by Sean Platt
Clint wrinkled his brow at Stone. “I’m supposed to save you? After you ended the paladin?”
“You won’t cry for the paladin,” said Stone.
It was true. During the entire trip, Clint had spent many a minute wondering which side he was rightly on. Was he on the side of The Realm, which had cast him aside? Or was he on the side of the outlaws, of which he was technically one?
“Besides,” said Stone. “You’re supposed to save me because it’s saving yourself. Here’s the situation, Marshal, in case you haven’t reckoned it true: we work together, or we die.”
Clint looked at Edward, then at the sleeping form of Buckaroo, then finally back at Stone. Stone’s hair was picking up the flickering light and seeming to distribute it, like a beacon. Clint’s eyes had almost adjusted. Around him, he could see the campsite, rocks, bushes, and the sheer wall of a cliff that they’d sheltered behind. Even with fully adjusted eyes and a torch, he could see nothing beyond their own little nest. The dooners, if Stone was telling the truth, could be anywhere.
“I need my guns,” Stone whispered.
Clint looked at him unbelievingly.
“We work together or we die,” he repeated.
“It’s a trick.”
“My guns are in your unicorn’s saddlebags. I know better than to try and steal from a unicorn. This is the only way. Get them and give them to me, and maybe we’ll survive.”
Clint’s senses were back, the night’s fog having lifted from his mind. He squinted into the weeds, still seeing nothing. Hearing nothing. The night was preternaturally quiet, like they were in a hole in the middle of nothingness.
His mind began to figure, his wheels turning.
Even with the paladin killt and Clint asleep, Stone couldn’t leave unarmed because he’d have too far to travel alone in hostile territory. He couldn’t take Havarow’s scimitar because the scimitar would be keyed to work only in Havarow’s hand. He couldn’t steal guns from a gunslinger. Edward had Stone’s shotguns, and Edward, even addled, was too big of a risk to rob.
Which meant that this was a ploy. There were no dooners.
Clint, proud of seeing through Stone’s ruse, smiled a crooked smile and said, “I’m not as stupid as Havarow.”
But at that moment, an arrow streaked between them and struck Edward in the hock. He whinnied like a surprised horse and rolled up, kicking sand all around in a frenzied cloud. Another arrow split the night, landing at his feet, and Edward then rose onto his hind legs, his front legs pawing the air, making the men duck and hold up their hands. The unicorn’s eyes shot wide. Clint could read his expression: something in him wanted to run, but there was still enough unicorn in him to stand his ground as if obeying instinct. Multicolored blood — all of it orange by the light of the fire — streamed from his wound. Then there was a spark and the arrow fell to the dirt. The wound stitched closed. With it gone, Edward calmed somewhat, his eyes wild but his feet reluctantly rooted. Somehow he’d healed himself. But it didn’t seem that he knew it, or that he’d done it consciously.
“Give me my guns!” Stone hissed, holding out a hand. “Do you really think I can outdraw you?”
It was a good point. Havarow was dead. Buckaroo was asleep and would remain that way until six in the morning or until someone hit a button on his chest. Stone couldn’t harm Edward and would never outgun Clint, even with his giant guns. With or without his weapons, there was little Stone could do to harm them. The risk of arming the bandit was minimal, but the upside was substantial.
Clint ran around Edward, who didn’t react, and pulled the two large shotguns from his saddlebags. Then, as an afterthought, he returned one of them. He tossed the single sawed-off through the air sidelong and Stone caught it with one hand, immediately racking it to chamber a round. Then held out his other hand, waiting.
“And the other!” he shouted.
“One,” said Clint.
Stone gave Clint an annoyed glance, but then a brief high-pitched whistling wiped the snarl from his face and sent both him and the gunslinger down to the dirt. Another dooner arrow raked through the night sky, careening within inches of Clint and striking the sand behind him.
