by Faith Hunter
Lieutenant Bolton sounded a breech along the far left wall. Mungo turned and saw the line of Scalies and their Arapaho allies filing into the yard.
“To the guns!” Mungo yelled, pitching his dry, raspy voice above the din of battle. “To the guns!”
Everyone who could move now did as they had been ordered, abandoning the walls and retreating to the line of guns in the center of the yard. They had been placed almost in semi-circle, with crews ready and waiting. Mungo personally helped the wounded find their feet and make it past the barrels as the Scalie horde crested the walls.
When everyone was set, Mungo raised his hand, brought it down, and shouted, “Fire!”
All eight barrels roared with double-canister. Massive, bloody holes were ripped through the Scalie lines. Armour and scaled flesh, bone and carapace flew into the air like a shower of confetti, as gun crews filled their barrels again with canister and fired a second time as the Scalies tried recouping and attacking once more. The amount of damage was so severe that Mungo had to close his eyes to it. But he kept ordering to fire, again and again, until the screams of the Killajunkur subsided, the roar of their allies waned, and silence fell across the yard.
Mungo opened his eyes and saw the last of the Scalies that had survived jump the wall and disappear. His last remaining men were huddled nearby nursing wounds, shaking, exhausted. Molly Dupree lay at his feet, a blaster wound having ripped open her chest and arms. Sergeant Williams stood nearby.
“Sir,” he said, in a whisper so no one else could hear. “We’re done. We’ve no more canister. We’ve no more ammunition. If they attack again, there’ll be no stopping them.”
Rage filled Mungo’s mind. He pulled the dirk from his boot, looked around the yard, and found a Scalie writhing in pain. He pushed away the dead bodies lying on top of it and held the knife to its throat. He was about to slash the beast’s throat when Corporal Johns’ words about the knife came to him. I know you’ll put it to good use.
He paused and looked into the terrified, opal-colored eyes of the Scalie. He tucked the knife away. “Lieutenant, a piece of paper please, and a pencil.”
The lieutenant found these items in the chapel and handed them over. Mungo spread the paper over the chest armour of the Scalie and scribbled a note. He wrote as legibly as he could, as well as his frayed nerves could hold the pencil steady and write. Then he folded it up and shoved it into the clawed hand of the Scalie.
“You cannot understand what I am saying to you,” he said, his face mere inches from the Scalie face, “but you will understand this. Go…and take this note to Arjukadembo. It is my flag of truce. Give it to him, and tell him that Captain Mungo Snead wishes to meet when the sun rises in the East. Tell him that I will come, and I will discuss with him our terms of surrender.”
The alien looked at him and flickered its blue forked tongue as if acknowledging his words. Mungo grabbed its left arm; Lieutenant Williams its right. They dragged the Scalie to the front gate and opened it. They let it go, and at first, the beast just lay there, staring into the early morning sky. Then it flipped over and scampered away through the burnt bodies and scorched buffalo grass.
“Are we really going to surrender?” Lieutenant Williams asked.
“What other choice is there?”
“What if he refuses to meet? Now that he is in a position of advantage, why would he?”
Mungo stared at his lieutenant with careful eyes. “Because Arjukadembo thinks himself an honorable creature…and so do I. Two honorable souls meeting to discuss peace.” He smiled through a blinding headache, a heavy heart. “He will see my supplication as a sign of his superior strength and intellect. How could he refuse?”
~*~
They met like before, in nearly the same spot, as the sun began to rise. This time Mungo went alone, much to the chagrin of his officers who begged him to take an armed guard. He refused. The show of an armed escort would not garner the result that he sought, and the only kind of long-lasting peace that he could envision. He walked out Fort Henderson’s ruined front gate, three hundred yards down the dirt road, and halted before the Great One.
“You have fought valiantly, Captain Snead,” Arjukadembo said through his translator. “You have defended your fort far better than I would have imagined. You have killed many brave Killajunkur warriors today.”
“Don’t forget your Arapaho and Pawnee allies,” Mungo said. Or they might forget you in time. “They are brave warriors as well.”
The Great One flashed a smile, nodding to his translator. “Of course. But now it is time to rest, to put down your arms and surrender. Do you agree?”
Mungo nodded slowly. “You have won, Arjukadembo. We cannot hold out any longer. I am here to beg for the lives of my people. Will you allow us to gather ourselves and leave the fort in good order?”
Arjukadembo considered in silence, his thick scales showing brilliant red and green along his length, the muck-sack in his throat bobbing happily. Mungo could see the joy (and perhaps relief?) in the Scalie’s amber eyes. Finally, he smiled again and nodded.
“Very well. You have leave to gather your dead and wounded and depart. We will give you two hours to do so, and no more.”
“Thank you, Great One.”
Mungo offered his hand. At first, Arjukadembo was reluctant to respond, the custom not practiced by the Killajunkur. Their scales shifted colors to denote pleasure or displeasure in agreements. The thought of touching a human was unsavory to them, Mungo knew, unless it was to kill. He thrust his hand forward and waited patiently.
“You are welcome, Captain Snead.” Arjukadembo leaned forward and shook Mungo’s hand.
