He was conscious, too, of the awkward weight of his gun, bumping on his hip with every step. He hooked his thumbs in his belt to keep it still.
Bony hands folded over the saddle’s pommel - pale skinned, with a greyish tinge, and blotched with darker grey liver-spots, the man evidently as dappled as his horse. Both the rider’s gear and his horse’s tack were curiously blank, unmarked by runes. Bowley could see nothing on either man or horse to indicate that the rider was, in any regard, a Queen’s Man.
Bloody bell, a wild spook.
The cowled head turned towards him as he neared. Bowley could make out the lines of a gaunt face in the shadows gathered beneath the man’s hat. The shadows seemed to writhe across his cheeks and down his neck. A long nose protruded into the light, blotched like the man’s hands.
Bowley stopped a distance from the stranger that he hoped might appear both authoritative and deferential. Queen’s Man or not, a spook was a spook, after all, and Bowley had no wish to have his soul sucked out of him for the sake of a moment of perceived impertinence.
“I’m Bowley, local constable.” It sounded as inadequate as he felt.
The cowl dipped in acknowledgement. Bowley waited, but the man didn’t speak. The silence began to stretch.
Bowley cleared his throat and said, “You got a name, mate?”
The stranger’s reply was as oblique as any magister’s would be: “None that’s any use.” His voice was a surprise, rich and soft.
Bowley tried again, “What brings you to Useless Loop?”
“Land’s thrown up a bad dreaming, hereabouts.”
Bowley’s guts clenched. He tried to keep his reaction off his face as he said, “How do you know about it?”
The man gave a huff that might’ve been a laugh. “Land stinks of it. How do you know about it?”
Bowley considered him, disinclined to answer and wracking his brains for who the hell this wild spook might be and coming up with nothing. But, damn it all, he was far out of his depth and, wild spook or not, he was in dire need of magical aid. “Dreaming killed a man, outside town. Chewed him up something horrible. Got the body in the coolroom at the pub.”
He felt an abrupt increase in the intensity of the other’s stare. “Can I see it?”
Bowley hesitated, but knew he’d committed himself now. He tipped his head in the direction of the pub.
He started walking, not waiting for the stranger to dismount. He heard the man land, heard his steps close behind - puffs of dust and the small clinks of shifting pebbles, no thump of boot soles striking earth.
The hair stood up along the length of Bowley’s spine. Bloody spook.
Ulf and Alby levered themselves off the rail and disappeared inside the pub. Bowley led the stranger down the side and round the back. By the time they arrived, Ulf had unlocked the coolroom door and retreated to the rear porch with Alby.
Bowley let the stranger precede him through the low door. The temperature dropped sharply within the thick stone walls. The man crouched beside the body, his oilskin collapsing towards the floor, as though it were all but empty. He pulled back the tarp that covered Stink and was still for a while, a crumpled pile of shadows in the light from the door. Outside, Ulf muttered something to Alby that Bowley couldn’t quite catch.
The stranger flipped the tarp back over the body and rose, turning, the brim of his hat only inches from Bowley’s eyes. His coat sleeve brushed Bowley’s chest as he exited. Bowley stood in the darkness alone for a moment. His eyes fell on the flattened lump under the tarp. He shuddered.
Ulf and Alby watched silently as he re-emerged. Ulf’s expression offered him nothing. Alby widened his eyes a moment. Bowley hurried after the stranger, already striding back up the street. The man walked past his horse and headed for the gate. Intrigued and disturbed, Bowley followed. Maise’s porch was empty. Sweat trickled past his belt to lodge in the back of his pants.
The man stopped outside the gate. His shrouded head half turned towards Bowley. “This is where they left the body.”
“Yep.”
The stranger faced outward. Bowley scanned the surrounding bush, wondering what he saw. For a minute the man was still. Then darkness began to pour from under the fringe of his shawl, out of his cuffs and under his coat tails. Bowley squeaked.
His shadow tore itself free of the runes on his boot soles and fled back into town. The darkness pooled on the ground around the man’s feet, its edges reaching and questing. It lapped at Bowley’s toes and flowed around his heels, then released him. The man raised his arms and the darkness shattered into a thousand running shadows that raced away into the bush.
The stranger lowered his arms.
Bowley swallowed. Green bloody Christ.
The stranger stood like a statue for most of half an hour while his shadows hunted. Bowley waited with him, not daring to walk away, feeling queasy and light-headed without his shadow. At last the hunters returned. They flowed up the man’s legs, moving fast, so that Bowley had trouble making out their shapes. He thought he saw men among the dogs and roos and emus and other, smaller forms. The last shadow disappeared beneath the man’s coat.
“The town should be safe for tonight.”
Bowley nodded, only realizing after he’d done so that the man couldn’t see the gesture. He gathered up enough composure to say, “There’s a lot of prospectors out there, up the Loop.”
“Dead.”
Christ. He’d had a notion there’d be more than just Stink McClure, but the stranger’s flat appraisal rocked him, even so. “There’s a farmstead, too, up the top. Fortified. Lot of people.”
The spook didn’t respond.
“My orders are to investigate,” Bowley added.
