by David Hair
Suddenly a bell rang out, echoing through the valley. Voices shouted in response, then three men burst from the gaol, saw Jones’s men and spun to face them. ‘Who goes there?’ one of them shouted.
‘Friend!’ Jones shouted back, jogging closer. He imbued his voice with reassurance, which wasn’t fair — but war isn’t fair and never has been. ‘All is well,’ he told them, and they visibly relaxed.
To the right of his column, the town was coming to life. Someone shouted, ‘The Chinks are out here! They’ve got guns!’ A shot rang out, and then a loose and uncoordinated fusillade rattled behind him, as the Chinese returned fire. The Parihaka men ran on, their prayers redoubling in volume and intensity.
Say one for me. He focused on the three men beside the gaol. Their leader stepped towards him, peering. ‘Hey, you’re not—’
Jones shot him, knocking the man off his feet. The other two fired, their shots glancing off his wards harmlessly. His used pistol began to load itself as he raised the other and fired again. A second man fell, clutching his chest. The third man ran.
‘Come on!’ he shouted, realizing his group was dangerously strung out. The Chinese had almost all stopped to kneel and fire, and were now reloading. The Parihaka Maori were still with him, but unarmed. ‘Ah Lum,’ he called. ‘ To me!’
Most of the Chinese were still positioned along the edge of the river, exchanging fire with men in the buildings. He waved those with him forward, and they moved towards the nearest cluster of buildings. The moon was out and the night well lit. The gunfire from the houses was away to his right. As yet, his group was undetected.
And apart from me, unarmed, he reminded himself.
He had almost made it to the line of buildings when the group entered an open area where a single pole stood, something dark and bulky atop it. A malevolent force struck him, though its seething hatred was not directed only at him but at all creation. He had to stop and steady himself. Knowing it was here was one thing; encountering it up close, something else altogether.
This was the Wooden Head of Maunga-tapu, the Sacred Mountain. Its power had sustained Puarata in his early days. How it could be here, he had no idea. But it was. With this artefact, someone like Kiki could cause devastation. I’ve got to destroy it.
‘With me!’ he shouted, running towards the Wooden Head. ‘With me!’ But the Chinese were still exchanging fire with Hayes’s men as they emerged from the houses. Only the men of Parihaka came with him. He cursed again. ‘Close up!’ Then dark shapes poured out of the houses at the edge of the settlement: a long line of Bryce’s Thistle Guard. With impressive discipline they formed two ranks, one kneeling, the other standing behind. They raised their guns.
Damien darted behind the third row of houses, Shui behind him. Part of him wanted to stand by Mat and face what his friend faced, but he knew he wasn’t in that league. A non-Adept taking on Bryce or Byron would be like a six-year-old trying to tackle an All Black. If we’re going to help, we’ve got to be smart.
He and Shui ran in behind the row of little houses, leaping fences and dodging a barking dog, until they landed in slush before a lighted window. He went to the back door while Shui peered inside. She hissed and looked at him, a fierce expression on her face. ‘Hayes,’ she whispered. Her free hand went to her throat and the ugly line of scar tissue there.
More than one hundred and fifty years ago, Shui had been the daughter of a Chinese trader, living in Sydney. Her father had run afoul of Captain William ‘Bully’ Hayes. A contract dispute had been settled by the knife: Hayes and his men had cut the throats of the whole family. When Shui had been reborn in Aotearoa with her mother, they were taken in by locals and she became a maid in Kororareka. It had taken the girl a long time to realize why she and her mother had been reborn into Aotearoa, even though they had never lived there whilst alive. Finally she’d understood: it had been to seek revenge on Hayes.
In February, Damien had come to Kororareka with Mat, met Shui and become instantly infatuated, as he was prone to do. It wasn’t usually reciprocated, but Shui had been different. There was an old Counting Crows song, ‘A Long December’, in which Adam Duritz sang about ‘the way that light attaches to a girl’. That was how Damien felt about Shui. It didn’t matter that they struggled to communicate — she illuminated his life.
So when she said ‘Hayes’ that way, he knew. This was her moment of redemption and justice. She lifted her gun, then cursed as the light suddenly went out. ‘Go, Dami!’ she hissed.
