Lostlander

by Dean F. Wilson

   “This is the Shifting Graveyard,” the gravedigger said. “It is where the sand has taken the lost. Anyone who stumbles in the desert finds themselves here, sooner or later. Have you stumbled, Coilhunter?”

   Nox cocked an eyebrow. “Have you?”

   “I am the Keeper of the Shifting Graveyard.”

   “Leader of the lost,” Nox mused.

   “No,” the man said. “Not me.”

   Nox almost growled. “Him then. The Man with the Silver Mane.”

   The old man's smile became a crescent moon, and it was crooked too. If there was magic in him, it was a slimy, snakey magic, the kind that tricksters and conmen gravitated to. It was the kind of magic that deserved a Wanted poster. But Nox wasn't here for a gravedigger. He was here to dig fresh graves.

   “Are you one of his lackeys?” Nox rasped.

   The old man grinned. “We all are.” He ran his index finger between his collar and throat.

   Nox stared at him coldly, keeping his gun pointed, letting the iron stare even colder. “I'm not,” he said, letting the grit gather and add to his conviction. He said it like he said the first words of the hunt and the last words before the kill. It wasn't just a promise. To him, it was law.

   “So you say,” the old man croaked. “So you think.”

   “So I am.”

   “For now.”

   “Forever.”

   The gravedigger's eyes were wry. “He'll win you over.”

   “Will he, now?”

   “He'll work his magic on you.”

   Nox spun the barrel of his revolver. “Maybe I'll work mine on him.”

   “Do you even know what he is?” the old man asked.

   “A man.”

   “More than a man.”

   “Well, I've killed folk who thought they were more than men. They died like men all the same.”

   The old man eyed him with a twinkle. “They'll come back to haunt you, Coilhunter.”

   “Well, I guess I'll have to start hunting phantoms then. It wouldn't be the first time I've chased ghosts.”

   “You won't kill him,” the man continued, consulting the lines in his hands for answers. “You'll just release him.”

   “Will I, now?”

   “It is so.”

   “And what about you? What'll you do?”

   “I'll serve my master, in life and in death.” He paused and ran a long, bony finger under his nose. “Especially in death.”

   “Your master,” Nox said. “Where can I find 'im?”

   “You can only find him if he wishes to be found.”

   “That's not what I asked.”

   “But that's what I answered.”

   “Well, you better change your answer, or I'll change you from gravedigger to gravesleeper.”

   “The Lost Tribe,” the man said in time.

   “Who're they?”

   “More who serve.”

   “Well, ain't that a surprise.”

   “They camp not far from here, due west.”

   “If only I knew where here was,” Nox grumbled.

   “You do. This is the Lostlands.”

   Nox forced a smile. “Aptly named.”

   “So are the Lost Tribe.”

   “They won't stay lost for long,” Nox promised. “And if they're in league with the Man with the Silver Mane, they probably won't stay alive for long either.”

   The gravedigger's eyes widened with a kind of glee at the thought. “I better get digging then,” he said. For a moment then, his shovel looked less like a shovel and more like a staff.

   Nox'd heard much about the so-called Magi, who claimed to have come from the land of Iraldas across the sea, a world with different races and different rules. In Altadas, they'd been roped into the war effort by the Resistance, tasked with making contraceptive amulets to keep women protected from having so-called “demon” children. Yet every now and then a Magus worked alone, serving only himself. Nox didn't know what to make of those fables. For a long time, he thought they were only designed to give hope to the losing faction in the war. Now, he wasn't so sure.

   Nox rode away, then paused and looked back. “What do I call you, gravedigger?”

   The man looked up and contorted his face in thought. “Perhaps … the Last Man you See?”

   “No,” Nox said. “That's me. If you're bad.”

   “And am I bad?”

   Nox eyed him up and down. “We'll find out, sooner or later. Sure as the sand.”

   As Nox rode off, the gravedigger called after him. “No. Sure as the grave.”

