To say that things have been in upheaval lately would be an understatement. Things like “returning to a regular blogging schedule” and “maintaining a solid fanbase” have been something of a lower priority as I’ve sorted out housing, managed my barista schedule, and generally gotten more settled into this next phase of my life. How I got here isn’t a happy tale, nor is it a finished one – but who among us can say that our story is actually finished?
Anyway. It’s been one of the longest traditions of this blog to respond to the Flash Fiction Challenge over at Chuck Wendig’s Terribleminds. It shows up on most Fridays, provided Chuck isn’t gallivanting around the country or writing award-winning novels. Even then, he tends to be pretty good at planning his posts ahead. Better than some of us, for sure.
So a good place for me to begin in trying to do likewise, and return Blue Ink Alchemy to a regular schedule, seems to be writing up some Flash Fiction. I turned my browser to Terribleminds, and instead of a full-length post, 500-100 words, this week the challenge is to write a tweet. Hence this verbose forward to what follows! At 131 characters, here’s how I contributed to the Tales from Black Friday.
The number of dead, trampled, and broken don’t matter.
I’m not the kind of guy who likes surprises very much.
I never had much in the way of birthday parties to begin with, but surprise parties in particular always rubbed me the wrong way. I mean, you want to celebrate my life by trying to scare me to death? No, thank you. It’s really difficult to prepare for that sort of thing if your friends are any good at keeping secrets.
And for a wizard, especially a professional one like myself, preparation is the name of the game.
The old house creaks under my feet as I make my way through it. I whisper a word to light the wick inside of the lantern I’m carrying, and pale orange light spills out into a circle in front of my on the floor. It’s something Bob the Skull helped me whip up, an old “bullseye” style lantern, with a minor enchantment that let me see ghosts and pierce minor veils. The word is that there have been a bunch of disappearances around the house, which is in a run-down neighborhood situated between downtown Chicago and one of its suburbs. It’s one of those areas you just keep driving past if you know what’s good for you.
But when you’re Harry Dresden, and someone pays you to look for their lost child in a place the police are unwilling or unable to go, you really don’t have that choice.
I make a face as the heat from the lamp starts cooking some of the dust on the floor and in the air. There’s a musty smell about the place in general, and the sudden heat source doesn’t help to abate that. I’m used to foul smells, but I wish I wasn’t. I’d much rather be back in my lab, helping Molly do some research into her father’s sword, Amoracchius, and trying to coordinate some of the activities of the Gray Council of which I was now apparently a founding member. I have a lot of things to deal with in my world, from vengeful vampire lords to ancient magical conspiracies, and this is taking time away from them.
All thoughts of the world outside of the house go flying out of my brain, though, when I step into the basement.
The world goes… weird. I feel off-balance, sick to my stomach, and get a headache, all at once. It lasts for a few interminable moments. Then, it’s gone. I blink, shake my head to clear it, and raise the lantern to look around.
The basement’s a basement. Cobwebs, mostly empty shelves, creepy corners. I turn, and look at the stairs I just walked down.
The stairs are collapsed.
They hadn’t made a noise. I shine the lantern into the threshold. There’s just enough room for me to step back through. I do, and the vertigo slams into me again. Once I recover, I’m looking up the stairs I’d just walked down, whole and intact. My brain finally gets through its warm-up cycle and I realize where I’d felt those things before.
The first time I’d ever used a Way into the Nevernever.
This was different, though. The Nevernever has a very particular feel to it. Stepping through (retch) a second time, it still feels like the real world once I recover. I walk through the basement to the storm doors, up the stairs and out, and look around. It’s the same neighborhood, still a Chicago no-mans-land, and nothing in my natural or wizardly senses tells me it’s an illusion or a construct. It’s real. Just… different.
“I hate surprises,” I say to myself.
As if in response (me and my big mouth), a engine rumbles up the drive on the other side of the house.
I stay low, and I Listen. The night’s relatively quiet, with just a couple of crickets that were silenced when the big car, some classic muscle-style beast, rumbles to a stop on the driveway. The engine sputters to silence, and I hear two doors open and close.
“Look, I don’t want to talk about your anger issues, okay?” The first voice is on the gruff side, and clearly annoyed. “I’m not your damn therapist.”
“No, you’re not.” The second voice is more refined, collegiate, but also exasperated. “You’re my brother, Dean. And you’re the only one I can talk to about this sort of thing.”
