Use Enough Gun (Legends of the Monster Hunter Book 3)
Page 15
“Fire away, Mr. Morne,” said Saida. She stood her ground.
Morne jerked both triggers at once. The shotgun bucked up. Dust flew from the gadfly’s right wing. Dozens of pinpoint lights showed through the wing’s web. Crippled, the fly circled, listing sharply to one side. Morne slammed two more shells into his shotgun, snapped the breach shut, and fired both barrels directly into the gadfly’s midsection. The small round shot bounced off the body and rippled the water in a hundred places. The fly headed for Morne’s neck.
Saida cut Brize’s path and missed her again. The bloodsucker dipped to the ground and flew at her ankles. Saida threw the blade. It pierced Brize’s back just behind the head and the creature squealed, shuddered, and lay still, stuck to the ground between Saida’s feet.
The air hummed. A hundred gadflies aimed at them. Morne fired, reloaded, fired, reloaded, fired. His fingers fumbled through his empty possibles bag and found nothing. One look told Saida. He was out of shells. She ran to the rushes growing along the water’s edge, snapped off two, and handed one to him.
“Jump!” She sailed into the water with the rush in her mouth. As she rolled onto her back just beneath the surface, she blew hard to clear her breathing tube. Morne splashed into the stock pond, causing her to bob like a cork, but she stayed submerged. The water above them cleared and they could see the gadflies scouting overhead in ever tightening circles. Deprived of their prey by the water barrier, they flew off by ones, by twos, by fives, until they dispersed in the four cardinal directions of the compass and left the hunters and the Reeve family alone.
Saida stood up and surveyed the scene. She walked to Brize’s carcass and pulled on the grip of her Damascus blade. It was stuck fast. Placing a foot, on the gadfly’s corpse, she pressed down and pulled back with her whole might. Morne slogged out of the water and picked up his empty shotgun; his rifle, worthless for killing swarms of flies, lay where he had dropped it in his panic. At least it was still loaded.
With a final wrench, Saida staggered backward. The blade was in her hand, but not all of it. It had broken in the middle. She walked forward and kicked Brize’s body over. The bloody tip of her knife protruded. She worked it free and held it by two fingers, dripping the monster’s gore back onto her enemy’s body.
“Aw, that big bug broke your pretty knife,” said Morne. “Wait… How could it do that?”
“I don’t know. It should not have been able to.” Saida sank inside. Weakness shook her limbs. The blade had been blessed to destroy monsters. No beast should have been strong enough in life or death to crack the metal.
Morne stared at the last dead gadfly he had blown to Kingdom Come. “He was a big one.” He poked the victim’s abdomen with the muzzle of his double-barrel.
“The males don’t bite or draw blood.” Saida turned the pieces of the broken blade over in her hands.
“These were all female?”
“Yes.” She laid the knife and its tip onto a piece of deerskin, shrouded it, and tied it with thin strips of leather. It lay perfectly at peace in the bottom of her possibles bag.
“I detect a pattern,” said Morne. “Have you noticed that all the monsters we’ve been fighting have been female?”
“Hmmm? Oh, yes. Female.”
“I told you, ma’am, with all due respect to you, females are more dangerous than males.”
“You have been a pretty dangerous male for most of your days, Morne.” She glued her mind to what had caused her weapon to fracture. “The knife blade should not have cracked, let alone broken in two.”
The Reeve family crept from the barn to stare at the dead bugs dotting the ground around their watering hole and front yard.
A shudder ran up Saida’s spine, but she shook it off and drew her thoughts back. “Mr. Reeve, you must burn all the bodies. Do not chance burying any of them. Some may be carrying eggs and then you will have a new crop, one you do not want. We must be off.”
“Before supper? At least let us feed you first.”
“Yes,” said Morne, “by all means, let them feed us first.” He ran his hand down the front of his shirt and pulled it away with strings of fly guts stuck to his fingers. “And a quick wash would be good as well. The next place may not welcome us covered as we are in bug innards.”
Saida relented with a simple nod. “But then we will go. And quickly.” She had been disarmed by an insect. It was a fact that she could not allow to become well known. And there was only one person who could tell her why it had happened.
“The blade broke,” said Saida to no one.
Morne nodded seriously so she would know that he was taking the event with the proper amount of solemnity. “What does that mean?”
“It means I have to go home.”
Saida wrung out her hair and bound it behind her. She walked the verge of the stream where she had left her bloody, gut-smeared cloak next to Morne’s long coat. She might be able to wash enough of the mess out to make them tolerable. She heard the pounding of rock on rock and rounded the bend to see an old woman on her knees in the water dunking the cloak and letting it float pinned beneath a stone while she did the same to Morne’s coat.
“I beg your pardon, but those are ours.”
The woman kept working, her long, unbound gray and red hair floating on each wind. The stream turned pink where the cloth soaked. Saida moved to within six feet of the stranger.
“Who are you?”
The woman wept and bowed her head over the garments.
Morne sauntered up. “Is she stealing our cloaks?”
“Thieves don’t cry. And they don’t usually stop to wash what they steal either.”
The washer woman stood and spread the cloak over a low bush. She hung Morne’s coat from a broken tree branch.
