by Sean Platt
“You’re not making sense,” said Clint.
But Edward sounded excited. He was somewhere between the no-nonsense companion he’d always been and the rainbow-farting goody-goody he’d become in the past decades. How he sounded, as they walked into town, was giddy.
“Nar, I finally am making sense! You said it earlier, about Mai: ‘It was all for nothing.’ But don’t you see? It can’t be for nothing! The fact that it seemed to be ‘all for nothing’ was a clue, and neither of us saw it. Everything happened as it was supposed to. Mai was a mortal with an Orb soul. She was taken by Kold, stripped bare, hollowed out. That had to happen, so that she could become the magic creature she needed to be. So why would we think it would stop there? Everything else happened according to plan, so why would that sense of purpose fail at the finish? The knife was there at the beginning, so it must be used at the end!”
“What the sands are you saying?” Clint said, annoyed. He felt more alive than he had in years now that he was back on the unicorn’s back, but it wasn’t enough. Edward was being entirely too cheery for him.
“You were supposed to deny Kold! She wasn’t ready. She had to die!”
Clint wanted to strangle Edward for that last sentence, but if he tried, he’d fall. So he gripped the unicorn’s mane harder, hoping it hurt.
“You didn’t do anything wrong, Clint! You couldn’t do anything wrong! Her transformation wasn’t complete, don’t you see? She was too mortal, and she still needed to grow into more. You thought she died in vain, but she didn’t! Mai died because it was meant to happen, in order to fulfill her purpose. So tell me, Marshal Clint Gulliver: if you could do it all over again, would you still like to change your mind as you’ve wanted to since that day?”
The town was getting close. In the distance, Clint could see the marshal’s station where he’d once chloroformed and locked Fat Ziggy and two Teedawges in their own cells. The station still stood, even after all this time.
“If I could do it all over again, then yar, I’d change my mind,” Clint answered.
“You can!” Edward blurted as the town neared. “It wasn’t time to open The Realm back then — but it may be now, and it’s not too late!”
CHAPTER FIVE:
THREE BANDITS
The citadel that housed Dharma Kold’s aborted attempts to enter The Realm had become a kind of fortified base and had acquired a reputation in the city as a secretive, reclusive, and maybe even abandoned place. Nobody seemed to go there much anymore, and it was closed only to authorized entrants and intruders wishing for a painful death. Clint, still nowhere near forgiving Kold for what he’d done to Mai and countless others, wanted to storm the place in force. Edward said it was unnecessary, and that he could secure a pass at the marshal’s station. Clint scoffed. If he needed further proof of how soft Meadowlands had become, he needed only to look at its bureaucracy and paperwork.
By the time they reached the station, Clint was feeling nearly strong enough to fight. He felt something else, too, but he wasn’t sure if it was real or if Edward’s exuberance had influenced his mind. Specifically, he felt a warm presence behind him, seeming to press into his back as if riding at his rear. He could smell a fresh, light scent on the air and thought he could feel breath on his neck. He felt comforted as if someone were whispering encouragement into his ear. Once, he even found himself cracking a smile. But the smile was defenseless and visible without his beard, so he stowed it, shoving it down into his boots.
He didn’t want to name what he felt because he knew how ridiculous it sounded — but truth be told, it felt as if Mai were riding behind him.
When they arrived in the OldTown section of Meadowlands, the road in front of the marshal’s station was blocked by a crowd. Clint hopped down and he and Edward skirted the masses, searching for holes. As he passed, a few people turned around, looked at Clint with a double-take, and whispered to the people beside them. Then, as they moved further around the circle, more and more whispers could be heard. A few men and women and children — especially children, toward the back of the crowd and with parents who should be ashamed to have them exposed and in the open — started to point.
The crowd was arranged around the square, clustered in front of the marshal’s station and leaving a large open space for four gunmen, who stood in the middle. Clint shook his head. Idiots. Any of them could take a stray bullet. But Meadowlands wasn’t a town that saw much gunplay anymore, and the people were complacent. They they knew nar of the old ways. People like Clint were relics of a past most had never known.
