Malice of Crows

by Lila Bowen

  When he ran out of bullets, he dropped the Henry on the table and went for his pistols. Three fellers made a break for the door, and although Rhett winged one of them in the back, they didn’t stop running.

  Rhett was the only man still standing, high up on the long table. The Rangers who were left squirmed on the wood boards, their breakfast forgotten and splattered all over the walls, along with more blood than any reasonable person wanted to see at a meal. The table shook with every step as Rhett walked to where he remembered Virgil and Milo falling side by side. When he looked down, he saw Virgil slumped against the wall, a kerchief around his busted knee. Beside him, Milo had clearly fled the mortal plane; a good gut shot would do that to a man who wasn’t made of sterner stuff.

  “You shoulda chose better sides,” Rhett observed, looking down.

  “Go to hell.”

  Virgil fumbled for his pistol, and Rhett didn’t budge. When the old man’s hammer clicked harmlessly on an empty chamber, Rhett snorted.

  “Thought you were loyal to the Captain, Scarsdale.”

  “You ain’t the Captain, cur.”

  “The old Captain said different. You were there.”

  Virgil spit, his tobacco a brown spot of slime mixing with his brother’s blood.

  “There ain’t no proof of that.”

  Rhett couldn’t stop chuckling. “You forget. Only the man who walks away gets to tell the story.” And he shot Virgil in the chest, easy as pie.

  Rhett didn’t like what happened next. It reminded him all too much of those burned-out villages that left folks like his mama and brother alone and on the run. But he also understood enough about the world to know that if he left any of the turncoat Rangers alive, they’d rain down hell on his head for the rest of his days. They’d join up with Haskell or head back to the main office, wherever it was, and the whole damn territory would be hunting the Shadow and his ragtag band of supposedly turncoat murderers.

  The Captain had understood Rhett and his destiny. These fellers just saw an uppity Injun claiming what they figured was theirs.

  He reloaded his guns from a dead man’s bullet pouch and walked around the table, stopping at each feller still drawing breath.

  “Would you call me Captain?” he asked the first one.

  The man spit on Rhett’s boot and took a bullet for his trouble.

  The second man he asked called him a cocksucker, and he took a bullet, too.

  Three of the fellers were too far gone to answer. One just whispered, “Kill me.” That feller had a hole in his head and wasn’t gonna last long anyway, so Rhett obliged him. Of all the men left, of the ones who could speak, not a one admitted he would call Rhett Captain.

  Not a one survived.

  When Rhett got around to the final corner, he saw a flash of the familiar faded red he was looking for, so he jumped down to move a big dead feller aside and found Earl cowering, covered in somebody else’s blood and shaking. Earl looked up at Rhett, his eyes white around with terror.

  “I never killed anybody before,” he said.

  “There’s a first time for everything,” Rhett said. “They’d have done the same to you. Hell, looks like they tried pretty hard.”

  Earl touched the red splotch on his arm. “Never been shot before, face on and point blank, neither. I could see his eyes, Rhett. They were full of hate. So I… I killed him.”

  Rhett exhaled and shrugged. “You get used to it.”

  “That’s just it, lad. Don’t think I will. It’s a sin to kill. Sure, I had many a sin to my name, but nothing like this. I saw his eyes go empty, heard his last words. Not even a priest within a hundred miles, I bet. No one to hear his confession.”

  “Reckon he didn’t feel like confessing. Considering the name he called me and the bullet he put in my own hide, he didn’t strike me as a religious man.”

  “He couldn’t confess, even if he wanted to. Even if he needed to. He died too fast. But I’ll be heard, by God. So listen well. Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. Oh, I have sinned many and much, and my last confession was so long ago I can’t even remember it. Some firebox of a church in New Amsterdam. I’ve lusted, and I’ve drank, and I’ve gambled, and I pretty much met the golden calf I was warned about, and I smiled at him. And I’ve taken the Lord’s name in vain.”

  “Well, goddamn, boy, who hasn’t?” Rhett was feeling impatient and knew that the longer they waited around, the braver the fellers outside would get.

  “Every moment of my life is like being trapped in a box, lad. I can’t get out. It’s dark in here and dreary, and my brother’s always telling me I failed him, and the drink’s not enough to take it away. I wake in the night crying, feeling my every loss, my every defeat. Anger’s been the only thing keeping me going, and I thought it was you I was angry at, but it was me. It was always me.”

