The Golden Minute

by John Birmingham

  The eerie sounds of the forest had given way entirely to the profane grunts and screams of men struggling to end each other. More arrows zipped past Smith, and he dropped from his saddle, where he presented such a large and inviting target, and onto the soft, spongy floor of the woods. Drawing his Bowie knife as he dismounted, he landed on the balls of his feet just in time to turn aside the thrust of a long lance that pierced the flank of his mount. The poor creature shrieked in pain and violated shock, charging off the trail and into the woods, dragging the attacker as it fled. Smith leaped and with one terrible, swift slashing of his knife he gutted the brave before the man had a chance to regain his balance. The injun’s skirling war cry instantly changed to the forlorn and keening howl of a dead man departing the world in terror and great pain.

  A pistol shot cracked, but it sounded very different from the clean bark with which he was familiar, more of a fizzing pop. Another round followed it, and a bright orange shower of sparks alerted Smith to the presence of Koffler who had regained his feet and drawn a pair of antique sidearms. They were clumsy, single shot weapons, but he was a good, cool-headed shootist who took his time to aim before firing, and both balls found their targets, shattering the skulls of the warriors Smith had skittled with his horse. He had no time to appreciate the marksmanship, however, before another fighter was on him, bellowing murder and wielding a tomahawk and a crude club with a stone head. Smith barely avoided the quicksilver tornado of edged metal and heavy bludgeon, saved as much by a stumble on the treacherous ground as he was by the sidestep he’d intended to avoid the killing blows.

  His opponent whirled and snarled and came back at him before Smith could set his balance to receive the attack, but this time he had the unusually large Bowie knife up and gripped in a hammer guard. For Smith, the long, heavy blade of sharpened steel was just as decent a rampart to shelter behind as the walls of any fort. Instead of retreating before the onslaught of his would-be killer, he feinted as though to retreat and, with the savage committed to a full frontal charge, he suddenly reversed direction and rushed in, slashing at the exposed underside of the Indian’s forearm, raised at that moment to bring down a flurry of tomahawk strikes. The great, curved blade sliced the soft meat from his arm, cleaving down to the bone. Smith did not stand still, though, pivoting on his leading foot to twirl around the outside of the Indian’s fighting arc, a surprisingly elegant dance step which suddenly placed him behind the screaming man where he wrapped his own, strong forearm around the brave’s neck, wrenching him backwards off his feet.

  It was like taking hold of a giant python, possessed by the demonic servants of Satan himself. Even grievously wounded, the Indian would not give up. Instead he twisted around and leaped to attempt escape from Smith’s grasp. The men locked eyes for something less than a second that went on forever. In the brave’s expression Smith saw nothing but elemental rage and a fixity of purpose which was then and forever fastened on taking Smith’s life.

  What did the native warrior see in Smith’s eyes?

  His slayer.

  The Bowie knife rose and fell in three animal-quick stabbing arcs which drove the keen point deep home, the final downward thrust breaking through ribcage bones and cartilage to pierce the hammering heart. Smith felt the man’s whole body go rigid and he smelled the sudden voiding of bowels and bladder that so often added a grave and demeaning insult to a man’s last, fatal injury. He threw the twitching body aside, turning to receive the next attacker, whom he sensed to his left. But there was nobody else besides Koffler, cursing and snarling, but still drawing breath.

  The German was painted in gore. His face was a mask of charnel horror, and he half-shuffled, half-staggered toward Smith, gripping an evil-looking fighting tool. Handicapped with the dullness of a man who had shut off all of his higher faculties to let his animal instincts run wild in the service of self-preservation, Smith stared dumbly at the weapon for a second. Koffler saw him gaping at it and almost appeared embarrassed by the attention.

  “A trench fighting knife,” he said, almost apologetically.

  A few deep breaths helped clear Smith’s head, just a little. The weapon, he observed, was a sort of diabolical crossbreed. A knife and brass knuckles, all in one.

  “That is all of them,” Koffler said. “A small raiding party, not native to this area.”

  His breath was labored and the man had turned an unhealthy shade of yellowish green.

  “How do you know…” Smith started to ask, but then waved off his own query. “Forget I asked,” he said. “Your books.”

  Koffler nodded and gulped a few mouthfuls of air.

  “The French in Canada,” he gasped. “They… these were… allies. Wabanaki tribesmen. They…”

  “Don’t matter none, now,” Smith said. His hands were shaking as he twisted the cap off his water bottle. The fight had left him with a ghastly thirst.

  Koffler too opened his canteen and drank.

  He produced a second, smaller flask and offered it to Smith.

  “Schnapps again?”

  The German nodded.

  Smith took a deep draught of the fiery spirit. The forest was slowly returning to normal around them.

  “You think this Apprentice feller organized a bushwhackin’ for us?” Smith asked, when he had his wind back.

  Koffler took another swig and shook his head.

  “No. We would be dead if he had,” he breathed out. Paused. And breathed in again. “No, Marshal Smith, this is just life on the colonial frontier. Nasty, brutish and short. It is not so different from your own time, eh, just much closer to the seaside here.”

