A Stillness of the Sun (Crowmakers: Book 1): A Science Fiction Western Adventure

by L. E. Erickson

  "My name is Dale Ackermann. I am strong, like all these men here. Why do you not tell what answer you want, and I will tell you if I can do it?"

  Ellis's lifted hand and pointing finger hung in the air a second longer before dropping to his side. Vincent felt every man in the group holding their breath in response to Ackermann's effrontery.

  Vincent was still watching Ellis, so he saw. He noticed how Ellis's head tilted back and the hint of a smile returned to one corner of his mouth.

  Understanding blossomed in Vincent's gut and slowly spread.

  Ellis wanted them to stand up to him. He wasn't looking for real answers to his question. He was testing them.

  "The work will require a different sort of strength than that to which you refer," Ellis replied. "But your kind of strength is a start. You."

  Ellis's hand raised so swiftly that Vincent didn't see the movement until Ellis's finger was pointing toward him. Ellis's face with its cat-like smirk remained turned toward Ackermann.

  "What about you? Why should I hire you for this job?"

  Smug bastard, with his carriage and his hat and his amusement. And his damned gloves. And all Vincent had was the opportunity to jump through hoops in hopes of being tossed a job, like a dog begging for butcher's scraps. Anger poured out, suddenly, wrenched from someplace deep and threatened to burst through Vincent's skin.

  The words Vincent knew he should say came to him just as suddenly. Fear twanged in his gut as he thought them—what if they were the wrong words?

  Vincent didn't allow himself time to think it through. He let the anger fill his voice and enunciated every one of those words clearly, so that Ellis would hear it ringing in every word.

  "Because I want it. Because I'll work for it."

  Ellis's head swiveled toward Vincent, and all Vincent's fury drained away, along with most of the blood in his face. An odd clarity remained, buzzing in Vincent's ears and sharpening his vision until he felt almost dizzy.

  Ellis's mouth quirked, briefly.

  And then Ellis looked away again, and that was that. Vincent felt exhausted and vaguely disappointed, as though he'd strained every muscle to hook a crate only to discover that it contained nothing but weightless dust.

  "You there. And you." Ellis pointed at William Jennett and then at Jan Bosch. "Form a line."

  Vincent counted as Ellis culled his choices from the crowd. Three, four. Kalvis and the Irishman Brian Byrne. Seven. Eight. Patrick Colley. Cocky little Robert Langston.

  Ellis never so much as glanced toward Vincent. Vincent's stomach curled into a sick, embarrassed knot. Because I want it—what the fuck had he been thinking?

  Ellis jabbed his arrogant finger at the Dutchman. "Mister Ackermann."

  Eleven.

  And then, finally, as before, Ellis's point shifted from Ackermann to Vincent.

  "And you."

  Ellis's gaze followed his pointed finger a second later. His eyes met Vincent's, and Vincent's breath froze.

  "The rest of you will have better luck in town, I believe." Ellis dropped his hand into a dismissive wave and looked away from Vincent.

  The men Ellis had called first had already passed their new employer and formed an uncertain line near his chaise.

  Was he really doing this, then? Vincent put one foot in front of the other and started toward the others. He wasn't sure he'd made a decision just yet, but it seemed like the thing to do.

  Vincent glanced toward Ellis. Ellis was looking right at him. Before Vincent could pass by him, Ellis spoke. "I know the kind of man you are."

  The words were quiet enough that no one else would hear, and Vincent couldn't tell if Ellis meant them as an accusation or an expectation. Although Vincent was close enough now to see Ellis's face clearly, Ellis didn't look at Vincent.

  In either case, Ellis seemed like the sort of man who might take it personally if Vincent turned out to be some other kind of man than Ellis thought he was. What kind of man was that?

  Because I want it, he'd told Ellis. Because I'll work for it. Those words sounded like Vincent might be the kind of man who'd see the chance to make a better life than the one he'd been handed and not be afraid to grab it by the balls.

  Vincent stepped into line with the others.

  Fine, then. He could be that kind of man.

  Chapter 7

  A dozen men kept pace with Ellis's one-horse chaise, walking in clumps of two or three—north from the square and then west along the Lancaster Road, further and further from Philadelphia proper.

