But no, this is insane.
Yet, the bullet hadn’t exited until the muzzle had jerked beneath the bandit’s chin. And then—
A spray of blood and bone and brain, the bandit’s face eviscerated.
Isaac looked at the mess, looked at the gun. He felt sick. No longer did the hunger burn within him, and he had to turn away lest he throw up.
Behind him, Carmen shook.
Isaac said, “It’s okay, girl. We’re safe now. It’s okay.”
But he looked at the revolver on the forest floor. The low flames didn’t reflect off the metal; neither did the moonlight, and Isaac wondered if they really were safe.
* * *
He crawled out of the copse of trees and found a large rock a few feet away. Then he set to rubbing his binds against the edge, so fast he could smell the burning twine. Eventually, the rope broke and he was free. There were deep impressions around his wrist; the dead bandit didn’t possess much courtesy when it came to tying him up.
Once free, he went back to the campsite. Carmen was still shaking, on her feet now, pulling at her own harness, which was wrapped around a tree. He stroked her neck until she calmed down.
The revolver lay in the same spot, an inanimate object. Isaac began feeling silly about his previous ideas. Thinking the gun was alive, that it possessed some sort of sentience, was the thought of a boy, one with a heightened imagination.
He was no longer a boy. Had he not turned seventeen, had the old ways not dictated that milestone to be a male’s coming of age, Isaac would’ve certainly counted himself a man. He had seen two deaths in a span of just days; more than most men saw in their entire lives. One of them, of course, was his own mother. And another had been more gruesome than anything he could’ve imagined.
He looked at what was left of the bandit. The blood had stopped rolling from his blasted neck. Most of it had been drunk by the soil. In the Long Ago, it was said that such actions were the cause of haunted forests. Where great battles were fought, the soil would be rich with evil blood, and from the strange sustenance, ghosts and ghouls would sprout like plant life.
Isaac shuddered at the thought.
Then, to double-check that this wasn’t a vivid hallucination, he toed the man with one of his boots and felt the solidity of the flesh. The body went forward and back, his arm falling from his side and thumping in the grass. The man was certainly real and certainly dead.
He went through the man’s bag, much in the same way the bandit had done to him, since he certainly wouldn’t need whatever was in it now.
Inside of the bag was an assortment of strange items. Isaac found a rabbit’s foot coated with blood, a clove of garlic, a hunting knife, a pair of women’s undergarments, and a coin purse. Naturally, he pulled the coin purse out of the bag, though he was quite curious about the undergarments. They were of lacy material and seemed to be used—an observation that both intrigued and disgusted him.
He loosened the tie of the change purse and counted the money. It was not much, a few silver coins, one gold piece, and two ruined half-bills so old they were not worth anything, but it would be enough for him to get a proper room, meal, bath, and maybe even clothes within the city.
So Isaac packed up all the items he thought useful—the garlic, the hunting knife, his weapons, the money—and left the dead body of the bandit. Carmen was glad to go, and for the first time on their journey, the cow led the way.
Thoughts of setting up a new camp came to mind, considering it was still dark and would be for nigh on a few hours, but he ultimately decided against it. The notions of haunted forests and more bandits crossed his mind. A fire would’ve been nice, but as long as he was moving, he would stay pretty warm.
As he walked, the coins jingled in his knapsack and the revolver weighed heavily on his shoulders.
“The sooner we get to Track City, the better,” he said aloud.
No one replied. Thankfully.
Chapter 10
Sentencing
Bound and thrown in a cell in the heart of town, Ansen Kane looked through the rusty bars at Jensen Watts. The deputy-turned-sheriff-turned-necromancer twirled Kane’s revolver around his index finger. No light reflected off the metal.
Though Kane’s face remained impassive, he burned with anger. That gun was meant for him and him only. A coward like Jensen Watts shouldn’t have been able to handle such a fine piece of weaponry.
