Merkabah Rider: The Mensch With No Name (3 page)

“Gersh?”
he called to his protégé.

“Stay
back, Hash,” the strongman called.

The
Rider turned his attention to the hole he’d blasted in the wall. He’d nearly
forgotten the dwarf. Fortunately the contest between man and shed had caught
Mazzamauriello’s attention as well. The little man was poised in the hole, one
pistol out, staring at the strongman and Ormzud. He raised it, looking for an
opening to aide his brother.

Suddenly
the Rider wished he still had his holdout pistol as he stood, feeling blood
pool in his shoe. He stooped to retrieve his Volcanic and quickly began to
reload it.

The
strongman Gersh had by now pinned Ormzud’s arms down and had him in a bear hug.

“Give!”
he shouted. “Give or I’ll break your back!”

Ormzud
just laughed and snapped his head back and forward, smashing the top of his
head into Gersh’s face. The kid dropped the shed and staggered back.

Mazzmauriello
almost took a shot, but Gersh regained himself and gripped Ormzud by his coat.
Put off balance by his mutilated leg, the shed found
himself
flung into the piano with enough force to break the keyboard to pieces and send
the strings snapping and twanging within.

The
Rider fired at Mazzamauriello through the hole in the wall. The dwarf shrieked
and fell outside once more. He then turned towards Ormzud, who was rising
stunned from the wreckage of the piano like something that had made its escape
from a monster’s maw by kicking out the teeth.

The
Oriental was glaring at the young strongman with a face contorted with hatred.
The strongman had his enormous arms open like a wrestler to receive him.

Then
Ormzud’s left arm whipped out and a small pistol slid from a contraption
beneath his sleeve into his hand. The Rider cut him dead center with the
Volcanic and squeezed.

Once
more Ormzud fell against the broken piano, but this time he screamed and shook
as the salt core bullet that had pierced his heart greedily drank up his bodily
fluids. Yellow slime bubbled out of the hole in his chest and it seemed like a
dry rot spread outward. In seconds it encompassed his entire body, and then he
was nothing but a desiccated mummy, a husk crumbling in a puddle of yellow mud.

“I’ll
be back, Rider!” screamed Mazzamauriello from somewhere outside. “Dig your
grave, you sonofabitch!”

“I’ll
dig a little one for you!” the Rider called back.

But
his bravado was short lived. He felt a wave of nausea and dizziness, and then
suddenly his legs just weren’t beneath him anymore. He tumbled to the dirt
floor, and into a jarring, unnatural sleep.

* * *
*

When
he awoke, he was still on his back, though the scenery had changed. Instead of
the patchy roof admitting sunlight through the gaps, he was looking up at
fluttering canvas. He realized he was in the show tent from earlier. It was
night now, dark through a hole opened up in the ceiling to admit the smoke from
the little fire going in the floor. The wind was whistling outside, making the
walls breathe and crack now and then.

He
felt stiff and cold, like a dying man that had changed his mind at the last
possible minute.

His
shoulder was bandaged, as was his leg. The talismans that normally draped his
body were lying in a tangled pile on the floor nearby.

He
saw the breed then, whom the strongman Gersh had called Hash. He was sitting
nearby on a rough pallet, inspecting the Rider’s golden pistol.

Gersh
himself had the Rider’s bloodstained tallit katan prayer shawl draped over his
knees, and was fingering the tzitzit fringes thoughtfully.

The
Rider stirred. What time was it? How long had he lain here?

“What
I can’t figure is,” muttered the breed, turning the pistol over in the light,
“why slap all this wampum on an old thumb-buster like this?
S’like
puttin’ a steeple on an outhouse.”

Hash
looked up as the Rider turned on his side, wincing at his shoulder.

“He’s
awake. Guess I’d best go tell them others.”

“It
can wait till morning, can’t it?” Gersh said. He spoke with a faint European
accent—German, maybe.

Hash
eased back into his seat.

