Eclipse One

by Jonathan Strahan

  Polecat complains: "But you shouldn't summon someone back from the dead just to make up a shortage."

  "I didn't," Lieutenant Brakespeare says primly. "Officers are forbidden by The Articles of War to attempt or achieve any magickal acts. Article 3, Section I, Subsection 2."

  Buck, from the settee, observes: "Maybe forbidden themselves, but there's nothing in The Articles of War about paying someone else to attempt or achieve magickal acts for you, eh? Who'd you get to do it?"

  "The curandero," Lieutenant Brakespeare admits. The curandero is an elderly bronco who, having decided he was too old and wise to fight, made peace with the Califians and moved into a wikiyup near the river, from which he dispenses charms, foul smelling ointments, and philosophical advice, in return for rations. "Anyway, Lieutenant Rucker can go back where he came from as soon as he either produces the inkwell, or pays for it. I don't care which."

  "Inkwell?" says Polecat.

  "Ayah, so. Pow signed a receipt for fifteen glass inkwells, shipped from Fort Ludwig to here—" Lieutenant Brakespeare fishes a sheet of paper out of her sack coat and consults it. "On Martes 12. One arrived broken and was dropped from the inventory. One was issued to Corporal Candy on Martes 15; one was issued to the AG, and one to the CO. Leaving eleven on the return. But there were only ten in the QM store. Where's the missing inkwell?" She looks accusingly at Pow.

  "I don't know." Pow says. He has no idea where the missing inkwell is, but there's a burning feeling in his throat, a scratchy roar that is extremely distracting. The dry Arivaipa air has sucked his moisture away and his thirst has returned, with a vengeance. Something wiggles on his neck; despite the canvas a centipede has fallen from the brush. Pow pops the flailing bug into his mouth and it squishes wetly between his teeth. The others don't notice.

  "How much is the inkwell valued at?" Polecat asks.

  Lieutenant Brakespeare consults the receipt again. "Fifteen lisbys."

  "Fifteen lisbys!" Polecat reaches for the cigarillo box on his blotter, which does not contain cigarillos. "Fifteen lisbys! That's pocket change!"

  "You always gotta do things the hard way, Tiny Doom," Buck chortles, and Lieutenant Brakespeare gives her a poisonous look.

  "Have you got fifteen lisbys, Pow?" Polecat asks.

  Pow feels in his pockets, but if he ever had fifteen lisbys, the Arivaipa desert has them now. He tries to answer; his jaw creaks like dry wood, and no words come out, only a puff of dust.

  "I'll take that as a no. Here, I'll give you fifteen lisbys, Pow, and you can pay Lieutenant Brakespeare, and that will be that," Polecat says, his head now wreathed in soothing herbal smoke. He fishes around in his top desk drawer. "Buck, do you have two lisbys?"

  There's an ink bottle sitting on Polecat's desk, half-full of ink. Pow can smell the dark delicious wetness—

  "I don't want your money, Captain," Lieutenant Brakespeare complains. "It's Lieutenant Rucker's responsibility and he should either find that inkwell or pay up—"

  Pow's entire focus is now pointed at that ink bottle and the promise of liquidity within. His thirst burns; his blood has long evaporated, and his veins feel like rawhide thongs, taut and stretched. He reaches a clawlike hand towards the bottle. The ink tastes thick and dark, but most deliciously, it tastes wet.

  The others have stopped their squabbling, and are staring at him. Pow licks his now black lips and sets the empty bottle back on Polecat's desk.

  "Anyway, it's not just the inkwell." Lieutenant Brakespeare says triumphantly. "There's also a small matter of the paymaster funds, which are also missing, and which Pow, as QM, is responsible for."

  Polecat blanches. "How much?"

  "Five thousand divas."

  "Paper or gold?" Polecat asks faintly.

  "Gold."

  V. Parched

  Suddenly Lieutenant Brakespeare's actions no longer seem quite so drastic. Fifteen lisbys is nothing; even a private can probably scrounge up fifteen lisbys, the price of a beer. But five thousand divas in gold—Fort Gehenna's entire payroll for the entire year! If the troopers find out their pay is gone, they'll riot, they'll mutiny, they'll desert. They'll raise a howl that will be heard in the War Department back in Califa, a howl that, since Pow is dead, will thunder down upon the shoulders of his superiors: Polecat and Lieutenant Brakespeare. They'll be court-martialed for sure, and lucky to escape cashiering. And they'll still have to pay back the cash. Five thousand divas in gold is a pretty good reason for raising the dead.

