Gunslayer: Origins

Complete Story Arc

Gunslayer: Origins

The Farmstead

Auron trailed the frayed jute lead-rope through calloused fingers as his buckskin moccasins bent stalks of prairie grasses flat, carrying him as always through the rising scent of tilled earth towards the row marker at the end of the field. He didn’t need the whitewashed post any more than the team of draft horses behind him needed his guidance after weeks of plowing, but the only alternative was tougher chores than this. There was no such thing as a day off during spring planting.

“Hup, hup.”

Pa’s deep voice encouraged the powerful horses as the angled iron plow caught its leading edge on one of the countless rocks lurking beneath the surface. Chain traces jingled across leather harnesses while massive hooves churned the new-growth turf. Pa flexed muscular shoulders under his dirty cotton button-down, twisting the tool to probe for a way through. The animals freed the implement and the tip glided forward again, shaving the soil and flipping the slice upside down as the team stomped onwards.

Auron turned his sweaty face, still beardless despite his fourteen winters, into the breeze rising from the west. The Rocky Mountains lined the sky; a jagged, endless border of their valley. Some nights, Auron sat against the house and imagined the forest-covered peaks to be as high and grand as tales from the before-times, when there was more land beyond them, not just the ocean. But not during planting.

Cattle lowed in their paddock further down the field; cow and calf pairs grazing over the rockiest ground not worth battling with the plow. The animals represented the accumulated wealth of Auron’s family, and were the key to his future in Pasture. With God’s will, and good management, he would help Pa expand the farm for future generations; and maybe show Bethany he was the one to share a future generation with.

The air’s cool humidity blended with the warm moisture rising from the sun-baked soil as Auron and Pa worked to turn the horses at the field edge, lining them up to the next undisturbed patch of grassland.

“Good boys. Last run of the day—let’s see if we can’t make it the straightest yet.”

Pa clucked his tongue and laughed as the team nearly pulled the plow free of his grip in their enthusiasm for oats and rest at the barn. His black beard had grown wilder than usual during the frenzy of spring, and the brim of his worn felt hat flopped in places as he kept the handles at their proper pitch.

Auron watched handfuls of sparrows light along rows of furrows as he walked, flitting about in search of worms in the upset layer of earth. His mother and sister would trace the lines in the morning; scattering handfuls of wheat as they went. The birds would be a problem then, but Pa would scare them off with his gun and the ladies would populate the fields with scarecrows afterwards.

In a normal year, they would’ve finished planting a week ago, but the spring of 357 AC had looked especially promising, and Pa announced he would go to town to trade for extra seed; a decision that rocked Auron’s house for days with debates triggered between chores and meals.

“There’s trouble in the south, and that means opportunity for us. We’ll grow twice as much and send it up for a better price,” Pa reasoned.

“If planting twice as much was that easy, we’d do it every year,” Ma countered. “Twice the planting, twice the reaping and twice the threshing.”

“We’ll hire out at harvest.”

“And there goes the extra coin we might make.”

It was the cost of the seed, not the added work, that Ma disapproved of most; but she relented after several days of Pa’s boyish charm offensive. In the end she was relieved of her fine wedding china, and Pa of his heirloom revolver; a rust-pitted relic from the before-times, useless without ammunition. The storekeeper had given them a fair deal on it, knowing he would sell it downriver to where the secretive Dwarves hungered for any example of old human artefacts. In return, they received an additional cartload of grain, and best of all, a small paper bag of wonderful candies. Auron’s family had been glad for the trade.

Mostly.

Ma was still cross about the dishes, that much was obvious by the way she knocked Pa’s wooden bowl down on the table before him at supper every night, but she would forgive him eventually. She never stayed angry longer than a moon or two, and this was a far cry from the time she’d caught him with Petyr Bushing and his brothers with a bottle of whiskey at Thanksgiving Feast. Pa spent weeks in the barn after that. “Lucky it wasn’t Christmas,” he joked to Auron on one of his nightly visits to feed Pa and the horses.

Rabbit stew tonight. Abihail must’ve caught it during the course of her chores around the farmyard; she had a knack for luring the elusive animals close enough to snag with a club, but he knew better than to mention her strange abilities. Auron’s stomach growled as the savoury aroma wafted up to him, but he waited for Pa to join hands with him and his sister from the head of the table while they linked with Ma’s on the opposite side and bowed their heads together.

“Lord, we thank you for the food you have provided through your servants, and ask that you bless this bounty. Keep your faithful from the darkness of this world, and guide us unto your will, oh Lord. Amen.”

They echoed his last and tucked into the meal. Ma handed him a hunk of crusty brown bread still warm from the oven and he dipped the spongy flesh into gravy thick with carrots and potatoes from last year’s garden, boiled soft the way he liked them. Pa over-praised the food while Ma pretended to ignore him, and he balanced himself on two legs of his wooden chair after he had finished.

“Well Sarah? What do you say to a candy?” asked Pa, packing a plug of tobacco into one of the endless handmade corncob pipes that proliferated around the house and barn despite countless incinerations in the oven upon their discovery by Ma.