In the square’s center stood three bandits. Across from the bandits stood the town’s marshal, who Clint recognized as Little Bill Taylor. Little Bill was fast on the draw and cool with his head. It was even said that amongst the people of Meadowlands that Little Bill had attained almost as much status as the old gunslinger himself.
As Clint stood behind two men with large drooping mustaches, he overheard one say to the other that those men should have known better than to tussle with Little Bill, and that they’d soon find themselves killt. As Clint moved down to stand behind a small man with a bald head and a sprinkle of black moles atop his scalp, this one literally rubbed his hands together and said he’d better get back to his shop and start making coffins because he was about to strike paydirt. A woman to his right chastised the bald man for being morbid, and he said, “Not for Bill, fool woman. For the Troika!”
Clint remembered.
Five or six years back, a bandit named Kid Richard had terrorized OldTown Meadowlands. He’d stayed away from NewTown, which had long ago grown its own police force (staffed by Teedawge archetypes and giants) that only patrolled NewTown, leaving OldTown to fend for itself. Kid Richard’s reputation said that he was faster than scattershot. Rumor said that twice, shopkeepers had pulled guns from under their counters and had fired at the kid, but that he’d outrun the lead. It couldn’t be true, of course, but the shopkeepers who’d fired the shots didn’t argue. After the encounters, both men had been dead by Kid Richard’s hand.
Kid Richard was working the west side of OldTown when a brazen older gunslinger (younger than Clint, but still with gray in his beard) nicknamed Doctor Death had come through NewTown as Kid Richard hadn’t had the guts to do. The reason the older bandit was named Doctor Death was because he approached crime with a surgeon’s precision. He would enter a new area, quietly assassinate the giants, Teedawges, and human lawmen protecting the area, and only then find people to rob after the law was scrambling to regroup. Doctor Death’s right-hand was a short man named Cold Hand Charlie. The kid who’d come to Clint’s ranch earlier had said that Clint was a cold-blooded killer, but Cold Hand Charlie’s ruthlessness made Clint look like the tooth fairy. The stories of how Charlie did his work set citizens of Meadowlands to locking their doors and boarding their windows from the inside. During Charlie’s time in town, sales of heavy door locks and firearms tripled. Hardware and gun store owners were delighted… until their shops were robbed and their buildings were burnt.
There was a tale told in Meadowlands about the day Kid Richard finally ran into Doctor Death and Cold Hand Charlie. According to folk legend, a black hand had reached out from the fissure between Meadowlands and The Realm and nudged the three gunslingers together — at which point they then shook hands and became the infamous group known as the Troika.
Now, staring at the Troika as they faced off against Little Bill Taylor, Clint could smell weakness on the gunmen. Their hands were poised over their irons (each wore an illegal three), but all of them led slightly with their dominant shoulder so as to present less of their chests and protect their hearts. To Clint, an opponent’s cocked posture always meant an opportunity. It told him that the men had something to lose, and that they didn’t want to die. A man who had nothing to lose, on the other hand — who stood straight-on, able to draw and aim true from both holsters — was always deadlier. A man who didn’t mind dying wouldn’t flinch, or double-clutch, or duck, o
r dive for cover. A man with ice in his blood would stand and fire until his cylinders were empty… and usually because of his steeliness, he’d win.
Little Bill was also standing cocked, but that made sense. Bill wanted to live too (Clint had heard he was building a house), but Bill also had only one iron. He only had to worry about shooting true with one hand instead of both, and he could fan the hammer just fine no matter how he stood.
Clint felt a resentful frown forming on his face as he watched Bill’s right hand hover over his single firearm. Each of the Troika wore three guns — their fifty-four bullets to his six — but that was how it was with law. Law said that a lawman had to disarm himself to face criminals who would carry as much iron as they pleased. Law said that a lawman had to lock a criminal up if he could, rather than shooting him dead as the criminal would do to him. In many ways, law was like magic. Magic said you had to follow this or that unfair rule, and that if you didn’t do it perfectly… well, then it would kill your wife.
