When he reached the apex he put his back against the rickety chimney and faced south and west. The desert was black like the sky, and where they touched, they almost became one. Merion could not remember ever seeing a night so black, so devoid.
The only light was from the town itself, bleaching a garish hole in the darkness with thousands of lanterns and torches and candles. Light glowed like a river of lava through the jagged edges of sign-boards and rooftops, splashing against the tall cranes of the worker’s camp and the spikes of pitched tents. Every few seconds a lonely shout, or a smashing of glass, or the squeak of a fiddle would catch on the breeze and come floating to his ears, muffled and malformed.
There was a shadow in the west. Even in the dark he could see it, and see it moving too, padding silently across the sand, or so Merion imagined.
In his mind’s eye he could picture the braids trailing in the wind, the colours of the war paint beginning to catch the light of the town, inching nearer with every thud of tough heels. He could see their long spears, blackened with soot as Lurker had told him, held low but ready, their flint knives, dipped in poison, and their arrows, dipped in the blood of whatever animal or poor soul they had killed last. He could imagine their fierce eyes, unblinking, their rigid cheeks cutting the air.
‘I can see them,’ he whispered.
‘Mhm,’ Lurker grunted. ‘Nothin’ we can do now ’cept raise the alarm. Give these poor bastards an equal chance.’
‘But the Shohari …’ Merion started to say, but then he thought of Calidae, and of Castor, and what should happen if the town were overrun. ‘An equal chance,’ he said.
Lurker pointed his six barrels at the sky and emptied each one. When he was done, he hunkered down to reload and watched with a grim expression on his face. Shouts grew loud on the fell breeze. Lights burst into being on each and every rooftop, and suddenly the ground became as bright as the night sky had failed to be. A single, lone gunshot rang out in answer to Lurker’s, and then a scream that sent a shiver through every single person who heard it. The shadow in the west galloped on. Bugles sounded now, from the lordsguards. The shadow had been spied. Bright torches burnt away the night, revealing the monsters it had been hiding. The war cries began to rise. Drums began to sound.
Lurker pressed a small spyglass into Merion’s hands, and the boy put it eagerly to his eye. He could see them now: lithe, lanky figures, swarming into the light like a horde of locusts, right into the sheriffsmen’s firing range. Their spine-chilling undulating war cry was momentarily drowned out by an explosion of fire and smoke from the guns. Bullets flew like hornets. The night began to crackle. All around the edge of town, puffs of pale smoke began to rise, dribbles of grey on an otherwise black canvas.
It felt wrong to think of fireworks, but Merion was guilty as charged. He recalled a night when he had been very young, standing on a box to peer out of Harker Sheer’s highest window, his father’s steady hand on his back. They had looked down upon the fringes of London, watched it sparkle and shimmer. Fell Falls looked the same, only this time there were no children duelling with sparklers, no popperkins or Jack Flashes being thrown in doorways, only bullets and powder, and the hack and slash of sword and chipped stone. No laughter or giggles, just the screaming of men and Shohari being shown the colour of their insides.
A great spout of flame burst up from the work-camp. A tent soared into the sky with wings of fire. There was more screaming, and this time the frenzied whinnying of horses. Something moved amongst the Shohari, even less human than they were. It screeched like a tortured wolf. Its shape, painted black as pitch against the fire, was nothing short of terrifying.
‘Hear that?’ Lurker asked. Merion nodded. The whole town had heard the creature. He could imagine children shivering under their beds at the sound of it.
‘Lupus,’ whispered his aunt, crawling up the roof behind them. She had Long Tom slung across her back. Merion had never seen her so menacing.
‘The Norsemen first told tales of them, stories from a time when they braved the ocean to settle here in America, a thousand years ago or more. More desert wolf than Shohari—a twisted bitch of a creature. Only ever see the females, never the males,’ she lectured.
‘My vials?’ asled Merion.
Lilain reached inside her pocket and brought forth three long vials. ‘Eel, sprite and roadrunner, just in case. Rather have you running than fighting.’
Merion held onto them as if they were solid gold.
‘It’s customary to pay your letter,’ she said, with a hint of a smirk.
Her attempts to lighten the mood were not working. Merion turned back to the battle, filling his ears with the rattle of constant gunfire. He wondered how many bullets it would take to win the night—or how many spears, for that matter. There came a rally of fire from the work-camp, and more screeching pierced the sound of battle. Merion caught the faint echo of a cheer on the ill breeze.
