Stars Beneath My Feet

by D L Frizzell

  It was fresh.

  No, I told myself. You know the caravan went through here recently. They probably did some small game hunting and couldn’t find the empty casing afterward. Except that the casing was for a Longarm rifle like mine. Who would use a fifty-caliber round on a beetle badger or a rockadillo? Answer: nobody. Any animal that small would be obliterated by such a large bullet.

  There are times when I don’t want to know the answer to a question. There are also times I can’t help myself. I pulled my binoculars from my field pack and climbed back up the windmill for another look around.

  This time I scanned the area directly surrounding the water stop. Angling the binoculars at the trail going toward Dogleg, I adjusted the focus until I could make out the individual rocks along the roadside.

  A pair of brass casings sat near in the open on the trail, less than fifty meters from the first one I found. Beyond them, another empty casing sat upright in the gravel. With a sinking feeling in my gut, I kept looking further until I counted at least a dozen more rounds littering the open ground.

  I looked back down at my gear in the pavilion and had another sinking thought. No caravaner would leave their hammock behind. They’d take it with them. Unless they were in a hurry. They wouldn’t neglect windmill maintenance, either. Unless they were in a hurry.

  I turned my binoculars eastward, the pit in my stomach growing deeper, and studied the dust storm. Only it wasn’t dust. It was smoke.

  Grass fires weren’t uncommon in the wilderlands, but the spent shell casing already gave me cause to suspect the worst. Even more suspicious, the smoke was coming from a collection of bluffs where grass would probably not grow.

  I cursed as I hung the binoculars over my neck and hurried down to the ground. Judging by the number of empty shells strewn along the trail, a large crew of bandits had ambushed the caravan. The caravaners had probably been outnumbered, choosing to flee on their wagons rather than hide behind the limited cover offered by the water stop. Judging by the depth of the furrows, their wagons were heavy-laden. Even then, it looked like the wagons had bounced as they careened down the trail. The signs were unmistakable now. They were in a damned big hurry.

  Dammit. Even if I had a horse, it would take me an hour to get to the bluffs. Now I’d have to run, which would take three times longer. That didn’t matter, though. I was a lawman, and I had a duty.

  It’s probably over already, I thought to myself, but rejected the temptation to assume the caravaners’ fate had been sealed. I looked back to the west. I had no idea how long Redland and Xiv would take to get to the water stop, but time would be working against me in this situation.

  I tossed my field pack on the hammock and withdrew a box of rounds for both my pistol and the rifle. Dropping them in my duster’s pockets, I ran into the pumphouse and grabbed an old pencil and a clipboard that I’d seen earlier. I scribbled a note on the clipboard, explaining what my intentions were, and tacked it onto the timber above the hammock. With my pistol and falcata lashed down to keep them secure, I checked my Longarm rifle and headed east along the trail as fast as I could run.

  Chapter Seven

  After running to within a few kilometers of the bluffs, I came upon a field of spherical boulders. Some were nearly buried in the ground, while others sat dauntingly exposed upon bedrock like gigantic billiard balls. They ranged in size from a meter in diameter to almost three meters. They weren’t made of the same layered shale as the local bedrock but were solid balls of granite that looked more like river rocks. Being smooth and round as they were, some had rolled together in groups where the terrain dipped low, but most of them were spread out randomly across the plain.

  There was a series of nine large boulders arranged in a line along the trail, all about the same size, but buried to different degrees. The first boulder was mostly underground, while the others rested incrementally higher upon the land until the last one had most of its shape exposed. I’d seen other arrangements like this, where boulders had settled into giant cracks in the bedrock. It was one of the ways the Founders were able to find tectonic fractures, but that ancient history didn’t matter at the moment.

  I remembered my experience at the Crumbles six years ago, where boulders just like these rolled downhill, colliding noisily with each other, their momentum undiminished by the men they crushed. Those men’s screams all ended with the same grinding, mashing sound of bones and flesh. The men who died beneath those boulders were foreigners, invaders. Jovians. We did what we had to do, but it was Redland who set those events in motion, and some good men died along with the bad. But that didn’t matter, either.