  Some of them talked—Vincent thought Robert Langston might not know how not to talk. Langston chattered incessantly at Dale Ackermann and Viktor Kalvis, crowing like a jaunty, over-confident little rooster. Behind them walked Tomas Poanski—he of the curls on the forehead who'd given Vincent the first hint of what Ellis was really looking for in his questioning. Poanski wore an expression of detached calm on his plain face. Walking beside Poanski, Petras Juszkiewicz glanced sharply ahead at Langston now and then, his square jaw set.

  The two Irishmen, Colley and Byrne, strolled a few paces behind Langston and his entourage. Short, sturdy Joseph Goodson walked near them, accompanied by boyish John Rawle, who glanced constantly around him like a child on holiday. Jan Bosch stalked a short distance behind, with William Jennett walking near but not too near—lone wolves, those two.

  Vincent could understand. He kept a careful space around himself as he walked, too.

  "And then her sister wanted some, too." Langston's words drifted back to Vincent like the squawking of some over-eager bird. "Can you believe that?"

  "No." Jennett uttered the single syllable clearly, but too quietly for any but those walking closest to him to have heard. Ahead of Jennett, Bosch issued an amused snort.

  Vincent smiled faintly but said nothing.

  Every step he took away from Philadelphia, from its wharves and alleys and cobblestone streets, turned him more into a stranger. He was leaving behind not only the only place he'd ever lived, not only Kellen, but every piece of identity that had made him who he was.

  Who would he be now? The question opened a wide, empty space inside him, and Vincent felt like he stood on the edge of that bottomless space and waited to see what would fill it. He found himself alternately tempted to grin stupidly or turn and run back the way he'd come. He buried both responses by watching the road and moving one foot in front of the other.

  The morning wore on. One foot and then the other, and trees slowly slipped past. They approached the Schuylkill River but turned north before they reached it and passed along a less traveled but clearly marked road, with the Schuylkill whispering just out of sight to their left and the sun casting shards of cold light through the leafless trees to their right. Vincent pulled his collar up closer around his ears. Light or not, the chill air still nipped.

  "I am surprised, seeing you here."

  At the sound of Dale Ackermann's voice beside him, Vincent started. He glanced ahead and saw that while Langston was still talking, he'd lost his initial audience and now babbled at the two Irishmen. Viktor Kalvis had fallen back, too, and was walking just in front of Vincent with William Jennett and Jan Bosch. Ackermann strode alongside Vincent.

  Vincent eyed Ackermann warily. The shorter man watched Vincent with watery blue eyes wreathed in smile lines and a patient, kindly expression.

  Vincent's guard went up immediately. No one was ever truly kindly. The bread was never free.

  "Why's that?" Vincent shrugged deeper into his coat.

  "You have the lady to watch out for. I am surprised you would leave her."

  The lightness Vincent had been feeling in his step turned heavy again. His face heated.

  "Maybe she kicked him out." Jennett glanced back with too-bright blue eyes and smirked. "No shame in it. Been known to happen."

  "No." Vincent shoved out the words, hating Ackermann for forcing him into having to speak at all. "It's not like that."

  "Sometimes, a man must do a thing.
" Kalvis spoke without looking back, in a level voice that matched the calm on his lined face. He glanced sideways at Jennett before finishing. "If he is a man, that is, and not a boy just playing at it."

  Jennett's face darkened, but he faced forward again without looking at Kalvis and fell silent.

  Vincent thought about not saying anything else, but Ackermann's head was still tilted and he still watched Vincent. Vincent shrugged, finally. "Yes."

  Ackermann nodded in what Vincent took as acknowledgment of the explanation. They walked without talking for a minute or so, long enough for Vincent to hope that was as much conversation as Ackermann had in him.

  "Our boss man, he is something else, yes?"

  With his thick speech, even thicker facial hair, and guileless blue eyes, Ackermann could easily have been mistaken for an unintelligent man. But Vincent had seen Ackermann's show of will back at the square, and he thought he knew better. Ackermann was leading up to something—or maybe he was just looking to start gossip.