Abihail’s green eyes widened at the prospect, and she clasped her hands together primly, maintaining the pony-show of dutiful innocence she reserved for Pa. “Can we? Please?”

Though they had shared a womb, few who met them guessed they were twins. Abihail was the image of their mother; fiery red hair tamed by braids, and the fair skin she and Ma both shielded with long-sleeved dresses and wide bonnets when they worked the fields. Auron had same brown eyes and likeness of their tanned, dark-haired father; though not yet his height nor breadth of shoulders.

Ma feigned an exasperated sigh at the peace offering and skipped across the raw wooden floor to the paper bag perched on the mantle. Pa cared little for sweets, but Ma loved them; though she would only indulge when prompted. Abihail shared their mother’s sweet tooth and they each plucked a favourite from the rough paper before the bag made its way to Auron. He felt the same deep longing for sugar, but tempered it with the notion of manliness Pa presented, and tried to refuse until Ma dropped one into his hand.

“What flavour is this?”

“Orange.”

“Not the colour, I mean the flavour.”

Ma smiled around the candy melting in her mouth. “Orange. Both a colour and a fruit somewhere down east. I had one once, when I was your age.” She pressed her fists together: “About this size and unforgettably juicy.”

Auron grunted and played the cube around his tongue, enjoying the intensity of the treat; sweeter than berries or even Ma’s honeyed haskap jam bottled on bountiful summer days. A matchstick hissed, and a cloud of fragrant tobacco smoke drifted up from the table to dissipate about the bare rafters opposite the loft where a timber wall split the space into two small rooms for Auron and Abihail.

Ma swatted Pa with a dish towel. “Not while I’m eating.”

Pa puffed his pipe and rose, digging out his portion from the candy bag in her hand and depositing it down the front of Ma’s dress with a grin: “Have my share sweetheart.” He laughed as she lashed at his backside with the towel and went out, taking up the double-barrelled scattergun from its place by the door.

Abihail lifted the water bucket to warm on the stove in preparation for washing. “What was the name of that song you played a few moons ago at the Shaws?” she hummed a fair rendition.

“In Your Light We Remain.”

“That’s it. Would you play it this week at worship? I want to sing it.”

“Maybe.”

Abihail lowered her voice to the taunting lilt she used with him. “If you do, maybe I’ll put in a good word with a certain someone from Meadow Pass.”

“Mind your business.”

Abihail was an incorrigible gossip, and fancied herself queen matchmaker in the community of Pasture’s young adults. Worse, she knew him better than anybody, and he had learned to ignore rather than deny her accusations. Auron left his empty plate and the conspiratorial silence of his mother and sister as they cleared the table, exchanging knowing looks.

The ladder creaked as he climbed to his room in the loft. The dividing wall made the space narrow, and the battered guitar hanging from pegs permitted just enough clearance to pass his straw-stuffed bed to where his trunk squatted in the corner. The sharp scent of pinewood rose as the lid swung on brass hinges, exposing the contents that were the rest of his worldly possessions.

Sitting atop two folded changes of work clothes and his Sunday best, was his short-bladed carving knife and the rough workings of his latest project. He left the clothes and joined Pa on the low porch where he sat rocking on his chair, loosing puffs of smoke at predictable intervals.

Auron settled on his three-legged stool and studied the block of butterwood in his hands, envisioning where the soft, loose-grained timber would be removed. He grazed the razor edge of the blade across the charcoal lines he had sketched the night before; raising a long sliver curling upon itself as the knife reached the end, like soil before the plow. The process repeated subconsciously, each stroke removing an even layer. A cold gust rippled over bobbing grass stems towards him, tousling his shoulder-length hair with its passage. The fine hairs on his neck prickled, and Auron lifted his eyes to scan the ranch.

The sun dipped below the mountains; bloodying the sky and darkening the features of the rocky peaks. The yard dogs drifted over from their haunts to lay below the porch and gnaw on bones or hooves from deadstock calves. Auron cast his gaze to the forest encroaching the heights of the surrounding valley, feeling eyes upon him.

Pa’s pipestem clicked against his teeth as he spoke, “Go tell Ma it’s a good night to be outside. This wind’ll keep the mosquitoes away.”

Pa wanted a lantern, but didn’t want to push his luck with Ma. Auron wanted one too, for as darkness spread across the fields, the long furrows took on a menacing air, and he shivered with more than the suggestion of the valley’s nightly fog. “Yes Pa.”

The ladies joined them in their customary seats on the porch, sitting with their backs to the wind so as not to disturb Ma’s darning and Abihail’s reading. Shadows flooded and ebbed across boards as the lantern swayed on its iron perch, creaking as metal slid against metal.

“For Jesus had commanded the impure spirit to come out of the man. Many times it had seized him, and though he was chained hand and foot and kept under guard, he had broken his chains and had been driven by the demon into solitary places.”Abihail continued reading aloud to where Jesus cast the spirits possessing the man into a herd of pigs and compelled them into the sea.

