by Kyra Halland
Lainie reached out with her mage senses. In the medium distance, in the direction of her Pa’s house, several leagues away, she sensed a number of mages. Strong ones; she recognized Lord Astentias’s power, and a couple of mages from the Hidden Council headquarters in Sandostra. There were a number of others that she didn’t recognize; at least one of them had Wildings-flavored power. Was there also an A’ayimat among them? Another had the sickly-sweet, peppery taint of demonsalts on his power. She couldn’t tell if her grandmother was there; Elspetya hadn’t used magic in her presence back in Sandostra, so Lainie wouldn’t recognize her power if she did sense it.
Closer in, in town, she felt plenty of life around her but no signs of magic. “You’re right. Plain. A bunch of them. I think there’s mages out at the ranch. In that direction, anyhow. I don’t know if any of them is her.”
They settled in to wait for the men watching them to grow impatient and reveal themselves. The snow came in fits and spurts, then finally stopped. Overhead, the clouds began to thin out and pull apart, revealing the weak winter sun lowering towards the mountains to the west.
Just when Lainie was starting to wonder if anyone really was out there, a man’s voice called out from down the street, “We know you’re there, Vendine, Miss Banfrey. We just want to have some peaceful conversation with you.”
Lainie peered over that way as best she could while staying behind the fence. The upper floor of the partly-burned Bootjack Saloon, on the other side of the street, was mostly intact, and the voice seemed to be coming from in there. There were likely other men holed up in the saloon as well, and in the other buildings that were still standing, including the rooming house next to the stable yard. She made a note to keep an eye on the upper-floor windows of the rooming house.
“If it’s peaceful depends on what you want to talk about,” Silas called back to the man who had spoken.
“That wizard woman told us to watch for you. She wants to see you.”
“Fine. We’d like to see her, too. Where is she?”
A soft footstep sounded behind Lainie. She and Silas spun around just as a burly man launched himself at Silas. Silas ducked aside; the man stumbled forward and fell against the fence. Silas wrestled him face down to the ground and pinned him with a knee in the small of his back, then pressed the muzzle of his revolver against the back of the man’s head. Lainie recognized the man as a ranch hand from one of the other ranches in the valley. “Where’s the wizard woman?” Silas demanded. “Out at the Banfrey place?”
“Don’t think I’m gonna tell you anything, you wizarding bastard,” the man said, his voice muffled by the ground. “We’re supposed to keep you here till she gets here an’ make sure you don’t cause no trouble.”
Silas shouted through the fence again, “Did you fellows ask yourselves why would she set a bunch of Plain folk to the job? We know she has other wizards working with her; why didn’t she set them to lie in wait for us? You think maybe it’s because you boys are expendable?”
“Gods-damned wizard!” The hand tried to buck Silas off his back. Silas shoved the man’s shoulders back down and prodded his gun against his head.
“She saved this town from the blueskins!” the man in the Bootjack answered. “Fought them off – killed them all! She’s the only wizard that’s ever done anything for Plain folk.”
“It don’t look to me like she’s done such a fine job of saving the town,” Lainie retorted. “Half burned out, and folks hanged on the gallows.”
“She made rules. Those folks broke them an’ brought the blueskins down on us.”
“You fellows ever stop to think why a wizard like her wants to help Plain folk?” Silas shouted across the street. “Or did you just roll over belly-up and let these outsiders move in and take over?”
In answer, a shot fired out from across the street. The bullet splintered one of the burned boards of the fence, and Silas swore and jerked back. Lainie gasped, then saw blood seeping from a hole in the upper right arm of his duster. At least he wasn’t shot in a bad place. “Damn it,” Silas yelled. “I just bought this coat!”
“Enough talking, Vendine!” the man in the Bootjack shouted. “What in all the hells are you doing over there, Nestor? You were supposed to get him under control!”
“Is Nestor this fellow who tried to sneak up on me?” Silas called back. The ranch hand tried again to throw Silas off. Silas rapped his revolver smartly on the man’s head, and Nestor dropped back to the ground as flat and still as a sack of beans.