He kicked down the door and burst into the back room of the tavern.
Confrontation
Mat saw John Bryce’s face swell with shock as the volley struck. Two men on either side of him went down, one of them the redhead holding Riki. But the warlock’s raised hand completely stopped the musket balls heading in his direction. They hung momentarily in the air, then pattered harmlessly to the mud. Beside him, Byron’s patu blurred, and Mat could swear that the young makutu had batted bullets away with the club.
The gunmen behind him cried out in fear as they saw how little their volley had achieved. They frantically reloaded, with fumbling and unpractised hands. None were soldiers, or used to combat. Damien and Shui were nowhere to be seen, having vanished as the fighting began.
Amidst the group of enemies, Mat could see Riki, shielded by Bryce. He suddenly realized that his own impulsive order to fire could have resulted in his friend’s death, and he almost lost his nerve. Then Bryce stepped forward, jabbed a hand towards the nearest of Goldston’s men, and shouted, ‘Die!’
With a strangled cry, the man grabbed his own chest, screamed and fell twitching onto his back. The Pakeha and Chinese behind Mat recoiled, their faces bulging with terror. Bryce smiled and selected another target. Beside him, Byron Kikitoa watched with hungry anticipation. Beyond them, Kiki was striding away with surprising speed, his arms pointing to something at the other end of town, where gunfire rattled. A stream of kilted soldiers was emerging from the houses, running the other way.
Hopefully Jones is coming to save the day.
Bryce’s eyes narrowed as he recognized Mat, then the warlock stabbed a finger at a Chinese rifleman. ‘Die, scum.’
The Chinese man dropped to the muddy ground, already dead.
Damien stormed into the room just as a bulky shape exited through the opposite door. He flew at the closing door, his right foot smashing into the panel beside the handle and breaking it. He stumbled through and flattened himself against the wall.
A pistol cracked. He felt the wind of the passing shot as it splintered the door frame. Hayes — Damien was certain it was he — swore and stormed on, wrenching open another door. Light washed down the narrow hall from the taproom. Men were shouting, Hayes’s voice rising above them. ‘Intruders!’ he shouted. ‘Get ’em, lads!’
Shit! There was nothing for it but to go on. Behind him Shui was calling threats in Cantonese, almost feral in her rage. ‘C’mon babe!’ he shouted, and stormed towards the door, diving through and rolling.
Two pistols cracked from either side of the room, the balls punching through the plastered walls. He came up firing left-handed, and a skinny man shrieked and went down clutching his face. One. He pulled his sword from its scabbard and scrambled to the end of the bar. The man positioned there was lifting a second pistol. He thrust before the man could aim, driving the tip of his steel into the man’s ribs and shoving it right through. Their eyes met: shock, turning to despair. Then the pupils rolled back and the man slid off his blade to the floor. Damien wrenched the blade free and turned slowly.
Bully Hayes was standing in the middle of the empty taproom. He’d thrown away his smoking pistol and drawn a sea-cutlass, curved and heavy. He wasn’t a tall man, but he was wide and muscular. Damien faced him warily, giving him all his attention.
He shouldn’t have done that. Someone cocked a pistol behind his back. ‘Freeze, boy.’
A gun roared.
A body crashed to the ground behind him. Damien
spun around in time to see a prissy-looking man in gentleman’s clothes crumple. The man’s face turned white and he coughed blood. His gun discharged aimlessly, carving a furrow in the floor, then the man’s face emptied.
He tore his eyes from the dead man, to where Shui stood by the door, her gun wreathed in smoke. ‘Babe,’ he purred. He braced his knees and turned to face Bully Hayes.
Shui stepped into the room, already reaching for her powder flask. ‘Hello, Mister William Hayes,’ she said in precise, heavily accented English. ‘Do you remember me?’
Aethlyn Jones threw his energy into generating a stasis shield between the Thistle Guard and the men of Parihaka. It was all he could think to do. A stasis shield was a thin membrane of power that removed energy from moving objects. Ideal for rendering flying bullets harmless, but exceedingly taxing to maintain for any length of time.
I’m buying a few seconds, that is all. Then they’ll slaughter us.