“You really want to keep doing this? Huh? In case you’ve lost track because you’ve been too busy flying over the cuckoo’s nest, we have a fucking Apocalypse to stop.”
There’s a pause.
“Then what are we doing here, Dean?”
“The last place we stayed at said that this house is where people have been disappearing. Come on, Sam. Some classic, old-school monster-hunting. Just what you need to put that anger to use. It’s what I do.”
“Yeah. And you’re so well-adjusted.”
There’s an audible shrug. “At least I’m not bitchin’ about it constantly.”
“And that’s healthy.” Sam sighs. “All right, come on.”
They come around the corner, flashlights in hand. Guess who’s standing there out in the open.
“Hi,” I say conversationally. “You boys lost?”
I lift my lantern to get a look at them. One’s tall, over six feet, with a lanky build, stylishly long dark hair, and a somewhat pained expression, probably from the end of that conversation. The other, shorter guy is built more like a boxer, all compact muscle and attitude, with close-cropped hair and narrowing, suspicious eyes. I know what they’re seeing, too – the silhouette of a guy in a leather duster holding a bullseye lantern in his right hand, and leaning on a large staff held in his left.
“Um. No.” The shorter one’s eyes narrow even more. His voice pegs him as Dean. “We’re… just passing through.”
“We saw your light,” says Sam. “We got curious.”
I make a face. One of those you boys are full of it faces. Molly says I’d make a good parent, with faces like that. I shudder to think what I’d be like as a parent.
“Well, then, you can keep passing. This isn’t something you guys want to be involved in.”
“Really?” Sam looks incredulous. I don’t blame him – I would, too.
“Really. There are monsters out here. Ghosts, at the very least.”
Dean nods in my direction, smirking. I can smell the smartass comment coming before he speaks. “So you, ah, watch that Ghostfacers show?”
“I don’t own a TV,” I say. “All I know is, I walked out of that basement in a city that isn’t mine, with my car nowhere in sight, and Goofus and Gallant rolling up here talking about the Apolcalypse.”
The young men stare at me.
“So,” I continue into the silence. “How about you leave the monster-hunting business to the professional wizard, get back in your car, and drive on down the road.”
“Wizard,” Dean repeated. “So… you’re a he-witch?”
I blink. “A what?”
Dean doesn’t let me clarify further.
Instead, he shoots me.
DISCLAIMER: This is a work of fan fiction. Harry Dresden and all attendant characters, locations, and creatures are property of Jim Butcher. Dean Winchester, Sam Winchester, and all attendant characters, locations, and creatures are property of Supernatural. Please support the official releases of both properties.
Is it still called waking up when you were not asleep, but dead?
It’s one of the questions you struggle with every time you return to consciousness. You are, at least, spared anything resembling a nightmare or even an idle thought while you are in repose; you know for a fact that your brain shuts down completely every time the sun rises. Now that it’s set, you are mobile again. Until that moment when twilight ended and night actually began, anybody finding you would have mistaken you for just another dead body.
It’s cold. The air conditioning unit up in one of the basement windows is kept on full blast during the day so your body’s falling temperature doesn’t stop for hours. That holds off the worst of the rigor mortis, so that when you… wake up? … your body can actually move. Stiffly. You take a moment to sit up slowly, flex your fingers painfully, get your blood circulating again.
The burning in your chest begins very soon after. You look down at the little round hole in your sternum. Every once in a while, you move in such a way that you feel a stabbing pain in the left side of your chest, deep within your ribcage. The bullet – it’s still there, still lodged somewhere in the wall of your heart. No blood comes from the wound, which is closed over. It’s not clotted, the way wounds usually are; there’s just this translucent, milky film over the hole, slightly sticky to the touch. You get a chill down your spine whenever you touch it. You avoid touching it.
Once you’re moving more like a human and less like something from the imagination of George Romero or Robert Kirkland, you put on some clothes and a hooded sweatshirt. Your hands find their way into the sweatshirt’s pockets as you head up the stairs and out of the cellar door. The landlord upstairs only knows that you leave at night and return in the morning, and so far, has asked few questions. You haven’t considered getting a job for two reasons. One, night falls and morning comes at inconsistent times, and you don’t want to be dropping dead in the middle of a shift, or the commute home.
More importantly, though, you need to find your killer.
