Outcast_Keepers of the Stone_Book One

by Andrew Anzur Clement

  “About done yet?” she yelled over her shoulder.

  “Finished!” Henry shut the final cage.

  Immediately, Liza thrust the bank’s manager forward into the arms-wielding clerk, knocking both of them against the cash desk and then onto the floor, unconscious. Many of the rabbits in the immediate vicinity of the disturbance were sent flying in the direction of the customers, renewing the confusion. Henry ran toward the side door with two of the cash-filled cages in hand. Liza moved to pick up the pistol.

  Moving as fast as a blur, the black-haired creature picked up the firearm and aimed it at the mass of people on the other end of the desk, which now included the third bank employee, who had apparently decided to take Liza’s advice to back off. Fortunately, half of them appeared too shocked by the situation, or scandalized by the white, pink-eyed animals that now crowded most of the building, to mount an effective resistance. Henry rushed back, collecting the next two cages. Then the next two. Then the next.

  Abruptly, a voice rang out in Liza’s direction. “Stop. Or I will kill you. You will not take my money.” It was a middle-aged man. Apparently one of the bank’s customers, his worn features showed that he had lived a life mostly out of doors.

  The felinoid quickly searched the crowd for the presence of other armed individuals. Seeing none, she centered her aim on the man who had directed his own firearm towards her. Liza jerked her head behind her.

  “Shoot him and I kill you. Try to shoot me.” Liza let out a derisive scoff. “And, you know what? You just might hit me. But not before I can pull this trigger. I guarantee you.”

  “Let’s go!” It was Henry, who was picking his way through the few rabbits that had strayed toward the hall leading to the side entrance. Almost tripping over a couple of Henry’s erstwhile cargo himself, the armed man moved through the opening between the cash desk and the short hall that constituted Liza’s and Henry’s escape route. Beyond was the wagon. Blocking the bank’s only open egress, he turned to face the thieves, his back facing the open door. Moving as best they could, the crowd closed around the tellers’ stations. Tracking his movements, Liza tensed her hand around the pistol.

  “Go ahead. Shoot me. They’ll jump you,” the man said, apparently noticing Liza’s action.

  Liza remained silent for a second, looking as if she and her partner in crime had been bested. Henry regarded her with increased anxiety. The felinoid directed her gaze down for a moment, looking as if she were about to lower her weapon. Suddenly, her palm tensed around it again as she screamed:

  “Malka! Now!”

  Outside, the heap of burlap left in the wagon heaved. Malka sprang from the floor of the cargo bed where she had lain in waiting, onto the driver’s bench. As she did so, the Thag drew her dagger from the folds of the plain tan garment she wore. Using the ability to differentiate sounds that she had learned in Husain’s camp, Malka had followed the entire quest – that was how she thought of it – and knew the exact situation before Liza had called out.

  As the Thag landed, she turned, throwing the blade. It impacted directly with the backside of the man’s left knee, causing him to crumple as it did so. Liza rushed forward immediately, collecting his weapon and Malka’s blade. Henry also scampered past as Liza turned to cover their withdrawal, moving backward until she reached the wagon. Both Liza and Henry scampered onto the driving bench.

  “Go, Malka!” Henry yelled. Malka snapped the reins and they were off. Behind them, a smattering of angry people – accompanied by a few rabbits – poured into the street yelling after them. The shouts quickly fell behind. After the trio left town, they quickly stopped so that Malka could obscure their tracks, while Liza quickly climbed into the back of the wagon to inspect their haul and cover it with the burlap tarp. Left alone, Henry waited watchfully in the conveyance’s front. Their flight continued in a slightly different trajectory. Eventually their pace slowed.

  “Wow! That...that was amazing! I never thought it would go off almost exactly as planned,” Henry broke the silence, finally unable to contain his excitement.