“Quite a thing, this is,” Watts said, grinning. A toothpick hung from the corner of his mouth. A dead-but-reanimated crony ambled about the sheriff’s department with a zombie-like gait. “Never thought I’d hold one. Hell, never thought I’d see a real life gun knight with my own eyes. Little did I know I had one living right under my nose the past few years! What a world we live in.”
Kane said nothing. He just stared into Watts’s eyes with burning hatred.
“Maybe I’ll go out shooting with this baby tonight,” Watts said. “Always wanted to shoot a revolver like it.”
Kane thought, Yes, please do, you dunce.
But then Watts was grinning, the toothpick rising with the pull of his lips, and he said, “Nah, I ain’t gonna do that. I’m no dummy, Kane. I know the spells woven into the metal. I know any enemy who tries to pull the trigger of a gun knight’s revolver winds up with a sizzling hole somewhere in their body.”
“Better than what you deserve.”
The smile vanished in an instant. Watts lunged forward and gripped the bars with a meaty hand. His eyes bulged from his face. Sweat stood on his brow just below the line of his hair.
“You wanna talk about what I deserve, my friend? You’re the one exiled from the kingdom. You’re the one with a price on his head.”
“That’s what this is about, money?”
Watts took a step back. For a short moment, Kane’s gun was within reach, on the other side of the bars, yes, but within reach. He still possessed his fast hands. Once a gun knight, always a gun knight, but if he took the chance, things could go from bad to worse.
“It’s about honor, Kane. Honor.”
“Says the man who killed the sheriff in cold blood and took his job.”
Watts shook his head. That grin came back to his face. “I killed the man who wouldn’t do the right thing and apprehend you. If anything, that is honorable. At least I got the balls to say it. At least I didn’t travel halfway across the world in shame.”
It was Kane’s turn to grin. “I have never lived in shame, Watts. Nor will I.”
“That’s your first mistake.”
“Locking me up. That is yours, Sheriff,” Kane replied.
“We’ll see about that. But I would bet my life on it that you’re finished. The crown will be here in the next week or so. I’ll get my bounty, and you’ll be out of my hair. Then I’ll start cleaning up this town, the way it was supposed to be.”
Ignoring this, Kane said, “There’s a price to pay for using dark magic, Watts. If you knew about my weapon, then you know about this.”
For the first time, Watts showed a different emotion besides anger or cockiness. He looked uneasy, because he certainly did know about that deathly price. The darkness, once allowed into a person’s life, will start to consume their very soul. It feasts on it. Thrives. Many men had gone mad from turning the knob of the Devil’s Door—men far greater than Jensen Watts.
And Watts knew this; Kane could see it in his eyes.
“There’s a price to pay for being a coward,” Watts replied. “You’ll find out soon enough.”
With that, he left, leaving Ansen Kane to himself. One of the reanimated men followed behind. The flesh of his ruined neck flapped with each step.
* * *
Low Town’s population hardly exceeded a few hundred. Not many wanted to live this close to the Infected Lands. Who could blame them? When the sun went down, and the night was still, one could hear the pained voices of the damned out there, and every time they were heard, they sounded closer.
Jensen Wat
ts walked into the Proudpost the day he locked Kane in a cell. He was flanked by four dead men. Each moved sluggishly. Each looked with unseeing eyes. And each had begun to smell.
No one played the piano, and the low murmur of conversation ceased as the batwing doors pushed open.
Wallace stood behind the counter, polishing a glass with a dirty rag. His head pounded with pain and it was bandaged up tight from his run-in with the bounty hunters on the night previous.
“Sheriff,” he said, nodding his head at Watts.
“Wally.”
“Can I get you anything?”
“Nothing for me tonight,” Watts replied.
Instead, he climbed up on the bar. His head was mere inches away from a whirring ceiling fan.
Wallace thought of pushing the sheriff into it. It might not kill him, but it would muck the bastard up pretty good. He had, after all, killed Donny and the former sheriff—Wallace didn’t care much for the old sheriff, but he’d loved Donny like a brother.
