by Alex Wells
Wait, she decided. It wasn’t impossible that he just had some bug he picked up in one of the mining towns. Give it a week, see if it was still happening and then she’d be worried. Grief worked weird on people; maybe Old Nick couldn’t cry, so he coughed instead. Maybe the problem would go away on its own.
Hob crept back down the stairs, easing the door to the little office building shut. She turned around to come face to face with one of the twins, skin almost pitch black in the dim safety lighting. She jerked back, one hand resting on her pistol for a moment while her brain caught up to her reflexes and let her know that no, it was probably OK. She stared at him, then said, “Freki.”
He nodded, the corner of his mouth twitching slightly.
“What d’ya want?”
He tilted his head up toward the closed window of Nick’s office. “Somethin’ wrong?”
“Ask me in a week. Mayhap I’ll have it figured out then. Good night.” She took a couple of steps around him, and then stopped. “You ever wonder how I know which of you is which?”
He shrugged, but she could see that little spark of curiosity in his eyes.
“Ain’t your hair. You’re the one that don’t look at me like I smell bad.”
Freki laughed, covering his mouth with one hand so the sound didn’t carry too far. “Don’t take it personal. He’s got a problem with women.”
Hob stared; it was the most words she’d heard out of Freki at one time. “Guess I’m glad it ain’t just me.”
“Girl bit him when he was little. Never got over it.”
Hob laughed as Freki walked away, not giving her a chance to ask anything else.
* * *
Later, Hob found out it was a miner from Rouse, his clothes still stinking of smoke, who brought the news. Middle of the night, and he’d still managed to find one of their in-town lookouts, gave them the message.
But all she knew was that someone hammered on her door with the butt of a gun, yanking her from a solid sleep. She rolled out of bed, scrambling to pull on her pants and button them while the banging just kept going. She jerked the door open before the man on the other side had a chance to knock it off its hinges.
Dambala, raccoon-eyed with exhaustion, his expression grim, said: “Full muster. Get downstairs.”
“The hell exploded?”
He paused at the stairway, looking back at her. “Weren’t an explosion.”
Her blood felt cold in her veins as she pulled on the rest of her clothes and shoved her feet into her boots, not even bothering to lace them. Her fingers fumbled with the buckle on her gun belt as she thumped down the stairs.
Every last man of the outfit was out in the exercise yard, some of them standing a little sideways, leaning against their compatriots. Nick shouted at them to hurry, to smarten up, fall in.
Hob took her position at the back of the column, glancing at Geri next to her. He was too tired to give her a dirty look.
“That’s all of ’em, Ravani,” Makaya said, surveying the group. “Where we goin’?” She was Nick’s second, and looked the same as the day Nick had brought Hob in off the dunes: a stringy brown woman barely over a meter and a half tall. She wore at least ten knives plainly; she had a lot more hidden in her clothes.
Nick crossed his arms over his chest. His face was pale, skin clinging to his skull like wet paper. “We’re ridin’ to Rouse. Bastards burned down Phil’s house, and Irina in it. We’re goin’ for blood.”
Hob glanced around at men nodding, their faces closing off in anger that they hadn’t even shown at Phil’s murder. Irina had been kind to each and every one of them at some point, had looked away when they stole her pies, and darned more socks than Hob cared to count.
Fire snarled through her blood, anger tight through her. Irina had been the closest thing she’d ever had to a mother, in the sense that she was Mag’s mama, and she’d tolerated her daughter’s wild friend. But Hob was so used to rage always cooking at her insides that she could think around it. “We goin’ to war?”
Nick snapped around to face her. “We’re goin’ hunting.”
“We go rolling in to Rouse, it’ll be war. Company ain’t just gonna sit by and let us string someone up as we please.”
“If you’re yellow, you can get the hell off my base. Get mounted up.” He strode away, duster snapping behind him.
Hob looked at Geri again; for once, he wasn’t trying to stare down his nose at someone taller than him. “Guess it’s war,” he said. “You comin’?”