  Ahead of Vincent, Bosch and Jennett both twitched their heads slightly to the side, and Vincent knew they were listening. Kalvis too, Vincent imagined, although the older man gave no visible sign.

  One thing Vincent had learned over the years was that friendly was fine and good—getting along with others had its advantages. But being too friendly only risked revealing things others could use against you. Vincent fixed his gaze on the carriage rattling over the rough road ahead of them.

  And gossip, especially about the man in charge, was never a good idea.

  "He's the boss." Vincent tossed the words out in as casual a way as he could manage. "He doesn't need to be anything else."

  Ackermann was quiet for several steps. Maybe he understood less English than Vincent had assumed and was trying to puzzle out Vincent's meaning.

  "You are correct, of course." Vincent thought he detected wry amusement in Ackermann's voice. "It was impolitic of me to make my joking in a way that could be so easily misinterpreted as a questioning of Mr. Ellis's character."

  Vincent refused to look at Ackermann's face, but no, he wouldn't be taking anything for granted where that man was concerned. Vincent carefully eased his mouth into a charming grin, the same one he used on Kellen when she was being difficult or to defuse a dispute in danger of becoming a brawl on the docks. "No misunderstanding at all, old man."

  Ackermann chuckled. Before he could respond, though, Ellis's chaise turned right, into a drive Vincent hadn't noticed for the trees. The men trailing along behind Ellis turned their attention to studying their destination as they followed after.

  To their left, a brick mansion came into view. Trees and shrubs marched in neat formations around the estate's grounds, tamed from the surrounding forest. Wisps of gray smoke flowed from the twin chimneys flanking the roof, following the lower roofs of a carriage house and kitchen behind and to one side of the main house before trailing up into the sky. Down the hill, beyond a row of winter-naked trees, stood a large stone and plank barn.

  Ellis halted his chaise alongside the carriage house. A black man came out of the carriage house, wearing the neat black and white of a house servant, and Ellis turned the chaise and horse over to him, then he motioned them down the hill toward the barn.

  "We're gonna sleep in a barn?" Langston spoke in a voice that should have been a little quieter and possibly more respectful, given that their new employer was well within earshot.

  "Colley, me friend," a voice much lower and closer to Vincent said, "I've heard of sleep walking. What does your learned self know about sleep talking? There's no such thing, I'm hoping?"

  "Your barracks. Gentlemen, if you will?"

  Ellis motioned for Langston and round-faced John Rawle to open the barn's double doors. The doors rumbled as the two men shoved them aside, and a scent like sunshine and straw rolled out, warm and clean.

  "Please." Ellis motioned again, and they all filed inside. Vincent took the opportunity to move away from Ackermann—away from everyone.

  Simple cots lined the walls. A single, neatly-folded blanket sat at the end of each cot. Vincent drifted close enough to a cot to conclude that the blankets were new. At the end of the barn closest to the door, and therefore to the house's kitchen, a large table had been set up.

  A simple barn, and it was a better place than Widow Howland's cellar room.

  "This is where your training begins."

  Vincent turned toward the sound of Ellis's voice. Feet rustled on straw as the other eleven men in the barn did the same thing.

  Ellis's gaze shifted from man to man to man, lighting on Vincent for less than a heartbeat before moving on, glancing at the grinning, youthful fools Langston and Rawle with the same lack of expression with which he studied the more somber majority of the group. Ellis didn't smile, but his voice had taken on that brandy-smooth tone Vincent was so quickly becoming familiar with.

  "Soldiers are for fighting." Ackermann's voice came from beside Vincent's shoulder. "Who will we fight?"

  Ellis took a moment to answer, but Vincent would've bet good money that he'd had an answer prepared before the question had even occurred to Ackermann.

  "There has been some trouble with the British. They remain loathe to vacate their forts and settlements, even though that territory was signed over to our United States after the war."

  "Redcoats." Jennett followed up the word with a derisive snort. "They ought to know by now they lost the war and were supposed to go home. We'll just have to whoop their asses again, I guess."

  Bosch and Langston and Rawle muttered and nodded. The other men just kept on listening quietly.

