan’s eyes snapped at the other woman, but her voice was calm. “Probably.” Her tone said, you got a problem with that?

  Nita Robles raised her hands, palm out. “Hey,” she said, “none of my business.”

  Morgan’s look softened and she chuckled. “’S’alright. ’S just I still feel bad, y’know? I used to needle Wolf about his shallow relationships. Maybe it had nothing to do with me and what I said, but a few of times he’s taken it into his head to get serious about relationships, and every time it turns out to be some psycho bitch who ends up cutting his heart out with a rusty spoon and serving it to him on toast.”

  Robles thought about that for a minute. “Hey, we all make our own choices.”

  “I know,” said the Railwalker. “The Book of Brick even says something like that. Doesn’t stop me feeling bad about the whole thing. I know he’d love to have something like what Rok and I have. But he hasn’t got a clue about how to go about getting it, and, frankly, neither do I. Far as I can tell, Rok and I just got totally fuckin’ lucky.”

  “Yeah, maybe,” said Robles. “But luck could only put the two of you together. It’s the two of you have to keep making it work day by day.”

  Morgan laughed. “Yeah,” she said. “Ain’t that the truth?”

  32. THE CAVE

  His very first memories, of course, were of his Goddess. But very early came Evreyt. Trainer, teacher, window on the world beyond the Cave and the Island, Evreyt bounded his day with rituals and exercises, taught him how to read and how to kill, how to swim and to fish, how to sew clothes and wounds, to cook and to cauterize. At Evreyt’s command he would run across the sea rocks at night, never sure when his teacher might appear from the darkness to attack him. He stood for hours holding heavy stones at arm’s length while doing his sums, hung from the bar while reciting his histories. He performed pushups, Evreyt kneeling on his back, while he conjugated verbs in Spanglish or Japanese. At times, as he grew older, Evreyt would take him on expeditions to the outer world. Sometimes these trips were exercises in stealth and camouflage, where he would have to move unseen through the darkness, a shadow among shadows, slinking through the desert to slip undetected into barns or even houses, or lurking through Bay City’s alleys and tunnels. On other forays they would travel in disguise to the city, at first dressed as father and son, and later as separate characters, Evreyt tracking his progress from a distance. Even when they walked in full view, the object remained the same: to pass unnoticed, to become a part of the background, to hide in plain sight. And always there was the Cave, and the formal training: kata, kumite, jiyu kumite, the forms and the sparring.

  If Evreyt was his sun, his surrogate father and mentor, the Goddess was his mother the moon. She appeared almost always late at night, when Evreyt had retired, to share with him the intimate secrets of her magicks: the shifting of form, the re-shaping of bone and muscle. Where Evreyt’s histories were dry recitations of facts and dates, his Goddess shared with him magical tales of his own life; tales of her wanderings in human form; stories of his father, a great hero and acolyte of the Goddess, who brought peace and prosperity to the world until he was betrayed and brought low by the Evil One. It was his Goddess who taught him of his true destiny, his lifelong mission to avenge his father’s betrayal and restore the Goddess’s perfect world.

  He was perhaps fourteen when he experienced his first Ritual of Teocatl. Together, he and Evreyt constructed the circle, performed the ablutions and the chants, and Evreyt prepared the sacramental potion. When he had drunk the sacrament, Evreyt retired. The world shifted. The cave, formerly dark, lit by flickering candles, became filled with light. And She came to him, his Goddess, his Moon, his Mother, his Hnahna. He chanted her secret name, and she unfurled the Multiverse for him, immersing him in excruciating joy and pleasure such as he had never imagined possible. When he awoke in the morning he returned to his training with renewed passion. He was a man now, a priest of the Sacred Goddess, an anointed hero.

  He trained with Evreyt for another three years. In that time their relationship grew gradually to be strained. He had no idea where Evreyt went
when away from the Cave and the island, had no notion of what Evreyt’s relationship with the Goddess might be. The man was an acolyte, certainly, but how far was he initiated to the Goddess’s service? Surely not far, he thought, for Evreyt was a teacher, not a hero, not a demigod. The thought plagued him.

