Stone Rider

by David Hofmeyr

  He navigates the course with precision. Attacking the jumps, being cautious in the turns, taking the right line every time. No arrows shoot out from their secret channels. Not this time.

  He powers up to the second to last jump. The biggest tabletop of the course and he sails over it without thinking. He turns his front wheel in midair, floats, then plunges down the far side.

  He’s coming towards the last jump on the course when his instincts buzz. Something isn’t right.

  He keeps riding, alert. And then he hears the sound. Up ahead. Hollers and shouts…coming from the slopes of El Diablo.

  Adam pulls up at the top of the last ramp. He’s breathing hard and sweat streams down the small of his back. His riding suit clings to him. He sees them. Three dirt spirals climbing high. Three Riders coming out of the sun, careening down the lava slope like the devil’s on their heels.

  Time to haul ass.

  With a last glance, he kicks down and goes. He flies down the jump and he’s away. Flicks a look over his shoulder, sees nothing but dust. He flips a gear and feels the byke grind. It feels good under him; it feels strong. But he’s tired. He can feel the leaden weight of his legs.

  He pulls off the track, strikes out for the desert. He looks back and sees one of them at a standstill.

  ZZZLICK!

  Something shoots past his ear. He swerves and ducks down. He’s riding like a demon. Going as hard as he can.

  ZZLICK! SSSHNICK!

  Stones.

  He looks back over his shoulder and there they are. Still coming. Still flying. Except the tall one, back on a rise, sighting him with a sling.

  That’s the last thing he sees before the pain hits. And then the world spins upside down and the sky turns black.

  —

  He moans and crawls on the ground. The Drifter, out of reach, lies with her wheels spinning. Adam reaches a shaky hand to his face. His mask is gone, ripped from his mouth. His goggles, incredibly, still strapped to his head. Teeth intact. Nose unbroken. When he moves, a pain knifes through his side. Bruised rib.

  His temple throbs. Blood drips into his eye. He can feel the hot pulse of it running down his forehead, down his cheek. But it’s okay—head cuts bleed.

  He looks up at the three Riders circling him. One tall. One muscular. One on a white byke. All of them in gleaming Voddenite suits, their colors alternately black, silver and gold in the sun.

  He tries to think. Tries to order his thoughts. His vision is blurred. A ringing noise jangles in his ear. A dull pain throbs at the base of his skull. It feels like his bones have turned to rubber.

  Levi comes to a sliding stop with a back-wheel brake. The others follow suit. He lifts up his helmet visor and squints down at Adam. “Who are you?”

  Adam coughs and winces with the pain.

  “Man asked you a question,” Red says, lowering his byke to its stand.

  “Nobody,” Adam croaks, finding his voice.

  “Well, that’s all wrong,” Levi says. “I know you. And you know me.” He swings off his byke and approaches Adam. With steady hands, he reaches down, unclips Adam’s goggles and tosses them away.

  Adam knows what’s coming now.

  Vengeance.

  “You!” Levi stumbles back. He stares. And then a light comes on in his face. “Of course. I knew we put him in the ground.” He smiles, squatting on his haunches in front of Adam. “So…if it isn’t the Blackout Boy. Perhaps not broken after all. Beat up your friend, then stole his byke, I see.”

  Adam says nothing.

  Levi grins and stands, looking down on him.

  “Round here we kill for stealing bykes,” Wyatt says, sneering.

  Red steps forward, rock in hand. “Want him dead, Levi?”

  A flicker of annoyance flashes in Levi’s eyes. “If I wanted him dead, he’d be dead….Throw the damn rock away.”

  Red pulls a face and grips the rock, white-knuckled.

  “Throw it away, dumb-ass!” Wyatt spits.

  Red glares at him. “Call me dumb-ass one more time—”

  Levi spins on them. “Shut the hell up…please…for a goddamn minute.” He sighs and shakes his head. Then he looks at Adam. “Don’t ever say my life is easy.”

  “Where’s Sadie?” Adam rasps. He attempts to sit up on his elbows and flinches in pain.

  “You’ve got it bad, haven’t you?”

  “Just tell me where she is.”

  Levi smiles. “I’ll do better. I’ll show you.”

