by Ian McHugh
He nudged the horse forward one step at a time.
But Cordrey was right. The stone and its Crossing were dead. It seemed nearly all were these days, and there were so few shamans to tend those that were left.
Easric dropped down from his horse beside the stone. One eye on Cordrey, he pulled leaves of sweetgrass and wove them into a braid and tied it into a loop. He tossed it over the top of the stone and it hung there, skewed. He asked the stone for its blessing.
Cordrey laughed at him.
Easric thought of killing him. Crossing into Imperial lands was trouble enough. Hauling a captive along while he did it was madness. He laid his hand on his revolver.
“So no hanging after all,” Cordrey said. “No vengeance for the people or object-lesson to ornery boys. And no swinging trophy for the great Warden Dane.”
Easric glared, but his hand fell away from his revolver.
* * *
Chapter 3
In which our man of action reads a book.
Easric lay naked but for his hat. His trousers lay nearby, legs tied together, stuffed with the things that had needed to stay dry: his revolver, powder horn, matches, notebook and lead stylus, and the rest of his clothes. As his horse had plowed the river, he’d worn it around his neck.
Sun dried him, tightened his skin. Breeze rattled the grass and reeds. It made his hairs stand on end and his balls pull up. It felt very nice.
Freedom Cordrey was not naked. He’d been dragged through the River Lentenlyf, still bound, with a horse lead wrapped beneath his arms. He’d nearly drowned. His clothes were soaked and wouldn’t dry for hours. He lay in the sand, miserable, like a netted fish.
Easric read, book shielding his eyes from the sun.
“Your father lied to you, Beatrice,” Easric said solemnly. “Now put down the pistol and let’s talk.”
Cordrey said, “All that trouble you’ve given them over the years, if they catch you this side of the river, they’ll hang you.”
“Yep,” Easric said.
“Papa would never deceive me so!” Beatrice exclaimed defiantly.
“There’s proof!” Easric declared, and he threw down the papers he’d retrieved. “It was the General, your father, who betrayed your dear brother to the Sorcerer’s men. Your brother’s life was the price your father paid for the secret of Rosemond. Anything to restore his lost honor. Even you, Beatrice, would he sacrifice for his vanity.”
“I’m not a wanted man over here,” Cordrey said. “They’ll hang you, and then they’ll set me free. Funny how things switch around just by crossing a river.”
Easric turned a page.
Beatrice’s eyes raced along the pages, widening in horror at each line. “No, no! I won’t believe it! My brother, my brother, to what terrible doom has our father condemned you?” Her pistol fell to the floor. She poured forth her heartbreak into a soprano shriek of despair, and swooned.
“You don’t care they hang you, do you? But they set me free, that would burn you up,” Cordrey said.
“Yep,” Easric said.
Easric caught her in his firm but gentle embrace. He patted her cold and deathly cheek until her long lashes fluttered open in response.
“I guess you can’t let them catch you, then,” Cordrey said.
“Oh, Easric, can you forgive me? They poisoned my heart with tales of your savage appetites. How could I have known they were lies? Only forgive me and swear you’ll see justice done. Avenge my brother; avenge me! Only such generous manhood as yours can stand firm before the likes of my father.”
“‘Generous manhood,’“ Easric said. “Got that right.”
* * *
Easric dressed. He made a hobble of rawhide so Cordrey could walk but not run. He tied Cordrey’s hands in front of him and dallied the extra rope.
Cordrey walked while Easric rode. The going was slow. It would take them a week or more to get to Rose Mound.
* * *
“That supposed to be you on the cover there?” Cordrey asked.
The illustration was a woodblock print. It showed a man from the waist up, hairless chest broad, shirt somehow both tight and undone, as if shirts weren’t made what could cover a chest like that. He held a revolver in one hand, a rose in the other. The revolver was smoking, and the lines of the smoke formed a languid woman of unlikely curves reclining on a pile of gold. Her eyes were come-hither. The man’s face was bold. Its one scar was perfectly placed to accent his jaw.