It was the first thing you thought of the first time you regained consciousness in the morgue. The smell of gunsmoke, wide eyes in the darkness, and a burning sense of indignant rage that your life was so callously ended. You need to remember more. Everything other than that searing moment before things went completely black is a haze. The faces of some friends and family linger in your mind, and you struggle to reconnect with anything resembling a coherent memory.
It’s why you walk away from where you were killed and towards another house not far from your own. You know it’s a bad idea. You know you can’t be seen. You know it’s going to end badly.
But your feet move in that direction anyway, muscle memory in control, your legs knowing the way even if your brain is telling you that you need to be elsewhere. Finding your killer. Earning your rest.
You stop across the street, between two houses, covered in shadow. You look up at the porch. You see them there, the lights of their cigarettes bobbing, the soft sound of beer cans moving, the occasional soft laugh. It’s an uneasy sound, a sound of recovery. They’re hurting, over there. Someone is, at least. You narrow your eyes, trying to make out more than shadows. And then –
Sitting on the porch with your friends, you laugh heartily at a joke and lift your glass. Another rim touches yours. You both drink. This is familiar, comfortable, and safe. No expectations. No awkwardness. No hidden agendas or concealed emotions. Honesty. Trust. Love. Friends. Smiles that light up rooms and make other people curious, if not downright envious.
Your heart clenches. The bullet is a burning coal in your ribcage. You exhale, a name pushing its way out of your dried, cracked throat past blackening teeth. You hear a can drop. The lights of the cigarettes stop moving. Panic shoots through your body. You turn and you run.
The dead have no place among the living.
Still, you make your way back downtown. Into the lights and seething populace of the urban center. You once again walk by where it happened. You hear the gunshot again, a phantom sound in the back of your mind. You scan the ground for clues. You’ve been here often enough to doubt you’ll find anything. But that garbage can wasn’t where it has been before. Someone moved it, probably to carry it to the curb. Under where it was is a small rectangle, and you bend to look –
The business card’s your only lead. Phone inquiries and talking with others in safe environments only goes so far. You need to go to the source to get your answers. Card in hand you head for the address when you get stopped by someone who knows what you’ve been doing, the questions you’ve been asking. You don’t see the gun before it’s too late…
You stagger. Your hand reaches out of the wall nearby. You can’t take your eyes off of the business card. You bend, knees creaking, and pick it up.
Turning, you see people staring at you. Flashing lights in the distance. And in the sky, stars disappearing as dawn looms. How long were you standing there?
You break into a run. You head for the only haven you have. You clutch the card tightly, the grip of the dead. You throw open the cellar door with strength that surprises you, nearly ripping it from its hinges.
You pull off your clothes, lest they start to stink, and climb onto your slab. You still hold the card. You want to cry.
Getting back into the swing of things with a return to the Terribleminds Flash Fiction Challenges. This one is “The Random Title Jamboree“. After I rolled my trusty d20, I started on this. I hope you enjoy it.
He sat in the back of his dingy, run-down van. The metal seat wasn’t comfortable. It wasn’t made for long-term sit-downs. Yet he’d stayed there for most of an hour, the late afternoon sun coming through the windshield, staring at the hood in his hands.
There was a quote or a paraphrase that kept coming back to him, from when he’d seen The Godfather as a kid. “There are men in this world who go about demanding to be killed.” He’d seen them first hand. They wandered the streets of the city, hands eager for money or flesh or blood, eyes always alert for the next victim, the next fix. The police couldn’t catch them all. The law wouldn’t hold them all. Prisons failed, rehabilitation didn’t take, and all the while the victims and their families suffered.
Someone had to do something about those repeat-offending skate-on-a-technically thinking-they-will-never-get-caught motherfuckers.
How did his actions make him any different than them?
He looked up from the hood to the rack on the opposite wall of the van. It was one of those panel jobs, with no windows past the two doors up front down the entire length of both sides. The back windows were open but tinted; he could see out through the rear-view mirror but nobody could see in. Nobody could see the rack. Nobody could see the assault rifles, the shotguns, the pistols. He kept multiple weapons to be prepared, in case of damages, jams, or other mishaps. He didn’t want to be in a situation where he had someone at the end of a rifle with no recourse when something went wrong.
He didn’t want to be in a situation where someone caught sight of him and took revenge on his loved ones in response to his justice.
