Blood Ward

by Glynn Stewart

  “If she was your bounty, my old friend, you’d have caught her two days out of Carlon, not twelve,” Yosan said. “I been paying attention, Kard. Not sure many others have, but I seen the pattern.”

  “She’s trickier than we thought.” Kard shrugged, but his hands were tight on the short repeater. “Your opinion of my skills doesn’t change the rules, Yosan. You don’t interfere with another Hunter’s prize.”

  “She’s not bound, she’s armed, and she holds your horses,” Yosan pointed out. “I’m inclined, my friend, to regards her as no man’s prize—and clear for the taking.”

  “You’d break the traditions of our brotherhood?”

  Yosan laughed.

  “Brotherhood? We wants to claims we have a brotherhood? There’s some traditions, yes, but I wouldn’t claims a brotherhood.” He drew one of his guns, a snake-fast motion, that had Teer’s own weapon out and trained on him.

  “Have your boy puts away his gun, Kard,” Yosan ordered. “This doesn’t needs to get ugly.”

  “It didn’t need to get this ugly,” Kard replied, but he gestured for Teer to holster his gun.

  Of course, Kard knew how quickly Teer could draw. The youth slowly returned the weapon to its holder, eyeing Yosan’s riders and all too aware of the gun in Lora’s hands.

  “This girl would makes eleven, I thinks,” Yosan pointed out. “Eleven bounties you went after that no one ever saw again. Eleven bounties, I thinks, with sob stories you fell for. And since I happens to be right here, I feels a need to makes certain the law is obeyed.”

  “That’s not how this works, Yosan,” Kard countered. “I have the bounty. I bring her in. You go hunt your own.”

  “I bears a Writ of Seizure, Kard,” Yosan reminded him. “Authorized to use all necessary force. I do not believes that you are delivering this bounty. To honors that Writ, I must sees justice done.”

  “Or you want the bounty for yourself,” Kard snapped. “Quite the dance you make, Yosan.”

  “You’ve a choice, Kard,” the other Hunter said, his gun clearly trained on Kard’s midsection now. “I’ll makes it easy: Carind offered me an extra ten stone to bring the girl in, alive or dead. If he offered you the same, we brings her in together and holds him to both. Each of our boys gets two stone; you and I splits eight with the Unity bounty. Good money for the easy way.”

  “And if I don’t need your help handling one girl?” Kard said.

  “I haves five men and you one,” Yosan said simply. “I don’t wants to leaves an old friend dead in the dirt, but I wills. You’s been betraying your Writs, Kard. Carrying criminals beyond the power of the Unity.

  “You’ve breached all that makes you a Hunter and breached any brotherhood we claims.”

  Teer’s hand was on his gun. He knew he could outdraw anyone except maybe a Spehari or a Kotan shaman-warrior, but he couldn’t draw faster than Yosan could pull a trigger. He just didn’t see any way out of this mess.

  “I’m afraid I must decline your lovely offers, but I’ll make you one,” Kard said lightly. “Ride away, Yosan. This isn’t the fight you think it is.”

  “Thats because the girl is armed?” the Shiggan asked. “I’ll takes six on three, too.”

  Teer couldn’t see Kard’s face, but he could hear the sharp edge of desperate warning in his mentor’s voice. He knew at least part of it: if Kard used Spehari magic to fight Yosan’s men, he’d have to kill them all.

  “No,” Kard warned. “Ride away, Yosan. You’re a selfish man but not a bad one. Don’t make me kill you.”

  Yosan laughed, a booming belly laugh that echoed across the empty plains—but his gun stayed trained dead-center on Kard.

  “Makes you kill me?” he said. “I’m not sure what you thinks is going to happens here.”

  “If you don’t ride away, we’ll be digging six graves,” Kard replied. “You have no idea what I’m capable of, Yosan. Don’t make this choice.”

  “Hears that, boys?” Yosan shouted. “Kard here says that if we fights him, he’ll be burying us!”

  Laughter echoed from the riders—and they were closing the circle, losing the distance between them and the trio at the center of the confrontation.