  No, I reminded myself. It did matter what happened that day. That’s when Redland showed his true colors. He was a mercenary, using his badge to serve his greed. He sold out everybody he’d pledged to protect. He was a traitor. It cost him his left thumb, but that was too small a penalty in my judgment. I wanted to kill him, tried to kill him. I almost succeeded. I blew up a mountainside and loosed a mountain’s worth of those damned boulders at him, but he still got away. Later, I captured him and took him back to stand trial. Watching the jailers weld that titanium shackle around his right forearm had been a poor substitute for justice, but at least I’d been able to sleep at night knowing he would spend the rest of his life breaking rocks in a dank, underground maze. It might as well have been a grave, I told myself at the time, because no one ever got released from Ovalsheer Prison.

  Redland, despite his obvious faults, found an angle he could leverage, and weasel out of his life sentence somehow. I looked back down the trail to where the windmill was barely visible on the horizon. Redland now had a T’Neth for a confederate. That made him twice as dangerous in my opinion.

  Deal with one problem at a time, I told myself. Caravaners first. Jarnum second. Redland third.

  The wagon tracks veered off the trail, suggesting the caravaners were using the boulders as cover, even though the soft ground slowed their progress. The bluffs were their destination, where they might have hoped to find cover from the bandits, but the darkening smoke in that direction told me they had misjudged their odds. I checked my weapons for the third time and followed the trail of spent shell casings toward the bluffs.

  Those caravaners were definitely panicked by this point, judging by the increased amount of brass on the ground. I tried to hold off that prickly feeling of dread rising inside me. Something bad had happened to the caravaners, and I wasn’t going to be in time to save anybody. I don’t know how I knew that. I could just tell.

  A sobering thought struck me. What if the Jovians were attempting another invasion? They’d been probing our frontier for decades, after all. Their leader, The Guile, was certainly crazy enough to try again, but we sealed off the only canyon large enough for an army to pass through. I took a fresh look around. The amount of brass on the ground suggested the caravaners might have been chased by an army, but I saw no evidence of pursuers, either on horses or wagons. Were they using maglev vehicles? Doubtful. The Jovians had completely given up on technology, preferring to return to the feudalistic society their Japanese ancestors on Earth used to have. They would have used arrows or swords in any attack, since they didn’t believe in using guns, and there were no arrows that I could see.

  Something inside me told me to run, to get away. I shook off the feeling, reminding myself of my duty to help those people. But why was this feeling so strong? I’ve never been a fearful person, but this sensation was visceral. I’d been in the sun for several weeks straight now, with only a few stops and little sleep since my aerobike crashed. I supposed I could have gotten a little sunbaked, but I didn’t think so. Would a crazy person know if they were going crazy? Maybe. Still, I kept going.

  I came upon the first rock formation, an escarpment that rose from the plains at a shallow angle. I ran up the long slope to where it ended at a meter-wide crack between me and the beginning of the first bluff. The drop where I stood was about five meters to some crumbled
rocks below. It would be enough to make a squeamish person turn around, but I wasn’t bothered. I positioned my rifle on my back, clinching the strap against my chest to keep it from shifting and making any noise that might give me away, and then hopped the distance easily. My canteen made a slight clunk against my pistol belt, but otherwise I didn’t make a sound.

  The ledge on the other side of the crack was narrow, with some scattered gravel from past erosion. I was careful not to disturb any as I made my way around the ledge to a point where I could see other bluffs. Most of the rock formations were taller than the one I was on, with varying heights that suggested there’d been some tectonic upheaval at some point. The highest bluff was probably fifty meters tall, its sedimentary layers matching the others around it, although they were no longer aligned evenly. I scanned the area. Nothing but wagon tracks below on the grassless trail. I could now detect a hint of smoke wafting through the air. It smelled like wood burning. Not a promising sign.

