Lonesome Paladin

by S. M. Reine

  “Just coming to see if I can help,” he said.

  “I’m afraid not. You can’t handle the hatchet and it’s unlikely you’ll be able to break apart any of this wood on your own.”

  “Actually…” The OPA had equipped Cèsar with a small hatchet of his own. He took it off his belt, picked out a tree, and started hacking at a thick branch. Metal bit into bark. Amber gushed from its innards.

  “Perhaps you can be helpful,” Sophie said. “Excellent! This will go much faster with both of us working! Do keep an ear out for potential attack as well. The Ard have been busy.”

  “The Ard?”

  “That’s a blanket term indicating the class of sidhe nearer animals than man. I see that you are worried, so please allow me to assure you this: you are not likely Ard. Your apparent normality means you’re gentry, akin to nobility.”

  He laughed. “You think I’m normal?” Sophie was as sweet as she was hot.

  In fact, Cèsar didn’t see a single thing lacking about Sophie. She had earnest eyes, one of those cute round bellies that women got when they were good at cooking, and arms strong enough to suggest she chopped her own wood regularly. Strong, feminine, smart—what was there not to love?

  “Not attracted to Blacks,” Cèsar muttered in disbelief, hacking harder at a branch.

  “Did you say something?” Sophie asked.

  He mulled his words, kicking a few logs into a pile. “It’s about Lincoln. You be careful with him, okay? He’s one of those guys.”

  She blinked. “I’m afraid you’ll have to be more specific than that.”

  Damn. Just thinking about it made Cèsar uncomfortable, and putting it into words was worse. “He’s got kind of a Southern mentality without the Southern charm, if you know what I mean. Confederate flags and a horn on his car that plays Dixie when he’s drag racing down by the river.”

  Sophie gave him a blank look.

  She must have come from a long way from America if that didn’t ring any bells.

  “Guess that doesn’t help,” Cèsar said. “Whereabouts you from, anyway? South Africa?”

  “No. What makes you think that?”

  “Your accent sounds a little African, a little British,” Cèsar said. “Wasn’t South Africa colonized by the British? And then something about Apartheid?” He’d barely graduated high school and smoked too much weed through college, so he figured he sounded like an oaf.

  Luckily, Sophie looked just as clueless. “I don’t make it a practice to study history that recent.”

  “Don’t know where you’re from?”

  “I’m not really from anywhere.” Sophie lifted an impressive stack of cut wood. “I believe that Tristan was from Johannesburg, if that helps. I may have picked up on elements of his accent during our many long talks.”

  “Tristan’s your boyfriend?”

  “No, Tristan wasn’t like that.” Sadness shadowed her eyes. “He was among my numerous guardians.” She sounded so bummed out that Cèsar couldn’t bring himself to ask why she had “guardians.”

  It was easy to imagine burly men banding together to form a protective circle around a lady like this. She had the bright-eyed innocence of one of the few pure things in the world.

  Cèsar wanted to protect her, and he barely knew her.

  “Just be careful around Lincoln,” he said in a low voice as they headed back to camp. “He’s racist.”

  “Oh. That’s a word I know.” She frowned. “Strange.”

  “Not that strange. It’s all over the place where we’re from.”

  “Then you’re trying to protect me, aren’t you?” Sophie’s smile brightened the night like a shooting star. “You’re a kind man, Mr. Hawke. Thank you.”

  He took her bundle of wood and carried it all the way back to camp.

  Lincoln was still waiting by the bags. He’d filled a shallow bowl with water and was staring intently into its depths, like it contained the mysteries of the universe. From Cèsar’s angle, it looked just like water. And Lincoln looked just like any other man of his type, soured over how little his entitlement to the bounties of the Earth meant in these cruel times, waiting for the universe to deliver what he deserved.

  CHAPTER 10

  Using a flint, hatchet, and tufts of moss, Sophie started an ordinary-looking fire within minutes. They had a dinner of uninspired MREs—meals-ready-to-eat given to them by the OPA—and agreed to take turns watching the camp overnight. Lincoln volunteered to take first shift.