“What do we do?” Lainie whispered. “Fight them, or give ourselves up, or just wait?”
“Let me think a bit. Can you bandage this up for me?” He shrugged off his coat and let Lainie examine the bullet wound in the muscle of his upper arm. It was deeper than she had expected. A sudden thought sent a chill into her heart. She checked the bullet with her mage senses, fearing to find that it was made of Sh’kimech ore, but it was just an ordinary bullet.
She started to work a little magic to stop the bleeding, but Silas stopped her. “I’ll be okay. You’d best save everything you’ve got for fighting.”
Lainie had stashed a couple of clean kerchiefs in her coat pocket, having learned long ago that they were good to keep handy when there was going to be trouble. She tied one around Silas’s upper arm. “Does it hurt bad?” she asked.
“Nothing I can’t live with,” Silas answered. “So, here’s how I figure. If we give ourselves up, I’m sure they have orders to make sure we can’t put up much of a fight against the Hidden Council people. If there’s only a few of them, we can defend ourselves easily, but if there’s a dozen or more it’ll be harder and we’ll probably end up killing some of them. I’d rather not have to do that if it isn’t necessary.”
“Me either,” Lainie said. “For their sakes, not that they deserve the consideration, and we also don’t need to give them any more cause to hate wizards.”
“Same thing if we keep fighting or if we make a run for it, try to shoot our way through. I’d like to get out to the ranch and meet Elspetya on our terms instead of hers, but we’d probably have to kill some of them and we’d risk getting hurt or killed ourselves, or at least running low on power and ammunition before we ever see her.”
“Maybe the best thing to do is hole up somewhere and wait for her to come to us.”
“I agree. But we’ll still have to hold these boys off. We’d need a good defensive position.”
“Yeah,” she sighed. “That’s the problem.” Their hiding place right now, in the open stable yard behind the half-ruined fence, was way too exposed.
“I’m getting tired of waiting, Vendine!” the man in the Bootjack shouted.
“You boys know you don’t have a chance against us!” Silas called back.
Lainie caught a glimpse of movement in one of the busted-out windows on the second floor of the rooming house. “Down!” she yelled at Silas.
They hit the dirt and rolled aside just as a shot rang out. A bullet plowed into the ground where Lainie had been sitting.
“Are you going to come out and give yourselves up?” the man in the Bootjack shouted. “We ain’t supposed to kill you if we can help it, just keep you from getting troublesome, but all bets are off if you’re gonna be difficult!”
Lainie felt around again with her mage senses. Still no mages close by, but more Plain people than she had thought at first. A couple dozen, maybe more. She and Silas might be able to handle them, but, like he said, it would take a lot of power and a lot of ammunition, and they’d have nothing left by the time they came face to face with Elspetya Lorentius.
Silas got up into a crouch again, gun in hand. Lainie also sat up, continuing to keep an eye on the boarding house windows. “We’ve got no quarrel with you fellas,” Silas called back. “We just want to see Madam Lorentius. If you’ll stand aside and let us go find her, we won’t have to hurt any of you.”
Faint sounds of voices raised in argument came from inside the Bootjack. After a
moment, the spokesman called out to Silas, “We have our orders.”
“You’re crazy, Gus!” a man yelled from the upper floor of the boarding house. “Remember what Vendine did to Gobby when he was tryin’ to hang the girl?”
“The hells with all this,” another man shouted from Minton’s General Mercantile across the street. “I’ve had enough talking!”
A bottle with a light burning at its mouth came flying across the street from the doorway of the mercantile. “Shit!” Silas yelled.
He grabbed Lainie and dove with her away from the fence. A heartbeat later, the bottle smashed into the front of the wooden fence, and the fence burst into flames. Gunshots fired from the roof of the stable behind them, the second floor windows of Mundy’s on one side, and the half-built hotel on the other. Bullets pelted into the dirt around Lainie and Silas and exploded in the flames on the fence. Still flat on the ground, Silas fired left, behind, and right. A man holding a rifle fell from the window of the boarding house, and another one tumbled from the roof of the stable.