“You’re riding out?”
“Tomorrow.”
Silence, for a while, then: “I’ll come with you. I can defend four men.”
A small part of Bowley bristled at the man’s presumption. Most of him sagged with relief.
“Have you got any rune-carved bullets?” the stranger asked.
Bowley knew the number precisely: six. He answered cautiously, “Some.”
The spook turned, his shrouded face a vague impression amid the shadows. “We’ll need more than some. Is there a runesmith in town?”
“Just the blacksmith.”
“He’ll do.”
The man brushed past and strode back into town. Bowley hurried after. The skin on his back crawled. His shadow lunged at him from the shelter of Ted Wright’s house, nearest the gate, and re-attached itself to his feet.
~ * ~
The mist was heavier the following dawn. The stranger, on his horse just outside the gate, was discernable only because Bowley knew he was there.
Bowley fumbled another carved silver bullet from his palm and pressed it into the magazine of his service carbine, then shrugged the gun from the crook of his arm into his hand and slotted the magazine home. Alby, German and young Dermott O’Shane formed a circle with him. German’s eyes were so bloodshot he had no whites left to speak of. Bowley knew his own eyes weren’t much better, having seen the state of himself in his washstand mirror. He’d spent the whole night out on his porch, his service revolver in his lap, loaded with the six rune-carved bullets he’d been issued a decade before, when he joined the Queen’s Constabulary. He doubted any of them had slept much.
Young O’Shane grabbed at a bullet that slipped between his fingers. It bounced off his thumb and tumbled in an arc to strike the ground. The older men flinched and sucked air through their teeth. All three shared a sheepish grin, their reflexes outdated, accustomed to rimfire cartridges. O’Shane scooped up the escapee and stood again, red from forehead to chin.
“No worries, mate,” said Bowley, relieved that he’d managed to load his own weapon without dropping anything and made magnanimous because of it. There was still a tremor in his hands, but much less than the day before, now that the moment was upon them.
Alby flipped the magazine cylinder s
hut on the second of his six-shooter rifles. He sniffled loudly. His cold seemed to be getting worse. “You know anything about this spook, Bowls?”
“Much as you do,” said Bowley. “German?”
“Don’t ask me, mate,” the blacksmith said. “Ve just carved fucking bullets all night.”
Young O’Shane piped up, “I heard about a dappled man, once, when I was out Ararat way. Said he came in from the desert, on foot, dressed like a blackfella and spotted all over, like his sire was one of them Dalmatian hounds. That’s all I know. Never saw him myself.”
Alby spat. “Reckon that’s our bloke. We right?”
“Yep.”
“Ya.”
The O’Shane boy nodded his head.
“No time like the present,” said Bowley.
His old brown mare, Clay, looked back at him with wide nostrils and white-rimmed eyes as he shuffled along her side. Her shadow was skittish beneath her, faint as it was, both horse and shade aware of the Dappled Man’s presence and keyed-up because of it. Bowley shoved his carbine into the sleeve in front of the saddle and patted her neck.
“Alright, old girl.” He unhitched the reins and brought them up to her neck. Alby was already aboard his chestnut mare, Nudge. German heaved himself up onto fat black Bismarck the gelding and O’Shane rose easily into the saddle of his new piebald filly. Bowley put his foot in the stirrup, grabbed a handful of mane and hauled himself up.
“Ah, shit.”
Maise, wearing an oilskin and a pair of Nev’s old pants, led Ulf’s mean-tempered roan up from the direction of the pub. Bowley held his ground while the others retreated. Maise stopped in front of him, Ulf’s idiot horse almost pulling her off balance as it danced about.
She didn’t wait to hear Bowley’s objections. “It’s my family, Robert. And I’m a better shot than anyone except you.”
He glanced at the others, waiting halfway to the gate. Alby smirked. Bowley said, “But you can’t ride for shit, love. What if we have to move in a hurry? That animal’ll break your bloody neck.”
“Don’t you ‘love’ me,” she snapped. “German can’t ride for shit, either.”
Of that, Bowley was acutely aware. “No one else volunteered.”
“I’m volunteering.”
“The spook says he can only defend four.”
“You’re the bloody constable - since when are you taking orders from him?”
“It’s because it’s your family out there that I don’t want you to come.”
“I don’t need you to protect me, Robert.”
It’s not you I’m protecting, love. It’s me. His desperation crept into his voice, “Maise, please.”
Her jaw clenched. She bowed her head, hiding her face from him. She was crying, he knew, and knew too that she wouldn’t accept any comfort from him. He dithered for a moment, then pulled Clay’s head around and prodded the horse into motion. He didn’t need to look back to know she wouldn’t follow.
The Dappled Man’s hunting shadows already roiled around his horse’s hooves, indistinct in the silvery dimness. He waited until the townsmen were a few yards behind him, then clucked his horse forward. His shadows ranged ahead of him, vanishing almost immediately from sight.
The Man’s connection to the ground, through his horse’s hooves, seemed even more attenuated, today, than it had in strong sunlight. It seemed he might, if he relaxed the will that anchored him, simply drift off into the mist.