  Cèsar fell asleep the instant that his head hit the bedroll; in his unconsciousness, he looked like a man and nothing more. Sophie followed him minutes later.

  Lincoln was left alone with nighttime weighing on his shoulders.

  Glowing amber bugs orbited him, always just too far away to swat, and bats flitted between the trees trying to eat them. The fire crackled at slightly too high a pitch, like it had been tuned to harmonize with the wind. Distantly, the broad river mumbled.

  One of the runes on his jacket flickered and failed. For an instant, Lincoln saw everything, and everything was too much.

  The serpentine flexing of the trees.

  The nearness of the stars skimming beyond the clouds.

  The low mist that threatened to quietly smother Cèsar and Sophie’s sleeping forms with dew.

  “Damn,” Lincoln muttered. He hammered the rune with his fist, smashing it against his breastbone, and it flickered back to life.

  The Summer Court quieted. It looked like Appalachia again.

  He waited until Cèsar was snoring before he eased to his feet. Alfheimr was across the river. Lincoln could get there without help from some OPA creep, and without waiting for dawn.

  When he straightened, movement mirrored him among the trees.

  Elise.

  She looked as solid as Sophie, who was curled up beside the fire underneath her jacket. But it still wasn’t Elise, was it? She only looked like the Godslayer from certain angles, and in certain lighting. Right now she was just a little bit wrong, like another face was superimposed over hers, melding their features.

  “Who are you?” Lincoln whispered.

  She melted back into the trees. Her hair disappeared, and then her shirt and skin. The luminous whites of her eyes were left to vanish last.

  He followed her.

  His feet made no sound on the carpet of fallen leaves. Insect buzzing faded into the white noise of the river and then that too was gone.

  The firelight cast his silhouette on the trees in front of him, sliced into vertical lines. Lincoln’s waist looked smaller than it should have, like he’d been bound into a corset of human leather. The flickering qualities of flame meant that he seemed to sway with a feminine stride, a confident sashay.

  He had been exorcised. There was supposed to be no demon left within him.

  Yet there was his shadow, and there was Elise, and they had followed him all the way into the sultry Middle Worlds.

  Lincoln had meant to find the ferry where it was moored among the reeds, but now he wasn’t even sure what had happened to the encampment. He couldn’t see Elise either.

  When he turned, there was neither firelight nor lightning bugs.

  Only night.

  He’d gotten lost, just as Sophie had warned would happen, and he had no clue where Elise had gone.

  “Damn,” he muttered again.

  Lincoln dropped his backpack, grabbed a low branch, hauled himself into the tree. He picked his way through the lacework of leaves.

  His head broke the canopy. It was easier to breathe up there, and easier to see too. Lincoln was stunned to spot the campfire a mile up the bank, its light a pinprick. It felt like he’d only tried to follow Elise for a minute.

  The river was close, but he’d been walking perpendicularly to it. He coulda kept going that way for days without reaching water.

  Reoriented, Lincoln dropped to the forest floor.

  Sophie was holding his backpack at the bottom of the tree.

  “Wh
oa!” He leaped away from her. “Jesus Christ, where’d you come from?”

  “I followed you out of the camp. I apologize deeply if I startled you; I’d been calling your name as you walked, yet you did not seem to hear me. You looked like a man possessed.” Sophie offered him his backpack, but faltered when he flinched. “Is something wrong?”

  It was that word. Possessed.

  “Nothing. I thought I’d seen something and got lost,” Lincoln said. “You shoulda stayed with Cèsar.”

  “You’re right, but I’ll make no apologies. I feared that something might be wrong with you. Why don’t we go back together?”

  He snatched the bag out of her hand and slung it over his shoulder. “I’m crossing the river tonight. Now.” Lincoln stormed toward the water. It took only seconds to break through the trees to marshland. Salty water crashed over his toes and sprayed his face, stinging the open cuts on his forehead.

  “This is because of NKF, is it not?” Sophie stood back, her feet on a protruding tree root and one hand on the trunk. She flicked her hood over her hair. “You’ll not know the truth about God if you’re killed in pursuit of Him.” His foot slipped and he sank to his knees. She gave a little squeal. “Be careful!”