“I
guess so.”

The
big youth looked to the Rider.

“I’m
Gershom Turiel. This is Hashknife,” he said in a deep but gentle voice.

“Rider,”
he answered, sitting up slowly.

“You
saved my life. I will be sure and tell the others.”

“Why
should you have to?” the Rider asked.

“They
found old Cashion with his head torn off in the bar,” said Hash. “They wanna
know if you seen who done it…or if you done it.”

“I
know you didn’t,” said Gersh quickly. “It must have been the men you…killed.”

“They
wanna know about that too,” said Hash. “Like what kinda bullets can burn a man
up like that?”

The
Rider sighed.

“It
was no man.”

Hash
snickered.

“What?”

He
closed his eyes. What else was there to say?

“They
weren’t men. Not entirely.”

“You’re
crazy!”

“He
didn’t…seem like a man,” Gersh said.

“What
the hell are you talkin’ about?” Hash said, wheeling on him.

“Hash,
you’ve known me since I was five years old. In all that time, have we ever
found anybody as strong as me? When I was six I could throw a bull by the
horns. But that man…I fought him. I really fought him.”

The
Rider looked at Gersh with renewed interest. The shed had struggled against
him. That shouldn’t have been possible. They were imbued with infernal strength
beyond any even the strongest mortal man should have been able to muster. He
looked about for his coat, found it, and found the blue glass spectacles stowed
within. It was a minor miracle they hadn’t broken. He found the rosette token
too, and transferred it to his hand.

“He
was big enough,” Hash muttered.
“Biggest Chinee I ever seen,
anyhow.”

The
Rider looked at Gersh through the lenses. There was nothing extraordinary about
him that the Rider could see.

“What’s
the matter,” Hash said, seeing the lenses, “fire too bright all of a sudden?”

“No,”
the Rider said, sliding them off his nose. He folded them and put them in their
case.

The
boy was no shed himself, or his irises would not have shown up when looking
through the seals. It was a puzzle, but not one the Rider had time to figure
out. Mazzamauriello had said he would return. That meant everyone in Varruga
Tanks was in danger. He would not let these freighters and drifters share the
same fate as the Sons of The Essenes. He would not be responsible for leading
death to anyone again.

He
leaned over and grabbed his talismans. He pulled them closer and began to
untangle them.

“What
are you doing?” Gersh asked.

“I’ve
got to leave. I can’t stay here,” he said.

“The
hell you can’t,” Hash said, rising and brandishing the Rider’s own pistol at
him. “You leave and they’ll say we let you go.”

The
Rider reached out and quickly snatched the pistol out of Hash’s hands.

Hash
blinked.

Gersh
stood.

“It’s
alright,” the Rider said, putting the pistol in its holster and belting it on.
“You couldn’t have fired it anyway. Tell them whatever you like. Tell them I
said I’d shoot you. But I’m going.”

“You
can’t!” Gersh said. “We took care of you for a whole day and you’re just gonna
leave?”

“Just
let him go, Gersh,” Hash advised.

The
Rider stopped.

“What
do you mean ‘a whole day’?” A cold sweat popped out in the middle of his back.

“You
been out for a day and a night,” Hash said.

The
Rider rubbed his beard. His wounds had been the last burden his exhausted body
had been willing to tolerate. The taste in his mouth, the extreme stiffness,
the
crust in his eyes…yes, it made sense. He had slept
through the day of the shooting and the day after.

Like
it or not then, death was already on its way. How long did they have till dawn?
Could he rouse these people and get them to escape? Even if he could, these
were professional freighters, most of them, and no man who made his living with
a fist of reins and a shotgun beside him was going to be convinced by a
stranger out of the wild to take their rigs off the main trail and scatter into
the desert where they could easily be ambushed and robbed. If they all left by
the beaten trail the shedim would overtake them anyway.

“Then
we’ve got to round up everybody. Bring them in here. We’ve got to get them
ready.”