She shielded the frail pages from the wind with her body when she had to turn them, and leaned back into the light to read the faint script. “Will the Dwarves be cast out of the world in the Last Resurrection?” she asked. “They aren’t demons, but they weren’t made in God’s image.”

Pa tapped ashes out of his pipe against the leather sole of his boots. “I don’t know, Abihail. Hopefully. Ask the pastor on Sunday.”

“Pastor Daniel always pretends to know, but that isn’t the same thing.”

Auron blew shreds of loose fibres away from the phoenix rising up under his hands. He admired his work, the model a fair approximation of the birds sometimes glimpsed flaring at night against the mountains in their mesmerizing courtship flights.

“Is that for Bethany?” Abihail asked pointedly. Ma giggled.

Auron’s cheeks glowed with embarrassment. “No. I just felt like carving it.”

“Oh, it’s just a coincidence that she’s obsessed with them. So you don’t mind if I keep it then?”

A sliver fell to join the pile about Auron’s ankles. “Can’t have it.”

“Why don’t you just admit it?”

“Why don’t you just give us a reading from the Book of Sins?”

Ma clicked her tongue and spoke without looking up from the looping needle and thread, “Leave your sister alone.”

Auron’s knife whispered over wood while the lantern creaked above. Abihail preferred His Testament, the first two-thirds of the Bible; stories of the Israelites and their Messisah, Jesus. Auron was drawn towards the latter part; records of the Old World’s collapse, and prophecies of woe and redemption as recorded by Isiah Stark.

“Yes Ma.”

The cedar-slaked roof shrieked as the wind gusted, carrying chilly mountain air preceding the nightly fogs that blanketed the valley. Goose-flesh crept across Auron’s arms as Abihail marked her place with a length of ribbon and closed the leather-bound Bible. The ladies took the lantern inside with them, leaving the men in darkness and the scent of a gathering storm. Auron fought the feeling of eyes upon him from the dark lines of furrows and waited until at last, Pa cleared his throat and went in.

The Raid

Dogs howled outside. Auron froze in his bed, straining to listen. Pa’s feet thumped to the floor in the room below and clothing rustled while long seconds passed. The howling rose in urgency as horses whinnied and kicked at their stalls.

“What is it?” asked Ma, her voice edged with fear.

Carved wooden figurines fell from their perches on the wall over Auron’s bed as the house rattled with the vibrations of a mounted party galloping up to the farmstead. He sprang up and dressed, sliding his feet into his slippers as Pa called out from the den.

“Raiders—Sarah, get the rifle!”

Abihail shrieked in her room as Auron slid down the ladder. “Come on!”

He waited for her at the bottom as Ma blew out the lantern and took up her post at the kitchen window with the hunting rifle, levering the action and setting a live round in the chamber as she watched the yard. Pa checked the snugness of the door bar in its bracket as hooves thundered around the house. Auron guided his trembling sister through the dark to their designated place and flipped the dining table over to provide cover. Dogs yelped outside, and were silenced.

Pa swung out the glass panes facing the front, and pointed the barrel of his scattergun through the gap. “Anyone not wanting to get winged had better leave off right now!” he shouted into the night.

Something blurred through the window and thumped into the wall. A black-fletched arrow quivered in the board, its crude iron tip sunken half an inch deep.

Auron’s blood chilled as a bestial voice roared in an unknown language, echoed in chorus from around the ranch; dripping with a quality not heard in animals: hatred. Abihail gasped and clung tighter to him, sending a shocking thrill through his body as if in the moments lightning gathered among the grasses before a strike. His arm hair rose on end as he eased her further into the corner, and a nip of static shocked him as their hands separated.

“Stay here, I’ve got to help Pa.”

First one, then the second scattergun barrel fired, deafening Auron within the tight confines of the house. The stink of burnt gunpowder filled the air, stinging his eyes as he fumbled with the latch of the trunk beside the front door. The lid swung back, and Auron groped for the canvas bag of shot-shells within. His hearing returned in a rush of furious ringing.

Ma panted as she fired from the kitchen, her shoulders heaving with breath when she sheltered next to the window to slide shaking brass cartridges into the rifle. “They’re in the barn,” she stammered.

Pa shouted abuse as he loaded; words unfit for church, as he called it. The house sounded as if a mob were pelting it with stones, and glass shattered as several arrows whistled in through the windows to pierce timber.

Auron brushed against the wall to where Pa peered through curtains and passed him a handful of brass shells loaded with buckshot.

“They’re pulling back,” said Pa.

“What are they?”

He paused, as if deciding to lie. Pa’s face set grim, and his narrowed eyes met Auron’s, “Orcs.”

Auron fumbled the canvas bag. This wasn’t one of the occasional hoorahs courtesy of the local Descendants chapter looking to provoke Christians by rustling livestock and vandalizing barns; this was an incursion the likes of which hadn’t been seen in these parts since the signing of the Pact a hundred years ago.

Pa recovered the bag of shells and began stuffing the casings into his pockets. “Get the water bucket and some rags. They’re gonna come back with fire.” He spoke with the certainty of a former ranger; a profession that had earned him this ranch.