Stone made a circling-around gesture with his finger, then pointed for a notch between two massive rocks to his rear, indicating the way out of the valley in which they’d sheltered. The camp was in the middle of a clutch of scrubby, ugly trees. The brush provided nice shade, but it also blocked what little moonlight there was. Clint looked up, between the trees, and saw that the moon had fallen behind a wall of thick clouds. The dooners had probably waited for the clouds, wanting it to be full dark before their attack. Clint couldn’t see in the dark and neither could Stone, but he was betting that the dooner shaman chief, who could sift magic from the sand, could. The good news was that if that were true, only one among their party — the shaman — would be able to see well enough to shoot. The rest would have to run in and fight close with war hammers. Which meant that if they could make it to the notch in the rock and there was a break in the clouds, they’d be able to see the warriors coming.
Or, if they had Edward.
As quietly as he could, Clint snuffed the torch with his boot, drooping a curtain of ebony. Then he punched Edward in the side. The unicorn didn’t react.
“Edward!” Clint hissed.
Edward turned his big white head and moved his lips over his teeth, looking very horselike.
Clint punched him again, this time higher. Stone had sneaked into the brush with his guns, seemingly expecting Clint to cover the other direction and follow him around, so they could meet at the notch in the rocks. Apparently he was planning to retrieve his horse later. Clint, on the other hand, wanted to take his own mount with him. And to wake him the sands up.
“Edward! Get your wits! I need your magic!”
Edward said, too loud, “Horses aren’t magic. You must know that.”
Clint ignored his words and pushed his body hard with both hands. “Make a bubble! Make light! Make anything!”
Edward’s lips moved and a bubble of saliva formed, then popped.
“Best I can do,” he said.
There was a burst of green light across the valley and the sound of a shotgun reporting through the night’s silence. Edward jumped, his big blue eyes registering fear in the scant light of the hooded moon. He was too dim, too confused. Clint would have to lead him, but Edward didn’t wear a halter, so there was nothing to grab. He tried reaching for the unicorn’s mane, but Edward was too spooked, and jerked his head hard. So Clint got behind him and pushed, knowing he’d need to move fast if it looked like Edward was going to kick.
A shadow crossed in front of the embers of the campfire.
Clint froze. Something — something he couldn’t quite explain, yet intimately trusted — told him that the shadow wasn’t Stone. His hands flew to his belt. Irons rose. Hammers fell. The shadow dropped at the same time as a sliver of moon peeked from behind the clouds.
Dooner.
Two more blasts of green light exploded across the valley. Two swirls of purple indicated that Stone had scored hits and that two bodies had just vanished. Green and purple appeared again in quick sequence, one like an echo of the other.
Clint pushed Edward. Then Edward did kick, and the gunslinger found himself on the ground with a hoofprint on his chest. But when he looked up, he saw something in Edward’s posture that heartened him. The unicorn hadn’t been spooked into kicking. He’d done it to be a jerk.
“Never push a unicorn,” said Edward.
“Are you back?” Clint hissed up at him.
Edward looked around as if he weren’t sure. He said, “Seems that way. For now.”
“Can you cast an umbrella?”
“I don’t think so. It’s hard to explain.”
“Can you do anything?”
“Yar,” said Edward. “I can do this.”
Suddenly it was like someone had turned on all of the lights on the world. A bril
liant ball of white appeared above them — and in its glow, Clint could see everything. He saw Sly Stone in the scrub on his belly. He saw three advancing dooners as they paused mid-step, shocked and frozen. He saw the dooner shaman chief, recognizable by his garb.
Clint’s guns came up. He fired two gunshots, and two of the men — both foot soldiers — fell. The remaining warrior and the shaman dove for cover. Clint told Edward to run to the notch, that he would follow. After a moment, he did, but halfway to the notch, the illumination overhead vanished and Edward’s purposeful trot, visible ahead, became a panicked canter. Apparently the unicorn’s window of lucidity had vanished, and he was once again just a spooked equine.
There were two quick blasts of green light and two more roars from the shotgun, and immediately after, Clint heard a set of running feet. He thought he had a bead on their location and made himself ready, but then the feet stopped and he lost them.
There was a barely audible breath at his rear.