“They ain’t never seen you have they?” Cordrey said.
Easric was blond and blue-eyed and broad as a bull. There it ended. He was not tall. He was hairy as a wolf except where scars marked him. His small ears stuck out through shaggy hair and got in the way of his hat sitting right. His nose was broken three ways, and his upper lip cleft by a knife wound so awful he had to talk with care so as not to mix his sounds. It wasn’t the most terrible wound on his body, just the one that everyone saw.
“And that woman, we both know she’s wasting her time,” Cordrey said.
* * *
There was nothing of this land to tell it was Imperial. These grasses were the same as those of the March, west of the Lentenlyf. These rocks here were the same quartz and chert and limestone. These antique hills, the same alluvial wash. It was the same sky.
They waded through grasses grown four feet tall.
There wasn’t a spirit to be felt anywhere, neither a Crossing for it to call home. The sweetgrass didn’t smell the same.
Still, Easric picked flowers as they went and tucked them into the band of his hat.
Evenings, Easric hog-tied Cordrey, feet bound to hands. Eyes cool, Cordrey’s hate lay just beneath. Easric could’ve warmed his hands by it.
He knew what Cordrey was thinking. He was thinking how Easric would die. He was playing out stories in his pretty head, picking the best parts of each. And when he’d made a story he liked well enough, Freedom Cordrey would make it happen.
It’s what Easric would have done were he in his place.
He didn’t make a fire. He read as long as daylight allowed, as much as he could stand.
* * *
Easric knelt near the dying outlaw and shook his head sadly. “I’m sorry to have done it, Billy, but you gave me no choice. Here you are; drink up. It will help ease your passing.”
Billy took the flask Easric offered and tried to bring it to his lips, but he shook too badly and the liquid only spilled. Easric held the young bandit’s hands in his own as gently as he might those of an infant, and he helped him to drink. It was whiskey, and the dying man sighed with contentment as that heart-strong draught of those sons of the plains dulled his pain.
“How can you be so good to me, knowing all the evil I’ve done?” the young brigand whispered. He coughed, and a ruby droplet of his failing lifeblood quivered on his tender lip.
“The world dealt you a bad hand, Billy,” Easric said somberly. “Had things been different, I know you’d never have served the Sorcerer’s cause. Were life not so cruel, we might have fought side by side. Think on that, Billy. Think on that.” Then the light faded from that misguided youth’s eyes, and Easric brushed them gently closed. “God take and keep you, Billy.”
Easric threw the book down. Had he been a witch, he’d have set it afire with nothing but his eyes.
“That what you think?” he spat at Cordrey, “The world’s dealt you a bad hand?”
Cordrey frowned, confused.
“Know what I think?” Easric said. “I think you’re a goddamn parasite, you and everyone like you. And you weren’t born that way, and the world didn’t make you that way. It was your choice. And the only whiskey you’re getting is what I piss on your grave.”
Cordrey smiled. Then he burst into a fit of laughter that left him wheezing. “Billy,” he said. “You’re a slow reader, Dane. For days I’ve been watching you build up a good steam. If anything was going to make you blow, I knew it’d be Billy.”
“You’ve read this?�
�
“I’ve read them all. ‘Know your enemy,’ just like the Saint says.”
“You think I’m anything like the man in this book, you don’t know me from shit.”
“You ain’t nothing like the man in that book. But you’d like to be, and that’s all I need to know.”
It was true, he would have liked that—if a gentle-hearted lawman stood any chance at all.
* * *
Chapter 4
In which what the reader has long suspected would happen, happens.
Four days, and they’d not seen a soul. It was too much to hope that luck would continue. Around noon he saw the Imperial patrol some two miles out. Two men on horseback. And they saw him. They turned and headed straight towards him.
He thought to make a run, but there was Cordrey on foot, and he’d be damned if he let the bastard go.
“You’d best shoot them now,” Cordrey said.
Easric ran options, rejected them all. He kept his revolver holstered. He didn’t draw the shotgun. He put the horse to a small clearing in the tallgrass then dropped down and stood calmly, hands clasped at his belt.
