Straight Outta Tombstone

by David Boop

  “Devour them,” Pete said. “At midnight.”

  Jack remembered the shuttered town, his silent walk. He didn’t know how far off it was, but midnight could not be far. “What are we waiting for?”

  * * *

  “What kills an elf?” Jack asked, raising an eyebrow. “Does a normal gun do it, or do they need something special?”

  Pete smiled as Jack rummaged through the wreckage in the cabin, casting about for usefuls. “Oh, a gun will do the job just fine. It’s the bullet that’s the trick—for an elf, you need cold iron. Works for knives and swords and things too—the more cold iron the better.”

  “Cold Iron? As in, not red hot?”

  “No, iron that has been beaten, not forged. The more it’s been heated, the less effective it is—never did figure out why.” Pete explained. “As it happens, during the late war, I ran across the LeMat revolver—a good gun, though a bit puny, with nine rounds of forty-five and an extra barrel of sixteen-gauge shotgun slung underneath. After it all ended, I had a couple made up custom that fit me a little better.”

  Pete unslung the satchel that’d been over his back, all four feet of it, and laid it on the ground before opening it up and pulling forth a pair of huge revolvers and a gun belt that looked unusually sturdy. “They’re a bit heavy, especially with two of them, but they fit my hand. I kept the forty-five idea, but went with a ten-gauge for those times you really want to get your message across. Bullets in the forty-five cylinder are a little special—lead poured around a cold iron spike. The shot in the ten-gauge is all cold iron.”

  “That’ll kill elves?”

  “It’ll kill everything but vampires and werewolves, one way or another. And it’ll give them a very bad day.”

  “One of those for me?” said Jack, eyebrow still raised at the newly impressive hardware as he stumbled across his shotgun, a bit beat up but still functional amidst the rubble.

  Pete laughed again, a dry laugh with no humor behind it. “No. It would break your wrist. Might break it clean off. What do you pack?”

  “Remington forty-fives and a Winchester 1887 ten-gauge shotgun. Why?”

  Pete grinned, handing him several boxes of forty-five ammo and ten-gauge shells. “Welcome to the elf-killing league. Ammo I can share. The forty-five is a little stiff, but a Remington should handle it and it’ll be just fine for you. The ten-gauge is fine, as long as you’re not stupid enough to run it through a pistol.”

  Jack returned the grin with a nod, and then noticed Pete still rummaging through his satchel. He pulled out a long wooden box that looked like walnut that had been varnished till it seemed to glow. It glittered like a jewel against the roughhewn floor where Pete had set it.

  “What’s that?” Jack asked.

  “Well, you carry a shotgun, right? Well…so do I, sort of—just built for my size and strength. You ever hear of those market hunters up north? I stole the idea from them and their punt guns and made a couple of improvements.”

  Pete opened the box and drew forth a bandolier holding what looked like long soup cans hanging in the loops before reaching back into the box and drawing forth something that resembled a double-barreled shotgun the Wells Fargo coach drivers liked to carry. Only this one was the big brother of the Wells Fargo drivers’ gun. The big, big brother. The one who could pick up the other gun and carry it around like a baby.

  Jack’s jaw dropped as he looked at maybe thirty pounds of wood and steel with muzzles nearly two and a half inches wide and all of three feet long. His eyes bulged. “Um, Pete? What in God’s name is that thing?”

  “It’s my kind of coach gun. Two shots, about a pound and a half of cold iron I chopped into tiny little squares myself, quick to reload using these newfangled cartridges and, with this bandolier-thing, I can carry a lot of cartridges. After the war, I was a little worried about unfriendly visitors. Now, let’s load up.” Pete pointed at the boxes of newfangled ammo he had cooked up before shrugging into the bandolier and shoving what could only be God’s Own Shotgun into a scabbard slung over his back and strapping on the monstrous gun belt with the two mighty overgrown LeMats.

  Jack shrugged, still a little boggled by the dragon’s armament, and began putting on his own gunbelt and—looking at the dragon’s rig—grabbing a saddle scabbard and some string, slung his shotgun across his back much like the dragon had.