Morne slipped two fingers into his waistcoat pocket and withdrew two coins, then thought better of his generosity and slipped them back. “What do we owe you?”
“One will die,” said the woman. She cried out as if in pain.
“Well, that fee is a little too high to pay,” said Morne. “It’s silver or nothing.”
Saida hushed him. “Who are you?”
“One who knows!” She shrieked, the wail forcing Saida to cover her ears.
Morne grimaced. “Forget telling me to hush. Tell her to hush.”
“One will die!” The hag ran down the stream away from them, screeching the whole way.
Saida and Morne watched until they lost sight and sound of her, looked each other in the eye, and looked at the abandoned laundry.
“How far is this home of yours? And how fast can we get there?”
“Too far and not fast enough.”
The elderly man in the long black cassock did not bother to turn around. He knew that presence from the old days, but it had grown stronger over the vacant years.
“You have not come to visit for a long while.”
“I have been busy,” Saida said.
“I heard.” The priest straightened his back from tending his delicate vines and plants, his small congregation that would produce enough tomatoes, peas, and beans to feed his multitude during the spare winter coming. “Not that I haven’t missed you, but why are you here now?”
“Am I unwelcome?”
The priest shook his smoke-colored head. “No, but I have noticed over the years that your visits are never purely social calls. Something must be wrong to pull you from your mission. Something irregular.”
“The Damascus blade broke.”
“That is irregular…”
She pulled the wrapped knife from the possibles bag slung across her shoulder, and untied it. Lifting the hilt and the shard from the deerskin, she held both toward him on the flat of her palms.
The priest touched them gingerly as though he expected the pieces to burn him. “How did this happen?”
“I must have done something wrong.” She remembered the hag’s warning. “Can you repair the damage?”
“I can try, but it will cost.”
&n
bsp; “Cost? Your aid has always been free.”
“This will be a different type of aid and a different type of payment, a higher price.”
“A price I can afford?”
“You are the only one who knows that. Come back tomorrow afternoon.”
“There is another matter.”
The old hermit pricked his ears and listened harder.
“On the way here, we stopped by a stream to wash the battle and blood from our cloaks, but when we weren’t looking, an old woman took them and washed them herself.”
Brother Andrew paled. “You saw her with your own eyes?”
“I did. Morne did as well.”
“Both of you?”
“Yes.”
“What did she say?”
“One will die.”
“She did not speak directly to you?”
Saida shook her head. “She spoke to both of us. What does it mean?”
“There is a legend, very old, that tells of a washer woman who appears to a family and predicts a death a short while before it happens. She is often seen washing the clothes of the one who is destined to die, especially the clothing of a warrior. Though I have never heard that she washed the clothes of two unrelated by blood… Later, usually within a month’s span and near the time prophesied, she can be heard wailing again, a horrible cry.”
“That it is.”
Brother Andrew startled. “Saida, take great care during these next days. I do not know what this apparition means.” He hefted the broken blade and matched its shard along the ragged break. “Guard yourself, especially your tongue.”
She laughed and made a wry face. “Why? Will a monster try to cut it off?”
“You do understand then?”
“Lo and behold.” The woman dropped her rake.
“Lo and behold.” Saida smiled. “How are you, Aunt Nancy?”
“I did not think to see you again,” said Nancy. “You have made quite a reputation for yourself since you left.”
Saida tilted her face toward the ground. “That was never my intention.”
“Still, your name has grown.” Nancy leaned her head around Saida and stared at Morne, squinting at his face. “And you…you are?”
“Morne, ma’am.” He remembered almost too late to snatch his hat from his head.
“Morne?” She accented the name a little too heavily.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “Is there a difficulty?”
“No, not a difficulty. Not precisely.” Aunt Nancy bent down and picked up her rake. “Take supper with us, Mr. Morne. Stable your horses in that shed yonder; you’ll find what you need. Come with me, Saida. We have some catching up to do.” Every two steps toward the whitewashed house, Aunt Nancy turned around to watch Morne with the horses.
“What’s the matter?” Saida asked.
“Where did you find him?”
“It’s more like he found me,” Saida replied. And tried to kill me. It was an old, bad habit Morne had with women, one it had taken a long, hard time to break.
“So he found you after all this time. Blood will tell. He knew in his heart that you were his kin.” Nancy placed two teacups on the linen-covered table and set the water on to boil. She carefully laid the silver teaspoons, the sugar, the heavy cream, and the sterling sugar snips. She steeped the tea and poured it in the china cups, all before Saida found her tongue again.
“Kin?”
“Didn’t you know? That’s your cousin, your Aunt Maudie’s little boy—oh, but that’s right, he was gone with his worthless father and she remarried before your folks came back here and settled. So you wouldn’t have recognized the name, and no one would have been inclined to mention it, the whole thing was such a scandal. Then Maudie died young. And nobody talked of it again. But that’s him—Morne. He has the look of his mother around the eyes and, thank goodness, none of the look of his father, a wicked man if ever I saw one.”
Saida’s frown surprised her aunt. All the pleasure of the reunion had drained out of her.
“He didn’t mention his kinship?” Nancy asked.