Clint spun to see the inhuman face of a dooner warrior with his hatchet held high. An arm circled his torso, pinning Clint’s own arm to his side. But then there was another blast of green light and the arm loosened, and the dooner slid down his body like a man down a pole. The dooner’s shape became indistinct and fizzled away into purple smoke.
The moon emerged, and in its slim white light, Clint saw Sly’s face and ridiculous hair. He nodded once, curtly.
There were running footsteps in the other direction, back toward the trail they’d taken into the alcove.
Edward had vanished — seemingly through the notch and into the open. Clint followed, his guns out. But there were no more arrows, no more men. There was no way to know how large the dooner party had been, but beneath the ball bright light, he’d seen only four. Stone had dispatched at least four others, maybe more. There couldn’t have been too many of them.
Clint ran through the notch. Beyond it, the sky opened. The gunslinger found he could see more of his surroundings as his eyes again adjusted to the dark. He located Edward, who had stopped and was chewing at sparse sawgrass. Then he turned back to the notch with his guns drawn, waiting to see what might emerge.
Seconds ticked by.
Where was Stone? Clint thought he’d been right behind him. But then he realized that the campsite hadn’t been a dead end; if it had been, they wouldn’t have chosen it. There were other ways out.
More time passed. There was no sound. And there was no Sly Stone.
Clint wondered how long he should wait before returning to the campsite. There were still horses in there. Buckaroo was still by the fire, asleep, oblivious. They also had supplies, assuming the dooners hadn’t survived and grabbed them. Food. Water. Things they needed.
Maybe Stone had been killt.
Maybe he’d dispatched all of the dooners and, now duly armed, had run back out the way they’d come in, looking for his gang.
Clint’s lip creased. Either scenario was more likely than Stone walking out to join him. He cursed himself for being so stupid. Of course Stone would flee. Why would he want to return to Clint — to the authority — to be re-shackled and taken again as prisoner?
Clint wondered if he cared at all about the errand Havarow had set them on and decided that yes, he sort of did. Buckaroo knew how to find the shimmer — the way back to The Realm — but Buckaroo, who now no longer rode with a paladin knight, was unlikely to take anyone to the shimmer unless he felt he was on official business, with a prisoner to escort. Clint didn’t care what crimes Stone had supposedly perpetrated, but he cared plenty about seeing The Realm. And Stone, unfortunately for Stone, was his ticket in.
But Stone was gone, and the night was again silent.
Clint crept back toward the notch in the rock, his guns at the ready. He peered inside and saw nothing. The overhead trees blocked most of the moon in the alcove. It was like peering into a cave, with embers from the campfire at its center.
There was a dead pine branch at Clint’s feet. It was desiccated and brown. Clint holstered his right gun, pulled a match from his pocket, popped it alight with his thumbnail, and touched it to the branch. The branch lit immediately, becoming a beacon in the dark night. Clint picked it up with his match hand, his other still aiming his gun into the blackness. He waved the branch around, illuminating the campsite. He could see Havarow’s body with Buckaroo asleep beside it. He could see fallen dooners. He could see the horses — who, strangely, had barely reacted to all of the gunshots. They were battle horses from a battling border town, and apparently didn’t spook easily.
He didn’t see Stone.
Clint moved further in, waving his branch and holding his gun. Then, seeing himself from outside, he decided he was being stupid. Yar, he could see. But he could also be seen. He hadn’t noticed the dooner shaman — the archer — fall. He might still be out here. He might be nocking his arrow right now, aiming at Clint, preparing to fire…
He dropped the branch, then started to stomp out the flames. It was big and didn’t go quickly. He considered running, abandoning the branch, but before he could, there was a deafening shotgun report behind him, and the area in front of him, already awash in orange firelight, became tinged with green.
Clint spun. Disturbingly close, he saw the body of the dooner shaman puff into mist as his bow clattered to the ground in front of him. Then he saw the giant orange afro of Sly Stone and the smoking muzzle of a magic sawed-off shotgun.
“Thankoo for drawing him out,” said Stone. “You took a big risk of him laying you straight dead.”
Clint, who hadn’t been trying to draw anyone out, nodded his you’re-welcome.