In front of him, the line of praying Maori stood in a rank as orderly as that of the Thistle Guard, their right hands raised palms outward, their voices raised in prayer. He had heard the chant before, a Pai Marire war chant calling on the Angels of the Winds to protect them. He’d vaguely known that there were Pai Marire links to Parihaka, the religious movement being pervasive at that time of New Zealand history. It reminded him of something, but his train of thought was shattered as the Thistle Guard commander screamed an order, and the men opened fire.
Jones felt the musket shot strike his stasis shield, each ball like a rabbit punch to his ribs. He staggered, had to grip the pole holding the Wooden Head. Above him the carving glowered, radiating hatred the way the sun radiated heat. But his shield did enough. None of Hemi’s people fell. Away to his right, the Chinese continued their firefight with Hayes’s sailors. He shouted at them to close up, to no avail. He would have given anything to swap his men’s position, and have the armed Chinese here instead of these damned pacifists.
‘Reload!’ shouted the captain of the Thistle Guard.
Jones looked up at the Wooden Head. It seemed to him that its eyes were moving, its tongue glistening in anticipation of the harvest of death to come. Jones searched his own energies and found them severely depleted. The stasis shield was not something anyone could manage for long, and he’d never created one so large, to protect so many. He looked at the backs of the Parihaka people, silently giving them up for dead.
‘All praise the Karaitiana!’ Hemi shouted to his people.
‘All praise! To mai Niu kororia, mai merire!’ they responded fervently.
They probably thought they stopped that volley with their prayers, Jones thought ironically, as he clung to the pole. At the rear of the Thistle Guard, only thirty yards away, Jones saw Kiki appear, and his fears redoubled. He looked back up at the Wooden Head. Its corruption had a stench that made Jones’s soul recoil. But it might be their only hope: to fight fire with fire, evil with evil.
‘Take aim!’ The guardsmen’s guns came up again.
I’ve got no choice. Another large stasis shield would be too much. He braced his mind, like a skydiver preparing to throw himself from a plane. The morass of makutu energy clinging to the Wooden Head was palpable, and he could see how it might be used, but there would be a cost. He flinched from it instinctively. Harden up, old man. People are going to die.
‘Fire!’
A second volley rang out, the muzzle flashes stabs of flame, smoke rising in the silvery moonlight. Jones’s stasis shield flared about him, smaller this time, the best he could manage with his remaining strength.
The prayers of the Parihaka men never faltered. ‘To mai Niu kororia, mai merire! To mai Niu kororia, mai merire! To rire, rire!’ they sang above the storm of shot.
Not a single one of them had been hit.
Jones gripped the pole in disbelief. Of course! The Pai Marire believe their prayers can turn aside bullets. I’ve even fought against the ghosts of Hauhau warriors here in Aotearoa whose beliefs protected them. I never thought to be on the right side of that equation.
He saw his own astonishment reflected in the faces of the Thistle Guard. ‘Bastards ain’t droppin’, Cap’n!’ someone shouted. ‘Whadda we do?’
Kiki’s voice rolled across the glen. ‘Use the bayonet, Captain. Carve a hole right through them.’
Mat felt the nerve of Goldston’s men break as Bryce’s death-spell took another. They weren’t cowards, but this was beyond them. As yet another man clutched his chest and fell, they wavered. It was death to stay. So they didn’t. They ran, with the remaining Chinese.
Mat was left alone, at the head of the narrow street. From the far end he saw flashes and smoke billow. A loud erratic series of crashes echoed through the valley. Concentrated, disciplined musketry, not the sort that Jones’s group was capable of delivering. Enemy fire.
He and Bryce eyeballed each other. Behind the warlock, Riki was standing like a zombie. Byron Kikitoa stood beside him with a taiaha held in a casual grip, as if this were all a game and he was more interested in assessing Bryce’s capabilities than taking a hand.
Mat felt a surge of anger and despair. This was turning into a disaster that could see people he loved die. But he wasn’t done, not by any stretch. He kindled flame on his fingertips and walked forward.
Moment of truth time.
Bryce lifted his hand and focused on Mat. His voice filled the space between them, filled his ears and echoed into his mind. ‘Die, Matiu Douglas. Die.’
