by Greg Keyes
Get Aster and get back to the real world. That’s all he should care about. It was all he should focus on.
But the Sheriff was a problem, in that regard. Because he had a feeling that once the Sheriff had Aster, he wasn’t going to let David take her back to her father. So he needed a plan.
It got easier, after that, to have the single, practical problem to occupy him. That way he didn’t have to think about Hannah, her bruised face and missing teeth, her misery and her defiance.
They didn’t encounter any other towns of the size Jobe burnt, and the Sheriff kept them from ranging to look for more, but if they happened to come across a farmstead on their way—which happened more than David would have wished—it suffered the same fate. Now that they were released from what few inhibitions they had left, they had become truly monstrous, and he was certain now their bodies were changing as well. Most had taken to going shirtless, and the muscles along their arms and backs pulled in unnatural ways. Most had odd, discolored patches in their skin. The horses seemed more nervous around them.
Only the Sheriff could check them, but David foresaw that eventually Jobe might decide the fortune of his gang needn’t be tied to the taciturn rider.
A couple of days later, they started down into a valley beyond which rose a line of hills.
They were greeted by gunfire.
First came the hissing of the bullets, like angry hornets tearing through the trees, and then the stuttered booms. A boy named Jeb screamed; his horse went wild and threw him to lie groaning on the earth.
“Dismount,” the Sheriff shouted. “Take cover.”
David was already scrambling down.
“They’re at a good distance,” the Sheriff told Jobe.
“Can’t you proof against bullets, or some such?” Jobe asked. He didn’t look or sound particularly scared.
The Sheriff didn’t answer, but gave a low whistle. His dogs took off at a run in the direction of the gunshots.
“Bring the boys up behind that bank,” the Sheriff told Jobe, gesturing at a creek about a hundred feet ahead of them. “Pass these out.” He handed Jobe a box of cartridges.
David crawled over to Jeb, who was pretty much being ignored.
Jeb looked up at him. He seemed in pain, but mostly confused.
The bullet had caught him in the collarbone. David guessed it was probably broken. He had steeled himself against the sight of the blood, but found that it didn’t particularly bother him. What he wasn’t sure about was what to do.
He cut strips of cloth from Jeb’s shirt, got some water from the canteen and dabbed at it. Predictably, Jeb screamed, but David kept at it. He was surprised to see the bullet, nested in pink, finely shattered bone.
“It’s not so bad,” he told Jeb.
But then he realized the boy wasn’t breathing anymore, and his eyes were like glass.
“No,” David said. “Jeb, you can’t be dead. It’s not that bad. It’s hardly even bleeding anymore.”
But Jeb kept that empty, accusing gaze on him, and the little light that was in him leaked away.
David only looked up at the crack of more gunfire, this time very near. Gasping, he scooted behind a tree, but then he realized it was the Sheriff and Jobe’s boys firing. Even though it was daylight, the muzzle flashes hurt his eye, and the sound was high and sharp for rifles. A sort of dark cloud surrounded the boys, fretted with green strobes of light. As it grew thicker their bodies seemed to shift and change.
In the direction they were shooting, the sky was darkening with unnatural speed.
They were a hundred feet away, and none of them were paying him any attention at all. Still, he hesitated. If the Sheriff caught him . . .
But the familiar pain began. He had to get Aster. He had to take her back to her father.
So he ran, not toward the Sheriff, but off to his right. He ran as he had never run before.
Behind him, the gunfire continued.
FOUR
TO WAR
Errol was sitting in the side of the square feeling everything was a little too calm, when he was proven right. Shouts went up around the village, and a minute later, strange riders came in. Errol swung up on his feet immediately, because these fellows looked more like Jobe’s gang than Chula and his. But Chula greeted them calmly enough. After a few minutes of talking, things were less calm. Runners went off and more boys came back, armed.
Errol caught Chula and asked him what was going on.
“A gang is coming this way,” he said. “They’ve been burning towns and homesteads.”
“A man with two hounds, one black and one white?” Errol said. Chula nodded.
“That’s the sheriff,” Errol said. “He’s after us. We should leave—then he’ll leave you alone.”
“You would deprive us of a chance to fight?” Chula said. “To show our bravery?”
He seemed as serious as cancer.
“If that’s the case,” Dusk’s soft voice came from behind, “you must allow us the honor of fighting with you.”
“If you wish,” Chula said.
“How long will it take for them to get here?” Errol asked.
“The sun will be halfway from noon to sundown.”
“That’s not long,” Errol said.
“It’s long enough,” Chula grinned.
But Errol wondered if he really knew what he was in for.
The boys painted black and red jags around their eyes—it looked like they were weeping lightning. They brandished guns and bows, tomahawks and clubs. Errol’s hands were too clumsy to work either a bow or gun, so he chose a club, a single solid piece of wood with a heavy ball carved at the business end.
He was swinging it experimentally when Veronica came up.
“What are you going to do with that?” she asked.
“Fight, I guess. The Sheriff has caught up with us.”
“Has he,” she said. She studied the boys. “He’s tough, Errol. And he’s mean.”
“Well, he’s our problem,” Errol said. “It’s us he wants.”