Wallace had ridden out to Crowne’s—Kane’s—hovel earlier and found his body. He was sitting in the undertaker’s basement right now, all pale, paper-skinned, and shot to hell. The wind had been still, and since the previous storm had passed, the outskirts of the desert had gone back to normal. Dry. Arid. Hot.
Because of this stillness, Wallace heard something in Kane’s well. It was a terrible sound, like nails scratching at the underside of a coffin, like footsteps in an empty house. Suffice it to say, he didn’t investigate.
But Wallace wouldn’t push the new sheriff, mostly because the dead men that flanked Watts scared the living hell out of him. He’d had enough of conflict. All he wanted to do was serve drinks, make coin, and see them all get out of his place. Best not to rile anyone else up.
Watts cleared his throat. He had come with the intent of proclaiming his rule over Low Town. If you wanted to reach a good portion of the town’s population, the Proudpost on a dry and hot evening was the place to do it. Husbands wanted to flood the dust from their mouths after a day in the mines or in the desert. Wives and children stayed home, but they would hear the gossip nonetheless.
“Some of you—well, I’m sure all of you—now know a traitor was living amongst us,” Watts began, his voice projecting across the saloon. “I’m not talkin’ about a regular, run-of-the-mill outlaw, either. I’m talkin’ about a traitor to our King, to Aendvar.”
“Bugger the Kingdom,” said Scooter Decker in a soft voice. He was heavily bearded and quite drunk, his eyes red, lips shiny with spit, and head lolling.
“Excuse me?” Watts said, but this was a rhetorical question.
Before Scooter could answer, the sheriff snapped his fingers at one of his dead guards. A man formerly called Charles Neal stepped forward. The gruesome wound in the reanimated man’s face still stood out in plain view, gummy and red-black.
Charles Neal, with one gnarled hand, grabbed Scooter by the throat and lifted the old man out of his chair with near superhuman strength. The patrons of the Proudpost wanted to look away, but found they couldn’t.
His face going red, Scooter choked out a plea that no one could understand. The patrons didn’t look away or do anything. Finally, the crunch of Scooter’s neck breaking reverberated off the wooden walls, and Charles Neal dropped the old man’s lifeless body to the floor.
“Any other objections?” Watts asked with a smug grin on his face. “Anyone else want to spit on Aendvar’s name?”
No one said anything, but the hate and fear and death had soured their guts.
“Right, where was I?” Watts continued. “Yes. This traitor is well sought after by agents of the crown. He has a hefty price on his head, one I could not pass up. I have been in direct contact with those in charge of bounties in the kingdom.”
He reached into his back pocket and pulled free a small crystal ball. A strange light swirled within, painting his face in a sickly green hue. For a moment, Watts looked like one of his reanimated soldiers.
“I pulled this off of the bounty hunter murdered in cold blood here last night. Can’t say he’ll miss it, and if I hadn’t taken it, I wouldn’t have learned the terrible truth about Ansen Kane.
“He is a murderer, a killer, a coward. He will kill anything that walks and breathes on this earth. He has toppled kingdoms. He has cheated, he has lied, he has stolen. The world will be a better place without him. And with the coin given as a reward for his apprehension, I will only help better our small community.”
There were a few cheers in reply. A couple haggard men in the back raised their mugs of ale and beer.
Watts grinned widely. “That’s all I care about. I’ve been here nearly two decades. Low Town is my home. Aendvar is my kingdom. I am no traitor, I am no rebel to the crown. I care about you all as if you were my family.”
Behind him, Wallace rolled his eyes. He thought Scooter Decker would certainly argue with that idea.
“Are we in agreement?”
No one answered besides the drunkest of the drunks. Had they been sober, Wallace thought they certainly wouldn’t have.