  —

  Adam’s hands are tied at the wrists and his waist is fastened to the byke frame. He’s going nowhere. On his left rides Wyatt, leering at him. On his right, Levi, whistling some inane and repetitive tune. Red takes up the rear. They pass the burnt-out wreck of a byke. A charred carcass still grips the handlebars. Wyatt rides close and delivers a savage kick to the body.

  Levi continues whistling. Adam turns away.

  He hasn’t seen living Riders for some time and he knows there’s no one beyond the Scorpions now. If there were, they wouldn’t be so relaxed. They wouldn’t be taunting him. This is the leading group—he knows it—and there’s nothing between them and the line.

  They rise up the slope of El Diablo. The heat is oppressive. Then Adam sees something that makes his heart stop in his chest. Ahead, swimming in the heat haze, a figure lashed to a tree by ropes.

  “SADIE!”

  The full horror of Levi descends on Adam. Running a few paces in front of Sadie, a red river belches and bubbles from a deep fissure. Molten lava.

  She’s too close. She’ll burn.

  He struggles in his seat and the Drifter angles and tips. He sprawls into the black dust and rolls, ignoring the pain. He comes to his feet and runs up the slope, but the rope is still wound to his waist, attached to the byke. He is jerked off his feet and slams hard onto his back. He groans and crawls upright, scrabbles through the dirt, stunned and dizzy.

  Levi shakes his head and laughs. “I can’t watch this. Free the love-struck fool.”

  Red pins him down with a knee and unties the rope. He stands and spins Adam round, unloosing the cord with a quick pull. Adam feels the rope burn. He staggers to the tree and collapses to his knees.

  Sadie’s arms are extended in front of her body, twisted over each other, and tied together. Her red bandanna is stuffed in her mouth. A rope, lashed to the tree, has been slipped through the knots that keep her arms pinned and it holds her at a slanting angle, away from the tree, leaning into the lava. Heat comes up in warping waves from the molten river. Sadie’s eyes are wide. Full of rage and fear. Her cheeks are bright red.

  Adam grits his teeth. Every cell in his body zeroes in on one task. Freeing her. He reaches for the rope and a stone whips through the air, missing his right hand by inches. He spins round and sees Wyatt, head down, sling in hand, loading another stone.

  “Next one kills the girl,” Wyatt says, not bothering to look up.

  “I’d leave those knots,” Levi says.

  “She’s your SISTER!” Adam yells. His heart hammers inside his chest. He gets up off his knees and stands, swaying. He feels like he’s going to be sick.

  “Here’s the play,” Levi says. “You’ll stand your ground and you’ll face me with that sling of yours. Kill me and you’re welcome to liberate your girlfriend. But if I kill you…well…” He looks at Sadie, then down at the bubbling lava.

  “And your thugs? They’ll let us go on our way?”

  “They’ll do as I say.” He flicks a look at each of them. Red standing solid as a mountain on one side. Wyatt, whippet-thin and tall, swinging his sling. “Isn’t that so, boys?”

  “Sure thing, Levi,” Red says.

  “See?” Levi declares, throwing up his hands. “Nothing to worry about.”

  Adam glares at him. “You killed my brother.”

  Levi smiles and looks straight back at him. “Toss the Blackout Boy his weapon.”

  Adam looks at Red, to the left of Levi. Stocky, thick-necke
d, muscular. A forbidding sight, but, as far as his slingshot ability goes, he knows he has nothing to fear. Red’s intentions are always plastered on his face. He’ll advertise his move way before he lets the stone go.

  He glances at Wyatt, standing on the right, legs akimbo, hands at the ready. Wyatt’s ability is well known. To grow up in Blackwater is to know his speed. Wyatt is not subtle. His sling emerges, hellfire quick, at the mildest provocation. Adam has seen the spectacle countless times. Each time Wyatt’s opponent has fallen. Except once, when Wyatt’s anger got the better of him. His weakness is his temper. Enraged, he’s prone to wild and wayward throws.

  Levi, on the other hand, is an altogether more complicated proposition. Adam has never seen him use his sling. All he has to go on is rumor. Stories passed from one Rider to another. But he knows the leader of the Scorpion Tribe is deadly. His face displays nothing. He stands in an easy, relaxed posture as though out for a casual stroll. But it’s his eyes…his quick brown eyes that speak of danger.

  Adam thinks back to Kane’s interrupted lesson.