He looked back down at the hood. It could use a wash. It didn’t smell great. More than one criminal had bled on it. Darker spatters marked its black cloth, evidence of several close-range headshots and one incident where he’d beaten a man to death with a lead pipe after a rough struggle. It came with the territory; when you did this sort of thing, you were bound to run into a bad situation. Things got messy. What mattered was surviving.
It didn’t really matter that he didn’t talk to his ex-wife regularly. Nor did it matter that his visits with his kids were supervised. What mattered was that they were protected. Both from any retribution for what he did, and the nature of what he did itself. He stared at the hood for as long as he could stand, closing his eyes when the emotions welled up.
Why was the world like this? Why did it take monsters to hunt monsters? Why did he have to become one when his partner and sister died together in that car bomb? They’d been so happy. He’d loved seeing them together. He still went by their graves to remind himself what was at stake, what might happen if he wasn’t careful… It was just as much a ritual as putting on the hood.
Which he did. Smell and all, he needed it. His family needed it.
He turned his attention to the bins under the racks. The bins containing the bullets. The rifle ammunition, he bought in bulk, mostly because it was cheap that way. But the handgun ammunition, he crafted by hand. He picked up things from pawn shops – jewelry from broken families, heirlooms of dead parents, the evidence of crimes whose victims left their pain unspoken – and worked them into the bullets. Every one meant something. Every one was intended to bring peace. Every one silenced a voice held in an innocent person’s head.
He executed more than scumbags.
He inhaled deeply, galvanizing his nostrils against the smell of the hood and what was coming tonight. Slowly, methodically, he loaded two of his handguns, holstering each at his hips. He then loaded two extra magazines, one for each pistol, which went into the pouch behind his back. He opted for one of the shotguns, a pump-action number with a forward pistol grip, a sawn-down barrel, and a collapsing stock. Its sling went over his shoulder, followed by his hooded long coat. It was cold enough that nobody would question his fashion at a glance. And most of his walking would not be on public streets.
There was another city between the avenues and thoroughfares. One unseen by those who merely existed between their austere offices and boring homes. Like the rest of the city, most of the people there just wanted to find a better life; a measure of happiness that often seemed just out of reach. But in the shadows of the highrises were the people who didn’t just wait for that measure, nor sought it with their own resources – they were content to take what they wanted from those who could not defend themselves.
They needed to know there were consequences to their actions.
He felt the weight of the vest under his coat. He felt the weight of the weapons on his hips, from his shoulder. He felt the weight of the bullets in his heart.
An executioner’s work was rarely done. He was a monster who disposed of other monsters.
And one day, another monster would dispose of him.
Until then, he had bullets enough for every other monster he’d meet tonight.
Last week, I posted some Flash Fiction that put some old gods in new situations. This has been an interest of mine for some time. I thought I’d pull in some old stories of mine and see what else can be done. Like this one – The Drifer’s Hand.
It would be silly to try and translate every story from the Eddas in this way, but I still feel like there’s more story, here. I don’t know if I’ll do anything with it, but maybe… Just maybe… We’ll see, I suppose.
The Eddas are full of manliness, with epic tales of heroes facing down monsters and often paying a dear price for being who and what they are. And many Old West tales bring us images of stalwart, stoic men standing in dusty roads, eyes narrowed at an opponent, unwilling to back down even if it means a bullet for their trouble.
It felt, to me, like a match made in Asgard, and the result is The Drifter’s Hand.
You can read the text below, or download the PDF here. Either way, read, comment & enjoy.
Spoiler
For a good portion of the late 1800s, the Arizona boom-town Midgard was every bit as prosperous and populous as her sisters. She never quite grew to the proportions of Tombstone, though, and as the new century approached she began to shrink. There was talk of the railroad going through or near the town, but local lawlessness kept the Santa Fe people from really committing to any sort of construction.
The stranger approached Midgard on a strong but tired horse, his hat half-tipped over his eyes, his beard disheveled and lips cracked from the road. His boots were caked with mud and his duster had more than a couple holes in it, some natural wear and tear while others clearly indicated the paths of past bullets. He seemed heedless of the looks he was getting from Midgard’s locals as he rode into town, his horse unerringly heading for the nearest trough of fresh water.
As soon as his steed was positioned to wash away some of the dust from the road, the stranger swung down from the saddle, tying the horse to the nearby hitch. Removing one of his gloves, the man bent to the trough and drank some of the water himself. Flicking some droplets away from his beard, he turned and headed in the direction of the saloon.