  Polecat and Lieutenant Brakespeare pounce on Pow, but their berating questions get nowhere. He can hardly hear them; they are distant mirages in his parchedness. The ink has only whetted his thirst—not quenched it—and now his only interest is in moisture. He can smell the wetness; not in the air, which is as dry as dust, but in the living bodies around him—wet blood, wet bile, wet sweat, wet saliva. They are soggy with wetness, fair dripping, and he can feel himself shriveling for the lack of it.

  Pow stares at Polecat, upon whose white brow stand little drops of sweat, whose rosy cheeks are flushed and bedewed. Polecat's lips are moving, opening to display the moist cavern of his mouth—the desire to lunge towards that wetness—tear Polecat's tongue out by the roots, suck out all its moisture—is rising like a dust devil inside of Pow, twisting and turning and—

  "Hey," says Buck. She's now standing next to him, a bottle in her hand. "Have a drink, Pow. You look like you could use it."

  His hands are too gnarled now to grasp the bottle; creakily he leans back, and Buck pours the coarse whiskey into his mouth; as it flows down his throat he feels his flesh expanding, reconstituting itself, plumping out. Delicious delicious wetness.

  Lieutenant Brakespeare turns on Buck: "You could be helping. You signed the receipt for the paymaster. This will hit you, too."

  Buck protests: "I am helping. While the two of you shriek like owls, I've been thinking. You know, the night Pow died, I was at the hog ranch, too."

  "Where else?" says Lieutenant Brakespeare bitterly. She's never set foot in the place.

  "Cállate, Azota, I wasn't feeling so well so I left early—cállate, Azota!—and thus missed Pow's heroism, but I do recall now that when I left, Pow was playing cards with the scout, Lotta, Pecos and some other guy. Pow was losing, and losing in gold, too."

  "Who was winning?" Lieutenant Brakespeare asks.

  "The scout," says Buck triumphantly.

  So Polecat puts his sack coat on and orders Lieutenant Brakespeare to arrest Pow, which she does. Then, they all march, under colors, down to the hog ranch to demand the return of the payroll. They find the scout eating pickles and playing mumblty-peg with the ice elemental. He freely admits that he won the divas off Lieutenant Rucker, but he refuses to return them. A bet lost is a bet won by someone else, fair and square.

  While Polecat dithers, and Buck and Pow have themselves another drink (or two), Lieutenant Brakespeare puts the screws on the scout. She starts out politely persuasive, then turns to choleric threats, but neither attitude makes the slightest dent. The scout is part-bronco, part-coyote, rumor has it, and a shavetail lieutenant don't scare him at all. Lieutenant Brakespeare sends a detail to search the scout's miserable shebang. No gold. Another detail holds the scout down and searches his greasy buckskin-clad person. No gold. She's urging Polecat to allow her to tie the scout to a wagon wheel and set his hair on fire—I'll wager he'll cough up the gold then!—when Buck offers a lazy solution.

  "A wager." Buck says. "Let's make a wager."

  Arivaipa Territory is arid and dull; the soldiers must make their own fun and what's more fun than a wager? At Gehenna, they'll bet on anything. I'll stand you four divas, five lisbys, six glories that you can't: leap a prickly pear cactus; eat six jars of jalapeño pickles; stand on your head for six hours; ride that strawberry roan; stay in bed two weeks; walk from the hog ranch to the flagpole blindfolded. The inhabitants of Gehenna have bet on ant wars; mule races; tennis matches; foot races; marksmanship; whose bed sheets are whiter; w
hose corporal is fatter; and whether or not lightning is attracted to a picket pin dangling from the flagpole. (Yes.)

  The scout's eyes, deep in red-painted sockets, gleam. "A wager?"

  "Ayah," Buck answers. "A bet. You won the divas off Pow, now give him a chance to turn about fair play. A contest of skill."

  "What skill?"

  "Who can hold their breath longest?" Buck suggests.

  The scout shakes his head. "He's dead. He don't breathe. A foot race?"