None of them looked back as they rode from town. They didn’t need to, could feel the moment when it dissolved into the shroud of mist and trees. Their mounted shadows tucked tight beneath the horses hooves. The charms on the horses’ tack clinked loudly in the surrounding stillness.
Beside the track grew spiked grass that was only ever the colour of forgotten bones. Trees surrounded them, some twisted, some straight, all of them alien, with their bleached skins - some that leaked thick sap like blood, others with bark hanging in strips and strings as though they’d been flayed. All growing out of ground that was either rock or clay and in both cases unyielding, that gave itself only with bitter resentment to any man who wanted to farm it.
Even under mist or rain, with the air above it saturated, the land remained parched. Bowley could feel it plucking at the edges of his shadow, and knew that the land would drink him up, too, in an instant, should he ever surrender to it.
~ * ~
A couple of miles out of town, they passed a stand of twisted eucalypts, their trunks wound up and bent like wrung towels, that marked a willywilly’s hunting ground. Bowley put his left hand to his badge, tracing runes - not that a willywilly was likely to give them trouble when they had a spook in their company. O’Shane pointed. Stink McClure’s shack - the old willywilly ground a signpost on the trail. Bowley had been trying not to look. The Dappled Man kept riding, facing straight ahead.
“Bowls,” said Alby, softly. “Strikes me that a Queen’s magister’ll tow a whole company of redcoats around with him. This bloke reckons he can only protect four of us. Makes me wonder, if we come across this thing that did for Stink, whether he’ll be able to handle it.”
“Alby,” Bowley said. “I reckon you think too much, mate.”
He slipped a hand inside his jacket, wound the cap off his hip flask with thumb and forefinger, and took a swig. He glanced at Alby, staring pointedly at the flask. Bowley took another mouthful and handed it over. Alby upended it, then passed it around. It came back to Bowley from German, empty.
“Damn,” said Bowley, but without much rancour. “Greedy bloody Kraut.”
“Vasn’t me,” said German, “Vas this greedy Irish bastard, here.”
Alby sneezed loudly, startling a flock of cockatoos into screeching, deafening flight. Men and horses alike all but jumped off their shadows. Young O’Shane’s filly put her head down and pigrooted, nearly planting the Irishman into the dirt. Clay danced sideways, objecting to the younger horse’s theatrics. Bowley pulled her head around and make her walk a full circle. He patted her neck as she calmed, his own heartbeat pounding in his ears. The cockies settled in the branches above, white enough to be the spirits of the dead, like the blackfellas believed, but complaining far too loudly to be ghosts.
Neither the Dappled Man nor his horse had reacted to the commotion behind them. The Man reached a fork in the track and unerringly picked the way that led up the Loop.
“Bloodless bastard,” O’Shane muttered.
“Reckon this fog might lift?” said Alby.
Bowley looked skywards. “Not for a while, anyway.”
The track started to climb. They passed the Mitchell brothers’ place shortly after. The Dappled Man ignored that, too. Bowley noted the absence of smoke coming from the chimney pipe. He knew with a sick knotting in his guts what they’d find inside if they looked.
The trees opened out on a shelf of lichen-fringed rock. The clopping of their horses iron shoes became abruptly louder, but flattened, the echoes smothered by the mist. The flanks of the ranges rose ahead, a blue-green wall vanishing into greyness.
Bowley squeezed Clay’s ribs between his knees. When she didn’t respond, he gave her a thump with his heels. She broke into a reluctant trot to come level with the Dappled Man, her hooves striking a dissonant staccato on the rock.
The Man sat hunched in his saddle, as if guarding his darkness against leaching away into the grey surrounds. He seemed diminished - not so fearsome, now, when fearsome was what they wanted most.
“You know what we’re hunting,” Bowley said, flat.
The Hessian fringe turned towards him. The Man whispered a reply, “Broken Hill.”
It took Bowley a moment to make the connection. His mouth turned dry. Broken Hill. “Christ.”
It had been a mining town up in New South Wales, out near the edge of the desert, where the spirit of the land hadn’t yet lain down to sleep. Some bitter dream had slithered out of a seam in the rock and into the mines. Possessed by it, the miners had devoured the town and
besieged the survivors in the church for four days until the magisters arrived from Sydney Town with a train full of redcoats and organ guns packed with silver grapeshot.
So the story went.
“How?” Bowley asked. “Dreamings don’t travel. There’s never been any dreamings like that around here.”
The Man didn’t answer immediately. The trees closed in again around them. There was wood smoke in the mist, blackfellas in the scrub. A camp. Cooking fires smouldered in a second, smaller clearing, enclosed by a half circle of lean-to shelters. The tribe watched them silently between the tree trunks. The women and children stood behind the men, swaddled in possum-skin cloaks and emu feathers. The cloaks were scorched with the same dot-and-line maps that scarred the blackfellas’ skins, that connected them to the land’s power and protected them from its dreamings. The men leaned on long spears and the hip-high war boomerangs that whitefellas knew as Number Sevens, for the curve and unequal proportions of their arms.
The Year's Best Australian SF & Fantasy - vol 05 Page 34