His spurs tapped against the wooden floor. The mid-afternoon crowd in the saloon barely numbered a dozen, roughly half of them at or near the Faro table in the corner. The man behind the cards, a well-groomed gent with a dark waistcoat and thin mustache, glanced up at the stranger before declaring the player to his right the winner. The stranger removed his hat and approached the barkeep.
“I’d like a room, if one’s available.”
“Ain’t seen you ’round here before,” the barman observed as he placed a shot glass on the bar and produced a bottle whiskey. Seeing it, the stranger nodded. “You just passin’ through?”
“I’ve been on the road quite a while. Not sure if my last stop’ll be Tombstone or further west.”
The barman nodded, pouring the drink. “Well, there’s a room available for the night, if you want it. Dollar and a half a week to occupy it, and that entitles you to breakfast in the mornin’.”
“Sounds like a good deal.” The stranger was rummaging under his duster for his money when the saloon doors swung open again, permitting a stocky man in a widebrimmed hat to enter. The sash around his waist, the band at his arm and the kerchief tied around his neck were all the same color, the red of blood pumping from a gaping wound.
“Oh, horseshit.” The color drained from the barman’s face.
“It’s Tuesday, Dwight,” the newcomer bellowed. “Fenris wants their money.”
“I don’t have it all.” The man behind the bar, his hand shaking, produced a modest iron box with a handle. He opened it and pulled out a small wad of bills. “The rooms ain’t been full all week and not many people been stoppin’ by…”
“Stuff it.” The newcomer snatched the money from the shaking hand offered to him, and quickly counted it. “This is all? What about that city slicker in the corner?”
At mention of the corner, the crowd around the Faro table scattered. The man who’d been dealing raised his eyebrows at them.
“Looks like he just lost most of his profit,” he observed, not looking at the newcomer. “I already paid Dwight for this week.”
The newcomer slammed a fist into the table in frustration and grabbed Dwight by the lapels. “I oughta break your face. You holdin’ out on Fenris? You know that ain’t smart.”
“I’m sorry! I’ll have it tomorrow!”
“Tomorrow is when Fenris comes through here and burns this stinkin’ waterin’ hole to the ground!”
The sound of a gun being cocked echoed through the saloon. The newcomer’s eyes slid to his right, towards the barrel pressed to his temple. The stranger set down the shot glass with his right hand, the left occupied with gripping the Colt Peacemaker.
“I think now’s a good time to leave,” he told the newcomer.
“You lost your marbles, stranger? This ain’t your concern.”
“I plan on sleeping here. If you and whomever this Fenris guy is plan on burning the place down while I’m sleeping in it, I’d say that damn well makes it my concern.”
“Fenris ain’t one guy. Fenris is a force of nature! It’ll sweep through this town like a plague outta the Bible!”
“Well, you can tell Lucifer all about it when I send you to meet him. Which’ll be in 5 seconds if you don’t haul ass.”
The newcomer’s face slackened, his eyes flicking between the hard countenance of the stranger and Dwight’s disbelieving expression. At the fourth second, he swallowed. “This ain’t over.” He backed away from the gun, and then shook a fist at Dwight. “This ain’t over!”
“It is for now,” the stranger said. “Disappear.”
He did. Dwight poured the stranger another whiskey.
“Nobody’s stood up to a Fenris man for months. You must really not be from around here.”
The stranger knocked back the shot. “Mind telling me who or what Fenris is?”
“Wolves of Arizona.” The voice came from the man behind the Faro table, who stood and walked over to join the stranger at the bar. “Thieves, bank robbers, kidnappers and murders. Just the worst sort of cowboy. Most of ’em just wear the red sashes. Fenris folk go the extra mile with those red kerchiefs and armbands of theirs.”
“Heard most of the cowboys were down near Tombstone.”
“So they are, stranger, so they are. One for me too, Dwight.”
“Right away, Mr. Frey.” Dwight produced a second glass, cleaning it quickly to pour the dealer his whiskey.
“Needless to say,” Frey went on, “you’ve made yourself an enemy, and one that won’t easily be placated, Mister…”
“Tyr. Jim Tyr.”
“Pleased, Mr. Tyr. Arthur Frey, at your service.”
“You can just call me Jim. Mr. Tyr’s my father.”
“In that case, Jim, why don’t you call me Art?”
“So why are we playing poker now, instead of Faro?”