  They swapped the flask one last time and Smith toasted the German.

  “Well, Professor, for an older gentlemen you done fought like a lion in the winter, sir. I salute you.”

  Koffler seemed pleased with the compliment, even though he shooed it away.

  “The trenches of the Great War, Smith. They were an unforgiving classroom. It grieves me to think we must do it all over again in a few years.”

  At Smith’s perplexed expression, he put the flask away.

  “Another war. There is always another war. But that is not our concern, or not yours anyway. We must delay no longer.”

  “What about our rides?” Smith said. Smith’s horse had fallen from the mortal spear thrust and Koffler’s had fled with an arrow in its hind quarters.

  The ground fog was clearing, thinned out by the weak, warming sun. The two men stood in a scene from a monstrous butcher’s shop. Seven bodies, all of them frightfully desecrated in one way or another, lay in a rough circle around them. The stench was familiar to Smith, and presumably to Koffler, but that did not make it any easier to stomach.

  “The natives will have horses,” Koffler huffed, still struggling to regain his breath. “We can search for them, or proceed on foot, but the latter course will certainly delay us.”

  “So might lookin’ for the savages’ camp,” Smith said, not in retort as much as in contemplation of their odds.

  It was a damnable conundrum with no obvious clear path to take.

  “Well, I say we roll the dice,” Smith said after a while. “We know we can’t get to Boston fast enough on foot to head off this Apprentice feller. Maybe we don’t find no horses and we’re even more delayed. But too late is already too late.”

  Koffler appeared to weigh up the situation. Finally he nodded.

  “Agreed. Let us find the cantonment of these Indians.”

  26

  It wasn’t as bad as she’d thought, hiding in a barrel full of rotten, maggot-infested meat. For starters, the barrel wasn’t full. Young Pip lifted out a false bottom hidden under just a few inches of nasty-ass cuts of fat-caked flesh to reveal a clean, surprisingly spacious hideaway.

  “Undoubtedly used for smuggling spies and the most expensive contraband,” Bowditch explained. “The worse the corruption of the broken beef, the less likely a tallage man will be to peruse.”

  Cady had
climbed in—reluctantly—but she had climbed in, stifling the mewl of disgust that rose in her throat as Pip replaced the deceptive covering, spilling a few scraps of meat and a small shower of maggots onto her head and shoulders.

  Oh. Sweet. Jesus. Noooooo….

  She shuddered in the crawling dark and ground her teeth against the total recoil of full-on, human-centipede-level body horror that wanted to lovingly wrap its long, soft, banana peel fingers around her throat and…

  “Disco rice,” Cady muttered to herself, over and over again. “It’s just a little disco rice.”

  She said it firmly, just like all the times at college she’d cut the moldy crust off the bread, telling herself then it was ‘just a little leprechaun butter’.

  Yeah.

  Just like that.

  After a few minutes that felt like an eon trapped in purgatory, the trivial fear and chickenshit loathing of being sealed up with a bunch of squishy, wriggling garbage worms gave way to a genuine fear of being caught by the magistrates and put on trial again.

  Would they even bother with a trial now, or just hang her for a witch after her escape from Salem? Cady felt caught between the natural urge to get the fuck out of there and the hundred percent certainty of discovery and capture if she tried. Finally, she calmed herself by excluding all thought of failure, and the karmapocalypse she’d brought down on herself thanks to imagining she could play this whole adventure like a shitty RPG. Instead she focused on swinging the sledgehammer of her intellect down on the bigger challenge she faced, and smashing it into tiny little pieces she could cram right up the ass of whatever stupid fucking deity had even invented that dick-smacking, derp-ass karma bullshit anyway.

  Sitting in her fake meat barrel, surrounded by smelly fucking pirates and conniving smugglers, hiding from fucking Talibangelical witch-hunting Jesus krispies and some spooky-ass punk-as-fuck time travel mafia, thousands of miles and hundreds of years from her friends and family, lost, desperate, fucked up and Smithless—totally fucking Smithless—Cady McCall resolved that when she finally got out of this barrel she was gonna start taking names and kicking ass.

  She could not just wait on Smith to mosey on back to her.

  After all, before meeting her, he’d blunderfucked his way up and down the timelines, spinning off a couple of dozen alternate realities without ever figuring out what he was really doing. She truly, madly, deeply wanted him back… but she also had to accept there was a chance he was never coming back. And she’d be fucked if she was gonna put up with this bitch-ass century.

  First thing to do was invent some decent chocolate.

  No. Scratch that. First she had to get out alive, but then she was totally teaching these backassward primitives how to make a Toblerone, an adult beverage not involving rum, and some electric fucking light which she totally could have used just then because it was dark in that barrel and she was hungry and she could have straight up murdered a vodka martini.

  She was hours in the dark, long enough for thirst and cramp to make a torture chamber of her hiding place. Two small, round holes admitted fresh air, which wasn’t even close to being fresh, below decks in a pirate ship, but after an hour, when she noticed herself growing lightheaded from her own stale breath, she carefully butt-shuffled around to place her nose and mouth closer to the air holes. By laying her ear against the cutout, she could also listen in on what was happening outside the barrel.