  “If God wants me to know the truth, He’ll make sure I survive to find Him,” Lincoln said, pulling his legs out of the mud. “Now stop your shrieking. I don’t need this shit.”

  The stakes indicating the makeshift dock were upriver. He trudged between trees and water.

  Sophie followed from drier land, bouncing from root to root on her toes. “Perhaps I’m the messenger for God trying to help you reach Him alive, in which case, that begs the question: are you insistent on this dangerous operation because your faith in the gods runs so deep, or because you have no faith in the judgment of others?”

  The rope connecting the barge to this shore was a good twelve feet into the shallows. Lincoln waded into the river, bag high on his shoulders. The water got colder as it climbed higher on his body.

  He caught the rope.

  “Mr. Marshall, I really must recommend against doing this! I told you that the ferryman only operates during the day but I neglected to tell you why!”

  If she continued from there, he couldn’t make out the words.

  “I’ll be fine!” Lincoln roared back. He’d led Hell’s armies into war; what could the Middle Worlds throw at him worse than that?

  He heard one more word from Sophie.

  “Bašmu!”

  It was meaningless to him. Nothing to make him turn back.

  The rope got slipperier as he dragged himself deeper. The harsh fibers scraped the pads of his palms, and he had to cling tighter to keep his grip. Soon there was no mud under his feet, and he kicked to keep himself afloat as he swung, hand over hand, across the rope.

  Over the roaring of the water, he couldn’t hear anything. But he felt the rope vibrating. He looked over his shoulder to see Sophie banging on the stake, and her mouth opening in a shout that he couldn’t hear.

  Was she trying to tear the rope down?

  He tried shouting at Sophie. “Stop! You’ll kill me!”

  Lincoln could catch only a glimpse of Sophie when he bobbed over the river’s swells. She wasn’t trying to pull the rope down at all. She was pointing over his shoulder.

  He followed her finger with his gaze.

  A black hump broke through the waves. He wasn’t sure if it was a hundred feet away or a hundred miles. Scale was impossible to determine with this much movement and magic.

  Near or far, one thing was clear: Lincoln wasn’t alone in the river.

  “It’s a log,” he said to himself through gritted teeth. Water slopped over his bottom lip, sweet as honey.

  The black form enlarged. It reminded him of those old blurry photos of the Loch Ness Monster, except that it was real, sluicing through water toward him.

  Lincoln was almost to the ferry. It was bobbing nearby too, and he felt halfway certain he could reach it before that thing reached him.

  The rope tightened near the boat. Lincoln had to haul himself out of the water, drenched clothes and all, using mostly his upper body. Then he swung one leg onto the deck, and the other.

  He’d just rolled onto the halved logs forming the ferry when the water surged under him.

  Lincoln was thrown.

  For a weightless instant, he had no contact with the wood. The ferry bucked like a bronco and water exploded underneath it.

  A body rose from the water.

  It rose and rose and rose.

  He clung to the boat as it tumbled down the flank of the enormous beast. Falling, he had a prime view of a serpentine neck and water pouring down its silky-smooth flesh.

  Then ferry hit water. Lincoln bounced, almost slid off. It was all he could do to cling to one of the ropes as he stared dazedly at the exposed monster.

  Broad, stocky shoulders jutted from the river, its three necks uplifting three enormous heads like a hairless wolf’s. Its eyes were mirror balls. Translucent hairs flowed down its spines like starlight spun into spider silk.

  When all three of those heads focused on Lincoln, none of its expressions could be interpreted as anything except hungry.

  This must have been the bašmu Sophie tried to warn him about.

  One of the heads swung toward him, mouth opening. Fangs extended over the roof of its mouth in stripes. The muscle of its tongue thrashed as it prepared to shred him like a block of cheese.

  Lincoln jumped out of the ferry and plummeted into the river.

  He sank into darkness. His backpack floated away, contents spilling into the stream.