  "Of course, we are also concerned the British will again inspire the tribes to commit most of their atrocities for them." Ellis clasped his hands behind his back. "Our settlers along that wild frontier live in dread of hearing the clash of tomahawks and scalping knives outside their doors."

  "The Reds ought to know better, too." Jennett crossed his arms and scowled. "Hell, even I'm old enough to recollect how old Mad Anthony schooled them. They forgot their treaties already?"

  "There had been no formal agreements with tribes in the Indiana Territory until Governor Harrison began to treat with them." Ellis turned his head toward Jennett. What he was thinking, Vincent couldn't tell. "But yes, the Indians do seem disinclined to accept their treaties, even the more freshly-made ones. A pair of Shawnee brothers are proving to be particularly vexatious. Governor Harrison does all he can to either civilize the Indians or encourage them to remove peaceably from our lands, and the delegates in the capitol would of course prefer to prevent this conflict from becoming full-out war."

  "Nobody believes that will happen." Kalvis spoke more quietly than the other men, but his voice carried every bit as well. "That those Indians or the British, either one, will just walk away from the Indiana Territory."

  Ellis smiled. "No, Mr. Kalvis. And that, gentlemen, is where you come in. I have been contracted to raise a regiment of volunteer cavalry."

  Ellis paused and smirked, as though there was something funny about what he'd said. In the moment of quiet, wind-rattled branches scraped insistently at the barn's roof.

  "Cavalry?" It was Goodson who spoke this time, his earnest, broad face creased in thought.

  "Yes." Ellis continued to smile. "Although the horses—and your horsemanship—will come about only after some rudimentary infantry drilling. There is much to be said for discipline and teamwork, and that can be accomplished with nothing more than your own two feet."

  All through that hay-scented room, men exchanged glances.

  "Regiment." Jennett ice-blue eyes had narrowed. "Why would you call us a regiment? There's only the twelve of us."

  If Ellis had been a cat, Vincent figured a whole lot of canaries would've been doomed.

  "Only the twelve of you so far," Ellis replied. "Time will tell."

  Jennett narrowed his eyes. "So if we're a cavalry regiment, then I suppose we ought to be calling you 'captain' ins
tead of 'mister.' What should we be calling ourselves?"

  "For now," Ellis said, "you will be known as the Special Horse and Battery Troop."

  Perfect quiet held sway for a heartbeat. Vincent heard those branches again, scratching against the roof. Wings beat, too, fluttering up in the shadows between beams over his head.

  "Battery?" Jennett asked.

  "Special?" Langston spoke right over the top of Jennett.

  For now, Vincent thought.

  Ellis's smile widened. "Patience, gentlemen. Patience. Nothing is certain, except that our new United States will always need protectors. And you, gentlemen, are about to become the very best of those protectors."

  Ellis paused.

  No one moved. They barely breathed. Even Langston was unnaturally quiet.

  "You will first learn the care and firing of traditional weapons. Muskets, sabres, knives. You will live, eat , and sleep the concepts of proficiency and discipline. And you will work, perhaps harder than you have ever worked."

  Ellis's gaze shifted toward the open barn door. A moment later, the sharp hot scent of coffee lodged itself in Vincent's senses.

  Released from Ellis's thrall, heads turned. Vincent's was no exception.

  A petite black woman in a white apron stood in the doorway, nodding in response to some question Vincent evidently hadn't heard. A larger white woman and the man who'd taken Ellis's horse set their burdens on the table—the coffee Vincent had smelled and a massive crock of what appeared to be oatmeal.

  "But for now, your first meal. Tomorrow morning, it will arrive much earlier. Allow me to introduce Mrs. Epler and also Mr. and Mrs. Lockton. They will take good care of you." Ellis made a half-bow. "Good day, gentlemen. I will see you in the morning."

  Ellis strode from the barn. His leaving had an almost physical effect, like stepping out of the wind and realizing you don't have to hold your coat quite so closely around you.

  At first, the men continued to just stand there, even after Ellis left.

  "Don't be shy." The tiny black woman flapped her hands, shooing the men toward the table.

  Langston was the first to move. "Don't have to ask me twice."