Evie landed on the roof above the street, touching down lightly. The cloak still clung to her, so that she felt like a strange, clumsy bird. When she saw Mat standing alone, her hand went to her mouth. Were the others dead?
She’d spent the first minute or so gaining height, trying to see what was happening. Over by the edge of the settlement stood the gaol house, the largest standalone building she could make out in the moonlight. Two lines of people were facing each other, fire and shot rolling between. The rest of the fighting had no such clarity. There were muzzle flashes from all along the first row of houses, as men sheltering in the trees alongside the river exchanged fire. Jones’s force had got strung out and bogged down. Things were going from bad to worse.
She fought a stab of helplessness. She had no idea what was happening, or how to intervene. But she drew playing cards from her deck and threw them into the air, assigning identities as she went. The King of Diamonds flew to her left, followed by the King of Spades: Jones and Kiki. An Ace of Hearts and an Ace of Spades trailed them in the air, and she had no idea what either meant. Aces were either high or low — double-edged weapons.
Before her, the Jack of Spades and the Jack of Clubs faced the Jack of Hearts: Byron and Bryce against Mat. The Ace of Clubs hung between them. A death card, in her own personal mythology. Then a rune stone flew from her pocket and began to orbit Mat — the fire rune, Kaunaz. A second later, she heard Bryce shout aloud, and sensed his spell strike Mat. The Ace of Clubs slapped the fire rune away, and the Jack of Hearts teetered.
Bully Hayes stared at Shui and slowly smiled. ‘Well, sure, girl, I remember you.’ His accent was American, his gloating tones filling the taproom. ‘Didn’t we have a little fun together?’
Shui spat and rammed a musket ball into the mouth of her pistol. ‘No. But this will be fun.’
Hayes tried to lunge for the door, but Damien interposed, darting sideways and blocking him. Steel clashed on steel, the cutlass heavy and Hayes’s wrist strong. The captain countered with surprising grace, then unleashed a series of ferocious blows. Damien was forced to defend, his lighter blade bending with each impact as he was made to give ground. Breath gusted from his mouth at each blow.
‘I’ve been using a blade all my life, boy,’ Hayes panted.
‘Yeah? Me too.’ Damien feinted a lunge that had Hayes back-pedalling, giving Damien a second to regain his poise. ‘I’ve fought at every age level of the North Island fencing champs, buddy.’ He thrust again, forcing Hayes to pause his adva
nce to parry. He kicked a chair at the man, then feinted left and lunged right, ripping a tear in the man’s left forearm. ‘Got some ribbons too.’
‘Ah, you prick!’ the American rasped, wincing at the wound. He retreated across the room. Behind Damien, Shui cocked the hammer of her gun and grunted in satisfaction.
Hayes tried to run, sensing the trap closing about him. He darted for the door, blocking Damien’s thrust and shoving at him. Damien parried deftly. ‘No way, arsehole.’ He slashed high, beat off a counter and then stabbed the captain in the thigh. Hayes yelped and staggered away, crabbing into a corner while Damien followed him warily.
Shui stepped in beside him. ‘My turn, Dami.’ She stepped beside Damien and levelled the gun at the captain. ‘You are mine now, Mister William Hayes.’
Hayes froze, staring at her. ‘Shui, isn’t it?’
‘Yes.’ Her finger tightened on the trigger. ‘This for my family.’
Damien thought Hayes might try to run, or plead. He did neither. Just as Shui’s finger moved on the trigger, he performed a small, curious gesture: he drew the thumb of his left hand across the space between him and Shui.
Blood sprayed, and the tiny Chinese girl collapsed. Damien felt his whole world begin to tear apart. The girl slid to the ground as her legs buckled, and she sprawled, choking out blood and air from her torn throat, her eyes helpless as they locked on his, pleading for something.
‘I may not be a hot-shot wizard, but I know the rules of this place,’ Hayes drawled. ‘I killed her in the real world: that gives me power of life and death over her here.’ He laughed coldly. ‘Silly bitch shoulda knowed that.’ He lifted his cutlass. ‘You shoulda too, boy.’
He thrust his curved blade at Damien’s belly.
Death-wish
