Merkabah Rider: The Mensch With No Name (6 page)

Bill
was hysterical beneath his wagon, and he seemed to paw at the earth and shove
his face into the hole he dug.

“What
the hell are they shooting us with?” Hash yelled over the wet slapping sounds,
turning his collar up and hunching his head down.

He
looked through the glasses again, and saw the shadowy figures swabbing the
cannon. A solitary figure walked along the ridge, booting at something. Then he
saw three broken corpses go tumbling like straw dummies down the front of the
hogback. They fell in pieces, the boulders finishing the job of dismemberment
that the cannon had begun.

“It’s
the men who didn’t stay. They’re strapping them over the mouth of the gun,” the
Rider said, fighting a quiver in his voice. He had not seen anything like this,
not even in the war. How many had left? He hadn’t counted the ones who walked
away.

The
gun boomed yet again, but this time there was no accompanying hail of gore.
This time there came a shrill whistling overhead, and an earth shuddering
impact. There was a flash of light from behind the saloon, followed by the
terrible noise of animals screaming. The Rider’s heart sank. They had lobbed a
shell into the midst of the animal pen. Smoke was rising from its location.
Probably his onager was dead. He prayed it had been quick.

Gersh
rose to his feet, but the Rider grabbed his sleeve.

“Stay
down!” he hissed. “There’s nothing you can do.”

“Why
would they do that? Kill the horses?” Baines stammered.

“They
don’t want us going anywhere,” the Colonel said.

The
wounded horses continued to scream for another twenty minutes. The noise was
unearthly.

“They
sound like people,” Gersh said.

The
field gun exploded again, making them all jump. The whistle in the air, like a
keen screaming they felt in their bones, made their joints lock up with
anticipation. Then there was another massive thump and the horses cried out no
more.

They
heard a terrible moaning sound though, deep and resounding. It was joined by a
heavy, shuffling rhythm.

Something
came around the corner of the saloon, huge and ungainly, its hide shimmering.
It was Cashion’s bull, and it was lowing again and again in a deep agony. As it
stumbled closer, falling against the rickety saloon, making the whole structure
sway, they saw its side was ripped open. Its ribs were exposed, white and
shining, and its quivering organs were trembling in the spaces between. Its
long ropy intestines had spilled out, and the bull was dragging them behind as
they uncoiled, tripping on them as they wound around its foreleg like a dog
with an unmanageable leash. Its face was badly burned, and it seemed to be
blind. The smell of it was like barbeque and shit.

It
came so close it brushed against the salt wagon, and then it began to bump its
head against the boards again and again, as it if had latched onto something it
understood even in this new, strange state, and was intent on solidifying its
connection to it, as if that would bring an end to the pain, a return to its
previous ideal condition.

Hash
took out his colt and laid it across the wagon and shot it between the smoking,
burned eyes. It slumped to its knees and fell over.

“Okay,
all bets are off,” Baines said, some of Bill’s panic evident in his trembling.
“We’ve got to go out there. Before it’s light and they can see us. We’ve got to
get to that cannon and stop it. They got the only horses now. We can’t even
leave here!”

“Calm
down,” Purdee warned.

“They
can see us,” the Rider said. He wasn’t sure, but it was probable that they
could see clearly despite the dark. “How else could they have aimed for the
horses?

“They’re
right,” Hash said. “You’d never get to it before the sun came up anyhow.”

“What
do we do then?” Baines nearly shouted. “Just sit here? They ain’t even tried to
parley! They’re gonna see us here from the ridge once the sun’s up…”

“We
got water. We can wait them out,” said the Colonel.

It
was almost as if they had heard him. The cannon thundered again, and again
there came the whistling. It was louder than before, and the Colonel and the
Rider both craned their necks for an instant before breaking into action.

“Run!”
they both screamed. “Scatter! Cover!”

The
Colonel grabbed Purdee and the two men went tumbling over the lip of the tanks,
and rolling away.

The
Rider grabbed Baines, who had stooped under the wagon and was screaming for
Bill to come on. Out of the corner of his eye the Rider saw Gersh and Hash
running.

The
screaming was so loud it seemed like raving in their ears. Then everything
leapt in unison into the air—men, the wagons, the barrels, the very dust and
all the human remains littering the ground.

The
Rider and Baines went head over heels and crashed together near the doorway of
one of the picket hovels in a heap. The Rider’s ears rang, and his whole body
shook. The smell of powder was heavy in his nose, but he was unhurt. Baines was
blinking at his side, hatless. The Rider followed his look as the intense alarm
in his head gradually subsided and the stillness of the morning returned.

Bill’s
wagon had been blown to pieces, and Bill was crushed beneath its wreckage. The
salt wagon was flipped over and lying a full ten feet from where they’d parked
it. Their makeshift breastworks were strewn about the settlement. A flying salt
barrel had smashed one of the picket hovels flat. Another had burst and covered
the ground in white.

The
Rider heard the little boy crying from somewhere, and he could hear something
else, a great gurgling, as of a bath draining.

He
rose unsteadily and staggered back toward the tanks.

It
was the point of impact. They had laid a shell right in the center of the pool,
smashing the sandstone bowl beneath. The water was seeping back into the earth.

The
Rider looked frantically about for some kind of container.

Hash
was already at his side, two canteens dangling from his arms, ripping the
stopper off one. The breed rushed down into the retreating pool and sank the
canteen. The Colonel and Purdee appeared. Half of the Colonel’s face was
bristling with splinters. So was Gersh’s entire back, which was exposed and
blackened, his coat having been mostly shredded.

Another boom.