“They’ll arrest you,” Cordrey said.
The soldiers came in at a canter.
“You know what I’ll do,” Cordrey said.
They slowed to a trot. They wore unsubtle overcoats of Imperial red. One was older, the other just out of boyhood. Both had carbines out but not up.
“You’ll regret this,” Cordrey said. And when Easric still paid him no mind, he shouted, “It’s Easric Dane! It’s Easric Dane. Shoot him. Shoot him, goddamn you, before he kills us all!”
The two men did not shoot. They reined in their horses just inside the clearing, ten yards away.
“He doesn’t look anything like Easric Dane,” the older said.
“Look at his damn coat,” Cordrey said. “Who else would he be?”
The insignia sewn to the shoulder of Easric’s brown greatcoat was a ragged patch of linen cut into a 2. It was plain as day who he was.
The younger snapped his carbine up, aimed it at Easric.
The older soldier looked pleased. “And who are you?” he said to Cordrey.
“Rasmus Tripp,” Cordrey said. “From Hallow Hill, south of here—”
“I know Hallow Hill,” the soldier said.
Easric let Cordrey spin his lie. It bought him time while he took the soldiers’ measure.
“I got a farm there. Dane, he rode in, he took me, said he’d kill my family I didn’t come. Said I was security. Look what he done to me!” and Cordrey held up his bound hands. Four days of tight rawhide had ruined the flesh of his wrists.
“Warden Dane,” the older soldier said. “You’re a long way from home, in violation of treaty. Why are you here?”
“He’s going to Rose Mound,” Cordrey said.
The soldier’s eyes narrowed. “You going to say anything, Dane?”
Easric ignored him, eyes on the younger soldier. Easric knew his type. He was smarter than his superior; stuck with a duty he abhorred, like holding a gun on a lawman he respected, but too disciplined to protest. Easric liked that. He hoped the young man lived.
To the young soldier he said, “I’m Easric Dane. And this here is Freedom Cordrey. He’s a murderer. I’ve caught him. And I’m taking him to hang.”
The young soldier’s eyes went wide and he blinked away sweat, but his carbine didn’t waver.
“You’re lying,” the older soldier said. “Cordrey’s got no reason to come this far across the river. And even if he did and you’re taking him for hanging, you’re going the wrong way.” Behind Easric stretching west was a trail of bent grass that any trained scout could see. “Throw down that revolver.”
So Easric did.
The soldier dismounted, told the younger to keep his carbine on Easric, and went to Cordrey. He drew a knife.
Easric said to the young soldier, “You let him free that man, he’ll kill us all.”
The older scoffed. He knelt to cut Cordrey’s hobble.
“Does he look like a farmer to you?” Easric said.
The younger shifted his carbine to Cordrey.
The older sliced through the cord.
Easric cracked Cordrey hard in the ribs with an elbow, twisted the soldier’s arm and wrenched it up across his back. The knife flew. He held the arm there, threw his other across the soldier’s throat, used him as a shield. The younger was now on the ground, carbine up and aimed. “Let him go!” he said, no clear shot.
Easric had lost sight of Cordrey.
Easric tried to fish the soldier’s revolver from its holster, but it was already gone.
A shot cracked from close behind. The soldier’s temple burst in an ugly spray and he went rag-doll in Easric’s arms. Easric kept him up, kept him facing the younger soldier. Had Cordrey wanted him dead, he’d have done it already.
Easric stood between two armed men. He couldn’t face one without turning his back to the other.
He made hand signs to the young soldier, hoped he understood.
The soldier nodded, and Easric dropped the corpse and threw himself flat.
The soldier fired over Easric. Then his eyes widened in panic. He dropped the spent carbine, went for his revolver, then lost his nerve. Instead of drawing, he turned and took two steps for his horse. Crack, and the soldier fell, shot in the small of his back.
Easric rolled standing and looked behind him. Cordrey crouched half-hidden between dense tufts of waist-high grass on the clearing’s edge. He was grinning wide, revolver on Easric.