Auron choked on his reply and crossed to the kitchen. Ma grasped at him as he passed. He trembled in her gaze, her eyes wild with the unbridled terror of a mare driven by wolves across the plains.

“This goes bad, you take Abihail and get over to the Shaws.” Ma’s sharp grip barely registered over the realization that Auron might have to go out there, into the dark with a mob of savage Orcs braying for blood, his sister in tow.

“If I tell you to run, you get to the tree line and don’t stop for anything. You hear me?” Her voice broke as she cradled his face. “You hear me?”

He nodded and felt the warmth of Abihail’s embrace as she joined them by the window.

Abihail whimpered against his chest. “I don’t want to die.”

Auron pulled her closer. “You won’t. I promise.”

“Wet those rags and wrap ‘em around your mouths. Dunk Ma’s chair shawl, use it to fight the fires.” Pa clutched the scattergun between his knees and tied down his bandana over his nose while a ball of flame bounced across the yard, leaving a burning copy in its wake as the riders lit projectiles from their neighbours.

Abihail saw to the bucket, and Auron was clutching the dripping shawl by the time the first flaming arrows thunked into the cedar slakes above them. Pa lay about with his scattergun; loading, firing, reloading and firing again as his fingers fished loose shells from pockets. Ma searched for targets from the kitchen window, but her rifle remained silent for long minutes while Orcs bellowed and horses whinnied outside.

Shadows retreated as an arrow sailed into the room, the cloth-wrapped head shedding greasy droplets of liquid fire onto the bare wood floor where it stuck fast. Auron sprang forward and smothered the light with the shawl, his breath pulling the wet fabric of his bandana tight against his lips. Scattered knocking echoed from the door as more shafts impacted against it.

“Sarah. Bring me the rifle.” Pa cast the smoking scattergun into the corner and locked eyes with Ma. Tongues of flame licked across the ceiling, illuminating the room. Hoots and barbaric laughter sounded above the crackle of burning lumber as their assailants mocked them from the darkness, waiting for the inevitable.

“Let us pray.” Pa wrapped them in his arms and began the Lord’s Prayer. Auron hid his face in Ma’s dress, ashamed as his legs trembled with insistent energy. Ma’s hand shook while she clutched his hair, and Abihail sobbed as she tried to join with Pa’s quavering voice.

Auron’s throat burned in the dense layer of smoke descending from the ceiling, forcing streams of tears from his eyes. Abihail coughed and clutched his arm; raising the hair along it with the fury of her grip.

“Amen.” Pa cocked the rifle and pointed it at Abihail.

Ma screamed as she rose and tackled him, one word over and over: “No!”

Another flaming projectile darted into the room, striking within arm’s reach of the pair as Ma and Pa wrestled for control of the weapon. The arrow’s flickering light showed the measure of the struggle on their faces, each drawn back in rictus.

“Sarah stop! It’s better this way.” Pa swung his heavy frame over and pinned her to the floor, but she would not yield the rifle.

“Run!” Ma shouted as flames spread from the arrow in the floor. Abihail shook him, her words incomprehensible. “Run!” Rafters cracked above, and the room swarmed with frenzied embers as a corner of the roof collapsed over Auron’s parents. ”Run!”

“Sarah!”

Ma would not yield the rifle, not even as the fallen beam burned across her legs. “Run!”

Auron tore his eyes away and crawled to the kitchen window, dragging Abihail behind him. He fought wind inhaled by the flames as he squirmed through, turning and helping a stunned Abihail through the gap afterwards.

The world outside was total darkness through tears and dazzled eyes. A rush of cold air set him to retching and hacking as his body purged itself of smoke. He wiped his face with the back of his hand and forced Abihail to her feet. They had to run.

Someone punched him in the chest, and the sound of an arrow vibrating to stillness in a board rose from behind him.

Auron doubled over, coughing blood onto the turf in the light of the burning house. He gasped and tried to breathe. Instead of air, a tortuous suction bubbled below his shirt. He collapsed to his knees, his head swimming as the inferno grew and porcine squeals rent the night. Abihail shook him by the shoulders, but his legs disobeyed him.

The inky sky above broke with strobing forks of silent lightning as a deluge of fat raindrops fell hissing onto the flames. Auron saw them then in the flashes—the silhouettes of a dozen riders between them and the barn.

They were a nightmare manifested from his darkest fantasies of the mythical Orcs. Demons made flesh, as the pastor told it. Hulking riders bulked up by plates of steel armour strapped across broad chests, making their draft horses look like ponies beneath their mass. Dirty green flesh showed in places where it wasn’t daubed in tattoos and warpaint, or covered in rusted mail.

Auron’s hair stood on end as static charges gathered across his body; scratching like the feet of a thousand insects.

The riders fought for control of their mounts as soundless fingers of lightning speared down into Abihail, wreathing her in swirling energy. Her body contorted as she rose from the earth, her nightdress fluttering as she glided up to hover over their assailants. Threads of lashing light arced from the roiling current surrounding her to the grass, igniting fires among the vegetation. A whorling aura of incandescence gathered around Abihail, obscuring her frame with its brilliance.