  Teer exhaled, his hand and gun concealed under his coat from most of the riders. He knew without looking that Lora had her thunderbuss in both hands and was eyeing the closest riders. Kard’s repeater wasn’t pointed at Yosan, but Teer knew how fast the El-Spehari could move.

  The tableau was frozen for a moment, then Yosan lifted his pistol, the weapon staying trained on Kard the whole motion.

  “Last chance, old friend,” Yosan said. “Puts the guns down.”

  19

  Teer wasn’t sure what Kard did, but it was clearly the final straw for Yosan. He registered the gunshot in the silence and hoped against hope that his companion was capable of managing the same shield he’d used against Teer once.

  That shot had been far more of a surprise, so Teer figured Kard was fine as he drew his own weapon in a blur of motion. The quickshooter trained on Yosan before the Hunter could do more than gape at Kard, cracking in Teer’s hand with the surprise that always came with a perfect shot.

  He didn’t wait to see if he’d hit, leaving the Shiggan man to fall as he twisted toward the riders. They’d been waiting for their leader to move, but they needed to take Lora alive and hesitated for a moment.

  That moment was fatal.

  Teer shot the first man before the sound of Yosan’s gunshot had faded, the bullet hammering into the base of the rider’s neck and sending him crumpling from his horse. He barely registered the horse spooking as its rider became so much dead meat, continuing his turn with cold focus.

  The second rider had his repeater up, pointing it at Kard as he started to shout words he never finished as Teer’s quickshooter cracked a third time. The bullet smashed into the man’s mouth, silencing him forever.

  His fourth bullet was slightly off, hammering through the torso of his target as their quickshooter cracked at him.

  Teer sidestepped the bullet without thinking as he turned again, his quickshooter lining up on the rider with the short repeater. That man had the weapon for his role and the barrel was swinging rapidly toward Teer as the young Merik pulled the trigger…and nothing happened.

  The worn pistol had failed and Teer realized, for the first time in his life, just how wide the barrel of a gun appeared when it was pointed directly at you. He dodged sideways again as the first bullet cracked, tossing aside the quickshooter as he did, but the rider was a practiced shooter with his own weapon.

  Two more shots echoed in quick succession, one of them hammering into Teer’s armored shoulder—and then a thunderbuss cracked as Teer hit the ground.

  Then silence fell across the plains again.

  It took Teer a moment to roll back over and cringe as pain radiated out from his shoulder. The armored jacket had slowed the bullet, but it had definitely not stopped it.

  “Are you all right?” he heard Kard ask—but the question was directed at Lora.

  “I…I…”

  “It was a good shot,” Kard said. “You saved Teer’s life.”

  “He… I…I killed him.”

  “You saved Teer’s life,” Kard repeated. “Thank you.”

  The El-Spehari was closer now, kneeling over Teer as the youth groaned.

  “You got hit.” It wasn’t a question.

  “Shoulder,” Teer ground out. “Through the coat.”

  “Let me look,” Kard demanded. He pulled the coat away, clearly intentionally blocking Teer’s view of the scene behind him. The illusion was gone again, leaving the true pale-skinned visage of his partner.

  “Yup. Doesn’t look like it broke any bones, but the bullet’s still there,” the older man said in calm tones. “Grab my hand.”

  Teer obeyed without thinking.

  “Good. Now squeeze.”

  The command made no sense until sparks of orange light dove into his shoulder. He
squeezed hard as he tried not to scream at the pain. He was pretty sure he failed, blinking back tears a moment later.

  “All right, bullet’s gone, wound’s clean,” Kard declared. “Lora, bring me some bandages, then see if you can gather up the horses.”

  “All right,” she said, her voice still strained.

  Kard helped Teer to his feet, stepping back to allow the Merik youth to see the mess around them. He had to swallow hard at the bodies—especially as he realized how many of them were his doing.

  Yosan was closest, the Shiggan man very clearly dead with a large hole where the base of his throat should have been. Teer followed the same turn he’d followed during the fight almost without thinking, tracking over two more corpses that lay where their horses had thrown them.