She nodded. “I suppose I could tag along.”
“Why don’t you stay here?” he asked.
“I didn’t ask permission, Errol,” Veronica said. “Did you try to talk Dusk out of going?”
He hadn’t, and he didn’t want to say so, but Veronica just sighed and patted his arm.
“Oh, Errol,” she said.
Chula took them up a winding trail to a ridge with a good view of the country. A dense marsh lay at the foot of the hill, and a band of forest, but beyond that the land opened out into prairie and little copses of trees.
“There,” Chula said.
Errol saw them, tiny with distance.
Chula and six other boys came up to the front with long rifles and waited. Errol watched the riders enter the edge of the forest.
Chula and his shooters raised their guns to their shoulders and took careful aim. Errol wondered what they were aiming at—he couldn’t see more than the occasional movements through the trees.
But they started to shoot.
After that, things got messy quick.
The air felt suddenly heavy, the sunlight dimmed. There were no storm clouds; it was more like dark glass had been passed between them and the light—and it kept getting darker until the solar disk was paler than the moon.
A cloud of what looked like black confetti blew up from the woods below, moving impossibly fast. Chula and the others threw themselves down flat, but Errol stood riveted by the sight.
Something slapped him in the face and in the arm and belly. He winced as cries of pain went up around him, but he didn’t feel anything. He looked down, but something was covering his eyes.
He reached up and pulled off a scorpion nearly as big as his hand.
“God!” he yelped, crushing the deadly thing and batting off the others that had fastened to him. He saw Veronica calmly picking scorpions off of herself and smashing them underfoot. Dusk’s armor had spared her; but hal
f a dozen of Chula’s boys were on the ground, racked with agony.
Those that could stood and shot again. This time they were answered with tarantulas the size of softballs.
Untroubled by their stings and bites, Errol set himself to crushing the vermin, but they seemed to be multiplying, somehow. He thumped spiders off of the nearest warrior, then stomped them on the ground. He was lifting his foot to smash another when a snake suddenly darted from behind him. Reflexively he yelped and hopped back, but then he saw the snake strike a scorpion and quickly gulp it down. A bullfrog the size of a kitten leapt on another, and suddenly the ridge was swarming with reptiles and amphibians all going after the bugs. He noticed Veronica standing alone, her eyes faintly glowing like phosphorescent algae and a weird smile on her face.
He gave her an uncertain thumbs up, and she returned the gesture.
A glance back down the hill showed him figures coming up the slope, fast. It was Jobe and his boys, but moving more quickly than seemed possible. It was not just that, but something about the way they ran that seemed all wrong.
Chula’s remaining riflemen fired again. One of Jobe’s boys pitched back and flipped several times as he went down the hill. Then he hopped back up and continued in the same, loping gait. Errol saw the Sheriff emerge from the woods and break into a canter.
Chula saw it too.
“Back,” he cried.
The boys fell into a disorderly retreat, some dragging those who had fallen. Errol picked up two of the boys and started down the hill, trying not to stumble.
He followed Chula into the swamp on a winding little path. Thick columns of cypress thrust up from the surrounding water, and not far away, Errol heard something big stirring.
“Just hold off a few minutes, grandpa,” he heard Chula mutter.
Then they were through, climbing to higher ground and a fallow field beyond. At the field’s far edge, Chula stopped running, and had his warriors form up in a rough line.
Of the eighteen they had started with, only ten were still standing, and that counted Errol, Veronica, and Dusk. Most of the others moaned with pain, and a few had stopped moving altogether.
Errol remembered Shecky’s ointment. He withdrew it and gave it to Veronica.
“See if this helps,” he said. Then he turned to face the swamp.
He heard screams from the darkness, and a ragged crackle, like lightning. Something reared up above the trees, a creature that gave him an impression of both snake and crawfish before it plunged back from sight.
“That’s grandpa,” Chula said. “Let’s hope he stays in there.”
Errol was going to ask exactly what Grandpa was when Jobe and about six of his boys came out of the swamp.
As they drew closer, he saw their skin was all grey, and their teeth were sharp, like those of cats.
Dusk had hafted her spearhead onto a new pole; now she set it and charged. She struck Jobe straight on, and Errol figured that was the end of him, but instead Jobe just wrapped himself around the spear and pushed it into the ground. Dusk let go in time and reached for her sword, but another of the boys made an impossible running jump and tackled her off of Drake’s back.
Errol bellowed and charged after her. He pulled the boy off of her and punched him in the face, as hard as he could, and then again. He dropped him as three more swarmed on him, and he was just realizing how dense they were, as if their whole bodies were made of bone. The recipient of his haymakers was actually coming back up on his feet.
Dusk rose and put her back against his, and together they fought whatever-it-was the boys had become.
One of them lost an arm to Dusk’s shining blade, and they backed off. For a moment he thought they were going to quit, but then he heard a sharp report. Dusk made a funny sound and then sagged against his back. Errol punched the guy in front of him and swung around to see Jobe holding a smoking pistol. Dusk staggered forward, trying to lift her sword, and Jobe fired again. Then one of Chula’s boys arrived, whaling away at him with a tomahawk.