‘If this town survives the night, that lupus has an appointment on my table,’ Lilain muttered to herself.
There came a chattering cry from above. It was Jake, circling the rooftop. Lurker wrapped his hand a little tighter around Big Betsy, his finger sliding almost imperceptibly down to the trigger.
‘What is it?’ Merion asked.
‘Shamans,’ Lurker grunted, and lifted a hand to point to a new kind of terror, emerging out of the darkness. ‘Fuck,’ he added, just for good measure.
Lilain unslung her rifle and lay down so she could rest it on the roof. Merion pressed the spyglass harder against his eyeball, as if it would bring the action any closer. There is a terrible fascination to war: part horror, part hope.
The two shamans were glowing white hot when they broke through the hastily-made barricade of dead bodies and cartwheels. Bullets melted inches from their skin. Guns grew too hot to hold. Powder caught inside casings. Soon enough the edge of town was a drumroll of gunfire, pitted only with screams and the shamans’ slow, ominous chants. A third joined them on the dusty battlefield, which was now swiftly turning to glass. Lightning crackled from his fingers. Merion sat up like a meerkat. The fighting pressed deeper into the town. A thick crowd of Shohari had gathered behind their Shamans.
Bottles trailing heads of flame began to rain down from the rooftops. They exploded in deadly flashes of hot blue and spitting green. Shrieks and wails filled the air as Shohari were consumed in flame. Alcohol never failed to solve a problem in Fell Falls.
‘Moonshine,’ Lurker mumbled. It was a fine tactic. The blinding, searing clouds of fire halted the advancing Shohari and the shamans long enough for the lordsguards to bring up their rifles and Gatling guns, and for the sheriffsmen to shore up the flanks, pouring into the alleyways and side streets. There were more bullets, and more screams. Merion drank it all in through the bulbous eye of his spyglass.
As soon as the flames had cleared, the guns began to fire. Wave after wave of bullets met the Shohari ranks. All that could be heard above the thunder of rifle-fire was the deep, rapid pounding of the Gatlings. Rounds spat from its mouth like water from a gargoyle in a storm, shredding the iron bones of the Shohari to splinters and making a sordid memory of flesh and skin.
Bricks and boulders chased the flaming bottles, pouring into the bloody chaos. One caught a shaman square in the forehead. He sank to his knees as the blood began to pour. His hands clawed at the air, wrapped in hot magick. Bullets melted inches from his fingers like raindrops striking a window. Hot metal pooled around him in glowing puddles. As he raised a hand to wipe the blood his eyes, his spell began to falter. His skull must have been split in two. The bullets crept closer. Flecks of hot metal kissed his bare skin and black cracks began to show in his white-hot skin. When the bullets finally met their mark, the shaman was consumed by the very magick that had kept him alive. He vanished in a burst of scarlet flame, and all throughout the town, in the streets, in the bedrooms and in the basements, every single scrap of flame burnt scarlet too.
It was a moment forever to be remembered by whiskey-slicked lips in saloons, whispering of how the moonshine flames had turned blood-red. Merion saw it with his very own eyes. It was a massacre. Straight and cold.
The lordsguards and their Gatling kept firing until the cries of the Shohari signalled utter defeat. The warriors scattered in every direction, only to be met by sheriffsmen waiting in the dark, or sniping from outhouses. The ferocity of their prey had shocked them, that much was clear, and now the carpet of their own dead littering the centre of town proved too much. Even the Shohari are not immune to the claws of fear.
Horns and drums sounded in the desert as they fled. Merion watched the dark shapes scurry across the fire-painted desert, their own shadows nipping at their heels. Merion frowned. He did not know whether to feel pride or sorrow as the cheers began to ring out across Fell Falls.
‘They fought bravely,’ Lurker hummed as he watched the Shohari disappear.
‘Some aren’t done fighting yet,’ Lilain whispered.
Lilain was right: the fire still burned ferociously in the main street, but only in one place, in amongst a pile of fallen Shohari. Before anybody could stifle the cheers or raise a shout, lightning began to flicker through the dead. Searing blue tentacles reached out to probe the bodies and their oozing bullet holes, as if searching for a soul that was still alive. It soon found one.
