Merion watched the creature swing its iron head around towards them. He felt his face drain. ‘Erm, John? I don’t think he is.’
‘Fuck the Maker,’ Lurker cursed. The boy was right. Horrendously right. The railwraith had spied them in the scrub, and by now they were the closest piece of meat he could see. ‘Run!’ he barked.
The railwraith charged, and so did they, careening through scrub and dead cactus, vaulting over rock and rut and dragging sand. But the railwraith was fast and full of hunger. Its loping strides pounded the rocks to dust as it swiftly closed the distance.
‘What have you got in that satchel?!’ Lurker yelled, stuck on the other side of a patch of cacti.
‘Salmon. Otter. Er…’ Merion’s feet pelted the ground like pistons as he fished vial after vial out of the satchel. He was running so hard he thought he might break them. ‘Seal? Bat?’
‘No bat!’
‘Crab?’
‘Yes! What kind?’
‘It just says crab!’ Merion squinted at the vial bobbing up and down before him. His chest was heaving and the corners of his eyes were turning fuzzy. He stared hard. ‘No wait, ghost crab!’
‘Fine! Drink it!’ Lurker was fumbling around at the small of his back now, fishing for his mammoth of a gun.
Merion snatched a look over his shoulder and sorely wished he hadn’t. The railwraith was just a stone’s throw away, and a weak throw at that. With every giant step it took, its pieces squealed and clanged like dying seagulls hurling themselves at bells. Merion’s heart skipped so many beats he thought it had stopped for good.
Lurker’s gun crackled like thunder, and a slug buried itself in the wraith’s eye socket. It would have killed any lesser beast, but this was a wraith made of iron and wood. The only blood it had to bleed was the grease that oozed from its joints. Lurker was smiling nonetheless. The bullet had done its job of distracting the monster.
Merion was already gulping down the blood. The magic hit him like a locomotive, setting his head spinning. Suddenly his body was lurching violently to the left, his legs moving unbidden and unnaturally, skipping through the sand in a way that made him fear they would snap in two. It certainly felt as if they were about to. The more he tried to push forward, the faster he moved left. Before he knew it he was a hundred yards to the left of the railwraith and tottering on aching legs.
The railwraith was furious. It ground its teeth as it cast around for a prey that had somehow escaped. Merion was already down in the dust. As was Lurker, hidden behind a broken cactus, already spinning the barrel of his gun. The railwraith sniffed. It was so odd, for a being made of iron and splinters to sniff. Beginning to swipe at the scrub, its arms and ragged claws swung in great arcs, ripping dead shrubs and stunted trees from their roots and casting them into the air. Rock and metal sang as they clashed over and over again. With every swipe, the monster came closer and closer to Lurker. Merion lifted his head as high as he dared, wincing with each crash of its claws. He could not see Lurker. Merion pushed himself up a little further. Lurker’s gun cracked again and the railwraith screeched with fury.
‘No!’ Merion cried, as the wraith raised its claws. Filled with a strange and sudden bravery, Merion made to sprint forwards but instead he threw himself to the right. The next time he sprang left.
‘Crab!’ Merion smacked himself on the forehead and turned so the railwraith was directly to his right. And he ran. Oh, how he ran.
His legs moved so fast they were a painful blur. His hands waggled, frantically trying to balance himself. This shade was both a blessing and a curse, but Merion had no choice. He ran on, straight through the legs of the railwraith and straight into Lurker, crouched beneath the shadow of the jagged claws.
It wasn’t pretty, it wasn’t clever, but it worked. Merion barrelled into the man and shoved him clear of the falling claws. They buried themselves deep in the sand, barely an inch from Merion’s heels. The railwraith roared at them, so close and so loud that flecks of grease spattered their faces. In that moment, they knew they were finished. It was inevitable: as soon as the monster tugged its claws from the ground, they would be cut to shreds. Merion wondered if Lilain would poke inside him like she did all the others. But no end came—at least, not yet.
The railwraith was straining to pull its claws from the earth. They had bitten hard, and they had bitten deep, and now the earth held them tight. It strained so hard that its joints began to pull apart. The young Hark could have sworn he saw beads of oil grace its grotesque brow, as it grimaced with frustration and hunger. Merion stared right into the wraith’s iron face and knew he would never forget it until his dying day.
Pang!