  “That’s bullshit, and you know it. You just got to get up and keep walking until things get better.”

  Earl grabbed Rhett’s pant leg and yanked, his eyes going wide and desperate. “I’m not done, and you’ll listen, lad! I swear you will! Somebody has to hear it, and since the worst of my sins happened after I met you, you’ll damn well take in every word. I remember what happened in Buckhead, and I would do it again. So tell that to God, when you see him, will you?”

  “I’m doing my best not to have that happen to either of us, donkey-boy, so get up and let’s get the hell out of here.”

  Earl shook his head, fat tears squeezing out of his green eyes. “I can’t.”

  “Well, I’ll help you, then.” Rhett held out his hand.

  Earl clenched his teeth and closed his eyes and shook his head harder. “No, lad. That’s just it. It’s not that I can’t get up. It’s that I don’t want to. That I don’t deserve to.”

  “Deserving’s got nothing to do with it. You just got to —”

  “I’m sorry, Rhett. I’m done. This will be my last sin, and a mortal one it is. God will understand.”

  Before Rhett could ask him what he was sorry for this time, Earl put a pistol to his chest and pulled the trigger. In the silence, the gun was nearly deafening, and the air filled with silvery-gold sand. The pistol fell with a thump, and Earl’s clothes fluttered softly down.

  Rhett scrabbled at his eye with his fist, fighting the dust and the tears all at once. It hit him like a silver bullet to the gut and left him gasping. He couldn’t grasp it. Couldn’t understand what he’d just seen.

  “Goddammit, donkey-boy,” Rhett gasped, surprised at the rage and sadness that welled up in his chest. “I didn’t like you, and you didn’t like me, but you would’ve called me Captain. We could’ve found a good place for you. I can’t believe you would do it, I can’t…”

  Falling to his knees, he plunged his fingers into the pile of sand and squeezed the slippery grains in bloody hands that couldn’t quite grasp enough.

  “Goddammit, Earl! Why’d you do it? Why’d you… Didn’t you know… Didn’t you know people cared about your dumb ass? Goddammit. You never said… I didn’t know… I mean, you were sad, and we knew it, but… hellfire!”

  Rhett carefully opened the pouch around his neck and poured in some of the golden sand, wishing for something more concrete to carry with him. Earl’s bag was beside his clothes, and Rhett picked it up and poked through it, but all he found were an empty wine bottle, a ball of old cheese, and the jar that held Earl’s brother’s ashes. Not knowing what else to do, Rhett opened it up, scooped in Earl’s ashes, and tucked it back in the bag, along with all the pistols and knives it could hold. If he was leaving here without the full backing of the goddamn Rangers, he was going to take every weapon he could. Even for monsters, life came with a one-way ticket, and he wasn’t ready to get on that dusty coach.

  After reloading his pistols with more spare bullets from the dead Rangers, Rhett stood and surveyed the scene. At least Conchita had managed to get away. He hoped.

  “I’m coming out,” he called, standing just inside the open door.
<
br />   Far as he could figure, there were at least three Rangers still walking, maybe more if anybody had slept in, finished eating early, or taken to hiding in the outhouse. He hadn’t heard any gunshots besides Earl’s and his own in quite some time, which meant his posse hopefully had the ponies ready to go and had alerted Cora to, well, whatever the hell had just happened.

  There was no answer to his shout, but just in case, he grabbed a hat off the nearest Ranger, slung it up on Conchita’s switch broom, and waggled it in the doorway. Nobody shot at it, which he took as a good sign. Readjusting the piss pan under his binder and glad so far nobody had been able to test its ability to stop bullets, he stepped out into the dull shine of a mostly gloomy day. Every hair on his body was up and quivering, every inch of him sang with pain, and the air was filled with a deep disquiet. Some of the excitement had sloughed off, and he ached in every bone, felt the tug of every inch of healing flesh. A deep, painful thrum in the meat of his buttock suggested that at least one silver bullet had found him, and somebody would probably have to dig it out, and soon.