  Even in life, Pow was pokey; in death, he's moving at a snail's pace. Buck quickly counters: "Who can stay on Evil Murdoch the longest?" Evil Murdoch being the most notoriously un-rideable bite-y mule ever seen in Arivaipa.

  The scout shakes his head. "Evil Murdoch kicks me in the head, I'm dead. The lieutenant, he's already dead, why should he care? Not good odds."

  Lieutenant Brakespeare suggests: "How about a penmanship contest?" This suggestion is so boring that she is ignored.

  "A drinking contest, then," says Buck, grinning. She knows that the scout takes particular pride in his ability to consume large quantities of bugjuice, with no outward effect. Only last year he drank the barkeep under the table, and she's a professional.

  "Done!" says the scout quickly, "I got five thousand divas in gold. What is he going to put up?" This question is a legitimate stumper. The cumulative value of everything at Fort Gehenna, from Polecat's silver cigarette case to the hay in the hay yard, probably isn't worth five thousand divas in gold. What can Pow wager that even remotely begins to match the value of the gold?

  "How about his soul?" the scout says.

  "Done!" says Buck.

  VI. Drink

  By now, night is falling. To the northeast, in a cliché suitable for a yellowback thriller, a storm is forming up over Mount Abraxas, garish purple and pink lightning splitting the iron-blue twilight sky. A dust devil spirals across the parade ground; the howling dog pack chases after it. Fort Gehenna is now mostly deserted; every soldier not currently on duty is at the hog ranch, along with every one else for miles. A drinking contest between the scout and a dead man is probably the most exciting thing ever to happen at Fort Gehenna. The hog ranch is standing room only; slits soon appear in the canvas walls, each rent accommodating an avid pair of eyes. No one wants to miss the show.

  The officers have had a whispered conversation regarding Pow's stake, which Pow has objected to. With his body liable to crumble to dust any minute, Pow's soul is all he's got left—he doesn't want to chance losing it. And besides, he doesn't care about the five thousand divas, why should he? He's dead. They can't court-martial him or cashier him. No, Polecat agrees, they can't. But they can confine him to the guardhouse, which is a dry place, where the water dipper is offered only twice a day. Here, they are offering Pow an opportunity to drink all he can, set me up another round, keep 'em coming. Suffer thirst or quench it. When it's put like that, Pow agrees that getting the money back is his responsibility after all.

  As for the value of Pow's soul, how can it match the value of five thousand divas? Strictly speaking, it does not. Pow, in life, was an affable fellow, always good for a laugh and a loan, but he wasn't a famous magician, or a holy man, or anyone else who might have accumulated great animus, a weighty powerful soul. No matter to the scout. He has a little collection of souls; he keeps them in a leather pouch he wears on a cord around his neck. He's got the soul of a baby who died at birth; a dog that could read; a woman who lived to be one hundred and four; a coyote with two heads; a man who was hung for horse-stealing; and a woman who changed into a flamingo during the dark moon. The soul of a man who drowned in the desert would be a nice addition to this collection.

  The rumble of thunder is growling nearer, like the distant approach of cannon fire, when Pow and the scout sit down across from each other at the whist table. The peanut gallery—no peanuts, no gallery—crowds around.

  The rules, as Buck explains them loudly, are simple: whoever quits drinking first loses.

  They start with the rest of the beer that Pow rescued from the flood—the last case, the one that Pow died for. After the funeral, the barkeep had put this case away for a special occasion and Pow's return is certainly a special occasion. It's very poor beer (the good stuff has no hope of surviving the long journey via steamer and mule train to Arivaipa) but the people who drink at the hog ranch aren't picky. As long as the beer is cheap and wet, they are satisfied.

  Pow, of course, only cares that the booze is wet. He and the scout chug down the beers as quickly as Lotta places them on the table. Six bottles each. With each swig, Pow feels his flesh expanding, fattening. The alcohol doesn't affect him at all, only the moisture. His muscles and sinews flex, his jaw relaxes. His brain swells back to its normal size, and he is beginning to think clearly again. The scout starts out strong, matching Pow sip for sip, but Gehenna's officers are not yet worried. The beer is weak stuff; even Lieutenant Brakespeare can drink several bottles of the stuff to no ill effect.

  The scout finishes sucking the last few drops of beer out of the last bottle and tosses it over his shoulder. A yelp indicates that his aimless aim still found a mark.