She wailed, and a terrible clap of thunder split the night.

Auron gasped as his body skipped across the grassy yard like a stone over water. The house disintegrated, spilling burning timbers, rafters and carved wooden figurines across the laneway. Flashing lightning lit the prairie, beating the turf in a wide swath below Abihail, tossing up clumps of soil or blasting chunks of steel and flesh away where they struck.

He lost sight of Abihail as he tumbled to a halt against the raised slope of a fresh furrow. His chest shuddered as his lungs struggled for air, and bright blood showed on his hand after another coughing fit.

Auron pulled himself up by a row marker, trying to rise as the tempest faded around Abihail. Glowing snakes slithered into nothingness across the ground while electric cords spun slowly to disunion. The light faded, and she fell limp onto blackened earth.

A handful of Orcs returned, finding the courage to face her now that she lay still atop scorched grass. Auron’s voice croaked. His arms failed and he sank deeper into the furrow as they bound Abihail’s wrists and slung her atop a horse in the light of burning debris before the raiders galloped off towards the mountains. Cold fog materialized about Auron as he clutched his wound, bubbling with frothing blood; and he sank into the muddy embrace of upset soil.

The Gunslayer

Auron struggled for breath, writhing in the merciless sun as each painful inhalation satisfied him less than the last. He stared at the scattered timber bones of his former home, unable to turn his head away. His neck felt as if it would snap at any moment under the increasing pressure of air trapped within his chest; contorting his throat and forcing his windpipe out of place.

He prayed sometimes during the cruel hours between night and noon, for it must be noon judging by the sun’s intensity. He cursed God as his mind blurred, begging for relief or forgiveness, or any kind of end to his torment in moments of lucidity. Only the wind answered, howling or whispering as it willed while the day wore on, draining the warmth from his heart even as his skin burned with fever.

Sparrows fluttered about the furrowed field, ignoring him in their foraging. The birds had always plagued the farm, gorging themselves on hard-earned seed and ears of corn before they could be brought to harvest. Auron gripped the field marker in his hand like a club; it wasn’t the sparrows that concerned him now.

Dark figures hunched around him in the tilled rows, draped in funereal plumage like the black-cloaked Descendants priests Auron sometimes glimpsed on trips to town; webworks of rune tattoos hiding the faces of the men beneath deep hoods. The surrounding vultures were more reptile than bird—hideous in appearance and purpose. The scavengers had been patient through the morning, but now as Auron’s breathing grew shallow, the boldest among them crept forward to perch just out of arm’s reach.

He tried not to think about the filthy creatures swarming about the laneway where Ma and Pa had been thrown clear of the exploding house. The vultures had been deaf to his pleas and curses until wracking coughs forced him into silence. Now the nearest hopped even closer, its scabby head bare of feathers, its curved scimitar beak encrusted with dried blood.

God help me. Auron summoned his failing strength and swung out with the field marker—the monster flinched back, throwing its dark wings out wide to steady itself. The wooden post tumbled from his grip, leaving chips of whitewash in his sweaty palm. The effort of his attack set him to unproductive coughing, shooting thrills of agony through his feverish body. Auron groped blindly at the upturned soil beside him for the comforting weight of his weapon as the vulture stalked forward again, unperturbed by his show of force.

Auron tried to scream fury at the bird as his hands searched in vain, but only a raspy wheeze escaped. His heart beat like falling hooves—a shadow blocked out the sun above him. Auron tensed in anticipation of flesh-tearing agony.

Leather creaked instead, and boots thudded to the ground with the jingle of spurs. The vultures edged away, giving up on Auron entirely and swooping over to join their brethren around the laneway. Someone stood above him, but he couldn’t turn his head to see who against the tormenting pressure in his throat.

A clasp rustled, and metal tools clattered while Auron gurgled atop the soil. Sunlight flickered as the figure moved, blocking and allowing it through as they inspected something near at hand. Auron’s lips parted, but his entreaties were mute.

“This is gonna hurt,” a man said, his voice rough as gravel. Fingers probed his ribs on the same side as the arrow which had passed through Auron’s lung, about a third of the way below the wound. There was cold, stabbing pain, and then instantaneous relief of the crushing pressure in his chest as built-up air vented out in a squelching sigh.

Auron gasped and shuddered as his healthy lung fought to expand against the confined space it laboured in. “Lean over on this side, make sure you hold that tube. Other hand…here.” The man pushed Auron’s free hand over to a thin brass cylinder protruding from his wound and eased him into the wedge of a furrow, allowing bubbling blood and fluid to stream to the ground. Air hissed at his side with each growing breath as if blowing through a stalk of straw, and the blazing pain in his chest subsided to a bearable smoulder.

The man limped off, leaving Auron to cough in the harsh sunlight as he recovered. He eased his head over as the pressure in his neck subsided, and watched silently indignant as the stranger poked around the scattered ruins of the farmstead.