All his life, Clint had been bound by both — by law on one side and magic on the other. His actions had never been his own, which was probably why toward the end of his travels with Edward, Clint had done his best to defy both magic and law.
“Bill’s gonna kill ‘em,” said a townie to Clint’s left.
Bill was watching the bandits’ shoulders, waiting to see who’d draw first and where their bullets would go. Bill knew what he was doing, and the townie was right — he almost certainly would kill ‘em, despite his significant disadvantage.
“Yar,” said Clint.
The townie looked at Clint. His brow wrinkled and then, slowly, his mouth opened. But before he could speak, Clint moved on, eager to find a spot where he could see better.
“My arm is getting tired,” Little Bill called from the middle of the circle. “Someone draw.”
The short, bearded man opposite him spoke next. Both hands were near his holsters, hovering above them like claws.
“You draw, Little Bill,” he said.
“Or just back off and let us go,” said the younger gunslinger standing beside the bearded man.
At this, the first bandit shot the younger man a look. It would have been a perfect time for Little Bill to draw. He could have ended two of them right there for sure — the man who’d given the dirty look and the younger man he’d looked at — and could have dove for cover to face the remaining man one on one. But he didn’t draw. Clint rolled his eyes.
Bill said, “I don’t want you to go. I want you in shackles.”
At this, Clint actually groaned aloud. Several people around him turned to reprimand him for his disrespect, but when they turned, their eyes became fixed and they stared harder. A kid behind Clint tugged on his pants and said, “Are you Marshal Clint?”
“Nar,” Clint replied.
The kid’s mother pulled the kid back with an apologetic look. “Hush, Bobby,” she said. “Marshal Clint would be dead by now.”
Now Clint was the one giving a glance — this one all the way toward the back of the crowd, to Edward. Edward was using a sharp rock beside the street to clean his hoof, not even watching the standoff. He’d gotten used to Clint commanding him not to interfere in matters of lead, now that he was too good for magic.
“I heard Marshal Clint could fly,” Bobby said to someone behind him. “Without his unicorn’s help!”
Another child’s voice, probably one of Bobby’s friends: “His unicorn can fly too!”
At this, a puff of breath billowed from the gunslinger’s mouth. It wasn’t quite the laugh it wanted to be, but it was enough to make Bill’s eyes twitch. An opportunity lost for the Troika. So all four of them were slow to pay attention, then.
“Nuh-uh! Unicorns don’t have wings. You’re thinking of a Pegasus.”
“Pegasuses don’t have horns,” said the second kid in an I-told-you-so voice.
Their mothers shushed them, reminding them that Pegasi weren’t real and telling them that if they couldn’t be quiet, she’d take them home and they wouldn’t get to see anyone killt.
A moment later, Bobby said, “Marshal Clint’s guns can fire two bullets at once.”
Well, that was true. They could, in fact, fire six bullets at once, but only backward… toward the shooter… if the shooter wasn’t the guns’ owner.
“Stand down, Bill,” called Cold Hand Charlie.
“I’ll stand down once you’re in my cell, Charlie,” Little Bill said.
“Or once you’re dead,” said Doctor Death. Doctor Death, in contrast to his macabre name, had a voice so proper it sounded like he was ordering high tea.
“Just step away, Little Bill,” said Kid Richard. “Nobody’s going to win here.”
“Mayhap,” said Little Bill. “But I’m not stepping down.”
“Just move your hand away from your iron, Bill. We have nine guns to your one.”
“Fired by six slow hands,” Bill said.
“Oh, for Providence’s sake,” Clint blurted, shoving his way through the crowd.
The bandits looked up, but Clint, who did little with his days other than fire shells and practice draws, saw everything happen in slow motion. The small bearded man’s hands were closest to his guns, but his body language said he was a lefty and would draw from that side. That man’s shoulder dipped, but it was Kid Richard, the youngest among them, who would have his pistol up soonest. The kid had a shorter draw — more from the hip, flipping his iron more from the wrist than the shoulder. So Clint drew, fired, and struck Kid Richard in his draw hand.