  "I gotta piss," he announces.

  Pow needs no piss break; so he waits at the table, while the scout saunters out back to the saguaro that became the default urinal after the big storm washed the privy away. He returns a few minutes later and the contest resumes.

  Now the beer is gone, and at Buck's bidding, the barkeep brings out the hog ranch's supply of mescal: six large ollas. This mescal is rough and strong; Buck doubts if the scout will make it through the second olla. She winks at Pow. Now that he is better hydrated, his eyes don't feel quite so much like glass marbles, so he winks back.

  "Ut!" Pow says, raising his glass. The mescal looks exactly like urine, and it tastes, Pow realizes, almost exactly like soap. By the end of the first olla, a thin glaze is starting to creep across the scout's face. He puts his glass down and burrows into his buckskin jacket. The room stiffens and other hands stray towards hips, shirt fronts, waists, and boot-tops—any place a weapon could be stashed.

  But when the scout's hand reappears, it's with a leather cigarillo case. He aims the cigarillo for his mouth, and makes the target on the second try. The scout accepts the trigger that the drover, leaning in, offers.

  "Cigarillo?" The scout asks Pow.

  Pow shakes his head. He's ready for another drink. And anyway, even when alive he never smoked. The scout gets the cigarillo lit on the third try; his hands are definitely shaking now. He probably won't even make it through the next glass. Gehenna's officers exchange triumphant glances.

  But the scout makes it through the next glass, and the next one too. They are into their fourth glass when the scout finishes his cigarillo and casually flicks the butt away. But his aim is impaired, and the flick sends the butt flying, not towards the floor, but directly at Pow. It lands in his hair, which, now well saturated with flammable liquid, immediately ignites into a halo of fire.

  The crowd recedes in a squawk of horror. The barkeep has had patrons burst into flames before, and experience has taught her to keep a blanket handy. While Buck and Polecat slap Pow with their hats, she elbows through the crowd and tosses the blanket over Pow, pushes him on the floor, and sits on him.

  When they unwrap the blanket, they find Pow a bit charred around the temples, but otherwise no worse for wear. They haul him to his feet and sit him back down at the table. The fire has quenched his deliciously moist feeling, and he's ready for another drink.

  "No more smoking," Buck warns the scout. She doesn't believe for a minute that the scout's flick was unintentional, but since she can't prove this belief, she's going to watch him like a hawk. Pow's thirst is the insatiable thirst of a desiccated dead man. The scout is neither dead nor desiccated and he should have long succumbed. Buck is getting suspicious. The scout grins at her, pointy blue-stained teeth gleaming, and raises his glass.

  But by the time they've killed the mesc
al, the scout is looking a bit done. His eyes are tarnished silver coins, and, in between chugs, he's clawed his hair into jagged clumps. The canvas walls are now sucking in and out, as though the hog ranch itself is trying to gasp for breath, stifled by the interior tension and the stench of hair pomade, tallow, dog and bugjuice. A guttural rumble overhead reminds them the storm is coming in.

  But the scout doesn't drop. They finish the mescal, and pause so that the barkeep can send Lotta out to the back to dig up the whiskey that's been mellowing in a grave near the corral. The scout staggers off to relieve himself of some of his liquid burden and Gehenna's officers worriedly confer.

  "He's cheating. He's got to be," Buck says. "No one can drink that much and live. Even Pow's starting to look waterlogged."

  Pow is looking rough. As he has absorbed the liquid, he's puffed up, ballooning like a sponge. Where he had been stringy and dry, he's now round and plump, but it's a strained kind of plumpness. His skin, burned black with decay, looks shiny and stretched, like the skin of a balloon. The bony claws of his fingers have swollen into fat sausages.

  In short, Pow looks about to burst. The scout has an outlet for his excess liquid. Pow is drinking faster than he can absorb. Something is gonna give.

  "I know he's cheating," Buck repeats.

  "How can he be cheating?" Polecat whispers. "What are we going to do?"

  Pow is no longer paying attention to the whispered accusations flying between the officers. Something cold and hard has just bopped him on the beezer: an ice cube. He looks up to see the ice elemental, suspended in its silver cage above the table, waving a small blue hand at him. Pow sloshily waves back.