As Silas reloaded, Lainie exchanged gunfire with men to either side of them. She hit two more, but still another man appeared on the roof of the stable.
“We gotta get out of here,” she said. “We’re just a sitting target here.”
“We can’t get out the back way,” Silas said. “Let’s head out into the street and try to make it into one of the other buildings.”
“Shielded or attacking?”
“Attacking. Let’s hit them hard right away and take out a few more of them. Guns first, then magic if necessary. And be ready to shield right after we hit them.” They got up, crouching low on their feet. “Now!” Silas ordered.
They ran through a gap in the burning fence into the street, keeping low and moving fast as they fired at the upper windows of the surrounding buildings. Answering fire came from the second story windows of the Bootjack and the Rusty Widow, but as soon as Silas and Lainie’s guns ran empty, Lainie threw a shield and Silas added power to it, and the enemy bullets struck the shield and fell harmlessly to the ground.
While Silas reloaded, Lainie called up a ball of rose-colored power and let the shield down just long enough to throw the attack down the street towards the Bootjack. The ball of power exploded into the saloon’s front window, blowing the wall apart. Men leaped from the windows of the collapsing upper floor and poured out the front door – a dozen or more, Lainie guessed. Plus there were still the ones holed up in the Rusty Widow and Mundy’s, and the other buildings as well. Too many for them to fight.
With the shield back in place, Lainie reloaded her gun while Silas looked up and down the street for a place where they could take shelter. Gunfire continue to pound against the shield, the slowed bullets littering the ground. Lainie didn’t dare let the shield down enough for her and Silas to fight back, but the physical and magical demands of holding the shield against the barrage would wear them down before long if they couldn’t find a safe place to hunker down.
Gus, the leader, stepped out from the doorway of the ruined Bootjack and waved his arms. The gunfire paused. “The wizard woman told us not to kill you if we can help it,” he called out to Lainie and Silas. “Just keep you here and make sure you can’t fight back. Give yourselves up, and no one else will get hurt.”
“It’s that business about ‘can’t fight back’ we don’t much care for,” Silas answered. “We don’t intend on going helpless before her.”
“Can’t say we didn’t give them a chance!” Gus shouted to the other men. As though at a signal, they all opened fire again.
Lainie drew earth-magic from beneath her feet and poured it into the shield to reinforce it, and Silas also fed more amber and blue power into the shield. He jerked his head towards the burnt-out ruins of the cattlemen’s co-op office down the street, on the south side of the crossroads. No one seemed to be hiding in there, and there were no other buildings standing near it except the collapsing Bootjack Saloon, no other places where gunmen could hide. “Let’s run for it,” he said. “Drop the shield when we pass the saloons; I’ll throw something at the Bootjack.”
“I’ll take the Rusty Widow,” Lainie said.
Silas holstered his gun and began drawing power. Lainie felt the flow of power in the earth shift towards him, diverted from her own pull on it to feed the shield. He cupped his hands together and a ball of power began to form, blue and Wildings amber swirled together. There wasn’t any brown or black in it; he wasn’t drawing too deeply. The sphere brightened with concentrated power until it was so blindingly bright that Lainie had to look away as she shaped her own attack.
“Ready?” Silas asked.
She nodded.
“Let’s go.”
Chapter 25
HOLDING THE SHIELD and their prepared attacks, Lainie and Silas ran for the co-op office. When they were even with the saloons, they dropped the shield and Silas heaved his ball of power at the Bootjack. It burst into the front wall, flattening what was left of it and blowing a hole in the brick wall of the bank next door. Two men with shotguns fell from the roof of the bank. At the same time, Lainie heaved her attack through the door of the Rusty Widow. Men, wood, and glass went flying into the street at the explosion.
Under cover of the blasts, Lainie and Silas made it across the intersection and ducked through the sagging door of the co-op office. Breathing hard, they hunkered down against the charred front wall, keeping their heads down and out of sight from the streets. “You okay?” Silas asked.