Watts frowned. “Perhaps the man going under the name of Crowne was nice to you. Perhaps he treated you with respect and admiration. I know it is true for some of us. Perhaps all of us. But that no longer matters. The kingdom comes first, before all. We must forget any niceties that ‘Noah Crowne’ has shown us. If it were up to me, I’d watch him hang. Hell, I’d tie the rope around his neck myself, right here, right now! But I can’t, for I am just a lowly sheriff in a small town, and there are greater forces at work involving him. There are greater men than me who want this outlaw.” Watts cleared his throat. “Now, I need to know you are all on my side.” His eyes flicked to the crumpled body of Scooter Decker.
Wallace thought, At least there’s no blood to clean up this time. At least he died with a crushed windpipe instead of a crushed head.
Following Watts’s eyes, the large crowd of drinkers gave out a small “Aye” of agreement.
“I said, who’s with me?” Watts raised a fist in the air.
This time, the crowd was louder. So loud, in fact, that Ansen Kane could hear their cheers from across the street in his cell.
“Better!” Watts called. “Now, to celebrate a long and prosperous relationship…” he reached into his pocket and pulled out a roll of silver coins, “drinks are on me for the rest of the night.”
Watts climbed down off the bartop and passed the money to Wallace. The bartender’s eyes grew. He didn’t like himself as the coin filled his hands, but dammit, he needed the money—blood money or not.
The crowd swarmed Watts, as the new sheriff stuck his arms out like some god.
Wallace, his pockets a little heavier, began pouring their drinks.
Chapter 11
At the Gates
Isaac reached the city nearly two hours later. A stream of people had lined up at the front gates. A steady flow of incoming and outgoing traffic went through. The sun wouldn’t come up for another hour or so, yet the city didn’t care.
Isaac’s mother had said once that the big cities never slept. You could hear the constant babble and chatter and rolling wheels of wagons down the cobblestone and brick streets no matter the time. The day was always bright, yet when night came around, not much changed. Torches lined the walkways and illuminated the insides of shops, bars, and homes in the downtown district.
He had never been there during the night. On top of the mystical properties of the city his mother had seemed to instill in his brain, she had also told him that it wasn’t safe at after dark—and hardly safe in the daylight, either. The derelicts and urchins came out in droves. Crime was a big problem in certain areas of the city, and there were simply not enough guards to combat the problem of the constant influx of population.
Track City was a hub for trade. Sitting on the Auvade River, which led to the sea and the neighboring countries far on the other side, many sailors and tradesmen came through, docking for the night and ge
tting in all sorts of mischief during their time there. Sea life was hard living. Not many wanted to take a job where they saw more water than land, and often the crews of many trade boats were full of criminals. Hard people.
Track City also lay upon the Crownroad, miles and miles of a straight route north to the capital city of Aendvar.
Isaac had never seen the capital, had only read about it and heard the stories from his mother. She had said it paled in comparison to Track City; it was like plankton to a whale. Looking upon the towering walls and distant castles of Track City beyond, Isaac couldn’t comprehend a larger metropolis such as Aendvar’s capital, Aendvar Point.
Cora Bleake had also said that the capital was no longer like it once had been, so many years ago, long before he was born.
Since the Knights of the Gun’s fall, things had taken a turn for the worst. The godly aura about the spiraling towers and hills had gone dark. Langan Falls and the nearby rivers had, for a short while, run red with the blood of the thousands slain in the attempted overthrow.
Rebels of the Crown, she had called the overthrowers.
Conveniently, such tales were not in Isaac’s history books; yet he believed his mother all the same.
Falling into line behind a wagon piled high with brass drums, Isaac led Carmen into the flow of people. As the line moved and they got closer to the city, he smelled roasting meat, sweat, and garbage…lots of garbage. He heard the clamor of people, some speaking in languages besides the common tongue, and distantly, the sweet ring of melodious music, the pounding of a gong—the sounds of the city, of life.
He was filled with anticipation. It beat out all other emotions: fear, longing, heartache, and hunger.
The line moved steadily on. At the gates stood a handful of armored knights. One was scribbling on a sheaf of paper. Curious, Isaac thought. He hadn’t seen that before. Then again, his last visit here was close to six months ago.
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