  Moments later, they were on the road under the moonlight, back to the sacred grove.

  * * *

  “Fairyland is lousy with elves,” Pete said. “Dark and light and everything in between. They are the Lords and Ladies, and the rest of us serve their needs.” They walked under the moonlight toward the sacred grove, or rather, in the sacred grove. The weird thing was, though Jack had walked from his claim to the cabin and past the sacred grove every day, he’d never known how big it was.

  From the outside, one was tempted to wonder why it was called a grove at all, since no tree could be seen, just an odd lot of standing stones and glittering sand. And he’d never stepped in it before, because it gave him a funny feeling in the pit of the stomach just passing by. But it turned out that once you stepped past the perimeter, the feeling got worse, and the land changed.

  He and Pete walked through a forest under the moonlight. “Will we get there in time?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Pete said very assuredly. “Time is different here, but I can feel it. I know enough of fairyland time. I lived in it for centuries. But a body, man or dragon, gets tired of being commanded and ordered about by capricious beings who have no other interest but their own pleasure and power. And they said the world of men was so bad, and they hated it so much, I thought I’d like a try.” He was silent a while until they crested a hill. From its top, Jack could see a winding road to the valley and, at the end of it, what seemed like a melee of tall, well formed men and…

  “Maisie!”

  “So it is,” Pete said. “And she’s holding them at bay. I wonder how.” He put out a hand and restrained Jack from running. “Not down this road, or they’ll be on you. They have bows and elf shot. They’ll bring you down in no time.”

  “Why haven’t they shot Maisie with elfshot, then?” Jack whispered.

  “They haven’t, because they need her alive for the ceremony. We’ll take the woods, and ambush them around the back and lend Maisie aid. But never mind the whispering. I have…a silence spell around us. That’s not what it is, but close enough. At any rate, the elves won’t hear us.”

  “So you threw in with humans,” Jack said. “Could you always shift into human form?” He wasn’t really interested, but the talk, and concentrating on it, kept him from throwing all caution to the winds and running down the road toward Maisie.

  “All of us dragons can shift to human form. But the thing is,” he said. “I shifted and started finding jobs among humans and living like a human. And I was in Philadelphia when the Declaration of Independence was read. I fell in love with it, and America, right then. That all sentient creatures were created equal. Those words I carry in my breast, like the chem on a golem.”

  Jack nodded. He wasn’t absolutely sure what that meant, except that best he could figure this dragon was American. “You’ve lived a long time,” he said.

  “Yes. Though I can’t expect to do so much longer. Once in the world of men, we only live two or three times the normal human span. It is enough. While I live, I’ll defend the world of men from the elves that have kept elfland in tyranny. After I die—” He shrugged. “No one can control the world after they die. And now we should be quiet, because they might have listening magic that counters my silencing. But listen, before we go in, you must remember, lead off with the shotgun first, and take out as many of the bastards as you can. We’ll pick off the survivors with the handgun after.”

  “Huh…what if we hit Maisie with the scatter shot?” Jack asked, uneasily eyeing God’s Own Gun.

  “Aim away from her, first. At the distant elves. There will be dozens of them at this. We
have to outthink them first.”

  * * *

  As they drew near, they could see that Maisie was surrounded by fifty elves, all of them glitteringly beautiful and blond, wearing buckskins of the finest, palest color, and with bows and arrows upon their back. Maisie held something like a lance in her hand, and every time one of them tried to grab her, she flourished it in his direction. The thing was that it was only one against many, and she had to keep retreating down the road.

  Down the road, that way, were those standing stones that Jack had seen from outside the perimeter, and he had a feeling that the elves were herding Maisie exactly the way they wanted her to go.

  Deep Mine Pete made gestures, indicating that they should split, so the shots didn’t all come from the same direction. Not being an idiot, Jack understood, too, that they should move right after taking a shot. His guess was that those deadly elf shots could find them, no matter whether the elves could see them clearly or not. It wouldn’t make the shots less deadly if they were just flung blindly among the trees. There were so many elves even blind shooting would kill them, and dead is dead.

