by Sean Platt
So Clint asked himself: What would Stone do?
Instead of stepping into Ziggy’s station, Clint knocked on the batwings. Then he swung himself to the side, his back to the wall. He felt himself mentally stepping into Stone’s ghost. He was simply here to create a great tale for later storytelling — mayhap when he was eighty years old, spinning yarns from a rocking chair by the fire.
From inside the station, Fat Ziggy said, “What the sands was that?”
Teedawge: “Sounded like a knock.”
Ziggy: “A knock? But they’re batwings!”
Clint knocked again.
Teedawge (the same one? Clint didn’t know): “That’s a knock, marshal.”
Ziggy, unbelievably, calling out: “Who is it?”
Clint tried to imagine himself with a giant stupid head of orange hair. What would Stone say? So he called back, “Bacon delivery!”
Ziggy: “Bacon?”
Footsteps approached the door. An albino face appeared above the batwings. Clint grabbed the head, yanked it down so that it wedged between the batwings, then raised one leg and pushed hard against the doors. The archetype struggled, trapped at the neck. Clint hit him hard over the head with the butt of his gun.
Ziggy, farther back in the station and apparently not within sight of the door: “Where’s that bacon?”
Clint peeked into the station, saw no one else in the reception area. Nobody had seen him attack the archetype. So he pulled a glass vial from an inner pocket of his vest, used it to wet a rag, and held it over the unconscious Teedawge’s face. Barlowe had given him the vial. It was filled with chloroform. Edward had protested, saying that shooting was easier. But Clint had argued, more successfully, for stealth.
He crept into the station’s front room, then peered into the back. The other Teedawge and Fat Ziggy sat behind the desk, side by side, cards in their hands. The other Teedawge’s cards were face-down on the desk as the others waited for his return.
Clint grabbed the unconscious man under the arms, dragged him into a chair, and propped him up. Then, since it seemed like something Stone would do, he took a woman’s hat that was hanging on the wall for some reason and set it on the man’s head.
Clint pitched his voice into the other room, trying to approximate a falsetto similar to the Teedawge’s voice.
“Hey, you guys want some of this bacon or not?”
Clint ducked into a corner, drew both of Stone’s shotguns, and waited. Ziggy barreled into the room much faster than made sense. The Teedawge was behind him, his gun drawn but facing the wrong direction. By the time the two newcomers saw him, Clint had both shotguns pointing at their chests. The Teedawge paused, then slowly lowered his gun to the floor.
“Gentlemen,” said Clint, keeping his shotguns centered. “Let’s go to jail.”
Five minutes later, with Meadowlands’ marshal and both Teedawges locked in their own cells (tied, gagged, and dreaming sweet chloroform dreams), Clint stepped out of the station and mounted the nondescript gray horse that anyone, if they’d looked closely enough, would have seen wasn’t actually tied to the hitching post. The tall newcomer with the oiled hair and too-clean shirt then rode up the high street as if he hadn’t just tied down the town’s law with his own two hands.
Diego Diamante — AKA Dharma Kold — lived in a citadel in the mountains north of NewTown. That, Edward said, would be where they’d find the Triangulum. It might be possible to climb up and peek down on the citadel (and maybe even sneak in and locate the Triangulum by homing in on the magic), but they’d have to take out the law’s communications first. Kold wasn’t stupid. He’d be waiting for Clint, Edward, and Mai, knowing that it was only a matter of time before they caught up to him. Clint and Edward were disguised, but if their cover slipped in any way, the law in town would “ring” (Barlowe’s word) to Kold using one of the spark-fueled communication devices they all held. If that happened, Kold would be waiting when they arrived at the citadel, and the game would be over.
Taking out Fat Ziggy and his men in the station at least ensured that their rings wouldn’t make it to Kold, but there was another problem. Rings in Meadowlands apparently went through a dispatching center and were broadcast out to the town’s other officers. If they didn’t handle that wrinkle before heading into the mountains, any discovery would mean that dozens, scores, or hundreds of Teedawges could be summoned to face them.