  Sling won’t work with anger. A sling needs tenderness.

  He remembers Sadie pressed up against his body. Her satin skin on his skin. The vein jumping on her neck. The hot pulse of her blood.

  Hold a sling like you hold a woman. Loose. And strong at the same time.

  He didn’t know what it meant then. He does now.

  He says nothing. Focuses his mind on the sling in his hand, and what is required of him. Both he and Levi have three stones in the leather pouches at their waists.

  The fingers on Adam’s right hand itch. He thinks about the stone’s journey: exploding out from the sling’s cradle at the right moment, the top of an arc, when the powerful thrust generated by the cord’s woven Voddenite is perfect, when the momentum will carry the stone to its target at a speed of about seventy yards per second, until it pummels right through flesh and shatters bone.

  Kane told him a stone—shot from a Voddenite sling—can be more lethal than a pistol. And, in the right hands, more accurate.

  Adam shuts his eyes and goes into a kind of trance, the way he does when he rides.

  “I think he’s set to black out,” Wyatt says.

  “No,” Levi says. “I believe you’re wrong on that score, Wyatt. What we have here is someone changed into some other thing.”

  “Some other thing, Levi?” Red asks.

  Adam flicks open his eyes. He watches them. He doesn’t move a muscle. Only his eyes move, from one Scorpion to the other, alert for a sign…a tell.

  “I believe he owes us gratitude, brothers,” Levi says. “See, we fixed him. Gave him a reason to be alive. Took his ailment and left him with nothing but hate.” Levi keeps his eyes steady on Adam. “I think we may find him more formidable now.”

  “S’pose he’s gonna die all the same,” Red says.

  “Like his brother died,” Wyatt laughs.

  “My brother was a damn fine Rider,” Adam says with an even voice. “Something you’ll never be, Wyatt. Know why? Because you don’t have the skill…but mostly because you’re dumb. Dumber than Red…and Red’s dumb as a pig.”

  Wyatt’s lip curls and his face turns puce. “You goddamn…I’ll show you dumb—”

  “Wyatt, NO!” Levi barks. But Wyatt, at speed, has the sling in his hand.

  Adam is hyperaware, his senses alive, his instincts on fire. His right hand moves lightning quick to the sling, he pouches a stone in one seamless movement, and then…

  A dull knocking sound. A mallet-hitting-wood sound. Wyatt jerks his head backwards and to the side. Both arms fall limp and, when he winds his head back to them, a look of shock, of bewilderment, haunts his eyes. And, blue-black in the dead center of his forehead, a plum-sized wound. Wyatt blinks, once, twice.

  CRACK! A report echoes off the black volcano and all eyes swivel to the slope.

  Kane. Godlike and frightening in the harsh light. The terrain behind him black as night.

  Levi stares at him. “How the hell…”

  Adam has a stone pouched, index finger through the loop. Cord ends between thumb and forefinger. He flicks his eyes from Levi to Red. Both are staring at Kane. Levi with his sling at the ready. Red still fumbling with his.

  Wyatt is on his knees, surprise still etched on his face, he opens and closes his mouth like a gasping fish. He groans and tips face-first into the dirt, throwing up a puff of black dust. It sinks on him and he doesn’t move.

  Levi turns, glances at Wyatt and looks at Adam. Adam’s sling is aimed at Levi’s head.

  “Lower your aim!” It’s Red. Adam glances at him, sees his predicament. Red, with his sling ready, is aiming at Adam, feet planted apart. But Red’s hands are shaking and sweat streams from his forehead. His eyes flick from Adam to Levi, and always come back to Wyatt.

  “WYATT!” he yells. “Get up, Wyatt!”

  “Wyatt’s dead, Red. Wyatt’s dead.” Levi says this with a serene expression, swinging his sling, down low at the hip, like none of this bothers him.

  “You killed Wyatt!” Red chokes, looking at Adam. His eyes are blank. He’s in shock.

  “Take control of yourself, Red,” Levi says.

  Down the slope of El Diablo comes Kane. He leaves Adam’s byke, the Longthorn, where she stands and he comes afoot, his boots crunching. Even though his walk is ragged, he looks in total control. He’s hard as bone, Kane. Unbreakable. He moves through the dust with his slow Rider’s gait and he kicks up a dark cloud as he comes. It sticks to his riding suit and his boots are blackened with it. Even at close range, he’s difficult to distinguish from the terrain, as though he’s a shadow snatched up from the sand.