  Without being able to see the tops of the bluffs around me, it wouldn’t be a good idea to go any further into the canyon. I rechecked my pistol and rifle for ammunition, more out of habit than anything else, and crept back the way I came to the spot where the ledge ended. Above, the rock layers provided adequate handholds for climbing. Far below, jagged rocks and gravel sloped away from the cliff.

  The ascent up the cliff face was more difficult than I expected it to be. I couldn’t pinpoint the reason exactly, which made the problem that much stranger. Taking an instinctive pause, I listened for anything out of the ordinary. Silence. No voices. No shifting gravel or falling rocks. Only the faint smell of smoke, which had now grown stronger. What made things strange was that it was too quiet. That’s when the hackles on the back of my neck went up. A dull ache formed between my temples and spread to my eyeballs. I usually associated this kind of headache with stress, which was understandable considering recent circumstances, but this was not a good time for it.

  Kate gave me this kind of headache sometimes, most notably around the time we broke up. A few unwelcome memories took the opportunity to fill my mind, and the headache grew in intensity. This isn’t the time to come unglued, I told myself. Feeling my balance might be affected if this went on much longer, I angled into a rocky cleft, keeping my boots planted on either side of a split in the rock. I closed my eyes and rubbed my temple with one hand, gripping the nearest handhold with the other. Had I been out in the sun too long? The heat had never bothered me before. Maybe it was the prolonged effects of sleep deprivation. Or dehydration. That could be it. I opened my eyes to adjust my grip, and almost fell.

  For a second, just a second, I thought my arms had fallen off. I could see them, and they were still attached, but I couldn’t feel them. It was like I wasn’t even looking at my own arms. I stared at them dumbly, willing them to move, but nothing happened even as my body started swaying. My legs failed me the same way. I intended to lean into the rock, but my knees were locked in place. Even my head refused to respond to my will. The only thing that did work, and with heightened sensitivity, was my equilibrium. I knew I was only a breath away from plummeting to the rocks below, but somehow my breath failed me, too. That’s when I felt well and truly frightened.

  Then my knees buckled. My body twisted limply, and my hands let go of the rock. I heard myself yelp and looked down to see how far I’d gone, or if I’d gone too far. But I noticed that as my legs gave way, the feeling returned to my extremities. Whatever had taken sudden control of my senses released me just as quickly, so I flailed my hands to get another handhold before I had another, and more fatal, experience with free-fall.

  I wound up on one knee, kneeling in the cleft that was hardly suited for standing. I arched over backwards from the weight of my gear, my arms outstretched with a tenuous grip on a single, fat piece of shale. My fingers seemed to work again, but that didn’t mean they could be trusted.

  I continued up the rock face, being more careful to pick the easiest route. It meant taking a few detours and even backtracking a couple of times, as I still felt shaken up. As I reached the top and saw nothing but weathered, sun-bleached rock in every direction, I crawled into a naturally-formed gutter in the rock and collapsed. I hardly cared that my weapons clanked noisily, giving my position away to anybody within a hundred meters.

  Maybe five minutes later, with no onset of another debilitating cramp or seizure, I decided I must be okay. I wrangled the canteen off my belt and poured water over my face. Swallowing some, and letting the rest run down my shirt, I felt a sense of normalcy return.

  What the hell happened? I asked myself, but had no answer.

  After putting my canteen away, I crawled on hands and knees to the edge of the bluff where I could get a good look around.

  The canyon was fairly unremarkable. There were vertical faces on both sides, uneven layers of sediment, jagged around the edges with broken chunks lying in the gravel at the base of the vertical faces. Other than a few scrub bushes clinging to scattered cracks in the rock, there were no signs of life. I took a moment to rub my temples, feeling the headache ebb a little, and drank the last of my water before continuing my reconnaissance.