A bullet ricocheted off the railwraith’s back and buried itself in the sand with a puff of dust.
‘Sheriffsmen!’ Lurker croaked. The prospector was right. As they set to running, they watched the horses charging.
The sheriffsmen whooped and hollered as they fired their guns. Their rifles were long and their aim rough, and the bullets flew wide and high. Merion kept running. He did not fancy coming to his end because of a stray bullet.
How undignified and pointless
, he thought.
Seeing the railwraith was stuck, they fired and reloaded like clockwork, each one of them eager to get that lucky shot in, if such a thing existed. Bullets shattered and bounced but they kept firing. Another shout came. Another rider was approaching. A lordsguard with a bundle under his arm and an idea in his head, apparently.
He shouted something, but Merion could not discern it. Whatever it was sent the sheriffsmen and their horses running. The lordsguard was left alone to charge the wraith. One of its arms was already free, and it had turned to grin at its challenger.
Merion saw it now—the bundle in the lordsguard’s careful hands, and the fear on his face. The wide berth the sheriffsmen had given him was because it was nitroglycerin. The poor fool was either tired of living or aching to be a hero. Only the next few moments would define him. As his horse galloped on beneath him, the lordsguard held up the bundle of explosives and shouted something to the nearest sheriffsman, something that made the man cock his rifle and wedge it into his shoulder.
‘Throw, damn it!’ hissed Lurker.
He was right: the lordsguard was being too bold, leaving it to the last second. It came sooner than he had expected. The railwraith wrenched its other arm from the earth with a roar and swung it towards the lordsguard, who was now standing bravely in his saddle. An iron fist ripped through his breastplate like a bullet through a tin can. The guard was riding so hard that by the time he finally came to a halt, the wraith had run him through up to its elbow. The guard hung there, legs twitching, staring down at the twisted metal that had replaced his insides with a face of abject horror.
Lurker’s gun fired one last time, and never a truer nor kinder shot had ever been fired. It would have been perfect had the muzzle of the cannon not been resting beside Merion’s ear. The boy cried out and slumped to the floor, almost missing the enormous bubble of fire that enveloped the railwraith, blasting its iron bones asunder. What was not melted was blown to smithereens. Shards of the railwraith scattered in all directions. One sheriffsmen caught a railspike in the neck and went down gargling a fountain of blood. A long wooden splinter skewered the leg of another. The last had his horse speared by a spar of metal and was thrown unceremoniously to the dust as the beast collapsed.
Merion slowly unfurled from the tight ball he had forced himself into. ‘Is it over?’
The man nodded and holstered his gun. ‘It’s over alright.’
Merion put a hand out to steady himself and found something sticky and wet instead. There was a dark puddle forming under Lurker’s right knee. Two inches up, he found the culprit: a slim shard of iron, sticking out of his thigh at a right angle. ‘Lurker, you’re hurt.’
‘It’s nothing.’
Merion was aghast. What had Lilain told him once?
Drunk men can very quickly turn into dead men if they open up a vein. Whiskey thins the blood and makes it pour.
‘You’re bleeding to death, you big fool.’
With a grunt and a curse, Lurker reached inside his coat to rip at its tough lining. He bound a strip around his leg, just above the wound. He bared his teeth as he knotted it.
‘Pull it tight, boy,’ he ordered.
Merion pulled. Lurker growled like a dragon.
‘We need to get you back to Lilain. If anyone asks, we can say you fell.’
‘Drunk again,’ Lurker muttered.
‘That’s the story.’ Merion strained as he lifted the big man to his feet. He stank of sweat and gunpowder.
The sheriffsmen were running over, still waving their rifles. ‘You,’ said the nearest man, as he pointed at Lurker. ‘You seem to have an ’abit of being in the wrong place at the wrong time,’ he barked.
‘Seems that way,’ Lurker shrugged.
‘What were you doin’ out here?’ asked another.
‘We were just going for a walk,’ Merion explained. ‘Nothing special. We wanted to see the railroad. We would have been meat if you hadn’t have come.’
‘Yeah, well,’ groused the first man. He looked as though he were desperately trying to concoct some sort of plot or scheme, as if the empty, blood-soaked scrub would suddenly sprout some evidence of a villainous conspiracy. In the end he had nothing to say except: ‘Do you need help?’
