by Ben Galley
‘That we must,’ Lurker echoed, still nurturing his bottle.
Averine curtseyed. ‘So formal, you Empire types. It’s my pleasure, young man. Where you headed?’
Lilain helped her shut and lock the bench. ‘East, and back to the coast,’ she replied. There was something of a wistful tone in her voice, as if part of her wished to stay and chat blood with the old woman.
‘In that case I wish you all well, and Maker bless you with swift travels. The wilds ain’t no place to linger.’
They filed out of the tumbledown church and into the sweltering heat of the afternoon, picking their way between the gravestones like ponderous fingers over chess-pieces. Averine and Rump hovered in the doorway. The little boy waved until they were but shivering shapes in the heat haze.
As soon as Cheyenne was far enough behind them, away from even the most watchful of eyes, two corks squeaked from their bottles. Lurker took a swig from his, whilst Merion only took a sip from the mule blood. He just wanted to feel the shiver of the magick in his veins.
It came as quickly as he hoped, and fiercely too for such a small drop. He could feel it sliding down his throat and stirring in his stomach, then seeping into his veins to pulsate and throb. Merion shuddered as it rose to his skull. He felt the power in his legs, and all the sore spots and aches of marching through the desert began to fade away.
Almighty, he had missed this.
‘Feeling good, Nephew?’
Merion turned and found Lilain smiling lopsidedly at him.
‘I am indeed, Aunt,’ Merion gasped as the magick ricocheted once more through his body. He felt his tiredness dripping away, and the strength and endurance flowing into his legs and spine. ‘I feel like I could go for miles.’
‘Well, enjoy it while it lasts. You got maybe an hour or two before it wears off, I think. It’ll last a little longer as you haven’t done it in a while,’ Lilain told him.
‘Is that how it works? It gets stronger if you use it less?’
‘No, not really. It’s your perception of it that changes. You notice all the little things, feel it deeper, or so I’m told. Just like Lurker and his whiskey, or his tobacco. The more you miss it, the better it feels when you find some. The more you notice every last drop.’
‘That makes sense, I suppose,’ Merion replied, nodding. He let the magick flow for a while, guiltily savouring it. ‘So what is that handshake, then? When were you going to show me that, hmm?’ he asked her, raising an eyebrow, a curious smile on his lips. The blood had shoved him into good spirits.
‘I was wonderin’ how long it would take you to ask.’
‘As if you can blame the boy,’ Lurker interjected. ‘He’s thirteen years old. There’s a secret handshake for bloodrushers. Of course he wants to know it,’ he chuckled.
‘That’s enough out of you, Lurker. I was going to show him, fear not!’ Lilain chided him.
Merion grinned. ‘You were?’
‘Well, it makes sense,’ she replied, ‘to be able to tell your friends from your enemies. To know your letters from your Averines, if you know what I mean.’
‘Good point.’ Lilain reached forwards and clasped his hand, and as she did so, she folded her smallest finger in to her palm and tapped, once. Merion instinctively did the same, clumsily at first, but he got there in the end.
‘That’s it, and again, fold before you shake,’ Lilain said.
A few more tries, and Merion had it. He practised several more times on Lurker’s raspy gloves for good measure and then nodded to himself, obviously pleased. ‘Anything else I should know about, while we’re at it?’ he asked.
‘Just the bloodrushing tax. Payable to your local letter on the first of the month. One florin,’ Lilain answered with a shrug. ‘I’ll make sure it gets to the right people.’
‘Or your local prospector can do the same job, but slightly cheaper,’ Lurker smirked.
Merion shook his head. ‘Cheats and liars, the both of you. Come on, before we end up as puddles of sweat in the desert.’
*
Sand and rock watched them pass by, lazy and still in the afternoon scorching of the summer sun. June in the desert had a cruel taste to it. If the heat did not make you sweat and burn, then the light blinded you, or the terrain tricked you, fouling your tired steps.