Dusk had fallen on her face. Errol stood to defend her, knowing suddenly that they were going to lose this fight.
Then he heard Veronica singing.
Trees splintered, and ‘grandpa’ came out of the swamp, moving horrifyingly fast.
“Run,” Veronica said. “I can’t control him for long.”
She handed him the ointment, and glanced down at Dusk.
“Go ahead,” Veronica said. “I’ll be along.”
So he cradled Dusk in his arms and ran.
Her armor hadn’t protected her from the bullets; one had gone through her chest and another a little above where her belly button would be.
He ran over a hill, followed closely by Chula and his warriors.
Fearing it was too late, he began undoing the fastenings of Dusk’s armor, trying not to look at her drawn, bloodless face.
He got the breastplate off. She had a quilted shirt underneath, now wet and sticky with blood. He peeled it up, found the lower bullet hole and smeared some of the ointment into it. Then he shucked it up further until he found the second wound and treated it, too.
That was all he could do. He got back up, ready to fight again. Chula was at the top of the ridge, also looking back, but there was nothing to see except Veronica, walking slowly—and it seemed to him unsteadily—across the field.
Aster stepped outside when she heard the gunfire. Sensible went with her, but cautioned the younger girls back in.
“That’s Chula and his Reds,” she said. “I wonder who they’re shooting at.”
Whoever it was answered a few minutes later. Shadow fell across the village, and in the distance Aster saw figures in motion on the town square. She started that way, but Sensible caught her arm.
“You can’t help,” she said.
“I can,” she said. “I have some sorcery.”
“That you may,” Sensible said, “but the boys will wither if you come near them. Stay here and protect us.”
More shots rang out, and stranger sounds, like fabric ripping.
“It’s the Sheriff,” Aster said. “I’m sure of it. He’s here for us.”
“Of course it is,” Sensible said. “And Chula is ready for him.”
They had begged Aster for stories, and not knowing that many she had told them of her journeys in the kingdoms thus far. She had done a fair amount of editing, but Sensible knew about the Sheriff.
Sensible was probably right. Veronica had come to see her the day before, and mentioned that Billy had taken ill. In fact, Aster was pretty sure that was the only reason Veronica had come, because she didn’t have a lot else to say.
The gunfire went on for a while, nearly continuous at first but then it dropped off until it was like the last few kernels of popcorn in the popper, and then silence.
Aster went back into the hut. Yelps had gone back to the village, but another girl, Summer, had joined them just after.
“Shall I plait up your hair?” Summer asked.
She wanted to say no, but the girl was so sincere and proud of her hair-plaiting ability, Aster just nodded and sat in front of her.
“I’ve never seen such fine, pretty hair,” the girl said.
For a hot moment Aster thought Summer was making fun of her, but then the tone registered, and she could read nothing disingenuous in it, so she tried to relax.
“I wish someone would come from the village with news,” Mockingbird said, making vocal Aster’s own thoughts.
It wasn’t long before the wish was granted. A girl nicknamed Heedless showed up.
“Chula and his Reds tricked them in through the swamp,” she said. “Snake Crawfish and the Horned Frog chased them back across Muddy Creek. Now it’s Sunday, so they can’t cross back, not until tomorrow, and I’ll bet Jezebel will have a word
about that.”
“Were any killed?” Sensible asked.
Heedless nodded solemnly. “The chief’s third son, the son of Walking Wolf, Mortar Red’s younges
t. Stone Breaker’s son might not live out the night, but he might.”
“And my friends?”
“Fought well,” the girl said. “The one with the armor, Dusk—she was shot. She might not live. Jezebel is with her. The other two are okay.”
“Billy?” she asked.
“He couldn’t fight,” Heedless replied, a touch of reproof in her voice.
Jezebel looked a lot like Hattie, but older. When she stepped out of the townhouse—which was now serving as a sort of hospital—her eyes fastened on Errol.
“She will live,” she said.
“I wasn’t sure the ointment would work,” Errol said.
She smiled. “I’ve seen that ointment before,” she said. “You’ve made the acquaintance of my cousin Shecky.”
“Yes, Ma’am,” Errol said.
“You can tell me about that later,” she said. “I’m sure it’s a good story, seeing as how the Sheriff was involved. Anyway, the ointment alone couldn’t have saved her—it’s not that powerful. But that and her high-and-far-off blood kept her alive until I could bring my modest skills to bear.”
“Thank you,” Errol said.
“I’ve others to tend to,” Jezebel said. “Let her rest; give her until morning before you visit.”
He watched her go back into the townhouse, uncertain what to do until he noticed Veronica, sitting in the shadows, legs crossed and head down.
He walked over.
“Well, you saved us again,” he said.
“Yeah,” she said. “Go, me.” Her voice sounded strained.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“Sure,” she replied. “I just need to catch my breath.”
He noticed she was holding her hand across her belly.
“What’s that?” he asked.
For answer she took her pointer finger and poked at her dress. The finger went into her stomach all the way to the third knuckle.
“How do you like that?” she said.
“Jesus. Does it hurt?”
“Not in the least. But I have a hole in me, Errol. That’s not right.”