  A fourth body had clearly been blown off his horse by both barrels of Lora’s thunderbuss, his upper torso a mess of shattered flesh and bone that bothered Teer less than the corpses he’d created.

  The Merik woman appeared behind Kard and wordlessly handed over the requested bandages. She wouldn’t meet Teer’s gaze, averting her eyes from him before she turned her back and went after the horses.

  “They’re all dead,” Kard told him. “One of the ones you shot is still on his horse, but he doesn’t have a head anymore.”

  Teer’s stomach revolted and he turned away from his mentor for a moment to vomit into the grass. He stared at the ground for several seconds, then, more calmly, threw up a second time.

  “Was expecting that,” Kard said. “Thank you, by the way. Lora saved your life—but you saved mine. That shield of mine only stops a couple of bullets. Yosan could have killed me.”

  “Wasn’t gonna allow that,” Teer whispered. “Just…these weren’t…”

  “They weren’t bad men,” Kard confirmed. “They weren’t evil; they weren’t criminals. Yosan was far from a good man, but he and I had even worked together.”

  The El-Spehari sighed.

  “I knew he rarely rode alone, but I’d only met Bova over there.” He gestured to a body Teer hadn’t seen, the other gray-coated Hunter in Yosan’s posse. With the extra armor of the coat, it looked like Kard had put at least five of the repeater’s heavy bullets into the man before he’d gone down.

  “This wasn’t our choice, Teer,” Kard insisted. “This was self-defense, nothing more. It hurts because we are Hunters. We fight for justice, but we weren’t going to lie down and die for Yosan, either.”

  The older man leaned down to pick up Teer’s quickshooter.

  “Watch it,” Teer warned. “It misfired; there’ll be a round in the chamber.”

  Kard nodded slowly, studying the weapon for a moment. Then, pointing it at the dirt, he shook the gun sharply once. Something clicked into place and the quickshooter fired, the bullet digging up a spray of dirt.

  “If you’re attached to this, I’d keep it in your saddlebags as a souvenir,” the other Hunter told Teer. “But I’d never try to use it as a gun again.”

  “It was old to begin with,” Teer admitted. “And it couldn’t do what I need now.”

  “Yeah,” Kard conceded. He passed Teer the gun and then stepped over to Yosan’s corpse. He looked down at the gray-coated body with an unreadable expression, then nudged it with a toe before kneeling down.

  Teer couldn’t see what he was doing until he rose again, carrying Yosan’s gun belt and both of the silver-handled quickshooters Yosan had wielded.

  Kard examined the weapon that Yosan had shot him with, opening the chamber and spinning out the cartridges still in it into the belt’s cartridge pouch. He looked into the mechanism and grunted in satisfaction.

  “Yosan always had good taste in guns,” he told Teer as he holstered the empty gun and offered the whole ensemble to the younger man. “Good steel, solid workmanship. Those will stand up to the speed you shoot at.”

  “I don’t feel right taking a dead man’s—”

  “We’ll bury them here, but we’ll take what we can use,” Kard said, cutting him off. He waved Lora over as the woman returned, leading three of the posse’s horses.

  “The rest ran too far,” she said. “Didn’t come when called and I didn’t see them.”

  “That’s two more than we need and one more than I hoped for,” Kard told her. “We go through their saddlebags, their pockets, their coats, everything. We want ammo, food, money, guns. That order of priority.”

  “You want us to loot them?” Lora asked.

  “Yes,” Kard said. “Problem?”

  “No, just makin’ sure,” she told them. “They’ve no use for it.”

  “See, Teer?” Kard said. “Women are always more practical than us. And she’s right. I’ll dig the graves while you two go through their gear. I’ll join you once the holes are clear.”

  “Dig graves with what?” Teer asked, though he was already moving toward Yosan’s body and the unpleasant task before them.

  “Magic,” Kard replied grimly. “A collapsible saddle shovel isn’t going to do this job quickly, and I want to be well away from the graves by sundown.”

  20

  Ammunition. Food. Money. Guns.

  Those four categories made up at least half of what the posse had been carrying. The cans and sealed packages of dried meat and vegetables went into their own stockpiles, which were loaded onto the two new extra horses.