Even when the sand faded into prairie here and there, where the sagebrush and hardy grasses swayed in the hot breeze, they got no relief. The ground undulated and swayed, as if designed to weary even the hardiest traveller. It was as though the desert resented wanderers across its dusty skin, the way a dog might nibble at fleas. The constant ups and downs and rocky tors made their lungs burn. Even Merion was tired. The mule shade had died away after an hour or two, as his aunt had said, and he had succumbed to the sweltering drudgery.
By early evening, their feet were sore and hot and their mouths were parched like roof-slats. They longed for a place to rest their limbs. Lilain was lagging behind and Lurker had dropped back to help her. Merion was striding ahead, leading them towards a distant smudge of green and brown, where a handful of hardy trees had banded together to form a huddled copse. As they drew nearer, something sparkled in the orange glow of the setting sun, something that looked like water between the trees. Merion’s tongue rasped between his cracked lips.
Rhin, who had met them a mile past the church, strode beside him, silent and yet keeping pace with the purposeful boy. His own withered tongue had another longing. It wanted to speak, to break the constant thudding of boots and crunching sand and say something. Anything.
To his surprise it was Merion who broke the silence.
‘Looks like water,’ muttered the boy.
Rhin squinted, and saw the glittering between the trees. ‘That it does. By the Roots, that’s lucky.’
‘I can’t tell whether we’re on a winning streak, or sore out of it,’ Merion whispered with cracked lips.
The faerie ran a hand through his hair and thought about that. ‘We found the church. And we got lucky with Doggard. Feels like a winning streak to me,’ Rhin said assuredly.
‘Hmmm,’ came the reply, and then there was silence again. Rhin did not mind one bit. That was a step in the right direction. Lucky indeed, he thought.
There was a strong smell of the water in the air, one that sparked a memory in Rhin’s mind, one he had not dug out in many a year. It smelled like the castle of Carn’Erfjan, the fortress where he had spent his earliest years. Standing fast between the raging sea and the ice that inched down the black mountains, it was one of the oldest faerie forts in all of Undering. It had been built before the Fae marched south with the Barbarians and the Kelts, to fight the First Empire from their shores—before they had been driven back to Eyra, or Éire as the humans called it.
Ancient Fae law demanded the second-born of every family be trained as a fighter, to make war for Queen Sift. Rhin had been such an offering, left on the steps to be raised as—or more accurately, beaten into—a soldier, like the Spartans of the olden days.
Another memory, one buried in an even deeper grave, came back to him then: one of trolls and cracking stone, of screams in the dust-choked darkness of the tunnels, screams that sliced through the constant roaring and gnashing of jaws and little bones. Rhin shuddered involuntarily, and pushed those memories away for another day.
There were no two ways about it: a brutal upbringing it may have been, but it had made Rhin the Fae he was today, and it helped to take some of the blame for his life’s crimes. His upbringing lightened the load. It was as Merion’s father had once said to him: a man is the product of his boyhood. How a boy is shaped echoes in the man he becomes. Rhin shook his head and rubbed the memories out of his eyes.
Under the trees, the evening air was cool, the sand dappled in the last shadows of the day. Rhin went straight to the small pool, his buzzing wings powering him forward, saving his feet the trouble. He kneeled at the water’s edge, cupped a hand, and sipped. The water was cool and fresh, with the t
iniest hint of desert salt.
‘It’s pure enough,’ he told the others, who were shuffling into the copse. They too bent to their knees and lapped at the water, slaking their powerful thirsts. Merion wasted no time in whipping off his hat and plunging his head into the cool water, blowing bubbles with a long sigh. When he came up for air and got to his feet, he let the water drip down his neck and chest, washing away at least some of the day’s dust and sweat.
It was not long before Lurker had a campfire crackling. They had bought some sun-cured, though rather unidentifiable, meat to go around. The rest of the supplies in Cheyenne had all been snapped up. Was it hound, cat, or tortoise? Who cared? Their hunger ignored the fact of it.
Lurker tended the pan, as always. Lilain was already half asleep. Merion was getting there. Only Rhin sat bolt upright, listening to the noises of the desert. Above them, the trees rustled gently in the evening breeze. Their pale leaves gleamed in the firelight.
Rhin could not get comfortable. It could have been the memories tugging at him, or something else entirely. He felt uneasy, and it irked him.