He mistook the figure’s billowing duster for brown monastic robes at first, until the man turned and exposed the open chest, revealing a button-down shirt and vest beneath. His weathered felt hat was of the same earthy hues as the rest of the clothing; equally hard-worn and certain of its utility.

A saddle-horse and pack-mule grazed on lush grasses nearby, flicking their ears towards the scavengers in the laneway as their dexterous lips ripped clumps from the turf. The stranger snooped around the rubble and blackened swathes of incinerated vegetation in the yard, too far away to hear Auron croak.

Auron’s throat burned for want of water. The pack-mule was tantalizingly close, but he didn’t dare move so as not to disrupt the tube protruding from between his ribs. He tried calling out again, but only coughed. Blood bubbled from the metal straw as breath hissed out.

Sunlight glinted on a brass badge pinned to the man’s vest as he returned. He was older than Pa, though by how much it was impossible to say. Burn scars glistened across one of his cheekbones, leaving the other half of his face free to collect road dust in wrinkles. His leather boots were worn through where they met stirrups, and his gait spoke of muscles stiff from riding, or old wounds healed as well as they were able. He stood over Auron, the colour of his eyes obscured by sunken sockets and his hat’s shadow, but glowing strangely even so. “What happened here?”

The word oozed like venom over Auron’s grimacing lips, “Orcs.”

“Yeah, I know,” the man made a dismissive gesture. “I meant the witch. Did you see her?”

“Water,” Auron’s voice cracked like sun-baked soil. The man retrieved a canteen from the pack-saddle and shook his head when Auron reached for it.

“Keep your hand on that wound,” he pressed the rim to Auron’s lips, letting the excess flow dribble down his chin as he drank. “What happened?”

“Orcs,” was all Auron could manage. His head spun from the effort of drinking, and his febrile body ached as each breath pushed life further back into his numb limbs, reuniting them with control of his mind in a frenzy of firing nerves.

“Fuck’s sake, boy,” the stranger stood and searched his pockets, kneeling again beside him in the field with a ragged grunt when he had found what he was looking for; a glass vial filled to its cork stopper with liquid the colour of strawberry preserves. The vivid elixir swirled with darker flakes in a bottled tornado as the man shook it. “You’re lucky I’m on my way back north.”

A chalky, bitter taste invaded Auron’s mouth as the vial emptied. Invigorating heat spread through his body, roiling through his chest about the open wound in a concentrated flurry. The stranger plucked the brass tube from between Auron’s ribs as the flesh knitted itself back together before his eyes. Soon his chest rose and fell with ease, as if no arrow had ever pierced him.

The blaze in his core faded as the power of the drink wore off. Auron’s fingers explored the dense scar tissue where a sucking wound had been moments before, and then the firmly sealed puncture at his side. He sat up, alert and painless,

“What was that?”

The stranger corked the empty vessel and returned it to the folds of his coat, “Potion of healing.” He spat generously, the saliva stained tobacco-brown, and rose to his feet, “It don’t come cheap neither.” The man lifted his chin, and mesmerizing blue eyes emerged from the shadows under his hat’s battered brim, glinting in the dark recesses. “I saw one hell of a lightning storm last night. Now you’re gonna tell me what happened with that witch.”

Auron leaned back on his arms, his legs outstretched in the soil. Thin skeins of dark smoke marked the remains of dozens of farmsteads throughout the valley, rising until they met the layer of cold morning air, and drifting along sideways below the invisible chill like trapped souls.

“Abihail—my sister… she isn’t a witch!”

The stranger grunted at his protest: “She dead or they take ‘er?” He nodded at intervals of Auron’s story, accepting without surprise the descriptions of Abihail’s elemental powers, or news of her capture. His gaze was disarming, despite the otherworldly glint.

“They’ll be heading back south now, along the mountains more than like.”

The man broke his hypnotic hold over Auron and whistled for his horse, who trotted over from its grazing, trailing the mule behind it. Saddle leather creaked as the man swung up and gathered the reins. “For whatever it’s worth boy, I’m sorry for your family. Good fortune to you now.”

Auron scrambled to his feet. “Wait! What the hell do you mean ‘good fortune’? We’ve got to go after Abihail.”

The stranger clucked his tongue, and the animals walked on. “We ain’t doing shit kid. Those Orcs you seen were just a handful out of the whole damn bucket. This here’s a job for an army, and an army ain’t gonna get anywhere near them raiders before they’re back in the Badlands.”

“Aren’t you a Gunslayer? I saw your badge—I’ve heard tales.”

The man halted the horse and turned in the saddle, “Gunslayer, kid. We’re monster hunters, not soldiers. Orcs are a problem for the lords, not for us.” The wrinkles around his eyes softened: “Besides, you don’t want me catching up with your sister. Trust me.”

“She’s not a witch!” Auron defended her on reflex, as he always had whenever other children voiced suspicion for her ‘knack’, as Pa had called it. His heart hammered, but he needed to know the truth. “What are they going to do with her?”

The stranger fixed him with his piercing gaze. “Honestly boy, we don’t know. Heard tell of ‘em using witches as weapons once or twice, not that they lack for good steel. Witchcraft is damned rare for us, unheard of in Orcs and Dwarves—maybe they’re just curious, who knows?”