“Tired,” Lainie gasped, “but okay. You?”
“I’m fine. Here.” He fished in one of his duster pockets and brought out a somewhat smashed paper packet of flatbread. “I brought this for you. You should eat something, keep your strength up.”
The buzz of danger and heightened energy through Lainie’s body made her stomach lurch even more than usual at the thought of food. She shook her head. “I don’t want to be throwing up when we meet Elspetya.”
“Well, if you’re sure…” He replaced the packet in his duster pocket. “It’s here if you decide you want it.”
Lainie nodded and slumped back against the wall. They had spent a lot of power and physical strength getting here, but they should be safe, at least for the moment. A desk and some cabinets remained in the office, also half-burned but looking sturdy enough that she and Silas could use them to barricade themselves in if they had to. The broken window in the side wall gave them a clear view of the road that led out west across the valley, so they could watch for Elspetya and her gang.
The respite didn’t last. No sooner had they settled into their shelter and caught their breath than a sensation of enormous power pressed down on Lainie’s mind. She peered out the window down the road to the west. A massive cloud of power in a rainbow of colors, shimmering in the fading, cloud-filtered light, was moving up the road towards town. Within the shield, Lainie could make out shadowy human shapes.
She probed carefully at the shield with her mage senses. Lord Astentias was there, and another mage who had a strong Wildings-born flavor to his magic, and a power that felt distinctly A’ayimat, along with a jumble of powers belonging to at least half a dozen more mages. Elspetya could be any of them. As far as Lainie could tell, none of the mages were bothering to conceal their power; there was no point now in trying to hide their presence. Instead, they were pouring power into that shield, to protect Madam Lorentius or in a show of strength, or, most likely, both.
Silas whistled. “That’s a hell of shield they’ve got up.”
“They must be pretty strong, if they’re willing to use that much power this soon.” The thought of her grandmother’s gang having that much strength made Lainie’s stomach knot up.
“Or maybe it’s all just a show to scare us into giving up without a fight, because they know they can’t beat us.”
He didn’t sound convinced, but Lainie said earnestly, “I sure hope you’re right.”
The group of mages came to a halt in th
e middle of the crossroads, and the shield disappeared. In the midst of the mages stood Madam Lorentius, wearing a black velvet gown, with Lord Astentias, in his white greenfoot suit and hat, at her side. Her hand was tucked into the crook of his elbow. They made a handsome couple, pale and dark, black and white in striking contrast, both of them attractive in a hard-edged way, and vigorous and confident in their strength and power despite their advanced ages.
Flanking them was an A’ayimat man whose multitude of necklaces of carved wood and bone marked him as a wiseman, and a tall, hulking mage Lainie thought she remembered from the Hidden Council headquarters, who had a hybrid Granadaian-Wildings feel to his power. Another eight or nine mages – all men, no other women among them – surrounded those four.
A few of the men who’d been downed by Silas and Lainie’s blasts were starting to move around. Two of them crawled among the other fallen men, checking on them, and a third walked over to Madam Lorentius and knelt before her. Indignation swelled hot in Lainie’s heart at the sight of a Wildings man bowing to that woman – or to anyone at all.
“We done our best, Madam Lorentius,” the man, a hand from one of the ranches, said. “They put up a good fight, but now they’s hiding, so I think we got ’em cowed.”
“You have done well,” Madam Lorentius said in her low, dry voice filled with unquestionable authority. “Still, they are strong and clever. Those of you who are able must remain on guard.” She looked directly at the co-op office. “Granddaughter. Mr. Venedias. You have done considerable damage today, but you are still badly outnumbered. Stop wasting your strength in trying to fight me. Come out, and let us speak face to face.”
The odds were bad, just the two of them against twelve or more mages and at least as many gunmen. Bad, but not impossible; no worse than when Lainie had faced nine Mage Council enforcers in Sandostra. Though fear still sent a ripple of cold through her and made her legs weak – she’d be a fool not to be afraid – she looked at Silas and they nodded to each other. It was time to finish this. “I love you,” she said.