‘It’s ready,’ Lurker grunted, jolting him.
The others sat up, rubbing bleary eyes. The sun had sucked the life out of them. It was no surprise that they ate in silence, staring like zombies into their bowls. Rhin was still the only one who kept his head up, his lavender eyes narrowed at the gloom as he chewed quietly.
The faerie paused. He had heard something, and not just a crunch and squeal of some unfortunate creature, or the tittering of the insects. A rock tumbling.
For what seemed an age, all he could hear was the noisy mastication of the others around him. To his keen ears they sounded like cows grazing, and he strained to listen to the desert beyond.
There: another clatter of rock. Rhin put down his thimble of a bowl and drew his sword. The others seemed startled. A bit of life appeared in their dull eyes. Lurker made to get up, already swinging the Mistress from her holster. He cocked the pistol quietly.
‘What is it?’ Lilain whispered. ‘What do you see?’
‘Hush, listen,’ Rhin hissed. His skin was already fading into nothing, just the dim outline of his features remaining. He tried to penetrate the darkness, but the light from the fire blurred the night’s edges. He began to tread sideways. There came another rattle of stones in the darkness. They all heard that one.
Merion was reaching for his coat, where the three bottles of blood were hidden in his pockets.
The faerie pulled out his knife as well. ‘I see people! About five, comi—’
The thundercrack of a gun cut him off, chased by the whistling of a bullet as it glanced off a tree a worrying distance above Lilain’s head.
‘Down!’ Lurker shouted, squeezing off three rounds into the darkness. There was a yell and a chorus of roars and curses.
‘The Sand Rabbits have got you now!’ came a cry.
‘Quiver in fear!’
‘Hand over your coins!’
Lurker growled. ‘Bandits! Merion, what have you got?’
As more guns opened fire, they threw themselves behind the nearest trees and hunkered down.
The young Hark scrabbled for a bottle. ‘Chipmunk?’
‘Fast reactions!’ Lilain yelled above the deafening gunshots.
‘Get a rock, and go round the back,’ Lurker ordered him, making a fist and driving it into his palm. Merion understood completely.
With nervous hands, he reached for the nearest, biggest, and lumpiest rock he could find. He wondered whether he was afraid or simply startled. He did not like the idea of the former. Merion held the rock with one hand and flicked the cork off the bottle with the other. A bullet struck the sand two inches from his foot, and sprayed dust at him, and he yelped.
The blood slid down his throat with all the speed of cold honey. Merion desperately tried to swallow it down as the bullets flew.
The Mistress sung out again, and the gunfire halted for just a moment. ‘Go!’ Lurker hissed.
Merion seized his chance. As he leapt from behind the tree and dashed for the desert, he felt the magick bite. He tensed as it began to flow with his blood. This was a fierce little shade. He could feel it coursing up his spine already, eager to get to work.
Another bullet zipped through the branches, spinning splinters in its wake. One of the guns had been turned on him. The boy pushed the magick down into his legs and found himself zig-zagging through the low bushes like a burst of lightning through cloud. It felt like his muscles had just awoken from a long sleep, and he finally knew how to use them. He gritted his teeth and powered on, bursting out of the copse and curving around to come at the attackers from behind.
Merion saw the muzzle-flashes a dozen yards from the treeline. There seemed to be seven, maybe more. Every time a gun crackled, Merion caught glimpses of a glowering face, the brim of a hat, or a threadbare jacket. Bandits indeed, he inwardly spat. Common thieves, come to kill and steal. Merion’s nervousness slunk away. He had no love to spare for thieves or murderers.
The young Hark scurried low between the boulders, holding his rock as tight as he could, twitching with every gunshot. The Sand Rabbits were spread out in a line, diagonal to Merion. Speed would be the essence. Fortunately for Merion, speed is what chipmunk blood is famed for.
The boy darted forwards as the nearest man stopped to reload, cursing to himself as another of Lurker’s bullets ricocheted off the rocks. The resounding thunder of Long Tom II could be heard now as well. Merion raised the rock high and before the bandit could react, he brought it down hard against the man’s temple. He went as limp as a dead snake, relinquishing his gun and bullets to the sand.