She almost laughed, because it wasn’t like she had a choice. It didn’t matter if it was plain suicide Nick was asking; he’d saved her life, given her a second chance when she hadn’t deserved one. She owed loyalty to Nick as the Ravani, and to Nick as the man that pulled her from the desert and gave her a name to call her own. “Wouldn’t miss it for anythin’.”
* * *
They rode in grim silence, twenty strong. There wasn’t a sound but the wind and tires humming over the dunes. Rouse was a string of lights on the horizon, yellow sodium flares lining the top of the wall. Nick’s voice became a whipcrack over the abnormally staticky radio channel. “Makaya, take care of the gate.”
“Sir.” Makaya peeled off the formation, motorcycle speeding over the dunes. The rest of them slowed, hanging back, giving her time to work.
Hob saw the black shadow of Makaya in the yellow light at the gates. She knocked at the inset door, it opened a crack, and then wider to let her in. She disappeared for a moment, then her voice came over the radio, barely audible even at the short distance. “Gate guard’s down. Going for the west side of the wall.”
They sped back up, arrowing toward the town as a single unit. Ahead, the gate yawned wide.
A moment later, Makaya’s voice came up again. “Neutralized. East side now.”
They pulled up to the walls, flowed inside in a silent tide.
“East side neutralized. Where to now, boss?”
“We’re goin’ to get churched,” Nick said.
They followed him through the streets like ghosts. The electric motors on the bikes made only a hushed hum, inaudible over the endless churn of the mine that made the town’s sleepless black heart. Houses stood dark and quiet, no sign yet given that their presence had even been noticed. Hob’s shoulders tensed up around her ears, waiting for the lights on the two guard towers to spring on. It was only a matter of time until an alarm was called.
The Wolves surrounded the church in a wall of metal. The simple sight of the building made a sick twist in Hob’s stomach, even so many years later, a reminder of how she’d been used by Father Lee and his adopted boy. Nick stepped off his bike, pausing to take off his helmet and light a cigarette, the yellow flare showing a face empty of any humanity. Then he spread the front doors wide with his hands, framed by the candlelight inside.
Hob slipped off her own motorcycle, made to follow him. Dambala grabbed her sleeve, didn’t let go when she gave it a warning shake.
“Leave off,” Makaya hissed. “Hob’s got a debt of her own to collect.” On the base, they called Makaya the debt keeper; she never forgot who owed her blood.
Dambala let go and Hob followed Nick, drawing her pistol. Vengeance be damned, she wasn’t going to leave the old bastard without someone to guard his back.
“Preacher!” Nick shouted. “Preacher, you get your goddamn flabby ass out here! We got you surrounded, so don’t you even think of tryin’ to run!”
The man emerged a few moments later through a door at the back, clad in a green dressing gown that looked nicer than any clothes Hob had ever owned. His face was pale, but he drew himself up, hands clutching at the front of his robe. “What have you need of, my… son?” The man almost bit the word off before he could say it.
Nick laughed, sharp and nasty, as he grabbed the man’s collar. The preacher screamed as Nick dragged him over to the altar and threw him down on the ground. He drew one of his pistols, the bone butt the color of butter, and the preacher fell abr
uptly silent. Nick pulled the hammer back, barrel aimed unwavering, dead center on the preacher’s forehead. “I know you got your finger in every goddamn pie in this town, you fuckin’ spy. So you tell me now, you tell me who killed my sister-in-law.”
“I don’t–”
The barrel of the gun twitched down and Nick fired, the retort deafening. The preacher screamed, tried to scramble back. Blood, almost black in the candlelight, ran from his leg, a long graze across his thigh. Nick grabbed his collar again, leaned down, pressed the gun barrel to the man’s cheek. “Next time, I won’t miss a-purpose. You tell me what I want to know!”
The preacher started babbling, words almost impossible to follow as they tumbled from his trembling jaw. “She told me all about sending her daughter away, she was a good woman – a God-fearing woman! I just told the foreman about it – and then there was the wake, and she was glad about it, but it got so many people muttering about worse, about more than one day. The foreman said they needed a little warning. I didn’t know he meant a warning like this, I swear!”