Tears began to run down Mungo’s face. He didn’t even have to force it. Exhaustion, coupled with the sinking feeling of defeat, finally let his emotions overwhelm him. He fell to his knees and cried.
“Rise,” Arjukadembo said, leaning forward even more to place his large clawed hands on Mungo’s shoulders. “Do not cry. You are an honorable man, and an honorable man does not cry in the sight of an ene—”
Before Arjukadembo could finish, Mungo reached into his boot and pulled out the Highland dirk, thrust it forward and up, into the seam between the breast plates of the Scalie’s armour. He struck the location he knew would do the most damage. The long, thick, sharp point of the dirk ripped through scales and bone and punctured the Great One’s chest, and dark red blood poured from the wound.
Arjukadembo fell back, in shock, but lashed out with his claws and drove them across Mungo’s face, leaving savage cuts. Mungo fell back as well, clutching his bleeding face, knowing that his left eye had been sliced. The Arapaho translator tried responding, but Mungo had prepared for it. Through his pain, through his half-sight, he pulled another smaller blade from beneath his belt and thrust it into the man’s throat, leaving him writhing and bleeding on the ground.
Arjukadembo staggered back, gasping for air. “You—you have failed me,” he said, trying to pull the blade free. “You have no honor.”
“You’re right, Great One,” Mungo said through streams of blood. “I have no honor. This is war, and I did my duty today.”
“My death is meaningless, Captain. My army will attack, and continue to attack until everyone in your fort is dead.”
Mungo shook his head. “No, your death does matter. You’re one of those rare creatures, Great One, that comes along once in a generation, once in a lifetime. With you gone, the Killajunkur will have to figure it all out on their own, figure out how to live together with all of us on this small rock revolving around the sun. And they may not be so brilliant as you, so confident, so able to make the right choices.”
Arjukadembo fell to the ground. “Another will rise, Captain. To take my place.”
“I’m playing for time, Great One. Time is the only thing we have anymore.”
Arjukadembo did not speak again. Instead, with the last of his strength, he motioned his army forward. Then he fell and stilled forever, as the long l
ine of skink riders moved forward, toward where their chief and Mungo lay.
With the last of his strength, Mungo rose up on feeble knees and flashed the small bloody blade he still held in his hand. My last stand, he thought as he waited for the first wave of Killajunkur to hit. My last and greatest stand.
As the first skink rider struck him, and as the rest trampled him into the soft ground, Mungo couldn’t help but smile. For in the distance, he could hear the long, persistent note of a cavalryman’s bugle.
General Davenport’s 10th Royal Guard had finally arrived.
~*~
Frank and Earnest
Tonia Brown
Frank popped the shutter open as quietly as he could, folding it back against the wall with a soft click. Thank goodness there wasn’t an actual glass window to contend with, just a fine screen between them and the office beyond. Frank pulled a blade from his boot and set to cutting the edges of the screen.
“Good thing there’s no glass,” Earnest said.
“I know,” Frank whispered over his shoulder.
“Cause it would be a lot harder with glass in the way.” Earnest seemed to think about this a moment, then added, “And noisier.”
Frank snorted at his cousin. “Yeah, and it’s noisy enough as it is.”
“Oh, sorry,” Earnest whispered, and went quiet.
Frank got back to work cutting the screen away. Of course, he’d have to climb through and let Earnest inside. There was no way his younger, much larger cousin could fit through the tiny opening. Frank was so scrawny, he could’ve gotten through a window half the size. Heck, a quarter of the size if his life depended on it. His ma once said Frank could squeeze through the eye of a needle if it meant escaping the fires of Hell. And considering that Frank and Earnest often faced the possibility of going to Hell, for performing deeds such as the one they were performing now, Frank reckoned he had to agree.
Once Frank had the screen off, he slipped through the window and into the office. He then motioned to his cousin, waving the man toward the backdoor. Earnest held a thumb up, then lumbered off in that direction. Frank felt his way through the room and found the backdoor with little trouble. There, he popped the catch and opened the door wide for his cousin to pass through. Earnest blundered inside, unable to execute even the simplest of movements without evoking the spirit of a drunken ox.
“Thanks,” Earnest said. The big man covered his mouth as his eyes flew wide in the moonlit room.
“You can talk now,” Frank said. “I reckon it’s safe enough in here. Just keep your voice down.”
“Good thinkin’, Frank.”
Frank lit a small lantern, keeping the flame as low as possible. Holding the light up, he scanned the room. There didn’t seem to be much worth taking. Frank stepped over a stack of dusty books and began rifling through the papers strewn across the untidy desk.
“Who you think lives here?” Earnest said.
“No one lives here,” Frank said. “It’s an office. Someone works out of here.”
“Whatcha lookin’ for?”
“Anything valuable.”
“I don’t think there is anything like that here.” Earnest glanced across the sparsely decorated office. “This feller ain’t got nothin’ I want. It’s kinda like other folks left stuff they didn’t want either.”