‘Over here!’ came the startled cry of the next man along the line, already swinging his pistol at Merion. But the boy was faster, ducking just in time. The gun fired at nothing but darkness. Merion spun as he rushed forward, swinging the rock upwards into the man’s groin. The bandit howled and folded in two. There was a dreadful, muffled bang as he fired a round into his own stomach in pain and panic.
The other five were now all bringing their guns to bear. Merion gulped and blindly hurled himself to the side as their muzzles burst with fire. Though his mind may not have willed any finesse into the dive, his muscles had plenty to spare.
Merion rolled agilely to his feet and darted from side to side, puffs of sand exploding around his feet. Not a single one seemed able to touch him, though a few came perilously close. Merion just grimaced as he lurched from side to side, ducking and dipping, never in one place for more than a whisker of a second.
Before he knew it, he was swinging his rock again, swiping another of the guns aside. A blade flashed, and Merion skipped back. A muscle in his stomach spasmed, and for a moment he thought he was done for. But it was Rhin, pouring further chaos on the dwindling pack of bandits. Fae steel slashed through leather and cloth, sliced at calf muscles and tendons. One man went down with a bloodcurdling scream, clutching at the backs of his legs. A sword to the back of his skull silenced him. Rhin, still only half-visible, wrenched his blade free and shook the blood from it. It was hard to keep up the spell in the midst of battle, but Rhin was more practised than most. He held his blades out to the side and began to jog forward. The remaining bandits were now shooting madly at the desert. Far too high, and far too wide.
Nobody ever suspects a faerie can do so much damage. Rhin raised his knife and threw it hard, catching a bandit in the chest. The blade may have been small, but it was as sharp as a winter wind, and hurt like the depths of hell when it caught bone, which it had. While the man clutched his chest, his face crinkling into a wail, Rhin bounded to the top of a nearby rock and lunged at him, his wings buzzing loud and strong. Rhin sailed through the air, slicing the man’s throat as he flew past his head.
A few paces away, Merion found himself being grappled from behind. Even while rushing the chipmunk blood, it caught him off-guard. He managed to roll instead of pitching onto his face. A brawny bearded man with
wildness in his eyes stood over him. He had a small knife in one hand, and was jabbing it at the boy.
Merion felt the blade whistle past his ear. He smacked his rock against the man’s ribs, but he just wheezed and barged forward, pushing Merion off his feet again. They fell as one and the boy felt the breath driven from his lungs. Magick rushed into his arms and hands, wrenching them upwards before the knife plunged into his heart. One hand grabbed the man’s throat, the other his wrist. Merion and the man writhed and strained wordlessly, muscle versus magick, with the only prize being life.
The bandit broke Merion’s hold by ramming his forehead into the boy’s brow. Sparks exploded behind Merion’s eyes and he reeled. Out of the corner of his vision, he saw the man raise the knife high for the final strike.
But whatever luck he’d scraped from the day stayed with him. Lurker loomed from behind, grasping the man’s knife hand with two of his and driving it hard into the man’s forehead as he turned in shock. He was dead before he hit the dust. Lurker raised the Mistress and fired, once, twice, and the desert fell silent.
Only panting and the ringing in his ears filled the vacuous absence of gunshots and yells. Rhin was busy retrieving his knife from its temporary home.
‘Thank you,’ Merion panted, still regaining his breath.
‘Don’t mention it,’ Lurker rumbled, his dark eyes roving the rocks around them, watching for any further trouble. The desert offered none, at least for now. A few shapes could be seen, hurtling towards the distance. ‘Nice job,’ he said, helping the boy to his feet. The magick was wearing off now, leaving Merion trembling and short of breath. He swore silently never to doubt chipmunks again.
Once they had washed the blood from their hands and blades, and stamped the fire out, they all huddled up, leaning their backs against each other. The only light they had was that of the bright stars above and the fat half-moon in the south. Rhin sat between Merion and Lurker, his black sword on his lap. Even though he appeared to be relaxed and lounging, he was a coiled spring, ready for more should the night offer it.