CHAPTER SEVEN:
THE ROVING ROPE GANG
Clint, who never felt bad, felt bad the next morning about re-binding Stone’s wrists after Stone had saved Clint’s life… twice. Stone did nothing to make him feel better.
After the campsite had been cleared, they’d roused Buckaroo, who’d voiced many wild west cliches in a thick backwoods accent after realizing that they’d been ambushed. Then they’d gathered the horses and supplies, consulted Buckaroo’s timepiece (which did, in fact, have a Realm-time chronograph built into it), and determined that the sun would rise before the moon would set. So they’d mounted up and rode, but before they had, Clint had pointed his gun with one hand and requested the outlaw’s gun with the other. Stone had surrendered his weapon with a shake of his head, seemingly unable to believe the gunslinger would demand it. And then, out of habit as a lawman, Clint had bound Stone’s wrists.
But by sunrise, the bandit’s complaining and protesting had weakened Clint’s will, and so by the day’s early light, Clint removed the man’s shackles.
It was a small risk. Stone had no weapons. He’d saved Clint and Edward’s lives twice now — three times if you counted the fact that Stone had woken them before the attack had even started — and he hadn’t run off when given the chance. Clint was sure that he hadn’t run because until the rope gang showed, Stone was far safer in dooner land with the marshal than without, but a non-escape was a non-escape nonetheless.
Once freed and able to hold his own reins, Stone again grew talkative. It was an odd sort of talkative. He spoke to Clint like an old trail friend, but he simultaneously implied that Gunther Jethro and the rope gang were stalking them and that when they finally struck, Clint would probably die.
Confident that he could easily handle Stone should he decide to flee, Clint allowed Stone and Buckaroo to ride a few steps ahead and tried again to glean information from Edward. But it was in vain; the unicorn’s lucid moments had dimmed to nearly nonexistent. Throughout most miles, Edward plodded along beneath the gunslinger without saying a word. Occasionally the true Edward shone through, and when that happened, he confirmed that the rope gang, as Stone suggested, was indeed close. And Stone knew it, too; he kept looking around with a smile, as if meeting eyes with his posse and telling them to wait for a weak moment.
The two men, the two mounts, and
the machine marched on, and the gunslinger waited.
Stone prattled on about the gang, as if it were impossible to surrender too much information. There were a dozen men, he said — a fact that caused Clint to start planning his gunshots. The gunslinger told Stone there were eleven, since he’d dispatched Teedawge back in Nazareth Shiloh. But without conceding Clint’s one-man-down clarification, Stone went on to say that Clint hadn’t killt Gunther Jethro, who was the gang’s beating heart.
Gunther Jethro, Stone continued, wasn’t the name the gang’s leader had been given at birth. His true name was either Gunther or Jethro, but nobody knew which. He’d grown up as one of a set of identical twins, and the two boys — Gunther and Jethro — had taught themselves rope tricks from the age of six out of necessity. They’d been orphaned and had, after the orphaning, returned to their family homestead to tend to their family’s herd of cattle. In order for two six-year-olds to subdue cattle, they’d needed ropes. But time was short to learn those ropes, and so they learned fast, always fighting a ticking clock marked by the few supplies they had on hand. If they wanted to eat, the boys realized, they’d need to learn to rope a cow. And so they’d practiced, and practiced, and practiced. They learned, they caught, they ate, and still they practiced, eager to improve. Soon their skills grew beyond the needs of their bellies. They learned to rope men, who they could then rob. And with that realization, the gang began. Their ropes became their arms and their singular weapons. They trained others. Together, the gang learned to tie people up without getting near them. They learned to nab weapons from a distance. They learned how to pull their foes into pieces. But the skill was a double-edged sword, and on one unfortunate day, one twin accidentally killed the other during a stunt. Nobody — including the survivor — knew which twin had lived, and so Gunther Jethro had taken both names just to be safe.
The rope gang, Stone promised, were some of the most dangerous men he’d ever met. The ropes of the gang were to be feared as much as any weapon wielded by any man.