  Nothing much, as it happened.

  Not for many hours.

  And then there was a short, terrifying interlude while the decks of Le Sournois thundered under the boots of a large boarding party. She heard muffled shouts and curses and occasional crashing and splintering noises as the boarders searched for her.

  That was the hardest thing. Knowing there were men looking for her, and other men who knew where she could be found. Like, as if you can trust men, right? How could Captain Garvey bind his own crew to silence, let alone the gang of shitbirds and dumb-grunt NPCs they’d captured on Le Sournois?

  When Cady at last heard at least two or three pairs of boots stomp into the galley, she almost fainted with alarm. Hard, unfamiliar voices spoke in a vernacular so thick she could scarcely make out one word in ten. She tried to imagine herself somewhere else… anywhere else but there. She thought of Smith; recalling his face, the strangely soothing lilt of his voice. She deliberately turned her thoughts away from her immediate fear and peril, about which she could do nothing. Rather, she devoted all of her attention to remembering Smith’s intense physical presence, the way he seemed to occupy not just the space he actually moved through, but all of the possibilities beyond it. His size and his great strength were at the same time both intimidating and deeply reassuring. With Smith nearby she always felt herself… not entirely safe… but safeguarded; by a man she absolutely, positively knew would kill every motherfucker in the room, if it came down to that, to protect her.

  Deliberately checking out of her unpleasant reality, Cady willed herself and Smith together again. Long reunited and many adventures removed from here, arriving at last to rescue his little girl, taking her home, and putting her down to sleep. They would back out of the room, slowly and quietly so as not to wake her, their fingers would brush lightly, their eyes meeting, breath catching, and bodies turning to each other, they would finally, finally, finally get naked and juicy in a triple-X frenzy of superhot jungle-fucking.

  There.

  She’d said it.

  Or thought it. Or whatever.

  She missed Smith because she wanted him as bad as she had ever wanted anything. And Cadence McCall was a young woman who did not deny herself or restrain her appetites when it came to wanting things. She didn’t want or even need him to come and rescue her.

  She needed him to come and take her.

  She was shaking so hard with a bubbling toxic stew of fear and desire, and a desperate thirst for liberation and relief, that she didn’t even notice the searchers had gone. It was many long minutes later and she was a hot mess of porny derangement when a gentle rapping on the outside of the barrel shook her out of the honey dip delirium.

  She heard Bowditch, muffled and quiet, but clear.

  “Needs must you stay hidden for now, mistress, but the immediate hazard is past.”

  Cady said nothing.

  It was all she could do not to groan.

  She wrapped her arms around herself and drew in a lungful of stale air. She was shaking, but the tremors were growing less ardent. She was going to make it. She was going to escape and she was going to reboot and she was going to own this bullshit level. But first, she was gonna have to rub out an emergency muffin buffer.

  She was in that barrel a while, and once she turned her thoughts to the idea of riding Titanic Smith like a two-legged Seabiscuit, well, those thoughts did not easily turn away. Perhaps it was the intimacy of her brush with death, but she found herself carried away on a hot rush of other, even more intimate anticipations.

  Cady took care of business and was napping fitfully when Pip and Bowditch removed the bogus barrel lid to let her out.

  “Marry gip, Mister Bowditch!” Pip blurted out. “Aye, but she’s a game one, this fair mistress.”

  The boy leaned over the lip of the barrel, shaking his head, his face an open study in disbelief. “She does sleep like a babe in the midst of alarum loud and hazards most dire.”

  Pip was grinning and bobbing about with bright, childish, innocent energy; almost as if he wasn’t a stabby little murder machine. Bowditch looked amused, but also just a bit impressed.

  “Mistress Smith is indeed a spitfire and a virago, Ensign. Let us have her out of there, shall we?”

  “Wait,” Cady said, blinking and shuffling around, and awkwardly rearranging her clothes. “Sorry,” she said when she was all buttoned up again. “It was hot as hell in the old barrel and I didn’t bring my PJs. But I’m good now.”

  Bowditch and the boy looked as though they hadn’t understood a word.

 
“Little help?” she asked.

  They seemed to get that. Each took one arm to lift her out of the oversized wooden cask. It was only marginally brighter out of the barrel than in. The only light in the ship’s galley flickered in a pair of lanterns hanging from iron hooks over a cold hearth. The movement of the lamps threw out long, uncanny shadows that swayed with the motion of the vessel, a gentle rocking Cady could feel but not see without a view outside of the enclosed space. Her legs were numb and stiff and her back hurt. She was also slightly—if privately—mortified. This pair of hapless Jack Sparrow cosplay nerds couldn’t possibly suspect she’d chosen to spend her last hours, or what totally fucking felt like them, furiously masturbating to her own particular final fantasy.

  But fuck that, she thought with sudden forcefulness.

  She was just a girl, thinking of a boy, and stroking the Wookie while hiding from the redcoats in a barrel full of spoiled meat.

  Move along, everyone. Nothing to see here.