“The dispatch is beside the saloon,” Edward whispered as they walked — slowly, since they wanted to appear as just one man who was not worth noticing.
“Why is everything in these towns beside a saloon?” Clint said, his fear coming out sounding like irritation.
“There are a lot of saloons in old towns,” said Edward. “Are you afeared?”
Clint swallowed, then decided it wasn’t worth lying. Edward knew him too well.
“Yar.”
“Me too. But this is hero stuff.”
“We were heroes before this. Back when we were invincible.”
“Not really. We didn’t have a flaw. Heroes have to have a flaw in order to be heroic, and now we have one: death.”
“For me, anyway.”
“There are ways that unicorns can die,” said Edward, “and one way is if he doesn’t use his magic to prevent it. If I’m shot but you aren’t — and if there’s still a chance you could use stealth to succeed — I wouldn’t heal myself so that you could go on.”
Clint thought about that, wondering if he could be so noble. He decided he probably couldn’t be, so it was good that he had no magic at his disposal. It would mean he’d have no temptation to cheat.
“For a long time, Stone did this all without shields,” Clint said. He felt as if Stone were riding beside him, offering guidance. And with that thought, the gunslinger realized with shock just how attached he’d become to the outlaw. For an unknown, unknowable number of years, it had only been Clint and Edward. But over the past months, that twosome had become a threesome, and now Clint felt hobbled, greatly resenting what had once felt like independence. From another human, anyway.
“You’re pretending you’re him, aren’t you?”
“In a way. That way, he’ll die if I get shot. Which is okay, since he’s already dead. He’d agree with me. I can practically hear it.”
Edward snorted. “You sound like the Leisei.”
They approached the dispatch office. Clint dismounted, and Edward circled to the rear. Clint drew both shotguns and peered through the open door. Inside, he saw a handful of men and women working in front of large crystal devices — apparently the communicators that Barlowe had mentioned. All wore implements over their ears and were staring at small screens, jabbing wires into a series of holes. Realm technology, all of it. Clint also counted eleven Teedawges around the room that were either on patrol or acting as guards, but none of them were alert. All had their weapons holstered and their eyes away from the door.
Leading with his shotguns, Clint stepped through the doorway and into the room. No one looked up. He took two more steps, now fully inside, pointing his shotguns around at the room’s occupants. Still nobody turned.
“I have come here to kick butt and chew tobaccy,” Clint announced, channeling Sly Stone, “and I’m all out of tobaccy.”
The Teedawges’ heads came up. Their heads were fully raised before vigilance lit their eyes and they realized what they were seeing. Clint locked eyes briefly with each man, mentally daring them to reach for their weapons. If they all drew at once, they’d kill him easily, but of course they wouldn’t all draw at once, and none of them wanted to be the first man killt.
Clint felt confident of his reflexes and speed, even with the oversized guns. He didn’t feel his usual certainty (in fact, his heart was beating so hard that he was sure the room could hear it), but he was cool enough to always keep his weapons trained on the men who moved their hands closest to their holsters. When he did, the men he aimed at would draw their hands back. Then others would inch their hands do
wn and Clint would aim at them instead, repeating the cycle. The room was quiet enough to hear a matchstick drop and skitter on the floor. He wished he could hand out chloroform and instruct each person in the room to whiff from the hanky, but he was out of hands.
There was a clatter at the rear of the room as Edward stuck his head through the back window and said in a loud monotone, “HELLO. I’M MISTER ED.”
Several of the Teedawges turned to look. As they did, Clint fired matching shotgun blasts into two of the crystal devices, causing both to explode in a shower of glass. Each made a puff of orange smoke which rose to the ceiling, where it hung like a cloud. Then the Teedawges, their paralysis broken, began to turn toward him and draw. Clint fired and struck two in the chest, driving them hard against the wall. But the Teedawges were machines, not men, and returned to their feet immediately. There was one crystal communicator left. Clint fired at it, saw it explode, then dove back toward the door, pulling himself around the corner. The archetypes didn’t immediately follow, likely assuming the gunman was still ready to end the first one who walked out. But once outside, Clint re-holstered his two big guns and drew his pistol. Without Sly’s magic inside them, Sly’s weapons were just oversized scatterguns. While they might work well against men, they were much less useful against the Teedawges. Unless he fired at close range, the gunslinger couldn’t reliably hit their thinkboxes using scattershot, and until he could, they’d simply keep coming.