A scream cut through the cheering like a sword through butter. Guns began to sing again, but not a single bullet could make it through the curtain of heat and electricity. Two figures rose up out of the dead, shrugging limbs and shattered spears aside. The fire shaman burned fiercely, pressing the lordsguards back and turning one side of the postal office to charcoal. Bricks rained once more. Planks began to spin down through the air. Even sandbags were being tossed, but still their magick raged. The Gatlings were melting; Merion could hear their mechanisms screeching. For a brief moment, it looked as though the shamans would tear a path straight through town.
However, if there was to be one saviour of men above all that night, it was once again the humble vial of nitroglycerin. Merion was starting to notice a theme. The shamans did not see the spinning vials until it was far too late. Two explosions bludgeoned the street, one after the other, like a double-punch straight to the ribs of the town. Every lordsguard fell flat. Two entire saloons met their demise. Even in the Runnels, they felt the wind on their faces.
The splinters were still tumbling when victory was blown on the bugles in true lordsguard style. Merion was the first to blow a sigh of relief. Lurker took his finger off his trigger and chewed his lip.
‘I’ll—’ he began to say, but then stiffened like a cat spying a bird. His finger grazed his trigger once more as he shuffled to the edge of the roof, staying as low as he could manage. Ignoring Lilain’s avid gesticulating, Merion followed him, sliding up next to the prospector. He held out the Mistress and pointed it down into the street, just like Lurker.
‘Take your finger off the trigger, boy,’ Lurker hissed. ‘I know what I’m doing.’ He pointed with the nose of his huge gun. ‘There,’ he whispered.
Merion spied the shadow peeking out from behind a fence, betraying its owner. A scrawny Shohari man, painted green, purple, and now red. This Shohari must have been out of his wits with fear. He had no eyes for the rooftops, just the streets. He had a broken tomahawk in his left hand, a lot of blood on his right. There was a cut across his collarbone, from a lordsguard sword.
‘Jus’ a boy, not much older than you,’ Lurker whispered. Merion squinted, and saw that Lurker was right. It was just a skinny boy. Taller than Merion by far, but still a boy.
‘What was he doing in the fight?’ Merion breathed.
‘Fighting for his land, jus’ like the rest.’
‘But he’s no older than I am …’ Merion couldn’t understand.
‘We all got our own fights. And we fight them in our own ways,’ Lurker replied and then he put a leather finger to his chapped lips. The boy was creeping closer.
Merion pondered whether he would have the stomach to wade into battle, if the tables were ever turned. He doubted he would.
But what if it was a battle to his avenge his father, or a fight for a ticket home? Would he charge into battle for that, kill for that?
Merion gritted his teeth.
If that’s what it would take, then perhaps.
It was then that the Shohari froze, barely a stone’s toss from their front door. He raised his head slowly, until he met the eye of Lurker and Merion, and their gun barrels. They held each other’s gazes for a moment. When that moment became too long and uncomfortable, Lurker made his move: a gentle, slow raise of his gloved hand, and a touch of the brim of his hat. The Shohari nodded, and then turned to run towards the darkness of the desert, dripping a trail of blood in the dust.
Lurker sat up. ‘You two go on inside. I’ll keep watch for an hour or so.’
‘Come, Merion. We have a busy day tomorrow,’ Lilain beckoned her nephew. She was already halfway to the window.
Merion rankled at the prospect of anything busy. He had work to do, work repairing the mess she had caused. ‘I’m afraid you’re on your own,’ he bluntly informed her. ‘I have bridges to rebuild, a lord and his daughter to pacify. I’m not going to let you ruin this chance for me.’
‘Will you just come inside, and stop hissing at me like a goddamned viper?’
Merion shoved the gun through his belt and moodily clambered back into the house, mumbling to himself resolutely with every step.
Lilain was waiting for him in the study, hands on hips. But when she spoke, her tone was far from stern; it was softer, more pleading. Merion had never heard it before. ‘Look,’ she began, ‘you can mutter and curse to yourself all you want. You can ignore me, snub me, shy away from me, even run away, Merion, but no matter what, I’m still your aunt. You’re stuck with me,’ she told him, almost managing to squeeze in a chuckle at the end. ‘We’re bonded with blood, and that’s something you won’t share with any friend, or girlfriend, or dog, cat, anything. So can we please stop hating each other for just a moment, and try to get along instead?’ Lilain held up her hands and pressed them together. ‘I am sorry if I ruined any plan you had. I should have chosen a better time to tell you about what I thought of the Serpeds.’