“Get
back!” Purdee shouted, running again for cover as the high whistle started up
again overhead.

The
Colonel and the rest scattered, but Hash was stooping in the pool, still trying
to gather the precious water.

“Hash!”
Gersh bellowed.

The
Rider restrained him as best he could. It took all his weight to drive him back
from the broken pit.

The
scream of the falling shell overwhelmed them as before, and there was a flash
and an explosion that broke the earth.

Hash
was simply gone.

They
crawled into the picket hovel, and found Baines there with his shotgun. The big
man curled up in a corner and sobbed like a boy.

The
Rider cast one arm over his burned and bleeding shoulder and looked to Baines.

“Bill?”
Baines asked hopefully.

The
Rider shook his head.

There
were six of them now, and they were separated. Sheardown was in the saloon.
Purdee and the Colonel had taken refuge in one of the stone huts across from
the decimated tanks.

“He
was like my father,” Gersh said once, miserably.

He
had sat up and was snuffling by the time the sunlight sifted through the
pickets, making crosshatches of day and shadow on the sand floor.

Sheardown
ducked in. He was blackened and covered in crusted gore, but unhurt.

“Anybody
hurt here?”

“Look
to the boy,” the Rider said.

Sheardown
had his bag, and he knelt beside the young giant and began to dab at his seared
skin.

“You’re
alright,” he said, amazement in his voice. “I saw you when the first shell hit.
It landed almost beside you. I figured you for the grinder, but you look like
you leaned against a hot stove, is all.”

Gersh
said nothing.

“They
killed Bill,” Baines said after having been quiet for some time. “And not only
that, they killed everybody that’s ever gonna come to Varruga Tanks. Every
cattle outfit, every buckboard, every poor thirsty bastard who ever comes
across the desert.”

“Maybe
they can put up some signs along the trail,” Sheardown suggested.

“Who’s
gonna do that?” Baines smirked. “We ain’t gonna get outta here.”

“Well,
I guess we have to,” said the Rider.

“Bullshit.
You said yourself they come to kill you, and they’ll kill all of us anyway.
With that gun they can just blast this place to pieces one shack at a time. All
we can do is sit here and die.”

“Rider!”
came
a voice, echoing across the stillness. It was
Mazzamauriello. He was calling from afar.

“If
you’re alive, come out!”

The
Rider rose slowly, thoughtfully.

“They’ll
blow you to bits!” Gersh warned, sitting up.

“If
I don’t show myself they’ll just assume I’m dead and kill everyone else.”

“Let
him go,” Sheardown said quietly. “It won’t make a difference.”

The
Rider went out of the picket shack and out into the sun. It was getting hot,
and he could smell the scraps of flesh on the ground. Flies were buzzing.

He
clambered up onto the overturned salt wagon and turned toward the ridge,
extending his arms. Maybe they would obliterate him with an artillery round,
but he suspected they wouldn’t.

“I’m
here!” he called.

“You
did the right thing to stay and wait for us, Rider! Many more would have died
had you led us on a chase!”

“I’m
the only one left!” the Rider called. “Come and take me!”

“No
no no
,” called Mazzamauriello, amused. “You’re not
alone yet! But you’re going to be the last one to die, Rider! I promise you!”

The
Rider lowered his arms.

“Do
you know Ketev Meriri, Rider?”

Ketev
Meriri. The name meant ‘bitter destruction.’ It was a reference to Deuteronomy
32—“The wasting of hunger and the devouring of the fiery bolt, and bitter
destruction; and the teeth of beasts will I send upon them, with the venom of
crawling things of the dust.”

According
to
midrash
, Ketev Meriri was a demon.

“Eight
times you have heard him speak this morning!” Mazzamauriello went on. “Eight
times he has looked down upon you! Rare and wonderful is he not? He was forged
by Lucifer himself, and was used in the First Rebellion to shatter the shields
of the archangels! Go back in your shack and wait! He will call you!”

“Is
he crazy?” Baines gibbered when the Rider came back into the picket shack.
“What was all that he was goin’ on about?”

The
Rider thought for a moment. There was no way to cross the open land and get to
the cannon without being blasted to pieces by it. But his astral form could
pass unmolested to the hogback in the Yenne Velt. What do when he got there
though? If the artillerists had been human, he could simply blow a hole in
their will with his ethereal pistol and possess them long enough to shove the
cannon off the ridge or douse it in water. But the shedim had no souls. He had
never attempted to possess one before and had no idea if it were even possible.
It was likely they were warded against him by their knowledge of his true name.
Lilith might have prepared them in that way somehow. But shedim were bound to
the physical world. Though resilient here, they were powerless to affect the
higher planes. Maybe that was another weakness he could exploit.

Then
there was Mazzamauriello’s claim that the gun had been forged by Lucifer. If
that was so (and the supernal accuracy it had demonstrated thus far seemed to
bear that out), then this earthly cannon on the ridge was only a physical
container for it. It truly existed in the Yenne Velt, and might have powers
there that he could not expect.

Nevertheless,
the cannon
was
the key.

He
turned to Gersh and clapped his hand on the big man’s shoulder, rousing him
from his gloom.

“Gersh,
come with me.”

Gersh
nodded dully and stood.

“Where
are you going?” Sheardown called after them.

The
Rider picked his way to the shack where the Colonel and Purdee were huddled.
The sun was hot on his back, rising high now.

He
ducked inside.

The
Colonel was sitting quietly as Purdee gingerly picked splinters from the side
of his face.

“Tell
me you got some idea on how to get out of this,” the Colonel said.

“I
do, but you’re going to have to trust me.”