  So they split, and before Jack had spied out a place to lie down, behind a protective trunk, he heard the crack-boom, as God’s Own Gun barked up ahead.

  A dozen or more elves disappeared in screams and smoke, and the rest were too confused to fire back. Jack fired his shotgun and took out another eight or nine. Who was counting anyway? All he knew was that half the enemies were gone. God’s Own Gun boomed again, and there were only a dozen elves left or so, and they were all around Maisie, which meant they had to be careful about shooting.

  The other elves had recovered from the surprise, at least enough to react. They turned, from fighting Maisie, and in the blink of an eye, three archers were letting arrows fly in the general direction where the shots had come from.

  Which was when Jack hit them, crack, crack with two shots from his own revolvers. Two more elves fell down, and before they hit the ground, Jack rolled away from his position, then ran to hide behind a thick oak tree. While he took deep breaths, he thought this was magical land indeed, as he didn’t think there were oaks this thick in Colorado.

  He heard arrows fly, striking the log that had protected him earlier. And then Pete fired again. And then Jack. And both times, they moved fast away from their former positions.

  Down below—in a glimpse caught between rolling and shooting—Maisie was taking advantage of the elves’ distraction to touch them with her lance, which made them writhe and fall, too, if properly applied.

  After a while, there was only one elf standing. He was trying to hide behind Maisie, and he pulled his bow off his back and—

  Maisie struck backward, her lance penetrating his eye. There was a sound like thunder, and his head exploded.

  “Maisie!” Jack said, running towards her, at the same time as Pete.

  She removed her apron, and was wiping elf-bits off her face and hair. “About time you boys got here,” she said. “But don’t let your guard down. I think there are more of them around.”

  Pete sniffed the air, which to Jack smelled mostly of exploded elf, and shook his head. “No,” he said. “But others felt their comrades’ deaths, and they’ll be here soon. Unless—”

  “Unless?” Maisie said.

  “Unless we destroy the sacrifice grove.”

  “And how do we do that?”

  “We put a cold iron spike into the center of the circle,” Pete said. “If we had a cold iron spike.”

  “You mean like this?” Maisie asked, flourishing her lance.

  It was a broomstick, with the missing finial of the daybed tied to the end, with a portion of Maisie’s apron strings. “They still herded me here,” she said. “But they couldn’t carry me.” She looked at Pete. “You were supposed to be there to protect me.”

  “I know, I know,” he said. “But the people from the town came to talk to me when I left the mine. They said I was shredding your reputation. By the time I got rid of them—”

  “There’re fools everywhere,” she said, and Jack made a note to talk to her about her reputation. Later. After this was through.

  * * *

  It turned out putting the iron spike in the center of the circle made the entire grove implode. One moment there had been trees and a forest, and vast distances inside the circle as had never been seen from outside. And the next there was nothing but some rocks on the cracked, red clay of Colorado.

  Even so, Pete must be a distrustful bastard, as he spread one-inch iron caltrops on his way out of the sacred grove. “If they rebuild the circle,” he said. “They won’t be able to come out. Nor will they be able to ride their fairy horses out.”

  Jack felt he appreciated distrustful bastards. The walk back to his cabin was far more than the mile and a half or so that it had always taken. He realized the battle had taken far longer than he expected, and taken far more out of him than he’d hoped.

  When they were back at the cabin, and Maisie was fussing and cleaning and making clucking sounds over the destruction, he watched as Pete humbly helped her. And he took note of the looks he gave her. Oh, sure. Maybe he’d only been trying to protect her from the dark elves. But unless dragons were completely different from human men, he was half gone on her, too. Or more.

  Would I let my sister marry a dragon? Jack thought. Well, truth is, she could do worse.

  THE TREEFOLD PROBLEM

  A Mad Amos Malone story

  ALAN DEAN FOSTER

  The children were wailing, his wife was sobbing, and that pitiless sliver of scum that walked like a man and called himself Potter Scunsthorpe (the individual with whom Owen was arguing fruitlessly) remained as merciless as a bull fixated on chewing three days’ worth of unmasticated cud. To add to the human cacophony at the forest’s edge, a pair of ravens flew past overhead, cackling like a pair of perambulating witches intent solely on taunting Owen Hargrave in his present misery.