  In the glare, it’s difficult to see the extent of his injuries, but his yellow eyes still blaze.

  “Don’t you ever die?” Levi spits at his approach.

  “Did once,” Kane says. “Didn’t like it much.”

  Levi studies him, eyes squinting. “Who are you?”

  “They call him Kane,” Adam says.

  Kane shakes his head. “But that ain’t my birth name.”

  A beat of silence.

  Levi shifts his stance. He looks uncomfortable. “Well, if it isn’t Kane, what the hell is it?”

  Kane turns his arm, pulls up his sleeve and displays something Adam failed to notice before.

  A mark—not a tattoo—a raised welt on the inside of his forearm. The letter B burnt into his skin. An infamous slave brand—a Providence burn mark.

  Adam remembers his conversation with Sadie.

  He didn’t just blame the slaves. He killed them. He took them—men, women, children—took them down to the river. He chained them and he drowned them. All of them.

  Falsely accused of starting a fire. Chained and tossed to the river gators. Sunk to their death.

  “Don’t you see who I am? Kane’s the name the Nakoda gave me. But the name I had when the Colonel sold me to them Providence Slavers…was Blood.”

  Levi’s expression doesn’t change, but a flush comes to his cheeks. A band of white appears under the eyes. A sheen of sweat on his cheek. His mouth contorts into a grimace. It’s there in his dark eyes, in the tight curl of his lips. Recognition.

  He shakes his head. “It’s not true.”

  Kane looks at him. “It is true. My name was Blood. Joe Blood.”

  Levi’s mouth is set firm, like a line of wire. “It doesn’t matter,” he says. “Nothing matters.”

  Adam stares speechless at Kane…at Joe Blood. Levi, Sadie and Joe. He should have seen the resemblance, but no…Kane’s scars hid the truth. Not even his brother and sister recognized him. Two brothers and a sister, ripped apart. The Colonel left his mark on his children. It made Sadie strong. It made Levi a psychopath. And it turned Joe into someone else altogether. Someone unfamiliar, even to his own kin.

  A false night arrives. It begins to snow. Not real snow. Ash. Gray flakes drifting down from a cloud belching from El Diablo’s gaping mouth, high above them.
The floating airships disappear and the sail trykes dissolve into gloom.

  Adam’s sling is still directed at Levi’s head. Red’s sling is likewise directed at his head. Levi and Kane hold their slings at their sides. What happens next happens in slow motion.

  Adam sees each frame of movement as though all four of them are underwater.

  First—disrupting the scene—two Riders, Hawks by the look of their crimson jackets, come sailing past, swirling through the ash. They keep their heads low and they look neither left nor right. They don’t even glance up at Sadie, hung on the rope. Anyone savvy enough to survive this far into the Blackwater Trail knows when to stop and when to keep going.

  This intrusion of the Riders is a catalyst. Red swivels round to launch his stone, not at Adam, at Kane. The move is so precogitated that violence explodes all around.

  Kane’s sling blurs into action, loading and firing a stone before Red has even twisted halfway round. At the same time, Levi Blood’s sling has swung round and—a nanosecond before he releases—Adam fires his own stone. It sings through the air on a straight path. Red and Levi drop at the same time.

  Adam steps forward in a daze, his ears buzzing. He comes to Red first and looks at the sightless eyes staring up. Dark blood flows from a circular wound above the left eye. Adam steps over him and keeps walking, to the crumpled figure of Levi. He lies with his face to the ground.

  Adam stands over him, hands shaking, breathing hard. He tips him with his boot, the way he tipped Frank’s body.

  Levi flips. His arm flings out and lands with a loose thud. And he groans. He’s alive. His chest rises and falls. On his cheek a bright smear of crimson blood. The cheek is blue-black already. The bone must have fractured where the stone hit. The skin under Levi’s eye turns a deep red, then purple as Adam watches.

  “Cut her loose,” Kane says at his elbow, handing Adam a canteen of water.

  Adam doesn’t waste any time. He runs across the ground to the tree and throws himself at the knots. He pulls away the rope attached to the tree first and hauls Sadie away from the lava. Then he plucks the bandanna from her mouth.