“Ready for what?”

“That
dwarf, he’s probably already on his way back here, and he won’t be alone.
They’re coming for me, but they’ll kill anyone they find here.”

Gersh
looked at Hash.

“You
saw what they did, Hash,” he said. “The little one ran along the wall. The big
one threw men around like hay bales.”

“I
did see,” Hash nodded slowly. “Alright mister, how about if you was to go on,
and get outta here? I expect we could think of somethin’ to tell them others.”

“You
misunderstand,” the Rider said, shaking his head “Even if I leave, and they’re
coming here. This place isn’t safe. They’ll torture everyone to find me, and
when they find out no one knows where I am, they’ll give this place back to the
desert and bury everybody in it.”

“Why?”

“Because
it’s what they do. It’s what they are.”

“What
are they?”

The
Rider was quiet for a moment. Then he leaned forward.

“Do
you know how when you’re camped out in the desert at night, and you know
there’s no one around, but you still feel like something’s out there just past
the firelight? Or that feeling, when you’re miles from anywhere, that makes you
look over your shoulder when you’re passing through wide open country? These
things…they’re the things you’re looking for. They’re the cold spots and will
‘o wisps and rustles in the grass that make you pick up a stick of firewood or
your gun. They’re the little funnels of dust you see spinning in the high
desert and the shadows you can’t account for in a dark room.”

“That’s
real vivid,” said Hashknife appreciatively. “You can palaver even better’n I
can. I wasn’t flat
busted,
I’d hire you on to
introduce the kid.”

“No
Hash,” said Gersh. “He means it. I don’t know how I know it, but it’s true.
That Chinaman, when I grabbed a hold of him, it was like layin’ hands on a
rattler. I mean, he was poisonous like that, you know? Like I knew if I didn’t
get him by the jaw, he’d kill me slow from the inside out.”

Hashknife
looked at Gersh queerly.

“You
know I ain’t afraid of no man, Hash,” Gersh said. “I never had
no
cause to be. No man’s ever been able to out-fight or
out-wrassle me, and you always taught me if I was to get shot there wasn’t
nothing I could do about it anyway. But I was scared of that one.
Real scared.”

“Awright,”
Hashknife said, kicking dust with mangled toe of one boot. “I believe you,
Gersh. Hell, I even believe you, mister. I guess I’m white enough to think
you’re crazy but Indian enough not to take the chance you ain’t. To put it
plain I don’t much care for you. I don’t guess I know what’s worse—that the
things you’re tellin’ me are really out there, or that you’re the type of man
such things would take an interest in. I’d just as soon put miles and miles
between you and me, but if you say it won’t matter…”

“It
won’t,” said the Rider.

“Awright.
I’ll round ever’body up, but I don’t know what
good it’ll do. I sold ‘em lies for the promise of a phony fifty dollar bill.
What the hell have you got to offer?”

“Their
lives,” the Rider said, going back to separating his tangled bodyguards.

Hashknife
chuckled as he passed out of the tent.

“That’s
rich! You think any of ‘em put much worth in that?”

Gersh
watched the Rider sort out his amulets.

“You’ve
been in a lot of fights,” Gersh observed.

“Yes,”
the Rider affirmed. When they’d tended him, they’d no doubt seen his scars. His
body bore the marks of shot and blade in more than a few places. Not all of
them were got in the war.

“Those
little scars…they’re only on your face and hands. How did you get them?”

The
Rider glanced down at his hands, and a brief impression of cacophonous
screeching and the closeness of sharp, slashing talons and fluttering wings
came to mind. It was part of what had kept him awake nights, that
claustrophobic sensation, that insistent memory that invaded his taxed mind in
the dark, of kneeling with his face pressed in the dirt and his hands over his
head as hundreds of shrieking little horrors tore at his flesh…no! He pushed it
aside, flinching involuntarily as he did so, as if casting the memory from his
mind with a flick of his head.