  Scunsthorpe let the farmer stem-wind for several minutes longer before raising a commanding hand for silence. He had the look of a successful undertaker, did Scunsthorpe, coupled to the unctuous mannerisms of a banker who could squeeze an orange in one hand, a nickel in the other, and get juice out of both. Slender as a reed, his skin the color of wild rice, he was clad in a finely tailored black suit entirely out of keeping with the present woodland surroundings. A black top hat one size too small clung to his white-fringed scalp with grim determination. The single red silk ribbon that protruded from the hatband was the color of blood. From the front of his immaculate white shirt, a gold watch chain dribbled into a bulging pocket. Only his scuffed and dirty boots marked him as a citizen of far Wisconsin and not more civilized New York or Philadelphia. His two troll-like lackeys flanked him, disinterested and anxious to be away.

  The subject of the animated and decidedly inequitable discussion between the two men was an inundation of unbroken verdure, a veritable mantle of virgin forest that stretched as far to the west as one could see. White and red pine stabbed at the heavens, interspersed with stout woodland guardians of northern and red oak, red and sugar maple. Here and there a solitary basswood made an appearance, and where sunlight was sufficient, dense thickets of blueberry, wintergreen, and partridgeberry burst forth in energetic tangles.

  All this green glory the Hargrave family owned, as part and parcel of their deeded land. It was coveted in turn by Scunsthorpe. The paper he now held out before Owen Hargrave might as well have been signed and stamped by the Devil himself. It was the mortgage to the Hargrave property. As is the way of those who lurk, wormlike, just below the surface of decent society, Scunsthorpe had bought it up on the sly. Now the final, balloon payment was due. Based on their existing equity, a Milwaukee banker would likely have extended credit to the family. Scunsthorpe was no banker. He was brother to the ravens who had just cawed past overhead, and like them, a soulless scavenger.

  “The timber is mine by rights of this deed.” It was an evident struggle
for Scunsthorpe to speak the words while masking his enjoyment of them. He kissed each vowel with a perverse joy. “That, and the land upon which it stands, and the adjoining farm, as well. Together with any buildings, wells, fences, barns, and other physical improvements you may have made thereon.” Unable to restrain himself any longer, he nodded toward the untouched forest. His prominent Adam’s apple bobbed as he spoke. “The law says it is so if you have not cleared this land. I see no evidence of it.”

  Hargrave glanced over at his wife, who was trying to ease the crying of their youngest, held in her arms, before once more confronting his tormentor.

  “I have explained and explained, sir. It was a difficult winter. I meant fully to hire a crew to at least commence the requisite clearing of the timber, but all our efforts had to be bent to preserving our livestock and thence getting in the spring planting. I had no time left for tree felling.”

  Scunsthorpe straightened, which made him loom even higher over the stocky farmer. “My concern is not with the vagaries of the local climate, sir, nor with your petty domestic matters. The law is the law, fixed and immutable.” He swept a scythe-like arm to the west. “You have not, as specified, made use of the forest. Therefore, it and all else included in this deed, is now mine by right.”

  Unable to contain herself any longer, Hargrave’s wife spoke up, her pleading carrying above the sobs of the children. Only ten-year-old Eli, who gazed at Scunsthorpe with undying hatred, was not bawling uncontrollably.

  “But sir, I beseech you, what are we to do? I would take a job and work myself to pay you something of the cash money you are owed, but with the farm and the four children I have little enough time to sleep.”

  Scunsthorpe’s mouth drew tight in a line as closed as that of his purse. “Then at least, Madame, you will very soon have time to sleep, as the arduous burden of caring for a farm will be lifted from you.”

  Greatly pleased with himself, he turned to depart…only to pause and frown as a singular shape caught his attention. It interrupted the horizon most notably. The Hargraves saw it, too.