“What am I supposed to do?”

“Whatever the fuck you want,” said the man with a shrug. “Stay here and rebuild if you can. Find a woman, have kids and get fat. That’s what I’d do.” He looked out to the ruined farmstead. “You’re welcome to come with me, become a ‘slayer maybe. It won’t change what happened here, but you’ll have the chance to save others at least.”

Auron shook his head, “This is our land…my land. My home.”

“Good choice, boy. I came south in the fall of last year with three ‘prentices not much older than you. I’m going back alone.” The stranger loosened up on the reins and the horse walked on: “Good fortune to you now.”

“Where are you going?” Auron called after the Gunslayer.

“North,” came the reply, stoney and rough as the laneway.

The Church

Auron patted the mounded soil with the flat of his spade in the paddock where he and Pa had dug for a well the autumn before. The unfinished hole was large enough to accept the fire-shrunken figures of his parents side by side, their unrecognizable bodies shrouded in a scorched tablecloth recovered from the yard.

Vultures screeched in their congregation along crumbling field-stone walls, frustrated at their denial of more flesh. The image of Ma and Pa’s tattered, eyeless corpses burned in Auron’s mind, though his body had already exhausted itself of tears and vomit by the time night fell. He spent dark hours shivering under his wool blanket at the foot of the grave, worrying about Abihail. Horrific scenes of savagery came unbidden to his mind, and he despaired in his powerlessness to save her.

Dawn arrived to burn off fog heavy with wood smoke. The ruined farmstead was just as broken and lonely in the daylight as it had been the night before; without even the pack of mongrel yard dogs for company. The fields where the cattle had grazed lay empty; wide columns of churned soil revealing where the animals had been driven south by the raiders.

Auron discovered the scattergun among the wreckage, its wooden stock charred in places—but still workable, along with a handful of birdshot shells among the grasses where the barn had stood. The tiny pellets would serve to knock a goose from the sky, but would be utterly useless against Orc armour.

Pa’s Bowie knife survived the fire as well, blown out into the laneway as the house exploded. Auron studied the heavy steel body where a silver blade had been fused along its length to provide answer to many of the monsters rangers might be expected to face on their long frontier patrols, and fixed the scabbard to his belt.

His family had never had much coinage to speak of; their wealth being tied up in the cattle herd, and there was no money to be found in the wreckage. Auron trudged down the laneway with the only items of any worth left to him: the gun, a rolled blanket secured with a hank of rope, Pa’s knife, and the pendant from Ma’s necklace around his neck; a modest cross of cast silver on a length of twine to replace the burnt ribbon.

Town seemed twice as far alone and under the burden of his thoughts. His feet found sharp stone edges through his moccasins as he walked, but he was numb to their sting. It was a market day, but even so, there was less traffic than usual in the tributary roads, and no carts transporting goods at all. The men he passed kept their eyes to themselves and moved with a sense of purpose, perhaps fearing to be away from whatever imagined stronghold they had ventured from.

Pasture’s streets were similarly wary, and a scattering of hasty fortifications were being erected belatedly in the town by the citizenry. Carpenters nailed boards across doors to bar them, and curtains flicked with furtive movement in second storey windows as wives watched the streets with catlike intensity. Four men armed with crossbows stood sentinel on a flat roof overlooking the town square, their simple weapons marking them as pagans just as certainly as Auron’s firearm showed him a Christian; more so even than the cross about his neck.

The bastion stood proudly at the town square, as it had since long before the Second Coming; the high stone walls shielding generations of faithful as the world burned around Pasture in the centuries of upheavals and strife since then. A handful of parishioners stood guard in the courtyard before the church’s imposing wooden doors and behind a barricade of overturned carts and furniture, resting hunting rifles and double-barrelled scatterguns atop the fortifications.

A pair of men left the defences and welcomed Auron by way of a handshake and solemn words of thanks to the Lord. They ushered him up a stone stairway worn in the centre where countless feet had trodden before. They must’ve read the loss on Auron’s face, for they didn’t ask after his family.

Acrid incense stung Auron’s nose as he entered the church, and he flinched as the doors clapped shut behind him. The atrium revealed itself as his eyes adjusted to the gloom. Whorling streams of perfumed smoke flowed down marble pedestals where smouldering promisetree resin glowed behind brass censers, flooding across the floor in a shifting pool of mystic fragrance. He and Abihail had loved to watch the currents form shapes and figures from their pew in the back of the sanctuary during long Sunday sermons, competing for the most outlandish sightings of monsters in the candlelit fog.

Dress shoes clicked over stone. Pastor Daniel strode through the ocean, his thin legs stirring up gales across the floor; driving a cloud to rise from the banks about his feet. Auron shivered as the tendrils coalesced into a snarling Orc maw.

“Praise God,” the middle-aged pastor came forward and embraced him, exorcizing the immaterial creature with his passage. “We’d had word that the entire southern valley had been razed.” Daniel’s pale eyes studied him through thick spectacles, the brass frames flickering with candlelight as he turned to lead Auron: “Come, you must be hungry.”