  Still no one shot at him. Heart in his throat and et up with worry, he looked to Cora’s wagon, which was turned the way he’d requested with Samson already up in his traces, calmly waiting. There was no sign of Cora, though. Then, out by the pony corral, Rhett saw the last goddamn thing he wanted to see: Dan and Winifred with their hands up, and a roughed-up Ranger with a rifle against Sam Hennessy’s spine. Two more Rangers – or ex-Rangers, by Rhett’s count, and young, scared ones at that – had their guns turned on Dan and Winifred. Except for these last two, they were all staring at him.

  “You drop your guns and hand over that Captain’s star, or your friends die,” the leader said.

  Rhett racked his brain but couldn’t put a name to the man’s snarling, ugly face.

  “Are you even a Ranger?” he asked, handing over neither the star nor the guns.

  The man poked Sam’s back with the rifle, and Sam cried out, wrenching Rhett’s heart.

  “Hell yes, I’m a Ranger. Rode with the Captain for ten years. Who the hell are you?”

  “I’m the man he wanted to be Captain. I rode with him for a couple of months. I killed the siren at Reveille and the Cannibal Owl, up north in the mountains. Also took down some Lobos that had captured the Captain and most of the Rangers. But I don’t remember seeing you around.”

  “Drop your guns and shut up,” the man growled.

  “Don’t believe I will. Now where were you when I was saving the Captain’s ass these last few months?”

  “I was on patrol, you little shit, and even though he didn’t do a thing to deserve it, I will blow Sam Hennessy’s spine out of his belly if you don’t drop those guns.”

  Rhett’s eye flickered to Dan and Winifred. Winifred looked furious, but Dan just winked. Which was just like the coyote, to go making fun when shit was serious. Dan’s eyes flicked down to the gun pointed at… his belly. So these new Rangers didn’t know that Dan and Winifred were coyotes, which meant they most likely didn’t know Rhett was a skinwalker, too.

  The head man cocked his rifle. “Last chance to drop the guns. I don’t wanna hurt Sam, but I will.”

  Rhett put the Henry down gently and was just reaching for his pistols when a cold shadow swooped overhead. Considering how big it was, he didn’t have to look up to know that there was only one critter in the area that could throw so much shade.

  “Holy shit! A dragon!” he hollered.

  When the Ranger looked up for just a second, Rhett whipped out his pistols and shot the feller. His aim was off, but he got him in the thigh, and the man fell to the ground hugging his leg, his rifle forgotten. The other fellers popped off their shots, but Dan and Winifred were already moving in for the kill. Sam staggered and fell to the ground, and Rhett hurried to his side to make sure he hadn’t actually taken a bullet.

  “You little —” the Ranger started from the ground, but Rhett shot him in the chest without a second thought and kneeled by Sam.

  “Did they get you, Sam? You gonna be okay?”

  He helped Sam sit up and kinda cradled the man in a way that felt both enormously awkward and fantastically intimate. Sam looked up at him, face streaked with grit and blood, and smiled that sunny smile that made everything better.

  “Just the bullet in the shoulder and a twisted ankle, I reckon.”

  They just stared at each other for a long moment while Dan and Winifred killed the other two Rangers with their own pistols. Cora landed nearby and huffed smoke like a question mark.

  “Did we get them all?” Rhett asked. “Looks like Cora’s hungry.”

  Dan and Winifred looked at one another, and Dan nodded, shucked his clothes, and became a coyote. The coyote sniffed the ground and took off for the chain of outbuildings at a gallop. Rhett inspected Sam’s bullet wound with the tenderness he would show a newborn baby and determined that the bullet had gone in one side and out the other, leaving a nice, clean hole. He was so accustomed to his own bullet wounds closing up that it felt right peculiar to gently pluck Sam’s shirt away from the bleeding wound and stuff his own kerchief over the hole that was making no attempt to heal itself.

  Winifred kneeled, too, but a respectful distance away from Sam. “Rhett, did you take any damage?”

  He shrugged and wiggled, hunting for pain. “Just twenty bullets or so, some in and some out. Reckon there’s a silver bullet in my buttock. Damn thing’s rattling around but won’t quite heal up. Another ugly scar.”

  “Your scars aren’t ugly, Rhett,” Sam said softly. His hand landed on Rhett’s.

  “I’ll leave you to it,” Winifred said, standing with a knowing smirk and walking back over to the half-saddled ponies.

  “I don’t know, Sam,” Rhett said, feeling a flush creep up. “Nobody much prizes mangled eyes, far as I can tell.”

