“Ayah,” Buck answers. “A bet. You won the divas off Pow, now give him a chance to turnabout 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 kick 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 bug-juice, 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 courtmartial 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 effect 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 toward 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 toward 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 mescal, 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 water-logged.”
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.
The elemental grabs at its scrawny neck and pulls, making an agonized face. Then it points to the scout’s empty seat. Pow is mystified. The elemental grabs at its neck again—no, it’s not grabbing at its neck, it’s pretending to pull on a pretend something that is not actually hanging around its neck. The elemental points at the scout’s empty seat again, and then mimes chugging a bottle. Pow glances around. The scout has not returned; the spectators have thinned out, some ducking outside for the same reason the scout did, others for a smoke. Buck has also disappeared, but Lieutenant Brakespeare and Polecat are still whispering worriedly. No, Polecat is whispering worriedly. Lieutenant Brakespeare is also staring at the ice elemental, who, seeing her gaze, opens his little blue beak. A few teeny tiny sparkles fly out: Gramatica, the language of magick.
Pow may be dead, and also alive, and therefore somewhat magickal, but he still can’t understand Gramatica. But Lieutenant Brakespeare, who is not magickal in the slightest, cannot be magickal at all per The Articles of War, upon pain of death (except at remove, of course)—a tiny little flicker of comprehension flits across her face, a flicker that almost instantly is reabsorbed back into her normal mulish scowl. The elemental tugs on the imaginary thing again. Pow and Lieutenant Brakespeare make eye contact, and the lieutenant raises her eyebrow oh-so-very-slightly. Pow is still clueless, but Lieutenant Brakespeare seems to have understood.
A bright blue light briefly electrifies the hog ranch interior, its whip-like crack provoking shrieks. The roar of thunder drowns out the shrieks. The storm is almost upon them.
The scout returns and takes his place across the table. Buck returns, and she and Polecat resume their positions of support behind Pow. But Lieutenant Brakespeare has realigned herself until she stands directly behind the scout. Buck gives her a glare, which is ignored. The barkeep pours from a dirt-encrusted bottle.
“Ut!” the scout says, raising his glass.
“Ut!” says Pow. The brief hiatus has left him thirsty. He raises the glass and drinks; the liquid flows like oil down his throat.
The scout sputters and puts his glass down. “This is not whiskey!”
The barkeep holds the bottle up so that the label reading Madama Twanky’s Amber Apple Schnapps is visible. “The whiskey bottles broke,” she explains. “This is all I could salvage. Don’t you like apple schnapps?”
The scout sniffs the glass again, suspiciously. “It don’t smell like apples.”
“If you ain’t thirsty anymore, we can stop right now,” Buck says. “Call an end, and Pow the winner. Get home before the flood.”
Pow swallows; death has ruined his palate pretty good, but even in death he knows the aftertaste of apple schnapps, his mamma’s favorite digestif. He also now knows the aftertaste of gun oil. And he knows the difference between the two.
“Finish now and we can be out of here before the storm blows us away,” Buck suggests. Her smile is very smug.
In response, the scout raises his glass and bolts its contents. Then he chokes. Coughs and wheezes. His eyes roll upward, and the snake tattoo on his forehead ripples. Tears spring to his eyes, snot dribbles from his nose. He swallows hard and slumps forward.
The hog ranch is silent. The wind has stopped, but the roof brush rustles, and a few drops of rain slip through, an advance guard. Another bolt of electric blue scorches the night. This time the crack sets ears a-ringing, and the accompanying thunder has almost no delay. Lieutenant Brakespeare leans over and jiggles the scout’s shoulders, but he doesn’t respond.
“I hereby declare—” Buck starts to say, and then the scout lifts his head. His eyes glitter green and gold, and he says: “Set us up again.”
The barkeep pours them each another round of gun oil, and this time the scout doesn’t hesitate. Smiling, he drains the glass and slams it so hard upon the table top that it shatters. He grins, a rill of amber fluid dribbling down his chin.