  There was a gravel road running through the middle of the canyon. The tracks still suggested the caravan was in a hurry, but I saw no more brass casings in the dust. Either the caravaners had run out of ammo, or they were conserving it for later. I made my way to another caprock south of my position, one that would offer a better view. A lone bush clung to the rock, not too big, but with enough scraggly branches to conceal me as I scanned the area. The canyon curved left, and then right again further on. The wagon tracks hugged every corner as if the caravaners were loath to give up the slightest bit of speed. But what were they running from? There were no visible tracks disturbing their hoof prints and wagon ruts.

  I checked the plateau behind me, feeling as if there were eyes watching me. Nothing. I hurried further along the plateau to get a better view, though I had a sinking feeling I already knew. The smell of burning wood had a new tinge to it, that of burned meat.

  Around the next bend, I saw ten wagons. I didn’t need my binoculars to tell me how bad the situation was, but I pulled them out anyway. Half a dozen heavy wagons sat there, thick timbers joined by bolts instead of nailed wooden planks. Each wagon had a team of six oxen, all of which were decapitated. Their yokes barely seated on their headless necks, some of the oxen had fallen so fast that their bodies reconnected with their heads as they both hit the ground. Others had rolled away from the corpses to sit like furry islands in the moat of blood that had pooled around the caravan.

  Hollow shell casings bobbed up and down in the tiny red sea, decapitated themselves in a manner of speaking. Dead men slumped on the wagons, some behind crates where they had taken cover, with others lying underneath the wagons, half-submerged in blood. It was a sickening sight, but none of it had burned. The source of the gritty haze was further into the canyon, somewhere around the next bend, and I could hear wood crackling with every change of the wind.

  There were more dead men than I cared to see, but a headcount told me there should be twice as many corpses. Maybe some had escaped the attackers, but I doubted it. Regardless what I’d find, I’d have to get closer to make sure – and that meant going to ground level.

  Despite a nagging certainty that I would find more than I bargained for, I climbed down rock outcroppings, keeping to the shadows as much as I could until I reached the ground. The wet smell of copper mingled with smoke in my nostrils. Flies buzzed about, both the Arionese kind with their crystalline thoraxes, and the common Earth variety, which had somehow hitched a ride on the Founding Fleet five hundred years ago. I pulled my necker out of my pocket and tied it over my face. It kept the flies out of my mouth and nose, but failed to block the smell.

  This wasn’t a bandit attack. I hadn’t realized this until it was staring me in the face. Maybe the sight of all that blood distracted me, or maybe I was still too damn tired.
Bandits are always after something valuable. They take merchandise or supplies, or simply take the wagons if they brought enough manpower. Except for the obvious signs of a struggle, the wagons’ cargo had gone untouched. The dusty gravel that lined the canyon floor was too loose, so there were no definitive tracks to follow. For that matter, there was an odd lack of evidence. There were no enemy shell casings, or even blood trails to suggest how many attackers had been hit. As many rounds as had been spent by the caravaners in the last kilometer alone, the most disturbing evidence was that there was no evidence of their attackers. The caravaners, with all their shooting, didn’t hit a damn thing.

  And then there were the oxen. Bandits kill people, but not livestock. They’re too valuable, and they’d have been useful for carting off the loot. Every last ox had been decapitated after the attack. Just like the clefang.

  I ran through the canyon toward the next bend, dreading what I’d find. I didn’t think about booby traps, or even giving myself away with the crunching sounds I made as I ran across gravel toward the source of the smoke.

  Twelve men. They’d been executed, possibly all at the same time. Their last-ditch, futile effort to escape had been utterly futile. When they were caught, they were hacked to pieces and burned.

  That’s no way to die, I thought to myself.

  As grisly as the scene was at the wagons, this bothered me more. My head began to hurt again, and this time I threw up. Fortunately, I had the presence of mind to yank the necker off my face to keep the contents of my stomach from deflecting back onto my clothes.