El Feo’s six-shooter felt small in his large gunslinger’s palm, but it would have to do. He ducked behind a rain barrel, suddenly aware of how hard it was to breathe. His vision wanted to blur but he fought it — along with a kind of red-hot panic that he could sense trying to eclipse his thought. He couldn’t let the doubt and fear in. He was still a trained marshal. He had plenty of training and conditioning to keep him cool when under fire without a unicorn, and the fact that it felt so hard now just meant that he’d gotten complacent. He needed to focus, and did. His vision became crisp. His thinking and heart focused. He even seemed to recall some conventional arms training.
He could do this.
Deep breath.
Deep breath.
A Teedawge poked his head out of the dispatch office. Clint fired. Black smoke belched from the thing’s head and it fell, this time for good.
Inside, Clint heard commotion as the people who had been manning the crystal devices cried out and shouted, ringing for backup that — if Clint had judged the things’ explosions accurately — would neither be able to hear nor respond. Which, of course, had been the point of this little errand.
Four Teedawges streamed through the door. Clint fired and hit one in the leg, but the thing simply stumbled, recovered, then ran on, making for cover behind a stagecoach. Clint tried firing on the others, twice, but only ended one’s thinkbox and was forced to scramble back as three more burst outside.
One of the Teedawges stepped into the street, calmy sighted on Clint, and fired. The round struck the rain barrel, punching a hole through the wood and spraying the gunslinger with water.
“You made a mistake deciding to shoot up Meadowlands, my friend!” the Teedawge shouted, the anger in his voice reminding Clint that the things were as much man as they were machine. The archetype fired twice more. One of the shots came too close to Clint’s shoulder. The rain barrel was poor cover and the man was shooting right through it.
Clint thought: This must be what it’s like for me to be shooting at anyone, no matter what they’re hiding behind.
Oh, how the marshal missed his guns.
Hiding behind the rain barrel was like hiding behind a sheet, so while he still could, Clint cocked his weapon and leapt out from behind it, sideways, preparing to tuck and roll when he struck the ground and make for a pile of dry goods in front of the general store. While in the air, laid out and weightless, the gunslinger drew a breath and squeezed his trigger. The shot struck the Teedawge between the eyes. There were sparks, then black smoke. One more down.
Clint struck the ground, rolled, came up and fired again. Now he was shooting through a stagecoach, judging his aim based on the legs he saw down by the wheels. But the bullet didn’t stay true, and he missed. Legs moved and readjusted. Marshal’s bullets would have taken out Clint’s target, but the simple lead slug must have veered once inside the coach, or possibly never even gone through it at all.
Clint already felt overwhelmed. How many more archetypes were there? And where was Edward?
Now that there had been gunshots, commotion began to stir all around him. Some of what he heard might be townspeople, or it might be a fresh wave of Teedawges. Or birds carrying bits of the Darkness. Or Independence Lee with his mace, for all Clint knew.
Clint scampered around the dry goods.
A Teedawge followed him behind the pile. Clint ran around, ducking under the boardwalk decking. He crawled on his elbows and belly, keeping his pistol up and clean. When he came up, the Teedawge was still watching the dry goods. He hadn’t seen Clint scamper away.
Clint stood behind him, aware that this would have been an excellent time to say something deliriously Stone-like. But he had nothing, so he simply raised his weapon. The Teedawge, his gun still aimed toward the dry goods, looked over with shock. Clint pulled the trigger, then heard a hollow click.
Six shots.
Not seven. Six.