  12 – THE LOST TRIBE

  Nox followed the gravedigger's directions, which weren't much to go on. He was starting to doubt himself, and had long started to doubt the gravedigger, when one of Old Reliable's iron feet unearthed a black feather. Not the feather of a tamba bird, the now-mythical creature that was used by some tribes to symbolise peace—and which unsurprisingly went extinct with the arrival of the Iron Empire. No, not even the feather of a raven, or a vulture, or some other beast of the air. This was a man-made feather. And whenever you found man-made things, you found men multiplying nearby.

   For now, all Nox found was feathers.

   He strolled on, slower now, the kind of slow he'd do when entering a saloon full or criminals or a town full of scum. The desert still looked mighty empty, except for those few black feathers, but it somehow felt he'd arrived someplace. It was no surprise that here, in the Lostlands, it wasn't signposted.

   “Howdy, my feathered friends,” Nox rasped. He parked Old Reliable and glanced around. There was no one within eyeshot, though there was the feeling of many. The Coilhunter's hand got another feeling into it: that familiar, long-trained itch.

   “Now, boys,” Nox said. “Let's see some faces.”

   “Or what?” a voice, deep and muffled, said from just feet ahead.

   “No, that's a voice,” Nox said. “Now, show me a face.”

   Suddenly, the sand erupted, and out of a hole in the ground came a man cowled in feathers. His entire face was covered by a black mask with a raven's beak, all except the eyes, which stared out at Nox with a kind of tranquillity the Coilhunter rarely saw in men.

   “Still not a face,” Nox said, “but that'll do.”

   “Why you do not show yours?” another tribal voice said, and another man, similarly attired, rose from the sand on the right. Two more followed on the left.

   Nox barely budged on the saddle. But boy did his fingers itch.

   “I'll take it you're the Lost Tribe,” Nox said.

   “We are,” the first man replied. He was taller than the rest, mostly due to a higher cowl and larger plume of feathers. Their masks muffled their voices just like Nox's did, but theirs didn't breathe out black smoke. Nox let out a timely puff.

   “What's with the get-up?” the Coilhunter asked. He gestured to their outfits with his left-hand pistol. They hadn't noticed him taking it out. He wanted to draw their attention to it now.

   “What is with yours?”

   “Survival,” Nox said, though he knew it was about flair as well. An old friend called Porridge would've said it was all about the latter. He was of the mind that men peacocked around in cloth and leather, but Nox was of the mind that men peacocked with knives and guns.

   “What do you want, Coilhunter?” The tribesman's accent was new to Nox, a mix of the tribes of the North and the walled-ones of the so-called Civilised South. Nox couldn't help but think it a strange mix.

   “Directions.”

   “Just directions?”

   “Well, somethin' tells me there ain't anything just about what you do, nor where I'm goin',” Nox said. “But for now, directions'll do fine.”

   “To where?”

   “I call him the Man with the Silver Mane.”

   The tribesfolk looked at each ot
her curiously. They weren't familiar with that title, clear enough, but you could see in their eyes that they were familiar with the man behind it.

   “I'm bettin' you've got a similar name for 'im,” Nox added.

   “We have only our own names,” the leader said. “No one can name another.”

   “Is that so?” Nox asked. He wondered where he'd gotten so many titles from then. It seemed like not a day went by without some other gang or conman giving him a new one. The Man with a Thousand Names was apt, but one day even that title might be an understatement.

   “So, what'll I call you?” Nox said.

   “Rassa-tuja-kissa,” the man replied. There was something about how he said it that made it sound a little off. The voice was muffled, but it seemed like the accent changed a little. Nox was no expert on the tribes, but this kind of sounded like how someone would put on their voice to mock them. Like how the Southfolk might do it.

   “Well, Rassa, what's the deal with your tribe?”

   “There is no deal.”

   “What about the feathers?”

   “You insult us to ask.”

   “Maybe I do, but call me curious.”

   “Curious is not your name.”

   “You've got that right, Rassa. Call me Nox.”

   “That is not your name either,” Rassa said. “Nathaniel,” he hissed.

   “Don't make me draw on you.”