It was hard for Frank to disagree with that. The office was furnished with half rotten chairs and crumbling end tables and a musty old desk. Papers filled most of the corners, while crates of empty whiskey bottles lined the back wall. Someone liked to drink a whole heck of a lot of rotgut. Frank liked whiskey too, though not that much. Usually he and Earnest would steal a quart or two when they could, and try to make it last as long as possible between them. They did the same with food. And clothes. And money.
Thus was the life of an outlaw in the west.
Frank didn’t really want to be an outlaw, and he certainly didn’t want his impressionable younger cousin in the criminal way. Yet there wasn’t much else they could do to scratch out a meager living in the harsh world of this new frontier. Ranch work was hard. Damned hard. Frank learned that after a month of shoveling poop and brushing down sweaty animals and getting kicked in the head every time he turned around. And the kicking thing was just the manager being a hard ass; sometimes a horse would kick him in the head too.
A fistful of blisters and two concussions later, Earnest and Frank decided honest work wasn’t for the likes of them, despite what their respective mamas named them. Aside from hard work, there was little else to feed a pair of grown men in the wild frontier, so they turned to a life of crime. Trouble was, they weren’t very good at a life of crime either, but at least they didn’t get a face full of horseshoe or boot, or end up smelling like manure. Well, not much like manure. It was a hell of a life too, for the frontier did not suffer fools gladly. Or smart folks, for that matter. Pretty much anyone with a pulse was not suffered gladly by the harsh, open west.
“I guess so,” Frank said, shaking his head. “I thought this place would have something worth taking. I heard this feller made good money as a private lawman.”
Earnest gasped. “A lawman? Frank, we can’t steal from a lawman. They got guns and bullets and badges that let them do stuff us normal folks ain’t allowed to do.”
“Don’t worry, he’s not a real lawman. He don’t work for the government or nothin’.”
“Really? Who does he work for then?”
“Anyone that’ll hire him I reckon.”
Earnest looked around again and wrinkled his nose. “From the looks of this place, not many folks wanna hire him, whatever he does.”
Before Frank could think much more about it, there came a knock at the front door. He pressed his finger to his lips, warning his cousin to keep quiet, then pointed to a stack of whiskey crates. Earnest nodded and ducked behind the stacks.
The door slowly creaked open.
Frank blew out the lantern, crouched behind the long desk, and wondered what kind of idiot lawman went away and left their front door unlocked with so many criminals wandering about these days. He also wondered what kind of idiot criminal didn’t check the damned front door first before cutting a hole in the window screen. As Frank contemplated these truths, a small halo of light drifted into the room, followed by soft footfalls on the hardwood floor.
“Mr. Jackson?” a timid voice said.
Narrowing his eyes, Frank pondered that voice. It sounded a lot like a child’s voice. What in the heck was a kid doing out at this hour, much less pounding on the door of a gun for hire?
“Mr. Jackson,” the kid said again.
The cousins waited in silence.
“I know you’re there,” the child said. “I can see your hat.”
Frank reached up slowly and slipped the hat from his head.
“I can still see your head,” the kid said. “You sure do have an awful lot of gray hair, Mr. Jackson.”
“Go away,” Frank grumbled softly. “I’m busy.”
“I can’t, sir. I know you don’t like no one botherin’ you or nothin’, but I need help real bad. You’re the only one that can help me, Mr. Jackson.”
Cursing under his breath, and knowing the jig was up, Frank stood to his full height. A little blonde-haired girl waited on the other side of the desk. She lifted her lantern and raised her face to take him in. After a few moments, the girl blinked, then furrowed her brow.
“You ain’t Mr. Jackson,” she said.
“Ya don’t say,” Frank said.
The furrowed brow shifted to narrowed eyes as curiosity slid into suspicion. “Who are you?”
Frank scrambled for an explanation. “Mr. Jackson had to go away on a trip. I’m watching his place while he’s gone.”
“We,” Earnest said.
“We?” the little girl asked, looking beyond Frank.
“Hello there,” Earnest said. “My name is Earnest and this is Frank. It’s real nice to meet you.”
Frank groa
ned. Trust his cousin to introduce himself during a robbery.
“Shut up,” he said over his shoulder before Earnest had a chance to say something even more stupid. Frank looked back to the kid. “What do you want?”
“You’re working for Mr. Jackson?” the kid said.
“Sure. Whatever. Let’s go with that.”
The girl visibly relaxed at this, which was good. No need to have some anxious brat waking up the whole town.
“Now we got that settled,” Frank said, “who are you and what do you want?”
“My name is Sally Tilson,” the kid said. “I need help real bad. Victoria is gone and no one has seen her. I hear Mr. Jackson helps folks find lost stuff all the time. I was gonna wait ’til the mornin’ to come and talk to him, but I can’t sleep knowing Victoria is out there all alone. Anything can happen to her, mister. Anything.”
“Victoria?” Frank said. Maybe an older sibling. Or younger? Some poor child lost in the unforgiving wilderness surrounding the small town. Frank didn’t like the sound of that. “How long has she been gone?”
“Almost two days.”
“Two days?” Frank scratched his chin stubble. “What yer folks got to say about it? Ain’t they worried?”
Sally gave a little pout, poking out her lower lip. “Ain’t got no ma. And pa says it’s just one less mouth to feed.”