He turned to run, but by the time that bit of remedial math passed through his consciousness, Clint had waited a heartbeat too long. The Teedawge raised his gun. Something huge struck the archetype from behind, knocking him flat. A huge gray horse nodded at the man with the empty gun.
Clint ran. Shots chased him. He ducked behind a pile of lumber, his heartbeat raging. His head wanted to spin, but he wouldn’t let it. He was a gunslinger. And no matter the number of rounds in his chamber, he was a marshal true.
Deep breath.
Under protection, Clint closed his eyes and drew another inhale. He imagined a target, saw it falling. He opened his eyes and reloaded his weapon, resetting the count he’d learned to keep in his head, mentally reminding himself he had six shots before empty, not seven.
He peeked out. Clint could see them now, growing bolder, barely bothering to hide. He could see their pale and menacing faces. How long before they simply charged at him? They must have realized he didn’t have his magic on hand. He’d seen hundreds of these things swarm back in Baracho Gulch. It didn’t matter that he’d taken out the communicators; the gunfight itself was making the broadcast.
A bullet careened from nowhere. It struck the lumber, caromed, and crashed into Clint’s left side. The gunslinger grimaced, grasping at his ribs. The harder he held the wound, the better it felt, but he needed his hand. He watched, waiting to see who had fired and who would soon fire again.
The ground started to shake. Clint looked up, saw a giant charging toward him. The giant was still far down the street, but he was approaching quickly. It seemed to be one of the two who had taken Pompi back in the glass and alloy alleyways of NewTown.
Clint cocked his newly-reloaded pistol. Looked again, scanning for pale faces. Counted six. Found no others, and noticed how the eyes of the six flicked toward the approaching giant.
The gunslinger stood, held the pistol in front of him, and fired. One of the archetypes belched sparks and smoke. His left hand, undistracted by the pain in his side, fanned the gun’s hammer. The remaining shots came off faster than any gunman he’d faced, no matter what kind of iron hung at his side: twothreefourfivesix, each beat was counterpointed by a plume of white, ordinary gunsmoke.
Six shots, six men down, but the giant was now very close, still charging. His massive fists obliterated the stack of dry goods Clint had hidden behind a moment ago. Clint ran, but his legs were much shorter than the giant’s. He might be able to take it out with a shot to the eye, but he hadn’t had time to reload. The gun was still in his hand; the tumbler flung open. As he ran, empty casings spilled to the dirt.
Clint h
id behind a stagecoach, but the coach exploded under a massive punch, becoming kindling.
Into a store. The store’s facade caving in. A massive hand entering, followed by an even more massive head. The giant couldn’t come inside, but now Clint was loading, his back against the wall. His face, back, and chest were all dripping with sweat. His heartbeat pounded in his ears.
Through the shattered doorway, Clint watched as the colossus backed out and unsheathed his giant hammer. He was going to level the store, and send Clint to oblivion in a puff of smoke.
Before the giant could swing, there was the booming of a scattergun and the giant fell. Clint waited to see what would happen next, but then Percy Noodle came through the door with a shotgun clasped in both hands.
“You’re carrying shotguns too, you know,” he said.
Clint had forgotten. For so long, he’d only had the irons as his side. But Noodle didn’t wait for Clint to reply. “Come on!” he yelled, beckoning.
Clint was still smarting from his wound, but the bullet seemed to have gone straight through. He could barely feel it, but he was sure he would feel it plenty once his adrenaline faded.
They ran outside and were greeted by a hail of bullets. Noodle dove, then reported without being asked that he was fine behind a wall of sandbags. Clint found nothing to hide behind, so he darted back inside the mercantile. He noticed the shopkeeper at the back for the first time, cowering with his hands in the air. Then the shop suddenly exploded — another giant had arrived and had swung his hammer as the first intended. Noodle again fired his scattergun and the giant turned. Clint ran and yelled to draw the giant’s attention back to him, making for another stagecoach and diving behind it, knowing that a single swing from the hammer would turn it to toothpicks.