  “I must admit, I think my Master would have approved,” Malka responded after a beat. As part of an attempt to disguise herself at Henry’s suggestion, the subcontinental half-breed now wore her hair in a long braid that snaked down her back, tied with a few feathers from a bird that Liza had killed a few days prior. She was dressed in the plainest tan clothing that the Thag’s leader had been able to find in their provisions.

  “Shut up! Both of you.” Far from exuding a mood of triumph, Liza sounded distinctly perturbed. “We almost got shot! Twice. Which, considering the object Malka has with her, is a risk I really did not want to take. I told you something like that would happen. But, did either of you bother listening to the only one here with some experience outside of an insular camp? No, of course not. That might actually have made some sense!” She turned to glower at Malka and Henry. Her voice lowered in pitch and volume.

  “You almost made me use one of those things.” She hissed the last word with disgust, then looked away staring out at the horizon.

  A moment of silence passed.

  “Um, Liza? What do you have against, you know...guns?” Henry offered tentatively, still seeming intimidated by the felinoid, despite his recent feat.

  Liza’s head snapped back towards him, her hair flying in the process.

  “Shut up!” she practically yelled. Then, she went back to staring into space.

  ***

  Bozhena kept her eyes glued to the set of wagon wheel ruts that she had tracked from where the Urumi had located them near the caldera. She had been slightly surprised when they had led her to the main street of the town where she now found herself. The warrioress had expected that her quarry would wish to remain in less populated areas, due to a belief that this would decrease their profile.

  Yet, if they knew that they were still being pursued, Bozhena supposed that they may have elected to risk passing through a town according to the idea that this would allow them to obscure their tracks among the many others made by its day-to-day inhabitants.

  How wrong they are, in either case, the Slav thought, sadly. The ploy might have worked, she reflected, if she and the Chosen’s two henchmen – who walked, as always, behind her – had not been so close on their trail. However, the fact that it was still possible to discern the wheel ruts of her target’s wagon from others told her that they were disturbingly close. Soon enough, she would find those whom she was charged to seek. Then, I will have to fulfill my duty to the Dark Prince. Dread accompanied the thought.

  As she lamented, her tongue strayed absently to what remained of her left front tooth. Its lower half had been shattered by the Chosen’s blow. While it did hurt at first, the pain had quickly subsided to a dull ache. There had been no reason for him to strike her like that. No reason, except sheer vindictiveness. Bozhena allowed herself to glean a small bit of pleasure from the mixture of hatred she felt for her commander and self-pity at her situation. The power of the Transmutation could force her to serve the will of the Dark Prince. But, it could never force her to enjoy it.

  As Bozhena came into the town’s center, two things came to her immediate attention. First, the relevant tracks veered left toward a building. They appeared to circle back to the cross street, which they had just passed. Second, a rather odd disturbance was taking place in front of said edifice. Over a dozen people were arrayed in a disorganized group, which Bozhena now noticed housed a local banking office. Around their feet, a few dozen rabbits gallivanted about in a confused manner, as more bunnies exited from the bank’s main entrance. Many of the people were yelling and gesturing in a wild manner. A few of the women could be seen crying.

  The blond-haired Urumi held up a hand, signaling the other two invisible forms to stop and observe. They perceived her gesture and did as it indicated; fortunately, Bozhena grated, they knew at least enough not to question her decision. The blue-eyed girl was aware that they would probably consider i
t a waste of time. They were technically correct. Bozhena could discern their quarry’s trail clearly. She could continue to follow them no matter whether the disturbance bore some relation to those she pursued or not. Still, it never hurt to gather additional information. And, she admitted privately, it allowed her to stall for time. She was genuinely curious as to what a bunch of rabbits were doing in a bank.

  As Bozhena watched, she tuned her sensitive hearing into a conversation between a man, who looked to be a local law enforcement official, and a middle-aged man in a disheveled suit who nursed a large red welt on his bald forehead.

  “It was so crazy, I would never have taken it for a heist,” the older man was saying. “This kid, no older than about fourteen, comes into my bank with these documents that say I have to allow him to unload this cargo of live rabbits into my safe. It’s a mistake, I tell him, but he insists. I figure that someone messed up the paperwork, so I eventually allow him to move the animals into the vault….”