Easric scrambled for his own revolver lying in the grass ten feet away, and Cordrey fired. The revolver bounced and Easric jerked back. He dove again and Cordrey shot it again.
Easric gave up and spread his arms. “Come on, you son of a bitch. This is what you been dreaming of, ain’t it?”
“I got bigger dreams,” Cordrey said.
Easric frowned, then he closed his arms together in front, ready to be tied.
Cordrey said, “I ain’t coming within ten feet of you, gun or no gun.”
“Well, what then?”
Cordrey took the reins of Easric’s horse in his bound-up hands, held them and the revolver together, and led the horse away. When he had a safe distance, he mounted the horse more smoothly than Easric would have believed possible with his hands bound. That’s what practice would get you.
Cordrey shot one of the Imperial horses in the head. Then he shot the other.
Six shots. Easric lunged for his revolver, came up and fired. It wouldn’t fire.
“You know where to find me, Dane,” Cordrey said, and he waved Easric’s copy of The Rosemond Gold, and he rode off.
“There ain’t no gold!” Easric shouted.
“Then why are we here?” Cordrey called back.
Easric threw the lead-mangled revolver after him, howling curses. Then he stood alone in breeze-stricken grass and let his eyes drift over the dead.
* * *
The young soldier wasn’t dead. Easric knelt beside him. The soldier’s head thrashed and his hands clawed the earth. He fought back screams through clenched teeth. His legs didn’t move at all.
Easric held him, grabbed his chin in a vice to focus him and bent close. “Listen to me. Are you listening?” And though the soldier’s eyes were wild, he nodded. “You’re dying,” Easric said. “Do you understand?”
“No.”
“Listen to me. You’re going to die.”
“I can’t.” He gasped fast short breaths to manage his pain.
The soldier was Imperial. He had no spirits. The grass would not sing him to sleep. He’d die alone. “I’ll stay with you,” Easric said. “I won’t leave.”
“I can’t die,” the soldier said, “Not now. God won’t take me. I sinned.”
“You didn’t sin. You were going for cover.”
“I tried to run. I’m going to die a coward and he won’t take me.”
Easric had abandoned the Imperia
l faith long ago. Their bloody god was good for curses and little else. He fought to keep his thoughts silent.
Then the soldier’s eyes cleared. “You’re Easric Dane,” he said. “They say you’re a saint.”
That wasn’t part of Lovelace’s romances. Some Imperial soldiers had heard rumors and told their own stories, ones Easric liked even less. Easric was plagued by stories. “I’m not a saint.”
“They say it’s a blessing to be killed by a saint.” The young soldier touched a finger between his eyes. “I promise I won’t look away.”
* * *
Chapter 5
In which the witch’s intention becomes clear.
Rose Mound was the largest mound known. It lay alone. From balloon, the scalloped cut of its tiers made it resemble its namesake. Or once it had. Fifty years ago, prospectors and treasure hunters had torn the thing down.
It had always been extinct, so no one had cared.
It was now an unsightly hill, bearing only traces of the pre-historic labor that had shaped it. It was sheathed in scaffolding. There was an enormous wooden construction. Teams of oxen turned a great wooden wheel, which turned a cog, which turned another and so on, until the entire assembly turned a great auger, boring out the mound at an angle. Dirt spilled into waiting rail-carts. They hadn’t used steam. There was not enough water. The auger flickered with witchlight runes.
Hard by was a mining camp. Its tents and shacks and sheds were set in neat rows. These were not the raggedy gold-diggers of the high plains. These were Imperial engineers.
Easric had a telescopic spyglass to his eye that he’d taken from one of the dead soldiers’ packs, days before. He saw a group of soldiers, an officer leading them. With them was a man. His hair was worked into braids, river-polished stones threaded through them; agates and opals and turquoise, green and yellow and blue like captured stars. Those beads said he was a shaman. Spirit-dead as Imperial land was, no shaman would come willingly this side of the river. He was bound in chains.