Art shrugged. “I like changing the game. I call.”
Jim rubbed his trimmed beard and considered his hand. Three threes wasn’t a strong one but it wasn’t bad, either. He didn’t fold. The locals at the table did. Art turned his cards over, showing a straight. Jim leaned back and gestured to the pot.
“All yours.”
Art smiled a bit and raked in the winnings as Jim turned back to his supper. Dwight had waived the fee for his room earlier, and after coming back from a bath and shave, Jim had found a plate of warm food waiting for him, also courtesy of the barkeep.
“I hear you ran off one of the Fenris boys.”
Jim stopped in the middle of slicing a bit of chicken with a dull knife.
“He was hassling Dwight and threatening to burn the place down. I’m sleeping here tonight. Didn’t want to wake up on fire.”
“An understandable concern, stranger, but most folk around here don’t want to piss off the Wolf.”
Jim looked up. The man standing over him wore a dark patch over his left eye and the star of a United States Marshall.
“They aren’t afraid of you, I take it?”
“They know I can’t be everywhere at once. And when I’m gone they think it’s fun to shoot my deputies. Always have plenty of witnesses to say it was self-defense or some such, though. Everybody’s afraid of ’em. They, on the other hand, don’t seem to be afraid of anything.”
“They should be. Every man’s got the same blood, same skin, same tendency to die when shot or stabbed.”
“Now there’s a pitch-black observation.” The Marshall leaned on the bar. “Where are you from anyhow, Mr. Tyr?”
Jim bristled. “Back East. Grew up around Arlington.”
“You fight in the war?”
He looked at the Marshall. “Yeah. Did you?”
Before the Marshall could answer, the doors of the saloon burst open. Three men walked in, all wearing the red of Fenris. Dwight ducked behind the bar and the music stopped.
“Odin! Where is he?”
The Marshall turned. “Right here next to me, Luke Hundr. And you ain’t taking him tonight.”
Luke stalked towards the table, his two cronies in tow. Art made a move to stand, but Jim shook his head. He stepped away from the others and hooked his thumbs in his gun belt.
“You looking for me?”
Luke scowled. “Hear you pulled a gun on my man Butch.”
“Butch was shaking down Dwight for money he didn’t have. He threatened to burn the place down. Since I’m sleeping here, I asked him not to.”
“You’ve got it wrong, stranger. Butch wasn’t going to do a thing on his own. WE will burn this place down. We put up the money for Dwight to open this little establishment, and if we want to burn it down since he can’t pay us, we’ll do just that.”
“Not in city limits,” Odin said. “You got a permit for this land, Luke? if so, you’ll want to evict Dwight and foreclose.”
Luke waved a hand dismissively. “That takes too long. I want my money or my land. If I can’t have one I’ll take the other.” He smirked at Odin. “And I know you got a hangin’ to be at tomorrow, Marshall. Got that nasty murderer Surtur locked up an’ ready to swing. Wouldn’t want to miss that, would you? Been chasing him, what, ten years?”
Odin’s eye narrowed and his mustache curled around his face in a frown. Luke looked past the Marshall at Jim.
“Tomorrow, you meet me out in the street or I burn this place down with you in it. Got it?”
Jim crossed his arms. “So you and all of your boys can shoot me at once? I didn’t fall off the stage yesterday.”
“It’ll just be you an’ me. We’ll settle this.” Luke smiled unpleasantly and tipped his hat to Odin. “Have a nice trip, Marshall.”
The Fenris men left in short order. Jim rubbed the bridge of his nose.
“Regretting pulling that gun on Butch?”
“I don’t do regret, Marshall. I take it he’s met men in the street before?”
“Many a time. Like I said, always plenty of witnesses saying the deputy or other poor sod drew down first. They say Luke’s got a sense for traps. Any time more than a couple of my men have been waiting for him to show, he doesn’t.”
“And I gather Luke won’t be showing up alone.”
“Probably not.” Odin patted him on the arm. “Nobody’ll think the less of you if you’re gone before dawn.”
“And leave them to burn Dwight’s place down? No way, Marshall. I’m not letting a mongrel like that run me out of town, and Dwight’s place is better standing and unscorched.”
“I have to agree.” Art Frey had resumed shuffling the cards, but wasn’t paying much attention to them. His eyes were on the men discussing the showdown. Music was playing again and people were going about their business. “This is our town, Marshall. It doesn’t belong to Fenris.”