Saida shook her head and gazed through the window toward the shed. Morne was wrestling with her horse that did not favor the look of the shed or the stall. Morne found a bucket of oats and coaxed her with more success. “I don’t think he knows of it.” Sorrow etched shadows on her face along lines that had not been there when Nancy had seen her last.
“Don’t tell me that boy turned out to be like his father?” Aunt Nancy said.
“That depends. What kind of wicked was old Mr. Morne?” Saida stared into the clear, swirling brown tea. An answer might float to the surface, but the left-over tea leaves in the bottom of the cup never stopped moving long enough to take a definite shape.
“There were rumors,” said Nancy. “Only rumors. I shouldn’t gossip…”
“You’ve already started.” Saida’s iron-hard expression would not let her aunt wriggle out from under the burden of the tale. “Finish.”
“He was hard on women, and not just on your aunt. That sort saps the life out of them and then bolts, leaving destruction in his wake. And…a couple of women went missing during that time, but nothing ever came to light over that. As I said, just rumors.”
“And the wicked old man, he raised his boy on his own?”
“After he left here? Who knows? Saida, there was nothing to be done for it. Somebody in the family would have taken the boy in, but the old man was bound and determined that the boy belonged to him, like he owned him, and there was no law that would go after them. Your Aunt Maudie was so glad to be rid of the father that she let her boy go, too. She never saw him again.” She tilted her head and examined Saida’s face. “You seem changed.”
“In more ways than one. How did Aunt Maudie die?”
“An accident. Broke her neck in a fall from the bluff east of town. She looked so pitiful, her face all cut up, her mouth, even her tongue. The sharp rocks on that outcropping…Is something wrong?”
“She never saw her boy again. She died of a broken neck, all cut up. What could possibly be wrong?” Saida’s inner eyes imagined Morne’s victims. “As you said, there was nothing to be done. One more detail though. What was the Morne boy’s given name?”
Morne pretended not to notice Saida’s stare boring into the back of his head every time he looked away. He thought it would stop. It didn’t. When it started to affect his digestion, he squirmed in place, pushed away his dinner plate, wiped his mouth with the linen napkin her aunt had generously supplied, and stared back. After a minute, he wiped his mouth again. Her stare must mean that he had inadvertently left some food stuck to his face.
“Forgive me,” she said. She folded her own napkin and patted it flat onto the table.
“Sure,” said Morne. “I forgive you. But you were looking at me pretty hard for a second there.”
“Ezekiel, I haven’t done right by you.”
“What…did you call me?”
“Ezekiel.”
“Where did you hear that?”
“It’s your given name, isn’t it? Would you rather I call you Zeke?”
“No! It’s just…I haven’t been called that name since…I can’t remember when. It was always, ‘Hey, Morne!’ or ‘Morne, come ’ere!’ Never Ezekiel… Never.”
“Son.”
Blood darkened Morne’s face. “No. Never that.” The eyes appeared before him again for the first time…for the first time since…since Saida. “Wait, how did you find out my name?” But Saida had slipped away.
He found her standing over a grave in the small church cemetery two miles down the road. He glanced at the name and dates. Too few years spanned the space between birth and death. “Your kin?”
“Yes.” She stopped her tongue before she could say too much.
The dates lay too close together for a natural death. “She died young,” said Morne.
Yes, his mother had died young.
“What happened to your father?”
“So you don’t know what happened to him, where he is now?”
“I don’t know where he is, or even if he is.” He motioned toward the gravestone with his hat. “Who was she?”
Saida pitied him. “You have never before heard the name Maud Jessup?”
Morne denied it with a shake of his head. He waited for her explanation and a dawning broke; as a rule, Saida had no interest in dead women…
“Did I…is she here because of me?” he asked.
“You would have had to start your bloody career awfully young.” She pointed toward the death date with a nod of her head. “No, Ezekiel. You didn’t kill her. She was your mother.”
Morne caught his breath in mid-draw and stared down on the grave…
“She was also my aunt.”
He shifted his stare to her face. “Kin? You and me?”
“First cousins.”
Morne studied the cold headstone. “What cut her life short?” When Saida did not answer, his mind scrambled over the possibilities. His breathing quickened. He turned and caught Saida checking the ammunition in her pistol. “What you are planning?”
“Where was the last place you knew your father to be?”
“We lived…Loma Escondida,” he said. “Northwest of here in the brush country.”
“Very well, Loma Escondida it is.”
“I ran long and hard trying to rid myself of that old man. I don’t figure to go hunting him now.”
“You’re the one always wanting second chances, but do as you will. Stay here. Our Aunt Nancy will put you up so long as you cause no trouble. You can work for your keep, save a little money, start a new life here or elsewhere.”
“While you go seeking him by your lonesome? How come? Why not leave well enough alone?”
Saida’s eyes misted, “Because things aren’t well enough left alone. Fighting gadflies to save a family’s farm is all well and good, but we did not meet by accident, you and I. There is a purpose for that Damascus blade I was given—a purpose that I have thus far failed to fulfill. Its breaking was no light coincidence, and I now have to go after your father. It is a blood debt I owe to my family, and to you.”