   “Do not think we did not already see you draw.”

   Nox smiled with his eyes. “No, you saw me draw one gun. Don't make me draw the other.”

   Then suddenly the tribesfolk shifted and drew weapons of their own. Except, they weren't guns. They pulled out long polearms from inside their robes. That would've been bad enough, except these ones pulsed with a little-known thing called electricity.

  13 – ELECTRIC

  The tribesman to the right raised his polearm up high above his head, ready to bring it down on Nox and Old Reliable, but he ended up bringing it down on himself when Nox fired a bullet into his wrist. They say everyone's got a gun hand, but Nox'd proven that wrong by leaving some folk with no hands at all.

   Nox fired with his other gun at the two tribesmen on the left, but they parried the blasts by spinning their polearms rapidly, until the whiz of electricity filled the air. Nox pulled on the reins and drove the horse back, then right.

   Rassa swung his polearm low, and it struck the front legs of Old Reliable. The electricity bounced up those iron limbs and gave poor Old Reliable a jolt. The horse toppled, and Nox rolled off just in time to avoid being crushed beneath him.

   Nox cast a butterfly capsule as he rolled. The mechanical butterflies inside barely had time to hatch before Rassa swooped in, tearing them apart with his rotating weapon. Any that survived were attracted by the buzz of electricity and the motion of the polearm, and they were electrocuted.

   So much for nature, Nox thought, though it was his own breed of nature. He bred them by the bucket load in his hideout in the Canyon Crescent. Well, he didn't have buckets of them now to waste, so held on to the remaining capsules. He'd have to do this the old-fashioned way. It was lucky he was good at that too.

   Nox pointed his pistol, half-clicked the trigger, then dropped it and quickly rose and fired the other. This put Rassa right off, sending him stumbling back, frantically fending off the bullets. Boy did he spin that polearm, and the bullets pinged off it like a shield. He heard a grunt nearby as a bullet bounced into another tribesman, sending him sprawling to the desert floor. Nox didn't intend to kill these folk, because he didn't entirely know if they were bad, or just slaves of bad. But as far as Nox was concerned, this one was on Rassa.

   The next two were on Nox, and boy did they swoop in quick. They came together, like a team. One polearm came down vertical, while the other swung horizontal, hoping to catch him whichever way he went. Nox dodged and ducked, kicking the legs out from under one of them. He tried to brace himself with the polearm, but Nox kicked that out too, sending it spinning between Nox and the remaining tribesman. It was a good distraction, good enough for Nox to send him limping from another bullet. Some said Nox shot gun hands. Well, he did feet too. And boy were you lucky if that's all he did.

   Rassa came in fast, but Nox parried the blow with the fallen polearm. The electricity sparked between them. It highlighted the grimness of the Coilhunter's eyes. They pressed against each other harder like the locked antlers of fighting deer. They puffed their chests. They challenged each other in the moment, urging the other to take a half-step back, to let their arm slip a little.

   “These are some weapons you've got here,” Nox said.

   Rassa didn't reply. He was struggling against the Coilhunter's larger frame, but he wasn't giving in any time quick. Both of them pushed the electricity closer to the other, waiting for the moment when the other fried. Nox wasn't entirely sure how bad it'd burn, but he had his own small supply of electricity back at his workshop to know that it could give a nasty shock.

   Rassa was just about to baulk. Nox could see it in his eyes. The tranquillity turned to strain, then came close to panic. Oh, he knew how bad it burned. He'd used these weapons before. Nox could almost see the kills in his eyes. What he could see for certain was that Rassa wasn't like the rest. No, he was no slave of bad. He was bad too.

   Then, at the final moment, when Rassa was forced to take a step back to balance himself, Nox's hand slipped a little and struck a button on the polearm, turning the electricity off. Rassa's eyes changed to opportunity now, but Nox took it first. He quickly flicked the weapon, tapping off the button on Rassa's side, removing the voltage there as well. Then he swung and jabbed the end of the staff into Rassa's stomach, knocking the wind from him. He stumbled back into the dirt.