“Give me a name!”
“S- Savrille. It must have been Savrille!”
“Good man,” Nick crooned, a tone Hob had never heard him use. It sent shivers up her spine, made her want to crawl away. He smiled. “Which one’s he?”
“Foreman for the night shift. I swear, that was my only part in it, I didn’t know what they were going to do!”
“But you did. You knew that they’d do something. And you didn’t say a goddamn word to anyone, when you could have warned her.”
The stream of babbling dried up abruptly. Maybe looking death in the eye, knowing he’d never escape it, made him calm. “It’s my job to maintain the order and keep them all safe. The very things devil-loving catamites like you hate.”
“Rina burned. You know how painful that is?” Nick clenched his fist tighter, almost choking the man with his own robe. Sparks ran down his arm, collecting around his hand. “Got a little taste of Hell for ya.”
The preacher’s eyes went wide. He opened his mouth, screamed “Witch–!”
His head burst into flame like a torch.
After that, he just screamed, for what felt like an eternity but could have only been a few seconds with his brain cooking. As soon as he went silent, Nick let go. The body made a wet thump on the floor, and flames licking out, searching for wood.
The air was thick with cooked-meat smell. Hob swallowed back bile as Nick turned toward her. His face was pale, eye wild, and for a moment there was no recognition. “Where to now?” she asked.
Nick shuddered, giving his head a sharp shake, then stood tall. “We get Savrille. He’ll be at the mine.”
“So will all the night shift guards.”
Nick paused on his way out, looked at her. “Guess that means they’ll know it was us an’ not the miners.”
Hob paused at the door, looking back into the smoky church. This was where the plan had been hatched, to have Jeb take the tracking devices, find out where she and the Wolves lived. This was where company men and Father Lee had decided she ought to be used, because order was more important than honesty. This was the reason Jeb had ended up in her bedroom. He’d even pushed her to take him back to the base, a subtle manipulation she hadn’t rightly realized before. Learned at the knee of Father Lee, perhaps. There was no knowing, now, how much of Jeb had been a lie. And it didn’t matter either.
She rested her hand on the back of a pew, letting the rage roar through her bones. Her vision went red, her heartbeat sang in her ears. When she lifted her hand away, there was a burned print, its interior red and smoldering. Flames licked up, caught, and began to move slowly across the top of the pew. “Just this building. No more than that.”
The fire was a living thing. It protested, it matched its will against hers, and she snarled at it to behave.
Hob turned her back and followed Nick.
* * *
There was no reason to keep quiet now, not if they were going to drag the foreman out of the mine in the middle of his shift. Nick just about vibrated with rage on his motorcycle, but calmed himself enough for basic strategy: he sent four to hold the gate, another six to secure the flanks, Freki and Geri with them.
One shouted order from Nick and the remaining ten Wolves drew pistols or balanced rifles across their battery stacks, steering their motorcycles with one light hand and the power of body weight. Coyote had a pistol in each hand, grinning all the while; asshole always did like showing off. They flashed up the hill toward the works, into the floodlights. People started shouting. Hob caught a blur of green to one side, a guard standing up with a cigarette dangling from his mouth, fumbling for his rifle. She shot him twice as she passed by.
Behind them, the guard towers lit up. Gunfire cracked through the night.
A few seconds later they arrived at the mine works – and the shacks at the top where most of the night shift guards holed up. As they halted, the doors flew open and guards piled out, half drunk and thoroughly confused. The Wolves sprayed the shacks and the bottlenecked guards with bullets. Men in green fell, or threw themselves to the ground for safety.
Then silence but for the creaking of synthetic wood and flexsteel, the clank of the overhead drive chain doing its endless journey into the mine.
“Savrille!” Nick shouted. “Send him out, boys! It’s him I want!”