  The saddles weren’t designed to be pack saddles, but Lora had a solution for that rigged up before Teer even raised the problem. He was approaching the horses with cartridge boxes and several saddlebags of food when he saw the new loops of leather on each of the designated pack horses.

  She’d cut up several spare sets of clothes to add new hangers for the cargo. Weapon scabbards were consolidated onto the pack horses as well, allowing Teer to store the four repeaters they’d retrieved.

  He was eyeing the short repeater himself, but he’d need to practice with the gun before deciding if he was going to keep it. He didn’t know what Kard was going to do with the rest of the guns—even with Teer taking Yosan’s guns, there were half a dozen quickshooters in the bags as well—but he doubted they were hanging on to a posse’s worth of firearms.

  There’d probably been more guns and even money on the sixth body, the one still strapped to a horse that they hadn’t managed to capture. Their looting was more than fruitful enough, though.

  By the time Kard had finished using his magic to excavate five graves and returned, most of the useful material was on the horses. Teer wordlessly handed his boss the bag he’d been tossing the money into.

  Between the five bodies and three horses they’d retrieved, Yosan had been carrying a dozen stones, half in the smaller glass coins for shards and chips, and the other four bodies had come up with about the same between them.

  Twenty-five stones was a lot of money. It was as much as they’d made for bringing in Boulder and his gang, ignoring what they’d been paid for the horses.

  Kard took the bag with a nod of understanding and looked into it. His eyes flickered, counting, and he sighed. He scooped out a seemingly random handful of coins and then passed the bag back to Teer.

  “Split it with Lora,” he ordered. “Then help me move the bodies.”

  Teer glanced into the bag himself, noting that Kard had managed to take almost exactly five stones’ worth of coins. He carefully extracted five of the actual stamped redcrystal stones, leaving fifteen stone in the bag, mostly in smaller coins.

  He then walked over to Lora and offered her the bag.

  “Your share, for helping keep us alive,” he told her. “You’ll need it once we part ways.”

  She looked away from him, focusing on arranging the saddlebags on the best of the three horses they’d acquired—now her horse, it seemed.

  “I don’t need blood money,” she whispered.

  “Neither do we,” Teer told her. “Practical, wasn’t that Kard’s word? You’ll need money, even if the Kota take you in. Take it.”

  Lora hesitated for
a moment longer, checking a strap on the saddle, then took the bag of coins from him.

  She still never met his eyes.

  Five perfectly cut graves waited as Teer started moving bodies. The piles of dirt next to them were slightly less neat, but Kard’s magic had carved perfect six-by-three-foot rectangles eight feet deep.

  Teer moved Yosan first. He’d already been through the man’s pockets and taken his money and guns. He didn’t think he could feel much more guilty, but somehow the necessary roughness of dropping the man’s corpse into an eight-foot-deep hole hit his conscience hard.

  “I’m sorry,” he murmured.

  Kard was behind him with Bova’s body, dropping the other bounty hunter into the next hole.

  “So am I,” he said, clearly having heard Teer’s words. “Better to bury them decently and say what we can for their spirits than leave them to rot.”

  “I know. What about the one still on his horse?” Teer asked.

  Kard winced as he turned back for another body.

  “Lora couldn’t catch the horse, so there’s not much we can do,” he admitted. “I feel bad for the horses that escaped, but that one has the worst luck. Hopefully, they’ll be found by people or a wild herd.

  “They should survive on their own, these plains are good for them, but horses don’t deserve what people do to them,” Kard concluded. “Taking care of them is the least we do in return.”

  Teer nodded, trying to lower the second body more gently into its grave. He failed, the depth of the hole preventing him from doing more than dropping the stranger in in a slightly more dignified fashion.

  They buried the last two as Lora finished packing up the horses, then Kard unleashed his magic again. The piles of dirt moved as if shoved by a massive blade, rough soil cascading back into the graves and covering the bodies of the dead men.

  “Hunters of the Territories,” Kard said softly. “We commit your bodies to the soil, knowing your spirits have left for the Courts of the Mounting Star. May our words follow your spirits and weigh upon your final Judgments.