  “Then they’re not looking hard enough. We all got scars. You just wear yours closer to the surface than most. I’m gonna have a fine one from this damn bullet. Cora can fix me up, right?”

  Rhett nodded. “Yep. She’s handy with that sort of thing. I broke my leg plum in half once, and she sorted it back, good as new.”

  “Did you like being with her?” Sam asked, real low.

  “I… I got other things on my mind right now. You, for example.”

  Rhett was getting pretty good at looking into Sam’s eyes, his heart racing and his skin tingling. For his part, Sam did not seem to mind.

  Dan walked up, pants on and slipping his bloodied shirt over his arms. “All I found was Conchita, and she’s got no quarrel. Everyone else is dead. All the Rangers. And I found this.”

  Looking pained and sorrowful, he held up Earl’s rustred shirt, once the only beacon that drew Rhett back to humanity. It looked sad and empty now, silvered with sand. The stains of wine and grease dotted it, and that simple reminder of Earl’s last moments was like a screw turning painfully in Rhett’s heart.

  “One of the Rangers must’ve got him,” Dan said.

  Rhett hated how much relief he felt, hearing someone else say it. It wasn’t a pretty lie, but it was prettier than the goddamn truth. Rhett owed it to Earl to never let the others know what had really happened.

  “He didn’t deserve that,” Sam said.

  “Hell no, he didn’t.”

  “Help me up, will you, Rhett? We got work to do. Folks can’t see… what’s left of this place. They wouldn’t understand.”

  Rhett stood and helped Sam to his feet. The three men shared the kind of look that Rhett figured a feller took to the grave, the kind of look that said they were going to do something down and dirty and necessary, and there was no going back once it was done.

  “We got to burn it, then,” Rhett said.

  Dan and Sam nodded their agreement, but like Rhett was the slow one just catching up.

  “But first, we take everything we need. We load up that wagon, maybe take another. Bullets, guns, food, magic shit. Clothes that ain’t covered in Ranger bl
ood and shot full of holes. And we bury the Captain.”

  “No!”

  Rhett and Dan turned in surprise to stare at Sam, who looked stricken at first but firmed it up into confidence.

  “Rangers don’t get buried, they get burned. We burn him with the rest. It’s what he would’ve wanted.”

  “You’re right,” Dan said. “He would.”

  “Then let’s get to looting and start setting fires,” Rhett said, feeling the tug on his belly from the east, already pulling him back on the trail. “We still got a lich to kill.”

  It was right pretty, the sight of a fire that big. When they’d burned Reveille on top of the siren’s husband, Rhett had felt a profound sense of waste and loss, like maybe that half-built little town could’ve found finer folks to run it. But considering what had passed that morning at breakfast, Rhett knew that the best of the Rangers had left the earthly plane with the Captain, and the dregs that were left would’ve brought no good to the world. They were like a pack of dogs turned wild by the loss of their master, and no one else could’ve taken them in hand. Rhett knew they would’ve spread only violence across the land. He knew that putting down those beasts meant other, more peaceful folk could go on living.

  Their hate – for monsters, for Injuns, for anything other – was like rabies, a thing that spread man to man and did more destruction than any one feller could ever do alone. It was, like all hatred, sprung from fear. The world needed fewer men like that with power and guns. For his part, Rhett was glad to take on the burden of fighting them. But he still wondered, not for the first time, if maybe he wasn’t the most dangerous thing around, and whether that was actually a good thing or not.

  They stood far away from the fire, although the wagons and horses were farther off still. Sam, Dan, Winifred, Cora, and Rhett, who held a glass jar under one arm. At Rhett’s urging, Conchita had taken what she wanted from the larder and set off in a packed-up wagon with a loaded gun, fast as two stout geldings could pull her. They’d looted, and Rhett reckoned he’d never feel anything but slimy, rootling through a feller’s pockets and saddlebags. He’d found all sorts of Ranger correspondence in the Captain’s bureau, but he’d left it all to burn. If the Captain’s men, hearing it from his own mouth, couldn’t accept Rhett as the new Captain, why the hell would the head fellers back east take him on? And that was before they learned what had befallen the outpost. No, better to let it burn. Better to let anyone in charge think all the Rangers had gone down in flames. If pressed, Rhett’s little posse was still officially out scouting, Captain’s orders.