“Set me—” The scout’s voice turns thick and then trails away. His head flings back and his eyeballs roll up and then roll down. A bubble of foam appears on his lips, and, as he gurgles, this bubble forms a beard, dripping down his chin to cover his chest. The scout begins to vibrate, his arms and legs twitching like he’s been hit by lightning. The foam turns reddish brown, as the scout paws at his neck, moaning creakily.
“Looking for this?” Lieutenant Brakespeare dangles a small buckskin bag for all to see. In her other hand, the knife she used to snip the buckskin cord while pretending to be solicitous gleams sharply. She smiles, and that smile, in combination with her jagged scars, one on each cheek, is extremely malevolent.
The scout croaks as she opens the bag, waving his hands weakly. Six wisps of light—the souls the scout has collected—fly up and out, floating through the brush roof to disappear into lightning-spattered darkness. Lieutenant Brakespeare shakes the bag over the table, and something small and glittery falls out: a scorpion.
“What is that?” Buck asks. The scorpion curls its tail up, stinger gleaming. Arivaipa scorpions are dull brown and white, bland. The carapace of this scorpion is milky green, like translucent jade, and its stinger is a small barb of bright fuchsia.
“Ha!” says Lieutenant Brakespeare. “That scorpion is a Potable Sigil. It makes any liquid drinkable. Pretty useful in the desert, no?”
“I told you he was cheating!” Buck crows.
“You cheated too,” the scout says thickly. “That weren’t no apple likker.”
“Evening the odds,” Buck retorts. “And anyway, your cheat cancelled out mine—so that makes your cheat bigger!”
The scout is gagging and retching; Candy thrusts a spittoon toward him just in time. The scout vomits up a copious amount of bad booze and gun oil and then keels over backwards. Lieutenant Brakespeare wenches his head up via a fistful of greasy hair and says: “Where’s the gold?”
The scout burbles and Lieutenant Brakespeare nods, satisfied. Candy and the drover carry him off, to recover (if he can) in the guard-house. Lieutenant Brakespeare and Polecat follow, to plan the excavation of the payroll gold as soon as the storm blows through. Outside, the rain is starting to come down, which means inside it is starting to come down as well. The spectacle over, the spectators scatter for cover from the storm.
“Can I have another drink?” Pow asks, but no one refills his glass—they’ve all disapp
eared. He’s killed the bottle of gun oil (Buck had switched the liquids when everyone thought she was pissing), but, of course, he’s still thirsty, and so he’s rather sorry the contest is over.
The scorpion-sigil skitters, tail waving frantically, trying to find shelter from the raindrops. Pow’s interior is starting to feel rather odd. There’s a ticklish feeling in his tummy, a funny rustling that makes him want to giggle. Pow unbuttons his sack coat, and something hard butts his hand. He looks down, and sees a scaly nose poking out from a tear in his shirt.
Freddie. The gila monster erupts from Pow’s chest and darts forward to snap up the two insect sigils, then scuttles back to safety. A gust of wind has almost taken down one of the canvas walls; another gust blows off half the roof and Pow’s hat. A falling viga narrowly misses Pow’s head; it lands instead on the table, smashing it. Then something large drops into Pow’s lap: the ice elemental’s cage. Inside, the elemental has a death-grip on the bars, tiny sangyn colored sparks flashing from its mouth. Pow doesn’t need to speak Gramatica to understand the elemental’s shrieks for help. As the rest of the roof blows away, Pow fumbles at the cage’s door. The door springs open and the elemental springs out, disappearing into the howling electrified night.
Pow lets drop the cage, and raising his face, opens his mouth to the wet wet rain.
Afterword to “Quartermaster Returns”
A thrilling tale of the Old East! Most of the records of the Republic’s War Department burned in fire that followed the Upheaval of ’15. However, several years later, a few crates of army papers were found in the storeroom of the Bella Union Melodeon, where they were being used as lav paper. Rescued by a visiting scholar who recognized their import during a visit to the facilities while attending a performance by Weatherhead, they were removed to the City Archives.[1] It was there that this historian examined them and discovered within an incomplete set of Fort Gehenna, Arivaipa Territory’s post returns.
Prophecies, Libels & Dreams Page 4