The bandit spun and fell to the dirt. He’d bear watching, but Clint could already see his gunbelt turning on his hips as he struck the ground; if he were to draw now, he’d have to fumble with his uninjured, non-dominant hand. If Clint had learned anything about two-gun bandits over the years, it was that the second gun was almost always for show. Few men could fire worth a spit in the wind with their opposite hand.
The other two men now had their hands on their guns, their fingers curling around the wooden grips, their fingers finding their way behind the trigger guards. But the second thing Clint had learned about bandits through the years was that even those who carried double-action pistols were never as fast with their guns uncocked as cocked. The fastest men fanned the hammer before firing, and a man who squeezed the trigger both to cock and fire was always less accurate. Clint’s fingers were very long and very strong. He was rare among shooters: a man who was as fast double-action as single.
His guns were both out. So were the guns of Cold Hand Charlie and Doctor Death, but they both had the same long trigger-pull that Clint did. They’d slow down to squeeze their rounds off accurately, but Clint wouldn’t.
Clint aimed both guns at once and fired in unison. Pistols spun. Then the old, tall, lean-as-leather marshal walked calmly over and placed his boot on Kid Richard’s good hand, crushing it into the dirt. His guns were still out, so he aimed one at each of the other bandits, both of whom were starting to cradle their injured hands rather than reaching for their weapons. And then, for dramatic effect, he reached back with his long thumbs and cocked both pistols.
The bandits’ hands reached into the air. Little Bill came up behind him, dragging out shackles.
A moment later, amidst many cries of pain as Bill handled the men’s red hands, the Troika was in custody. The crowd cheered as if a sporting event had been won by their favorite team. Amongst them, Clint could hear murmurs about himself, and could already sense the legends about himself growing like a disease.
Little Bill looked back, taking in the marshal from head to toe.
“Marshal Gulliver,” he said.
“I thought I trained you better than that,” Clint replied.
CHAPTER SIX:
A RAINBOW OVER
MAIN STREET
Bill shoved the bandits toward the station. Clint followed. Once the men were inside, Edward simply obliterated the station’s door so that he could enter as well. Once inside — big whit
e unicorn in a not-terribly big space — he repaired and closed the door behind him.
Little Bill escorted the Troika to the back — to the very cells in which Clint had once locked Fat Ziggy and his men — and returned a moment later to wash his hands in a basin. Finally he sat in a chair behind his desk and smiled.
“The famous Marshal Clint and Sir Edward,” said Little Bill. “It has been a long time.”
“Where is Fat Ziggy?” said Clint. “I thought he’d want to see me.”
Bill stared at Clint, then shook his head. “Clint, Ziggy died twenty years ago.”
“Was he killt in duty?”
“He died at his house. Of old age.”
“Old age? He wasn’t that old.”
“Clint,” said Bill, leaning forward, “he was eighty-seven. Have you lost track of days? Or have you discovered the fountain of youth? Because I’ve got to tell you, you look good for a walking corpse.”
“First time anyone has ever said that to him,” Edward muttered.
“You must be over ninety yourself.”
“One hundred and twelve,” said Edward from the floor. “That’s why I stopped putting candles on his birthday cake. That, and I don’t have thumbs.” Then Edward whispered to Bill, his voice taking on some of the recent, new-Edward joviality. “He doesn’t like magic anymore.”
Clint shrugged. Time ceased to matter when you lived alone, seeing no one. Even when he and Edward were traveling, it had seemed like time stood still. Edward never aged, and they never saw the same people twice. He hadn’t been into Meadowlands for any meaningful amount of time for nearly thirty years. Those decades of wandering following Mai’s death had felt like their five years following Dharma Kold, just dilated and stretched. Sand followed sand. Mesa followed mesa. Bandit followed bandit, and blood followed blood. The changes exposure to the Triangulum had impressed upon his body made it so he aged slowly, but that was small comfort when a man was tired of living.