  “Can you describe this boy?” the law officer said.

  “Brown hair. Blue eyes. Light freckles on his face. He was of average height for his age.”

  Bozhena was about to move on. This clearly had nothing to do with those she was tracking. And, what had happened with the rabbits was clear. They had been used as a means of getting the bank’s manager to open the vault, then let out as a distraction.

  She had been on the cusp of paying no further attention, when the man continued:

  “Out of nowhere, this girl appears from behind me inside the back of the vault and takes me prisoner.”

  “Describe her.”

  “I don’t know. She was behind me the entire time, before she sent me and one of my tellers careening into the front desk. That’s all I remember until I came to.” Bozhena stopped, perceiving that the other two Urumi froze behind her as well.

  The law officer turned to the rest of the crowd.

  “Can anybody tell me what this woman looked like?”

  “Long black hair, very white skin,” came one voice, a woman’s.

  “She was not much older than the boy. Maybe about sixteen or seventeen.” This time, the response came from a man with craggy features, who, Bozhena noted, sat propped up against one of the building’s exterior walls with a bandage tied around one of his knees. “She moved faster than anyone I’d ever seen.”

  “And no one saw her enter the bank?” the officer asked.

  There was silence from the crowd.

  “No.” It was the woman again. “But there was one other girl. About the same age. She drove the wagon when they got away. That girl stabbed my husband’s leg. She looked like some kind of Indian. You’ve got to find them, officer. My husband and I had our entire life’s savings in that bank.”

  The conversation continued on, but the blue-eyed warrioress paid little attention. The description of the boy had been meaningless to her. But, the other details – the description of the two girls, how one seemed to move inhumanly fast and seemingly appear in the vault – were too familiar to be a coincidence. Although she had no logical idea why they would need to rob a bank, Bozhena remembered that for a time during her tracking she had followed three sets of hoof prints; the Urumi supposed that the third individual could be the boy that had been described as traveling with them by the people in the bank. Though, she couldn’t figure why this would be the case either.

  Bozhena turned to see three men on horseback coming down the street, which lay perpendicular to the thoroughfare on which she now stood. They were all dressed in uniforms, marking them as law enforcement deputies. Each carried a rifle in one hand.

  “They went this way?” the one in the center asked, pointing straight ahead with his firearm.

  Multiple expressions of assent went up from the crowd.

  Again, Bozhena raised her hand, flicking her wrist once forward quickly to indicate that her band should follow. Maybe she could let these three do the tracking for her. If they were as close behind as the situation suggested, her quarry should not be hard for them to follow.

  Standing on the road, the Urumi waited until the three deputies were almost out of sight, then she flicked her cape slightly, moving instantly to catch up with their current location. The Chosen’s two henchmen followed. They repeated this process multiple times, moving back out into the countryside. With the traces so fresh, they moved quickly. Much ground was covered.

  Then, the three policemen stopped.

  “That’s it?”

  “What?” another of them responded.

  “Their trail. It just...ends.”

  While the deputies seemed momentarily perplexed, Bozhena recognized the same expert cover work she had discerned before. Her prey definitely lay close by. The blond Urumi looked around, searching for traces of the actual direction they had taken. She spotted something unnatural sticking out of a shrub about a hundred feet away. Shortly after, she could discern that the tracks picked up again and waited to see if the deputies would notice. After a few moments, they did.

  “Hey! What’s that over there?”

  The first to notice, who had been in the center of the trio back in the town, moved his steed toward the shrub. The other two followed suit. As he approached it, the man dismounted and picked two objects from the plant’s thinly leafed branches. He stared at them: they were a pair of fifty-dollar bills.

  Then he noticed more traces of wagon prints a few dozen yards further afield. At first, it flashed through Bozhena’s mind that the bills, along with their leavers’ apparent trajectory, had been intended as a decoy. But, examining her environs, she detected no traces of other, more well-hidden paths that they could have taken.