Lurker grunted a no, and that was that. ‘The boy’s stronger than he looks,’ he said, and the sheriffsmen were good enough to leave them alone, going back to tend to their own wounded and dead. Merion rolled his eyes. He was not stronger than he looked, not by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, to be accurate, he was a great deal weaker than he looked. Lurker didn’t seem to care. He leant heavily on the boy, bending him almost double with his weight. Merion staggered and shuffled, still sideways, and led the man slowly back towards the town, where the workers stood in nervous hordes, their conversation a dull roar.
They quietened somewhat when they saw a bloodied man and an exhausted young boy staggering towards them. They had heard the shots, and seen the explosion. The sight of them stirred hushed whispers and narrowed looks. The crowd split right down the middle to let them pass, standing like hedgerows as the two awkwardly lumbered along.
Somebody buried several rows back began to clap. Slowly at first, then faster. Others took up the rhythm. The clapping grew stronger and louder. Merion looked about at the dusty, sweat-streaked faces of the men standing beside them, and met gaze after gaze. They looked pleased, not angry, appreciative, not aggressive. He tried to smile and thanked the Almighty, the crab blood had finally worn off.
When they eventually escaped the applauding throngs of workers and gawping citizens, they began the long walk up the rocky slant of the Runnels. Lurker was still bleeding despite the cloth tourniquet. Every now and again, his pained shuffle would flick a drop of blood on the hot sand. Merion could not help but think of the old treasure maps on his father’s study walls, with the paths all marked out by red dots.
The Runnels were quieter than usual if that were possible. Folk had run down to the town when the commotion had started. All except Lilain, that was, who was busy standing on the lip of the hill, stark and black against the blue sky behind her, hands framed on hips. Merion did not need to see her face to know what expression was pasted across it: one of fury, no doubt.
Merion steeled himself. Lurker was getting heavier with every step, and they had already taken quite a few falls. Merion gritted his teeth and pushed his legs on, one after the other. They ached after the crab blood, but at least he still had a little strength in him.
Almighty if he wasn’t tired.
Lilain spat as they came near. If anything Merion had underestimated her expression. She looked livid. ‘If you weren’t already bleeding, Lurker, I’d be the first one tickling your throat with a scalpel,’ she hissed at the big man.
‘Lil,’ he began, holding up his free hand, ‘it weren’t like that. Came out of nowhere. We were far south o’ the rail.’
‘I don’t want your excuses, prospector, just get yourself on the kitchen table, so I can fix that damn leg. Even I don’t punch cripples.’
Lurker sighed and hopped up the steps one by one. The shade of the porch was welcome after the hot and heavy work of carrying Lurker. Merion slumped onto the wooden bench and exhaled good and hard. He looked at his hands and grimaced at the blood on them.
‘What happened?’ Lilain demanded of him.
Merion shrugged. ‘We weren’t even close to the rail. It saw us from afar and came chasing. Lurker killed it.’
‘Anyone die?’
‘A lordsguard. A brave one. Maybe a sheriffsman.’
‘Well, I guess bravery has a price out here.’
‘It would seem that way.’
Lilain worked her lips around her teeth as she pondered what to do with all this pent-up energy she suddenly found herself with. Her rage had fizzled out after her nephew’s words.
‘Don’t wander off,’ she ordered him, as she strode into the house.
‘I won’t,’ mumbled Merion. He stretched, winced, and then slumped a little more, splaying his legs and arms across the angles of the bench. It was far from the comfiest thing in the world, but right now Merion’s tired body did not care. He rested his head against his fist and closed his eyes, just for a moment.
It had been a long day after all, a fractured day, full of excitement and terror.
Merion watched the railwraith in his mind’s eye, reliving its shining claws and tortured bones. Even then, safe and sound on the bench, he shuddered. His heart followed suit, and Merion gasped, putting his hand to his chest momentarily.
Almighty he was tired. And lucky.
He had almost died today. Several times.
He’d been a fool
. An idiot. His father would have whipped him for his stupidity. And yet he had survived, by the skin of his teeth, and all thanks to rushing. His father might have whipped him, but he could imagine a little smidgeon of pride holding back the lashes, ever so slightly. Merion clenched his fists tightly and smiled to himself. It must have been tiring work, because it only took a matter of minutes for him to drift off into a murmuring, twitching sleep.