  He was eighteen when he surpassed his master and killed Evreyt in a sparring match. Once the man was dead he was filled with dread, and felt something like guilt for the first time in his life. But soon the Goddess came and blessed him for his courage and wisdom, and told him that this was the sign. It was time for him to travel far from his cave, out into the wide world, to find the House of Katana, where he would complete his training and take his first steps on the road to manifesting his unique destiny.

  33. WOLF

  So I was going to face a monster tonight.

  I was concerned, but not afraid. I’ve never been afraid of monsters, ghosts, mutants, any of that sort of thing, not even when I was a little kid. Maybe that’s because as a kid I felt like a monster myself. Eternal gypsies, an itinerant gambler and his son, we were outsiders everywhere we went, and to be an outsider is already halfway to being a monster. Then I started having those weird experiences: visited by my mother’s spirit; followed around by the crows; animals talking to me; visions of the future—or possible futures, like the guy with the suicide jack. Like I say, I never talked to my Pa about any of this. Early on I knew he wouldn’t approve. Later on, as I got older and understood more, I was even more certain of that. He had no use for “visions and curses and ever-filled purses, prophecies, potions, and knells,” as he quoted once from some old song (damned if I understood what knells might be, but I knew about the rest of those things). Such opinions were adamantine, glistening, sharp edges to his personality. None of that stuff was welcome in his life, thank you very much.

  To my child mind this could only mean one thing: if he ever found out about my strange experiences he’d give me away, or leave me somewhere. He wouldn’t want me around him if he knew. He’d already nearly gambled me away once. How much could I mean to him?

  Chances are good I was wrong. As an adult I realize that blood ties, particularly parent-child ties, can motivate people to transcend their prejudices and fears. And sometimes they don’t. The homophobe may put aside his disgust when his own child comes out; but then sometimes he may dispossess and deny his child. So I can’t be sure, not a hundred percent. I hadn’t spoken with my father since just after I joined the Order, so maybe my childhood fears had been realized after all.

  Point is, those fears, that adamant position my Pa took, made me feel the Compleat Monster. Rejected by society as a gypsy kid, rejected by my father (although he didn’t realize it) as a weirdo, I was truly damned.

  So I never feared the monsters and the spooks. That’s not to say I was without any fear. I had plenty of fears in my anxiety closet. Fears of abandonment and isolation (for all I embraced isolation often enough). Fear of water (I died by drowning once as a child and was brought back), fear of dogs. I was petrified of heights at one time. I got over many of those fears just by facing them down. But monsters? Not a problem.

  Roth’s presence, though, had me fearing for his safety.

  It would be a night for monsters, I thought, as I watched the fog begin to rise. The restaurant had been closed since Chief Adams’s death, but now floodlights illuminated the long sea grass, the parking lot, the carved wooden Hartshall sign. Below the sign hung a “closed for private party” notice. The building looked like it had been converted from a big old summer house. A wide porch, which could be set with tables in season, ran completely around the place. The first floor held the main dining room, with the smaller dining room running off it to create a fat “L” shape. Inside the angle of the L was the kitchen, which communicated with both dining rooms. Be-tween the kitchen and the main room was the bar. Above, a second floor office and another private dining room opened to a mezzanine overlooking the main room.

  Trying to make the whole affair look as natural as possible, Roth and the three ringers had met in the kitchen, where they’d talked and drunk while Roth cooked. The guards who had escorted the “guests” took up positions. One was in the main dining room, one in the kitchen, and one on the front porch. Rok kept watch from the mezzanine. In the office, Morgan watched the infrared perimeter and coordinated our communications.

  I had four guards hidden with me in the bushes outside the building, watching from the perimeter. We were an open hand, and when the Beast stepped in we were going to grab him. I was the opposable thumb that was going to make sure he didn’t twist out of our grip.

  An hour had passed, and the fog was really rolling in now. I hadn’t experienced fog in some time, and the dampness that soon coated me was an unpleasant surprise. Hartshall wasn’t quite a blur in the grayness, but its details were becoming vague. As fog lowers the visibility, it conducts sound better. Listen, Railwalker.

  34. THE BAY

  Through the fog, he comes.

  The oarlocks of his boat are muffled. The boat slows, gliding through the mist to beach itself with the softest of grinding noises.

  Across the sand, up over the rocks, he comes. The fog seems to rise with him as he climbs, spilling over the edge, lapping through bushes and across long sea grass. Where the sea grass ends the mown lawn begins to fill like a bowl, the mist blurring the shapes of the glowing, lighted windows.