  “Looks like they went this way,” the deputy yelled. “What do you boys say? Follow the money!”

  The other two communicated their agreement.

  Again, the Slav gave the signal to follow. But, she furrowed her brow. The one she was tracking was not sloppy when it came to covering her tracks; Bozhena wondered why she who carried the Fragment would have left such an obvious clue as to her real direction.

  She prepared for the distinct possibility that the deputies would find that a trap lay in waiting for them, when they caught up with the miscreants both civilization and the Urumi pursued.

  The three servants of the Dark Prince repeated the process of waiting, following the policemen with their eyes, until the three local deputies practically reached the horizon. Then, they caught up with the lawmen. The dark figures repeated the process perhaps a dozen more times.

  Then, after completing yet another jump, Bozhena saw a lone wagon, making its way slowly over uneven terrain, a few hundred feet ahead. She waited for the felinoid to appear. Or, for the one who held the Fragment to attack in the manner of her Sect from behind one of the nearby rocks.

  Nothing happened.

  After a few moments, the three lawmen, who were still ahead of her, nodded as if in agreement. They raised their rifles and began to fire.

  This is a problem, the thought manifested in the Podole native’s mind. Her quarry appeared to have been caught completely unprepared. With luck, the gunfire would remove the lightning-fast felinoid from the tactical equation. But, Bozhena was supposed to capture the one who guarded the Fragment alive. It doesn’t make any sense, her thoughts insisted. Those I track are not so careless as to simply leave clues to their location lying about.

  Grimly, she signaled the Chosen’s two henchmen to move into position behind the deputies. Her hand moved to the long coiled blade that rested against her hip, determined to do what was necessary to complete the task the hated Order had required of her.

  ***

  The shot rang out over their heads, tearing through the fabric of the wagon’s canvas awning. Liza and Malka crouched down in the well in front of the driving bench, meant for the conductor’s and passengers’ legs. More bullets continued to rent the fabric of the wagon. Others could be heard chipping the wood or slamming into the cages full of cash i
n that lay in the cargo bed.

  “Oh, hell!” the felinoid yelled over the bullet fire. Moving with her customary speed, she poked her head up just slightly enough over their cargo to ascertain who shot at them. Then she moved back down. The milk-skinned young woman did not like what she saw. Over this terrain, there was no way they could outrun men on horseback with a wagon. She crouched back down to address the Thag.

  “Three men. Law enforcement on horseback. With guns, obviously.”

  “How did they find us?” Malka sounded both confused and slightly panicked.

  “I don’t know. Either you didn’t hide our tracks as well as you thought you did. Or, they just got really lucky,” the green-eyed girl hissed at her.

  “That...that is not possible. I covered….”

  “Not now. How are we going to deal with this?” Liza continued in the same annoyed whisper.

  “The firearms,” Malka whispered. “We still have them from the bank.”

  “Do you even know how to fire a gun?”

  The Thag shook her head.

  The felinoid harrumphed. “Figures.” Then she began thinking out loud.

  “So, we’re low on ammunition. Only six shots per gun, assuming they’re completely loaded. Okay. They’re in the open. We can use the wagon as cover. Target what shots we have. I’m not very good at aiming, but maybe if Mister Bunny Burglar over there takes….”

  She stopped. Looking behind her, to the empty space off to the right side of the wagon’s seating area.

  “Where is Henry?”

  Malka and Liza looked around. Both of them spotted their erstwhile captive at the same moment.

  “Ugh! He’s in front of the wagon running away with one of the cages,” Liza said, as if the situation needed any clarification. “I told you we should have killed that little….”

  The gunfire ceased abruptly, replaced in short order with the quick screams of men and horses. Then silence. The escaping youth was forgotten for the moment. Liza quickly poked her head just over the stack of cages.

  “Oh, no! Oh, please, no!” For the first time since Malka had known the felinoid, she seemed more genuinely worried than annoyed at their situation; she knew what Liza had seen.