  There was only one instant of peace where he was suspended in the honeyed depths. The bašmu’s roaring was muffled. Lincoln sealed his mouth against the river, letting it support the weight of his limbs.

  A giant head thrust into the water a few feet away, a torpedo blasting shockwaves through his body.

  Its glimmering eyes shined even in the murky darkness of the water.

  Lincoln’s back hit mud. The bašmu had pushed him into shallower waters.

  He kicked against the ground and tried to lift his head into air, yet when his lungs filled, it was not with oxygen. He gagged. Choked.

  Something bit into Lincoln’s shoulders.

  Teeth?

  He reflexively swung his fists, but his knuckles only met soft human skin.

  It wasn’t an oversized serpent-wolf jaw yanking him out of the water. It was Sophie.

  Lincoln’s head broke water. He spewed river from his lungs and inhaled a ragged, excruciating breath. She dropped him on dry land, collapsing from the effort. “Bašmu,” Lincoln gasped.

  “I know,” Sophie said, beating his back as he vomited.

  Any hopes of the bašmu being strictly aquatic fell apart as he watched it climb the side of the river. Its thick legs were gnarled like a snapping turtle’s. The thing looked like a remnant of the dinosaur era after being mutated in an atomic incident.

  “Take cover!” He shoved Sophie toward the trees but couldn’t follow. His legs were still jelly. He slipped.

  Sophie dragged him the rest of the way.

  One of the bašmu’s heads crashed into the trees. It splintered the trunks in half. The impact must have hurt—it reared back with an earth-trembling roar, and without water to insulate him from it, Lincoln’s ears popped.

  The instant the trees broke, they died in rapid-speed. The leaves fell away. The trunks blackened. The willow’s weeping branches shriveled, turning to brittle joints, and the point of fracture weakened.

  Lincoln only had a few awed seconds to watch the tree disintegrating before he realized it was falling.

  “Move!”

  He shoved Sophie again.

  They rolled out of the way in time for the tree to crash where they’d been standing. It hit hard enough to indent the ground.

  Another head swept in to grab Sophie.

  Lincoln leaped in front of it. The bašmu’s
scaly muzzle closed in, mouth opening wide. Its lashing tongue was there.

  Instead of trying to dodge, he leaped past its first row of teeth into the stinking mouth. He shoved his hands between its fangs and pushed hard. Boots down, hands up. He had to keep the mouth open.

  Its grunt of frustration blasted in his face, reeking of rabbitbrush blooming at the end of summer, of roadkill carcasses gone spoiled on the pavement.

  “Sophie, run!” he groaned over his shoulder.

  There was a break in the fangs between mouth and throat, exposing tender sinus skin. The writhing black tongue curled around his waist.

  Lincoln spared one arm to draw one of the OPA daggers. He jammed his heels against the teeth, trying to make it swallow him more slowly, and the razor edges of its fangs shredded his pants. The scent of his blood mingled with his breath. His temple was smashed against the bony ridges of its skull, and he was eye-level with the swollen venom sacs at the base of its primary fangs.

  He hadn’t been anywhere else that reminded him so much of Hell.

  The bašmu struggled to swallow with his feet stuck. He plunged the dagger through the palate into the bašmu’s brain.

  It screamed. It gagged.

  The bašmu spat Lincoln onto the shore.

  He scrambled into the tree line before turning to watch. Liquid ruby spurted from between its fangs. Its gemstone eyes were rolling and flashing with pain, but only on that one head—the other heads were coming around to bear on Lincoln.

  Another mouth shot toward him.

  Lincoln leaped behind a tree.

  The mouth smashed around the trunk. The points of its sharpened teeth embedded in the bark, leaving it momentarily caught.

  He punched the dagger into its jaw. Bone cracked. Scales fractured. Chilly blood gushed over his hand when he pulled free, leaving the hilt slippery in his fingers.

  The bašmu jerked back and dragged the tree halfway with it before it managed to let go. The tree’s roots came up, just as he’d hoped, and Lincoln leaped out of the way as they unzippered from the damp earth. The soil sheared into the water. It tumbled faster, and faster, and the bašmu lunged at just the right time.