One of the guards raised his head, looking up at Nick. Hob pointed her pistol square at him. He pressed his forehead back down against the floor of the shack.
Miners flowed from the works, a sea of smudged blue coveralls and dirty faces, pale arms streaked with grime. A man Hob didn’t recognize, a reflective stripe on his hardhat to indicate he was a crew leader, yelled to Nick, “What do you want him for?”
“You all know damn well that the fire Irina burned in weren’t an accident,” Nick shouted. “Well, I know who gave the word to have it done. I want Savrille, now!”
The crowd of miners murmured, still more coming up from the works. Some sounded angry, nodding their heads in agreement. A few others stepped back, hands raised, wanting no part.
“He ain’t bad, for a company man,” the crew leader said. “Treated us fair enough. You sure?”
Nick glanced behind him, then jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “See the fire I started? That’s how sure I am. Evil men talk a pretty game.”
More murmuring. “Fire?” “Is that the church?” “Jesus, what did he do?”
But the crew leader nodded, slowly. “Phil was a friend of mine, and so was Irina. But if you want Savrille, he ain’t in the pit.” He pointed at the second guard shack. “Hangs out in that one, plays cards with his friends all the time.”
Nick threw down his kickstand, strode over to the shack. A guard tried to rise and Nick kicked him in the face. He disappeared into the building; a moment later he came out, dragging a much smaller man by the back of his blue jacket, the nose of his revolver pressed into his cheek.
Behind them, more gunfire, getting closer.
“We don’t have time for your theatrics, Nick,” Coyote said.
Nick didn’t seem to hear. “You tell ’em what you done,” he hissed. “You fuckin’ tell ’em, or I’ll do somethin’ a hell of a lot worse than just shooting you.”
The man shook, tears running down his face, snot bubbling out of his nose. He didn’t look like a murderer, Hob thought, wasn’t all hard edges like Old Nick. But probably it was a hell of a lot easier to just kill with an order than to go set the fire yourself, pull the trigger. “I ordered it,” he whimpered.
“Ordered what?” Nick roared.
“Ordered that the house be burned. The man was blackli–”
Savrille’s head blew apart into a spray of bone and brain. Bloody mist painted one side of Nick’s jaw as he let the body drop. “You all heard it. I done justice because the fuckin’ greenbellies never will look at one of their own.”
Behind them, someone screamed through the sound of gunf
ire, high and thin.
Nick turned and ran to his motorcycle. “Fall back!” he shouted. He tried to yell another order, but choked on the word as he pulled on his helmet. Half a cough came over the radio channel before the transmission cut out.
Hob leaned hard, chain mesh on the wheels throwing sparks on the uneven ground as she whipped her motorcycle around. They went down the hill faster than they should have, toward the gate. She waited for someone to echo the order, but no call came to warn the other groups. Hob keyed her microphone on and, as calm as she could given the circumstance, said, “Fall back, all hands to the gate.”
The sound of rifles was replaced by the bark of bigger guns, bullets raining down from the guard towers. Hob half twisted on her bike, trying to keep her weight steady and her path straight as she fired at the floodlights on the tower. Two went out in a shower of sparks. Then she ducked her head as the trail of tracers moved toward her, swerving out as wide as she could in the all-too narrow street. She ran up onto the boardwalk, ducking below several awnings and low-hanging signs. Synthetic wood shredded around her; glass cracked and shattered.
They made a tight turn to the gate. That team was intact, hiding behind their motorcycles, rifles propped up on them or coming from between the wheels as they returned fire. Hob hung back just a little, let the other seven get out ahead of her with Nick in the lead, then called, “Team one out!”
Then she gunned it, running off the hardpan and skidding into the dunes, not looking back. A moment later, Dambala’s voice came over the radio: “Team two out. Gate team, fall back.”
Hob had one short moment to think about the fact that it was Dambala, not Makaya, that spoke, even though her team had been covering the flanks. Then all she could do was concentrate on the wobbling beam of light that showed her path, trying to keep her proper spacing with the people next to her.