   “Right,” Nox said, marching up to Rassa and grabbing him by the neck. He yanked the cowl clean off, and Rassa was lucky he didn't take off the head. Nox was surprised to see the face beneath: a pale man with short, tight hair. Not the average tribesman at all.

   “Well, now,” Nox said. “Ain't that a sight for sore eyes.”

   Rassa scowled.

   “Now, is that a tribesman's scowl,” Nox said, “or is that the scowl of someone who just made up a tribe?”

   “It is not made up,” Rassa said, in his now too obviously fake accent. “We are real.”

   “Oh, you're real, alright. You just ain't what you say you are.”

   “We are Lost Tribe.”

   And boy, oh, boy were they lost. Some folk went to the tribes to find themselves, and some went out into the Lostlands when the tribes couldn't help them. Some weren't so much as looking for themselves as looking for a family, a community—a tribe. The Ootana were reluctant to welcome outsiders. The Rasaoua shunned them. The Udanudaga despised them. And the Tiandala were gone, all except Umna, wandering somewhere in the wild. Few spoke of the Anganda, and they were growing fewer for speaking of them.

   “Well, I found ya,” Nox said, and he said it like he did when he had a Wanted poster. Rassa wasn't on any that he knew, but he probably should've been. The Coilhunter knew it in his gut—his own old reliable—that if he looked hard enough, he'd find the remnants of Rassa's crimes. Why, he didn't think he'd have to look that hard at all.

   Nox grabbed Rassa by the scruff of the neck and started hauling him away. Normally the body wouldn't have struggled. Normally the body wouldn't have fought back. He could've made it easier with a grasp, draw, and fire—three stages he'd long honed into what many saw as a single movement. He was getting older, but it felt like his gun hands were getting younger, getting quicker. Experience was their whetstone. Experience made him sharp and deadly. But no. The easier kill wouldn't be any use to him out here. He had to find a way to the Man with the Silver Mane. Rassa was the way.

   Rassa did his best to shout out some tribal language he'd long been imitating. He didn't quite get it right, and it showed. Nox was no exper
t on the tribes of the Wild North, but he knew enough, and had met enough, to know what didn't look or sound right. Rassa was out of the ordinary, that's for sure. It made him right at home with the Man with the Silver Mane. Ordinary just didn't cut it with him.

   “You can keep yammerin',” Nox rasped, “or you can save your voice for when I ask ya to speak.” He leaned in close, blasting a puff of smoke out of his mask right into Rassa's face. “Because when I ask, you God damn better speak.”

   He didn't wait for Rassa's reply, and Rassa didn't give much of one beyond a few grunts. Nox dragged him on further, away from his supposed tribe. If the Coilhunter'd had his monowheel nearby, he would've hauled Rassa into the box at the back. The bounty box. Boy, you didn't want to find yourself there. It was small, and it wasn't particularly deep. But it was as good as a coffin. It was as good as a grave.

   He halted and flicked a pouch open on his belt with his thumb. He rolled out a butterfly capsule, one of his favourite toys. It became part of the legend of him. He came in a cloud of dust, smoke, and gas. The gas came from the little mechanical butterflies—and they sent you off to slumber. It was just the ticket for someone like Rassa, whom Nox needed to subdue until he found a better wait to travel. And Nox could use it now. Rassa couldn't swat them away.

   He held the capsule up to Rassa, who stared at it, frozen in fear. Why, it had that effect on many too. Sometimes the fear was greater than the weapon itself. It was as if he'd learned to bottle that too.

   “Well,” Nox said, “now's about time for bedtime prayers.”

   But Rassa didn't pray. Just as the Coilhunter was about to lay him down to sleep, the land decided to do the same for Nox. It broke apart beneath him, swift and sudden. He fell and let go of the capsule. Rassa snatched it from the air, before clambering away from the hole.

   Nox landed on his feet, holding his hat over his eyes to shield them from the dust. When it cleared, he saw Rassa smiling down at him. It seemed he had a bounty box of his own.