  He can smell them. There, in the bushes. There, in the tall grass. And then over there—he sees the one in the clump of trees move slightly. They smell of gun oil, tobacco, aftershave, sweat and grease. They are not important, but he is careful. He takes the two closest quickly—first the one in the grass, then the bush-lurker. Then he waits for the fog to thicken, as he knows it will, before taking the hider-in-trees.

  And now he comes to the building, the home of light and laughter, and the Enemy. He had hoped to come against the Enemy in his Tower, but this was better. The Tower might be the outer stronghold, but this place was the Enemy’s Heart Home. Yes, this was much better.

  A guard was coming around the corner of the house, and inside, he sensed, bodies were moving…

  35. HARTSHALL

  Cort Remming had not been this close to City Boss Roth since the man had pinned his badge on him ten years ago at his induction ceremony. Back then, that occasion had been nothing like this. Back then, Remming was just one among a dozen guard academy graduates being inducted that year.

  He leaned against a counter in the Hartshall kitchen, savoring the aromas of grilling meat and spices. The city boss moved about the kitchen, keeping up a steady stream of stories, comments, and anecdotes as he prepared the meal.

  The Railwalkers’ plan had called for the illusion of an intimate dinner for Roth and his three remaining cronies from the old days: Jim Shaw, Harold Carter, and Sarah Weldt. Remming had to shave his mustache to impersonate Shaw, but he figured he had the easier end of the deal when he considered Brewster’s plight. They hadn’t been able to find a female guard as large as Sarah Weldt, so Rob Brewster had to dress up in drag, in a silver dress with a long black wig. Jaffa Armstrong, who needed only the application of a little gray to his kinky hair for him to sub in for Carter, had kidded Brewster that he ought to consider moonlighting as a Weldt impersonator at the Drag Strip, a transvestite club in the south end. Brewster had not been amused.

  Remming was surprised that this scenario should mean Roth himself was doing the cooking, but he shrugged and took it in stride. To each his own. If Roth liked to cook, Remming just hoped the man was good at it. He wasn’t particularly anxious about the whole night. Auden had implied that this assignment was a dangerous one, that he could easily end up dead, but Remming wasn’t buying that. Assuming the Railwalkers were right about the Beast’s objectives, and assuming that the Beast was stupid enough to fall for this trick, Remming had no doubt the guy would be taken down before he got anywhere near Roth and the guards pretending to be his cronies. And the fact tha
t Micah Roth was playing himself in this little charade convinced him that this was so. Remming was sure Gage would never have let Roth participate in this farce if there was the slightest chance of the city boss being in danger. Still, danger or not, Remming was just as happy to feel the weight of his pistol under his armpit. They were all armed, the guards with the standard .9 mms, Roth with an ancient .357 magnum, a real museum piece.

  The old man continued to talk nonstop, taking the responsibility off the guards for doing any acting or impersonation. He kept up a running commentary on the state of the city and the progress of the dishes he was preparing, all interspersed with stories and recollections. Remming had to give the man that: He knew how to tell a story and make it entertaining. And his liquor was good. If the food was as good as the talk and the liquor, with the other guys outside poised to take the Beast down, Remming figured he and the others were in for an enjoyable night, though it would probably end abruptly once the Beast was caught. He promised himself he’d get as much out of this assignment as he could before the shoe dropped.

  Between stories Roth had explained the various steps to what he was doing with the food, though they hadn’t really registered with Remming. Remming didn’t cook, beyond tossing a frozen dinner in his micro or boiling coffee. Roth was preparing some sort of venison steak inside a pastry shell, with asparagus and roasted potatoes to go with it.

  “So the landlord points to a sign on the wall, ‘cash today, credit tomorrow,’” said Roth, spinning out another story. “And Cochrane, he’s got no money, but he knows if he doesn’t buy drinks for this crowd, he’s not getting their vote. So he tells the landlord to hang on a minute, and steps out into the desert. He looks around and sees a raccoon climbing into the tavern’s garbage. He’s in the zones, so naturally he’s got his gun on him. So he pulls it out, pots that old ’coon right off the garbage pail. Pulls out his buck knife, strips the hide, and takes it back into the tavern.