“Art Frey, you ought to be ashamed of yourself.” Odin looked the gambler over with his good eye. “Siting here behind your cards for months not doing a damn thing about these hooligans. Why now?”
“They never threatened Dwight like this before. It’s be a very lean time. He hasn’t had lodgers, nor I many punters. Dwight and I got a good partnership going. I don’t want to see it end in flames.”
“Do you even own a gun?”
“Matter of fact, I do. Damn peculiar Henry rifle. Most people find it’s too heavy in the barrel or the stock, but if you know her balance and how to use it, the damn thing very nearly aims itself.”
Odin looked back to Tyr, who shrugged. The marshall then ordered three whiskeys, drank with the men and replaced his hat.
“I need to see to Surtur’s transportation. We’ll be gone before dawn. I wish I could delay but the judge is eager to put this on in the books. Good luck, gentlemen. You’re gonna need it.”
Odin left the saloon. Art turned to Jim.
“I hear you served in the war?”
“51st Virginia. You?”
“I’m a Massachusetts man, myself.”
They drank their next shot of whiskey in silence.
The horse at the hitching post turned to Jim, as if to ask a question. The drifter saw the look, knowing what it meant.
“I don’t know what I’m doin’ out here, either.”
The dawn broke over Midgard, painting the town and the surrounding parched lands in pinkish reds. The stagecoach with Marshall Odin, his prisoner and deputies had already rattled out of town. The sound of hooves brought Jim’s attention back to the street ahead of him. Around him, the signs of the shops swung in the morning breeze. The large sign for the livery stayed in place, dominating the second floor of the barn on the north end of town and sheltered from the wind.
Jim stepped away from his horse, hands held at shoulder height. He didn’t want to get shot before Luke Hundr had a chance to get off his ride. Eight men on horses came around the corner and down the street. Jim frowned.
“I’m here like we agreed, Luke Hundr.” He waved his right hand. “My gun hand’s empty. I thought you said it’d be just you and me.”
Luke smirked as he swung down from his horse. The other Fenris men stayed mounted, and Jim saw one of them was Butch, the beefy face under the wide-brimmed hat leering at him. Nobody else was out in the street or even near windows Jim could see. That was probably a safe bet on their part.
Without a word, Luke drew his pistol and shot Jim. The impact of the bullet half-spun the drifter to his right and sent him to the dirt. Jim had been shot before, which didn’t make it sting any less, but helped him fight down the sense of panic that always came with it. He saw his right hand, ruined, pumping blood into the dust.
“I told my first lie when I was six years old,” Luke told Jim as the hooting from his men died down. “I ain’t quit since then.”
“Yeah, well. I may not have the experience you do, but I ain’t always a hundred percent truthful either.”
Luke cocked his head to one side, leveling his pistol. “Really? Do tell.”
“For one, I ain’t alone either.”
From behind the livery sign came a loud crack. Butch was taken right off the back of his horse, a hole opened up in his chest. The others’ mouths opened in shock and Luke turned to see what’d happened. That was his mistake. In a flash, Tyr grabbed the pearl handle of his Colt with his left hand, drew the gun and fired. His shot caught Luke in the shoulder, spinning him fully towards his men. Jim rose behind him, the wide eyes of the mounted Fenris men on every move he made.
“For another, I’m a southpaw.”
The second bullet shoved Luke to the ground, his skull shattered from the impact. Tyr, his right hand at his side and streaming blood down his leg, aimed his gun at the next Fenris man. When another tried to draw down on him, the Henry rifle made itself heard again, dropping the offender. The remaining Fenris wheeled their horses, and two more were shot down as they rode for their lives.
Jim sank to his knees. He holstered his gun and raised his right arm with his left hand, trying to slow the bleeding by elevating the wound. Art Frey appeared beside him minutes later, the Henry rifle slung over his shoulder. His clothing was still somehow immaculate, despite having to climb into the trestle of a stable in the dark.
“Here, Jim.” Art handed him a flask, which Art discovered was full of single malt scotch. He nearly coughed when it hit the back of his throat. The gambler helped him to his feet. “Let’s get that hand looked at.”
“Whatever hand I’m holding next, Frey, it’s going to beat yours. I’m feeling pretty damn lucky today.”
Art chuckled. “I’ll take that bet, Tyr. Now, let’s make sure you don’t bleed to death before I take the rest of your money, too.”