The sanctuary was cavernous, its frescoed ceiling supported by scores of stone pillars leading down the centre of the hall to the altar which stood beneath a wide golden cross suspended by wire. Families huddled in the pews beyond the alcove, their voices blending together in a murmur pierced by a baby’s cries. Auron looked for the faces of ranchers and farmers his family had known all his life, but there were precious few. Amongst the several hundred gathered, most were the townsfolk who had not suffered the attacks.

Pastor Daniel led him to aged ladies distributing thin vegetable soup into wooden bowls and pressing them into the hands of a line of refugees. Auron accepted his with a strained word of thanks and found a space on one of the long pews near another ranching family who made their temporary home amongst blankets and trunks overflowing with household valuables. His own meagre possessions clunked against the fine-grained boards running the length of the long bench, polished glossy by generations shifting between kneeling to speak to God, and sitting to listen to Him.

He drank the lukewarm broth mechanically, busying himself to stave off inevitable questions from his neighbours; but no sooner had he set the empty bowl aside did the rancher’s son come sliding along the pew behind him.

“Ho Auron,” he said, leaning forward across the backrest.

“Ho Rafe.” Auron stared at his favourite window above the pulpit, the empty space bordered by jagged panes of stained glass clinging to the stone sill. Sunlight burned through the scattered fragments, calling to mind the Gunslayer’s gaze.

“South Valley gone?”

“Yep. Meadow River?”

“Yep,” answered Rafe. The boy, younger than Auron by two winters, paused as he found the right words for the next question: “Just you?”

“Yep.”

Auron held the silence until Rafe slid back along the pew to his family. If Meadow River had burned, then so had Bethany; not to mention the rest of his friends out that way. He saw them in his mind, scattered and torn—a feast for gluttonous vultures.

Auron lowered a padded riser from the seat back in front and knelt to pray, leaning his arms upon the solid wood bench to steady his trembling hands. His lips moved as he recited the Lord’s Prayer in silence, the words meaningless against the cold anguish settling over his heart. The weight of his loss pulled him down even as he reached for comfort, and his hands shook with fury at God’s betrayal of his family. Auron ceased his prayer and glared through watering eyes at the gleaming cross suspended before the pews. He gripped the backrest and slid into his seat, lifting the riser with his foot until it thudded into place with an echo of finality in the open sanctuary.

Auron stretched out across the wood and rested his head against the rolled blanket, turning his face from the altar as if he could hide the blasphemous rage intruding on his mind. God had let his parents, and half the Christian farmers in Pasture die, cursed Abihail with unholy power and let her be taken by filthy Orcs; all while they lived as He instructed, and kept faith to His promise. Auron wrestled with mortal fear as blame and grief flooded his thoughts, blistering hatred gaining leverage against dying beliefs, outclassed by a fresh contender.

He trembled on the pew until gleaming fragments of stained glass dulled in the gathering darkness. Auron mastered his breathing, and wiped his face against rough wool before he pushed himself up to sitting. Candles burned now only at the bases of pillars to guide people about their nightly business, and families drew in upon themselves under whatever shelter they had managed.

A cold pot of broth sat on the unattended dining table, and Auron swept away the layer of congealed grease to ladle a portion for himself, taking also a tin cup of water and emptying it in one draught before he refilled it from the cask. The twine sling bit his shoulder under the weight of the scattergun, and Auron paused to drape the blanket about himself to lessen the effect. He took the tin with him as he walked from one candle-lit circle of stone to another until he again passed through the perfumed alcove and into the crisp night air.

A half-dozen men turned their heads from the barricade and then back to the shadowed courtyard before them. Auron exchanged nods with one and joined them wordlessly among overturned carts and rough timber framing. The town was still, its timid silence broken by barking dogs asserting themselves across yards and balconies. The sliver moon did little to light the streets, making gaping voids of alleys and entire residential blocks alike.

Auron pulled the blanket tighter around him as a chill fog settled over Pasture, condensing into thick droplets on every surface. His neighbour to his left offered him a slug of liquor from a flask. Auron hesitated, then took a guilty nip. The illicit alcohol warmed him, though it lacked the heat of the Gunslayer’s potion.

Auron’s eyelids grew heavy as he leaned against dew-slicked boards, and he thought of Abihail as thunder growled in the distance. Men murmured at the barricade, and Auron’s head jerked up to face the courtyard. Lights flickered through fog and shadow in the streets beyond, dancing and growing more plentiful as basso rumbling rolled ever closer. “Horses.” He recognized the noise before the older men around him could even make it out over the breeze.

“I’ll get the pastor.” One of the men ran up the steps and disappeared behind the tall wooden doors as the others settled in behind their defences. Auron let the corner of blanket covering the breech of his scattergun fall to his side, and drew back each of the hammers until they clicked into place.

Numberless lights swirled like a flight of phoenix as torches resolved out of the shadows, revealing figures in gleaming plate armour and a flood of trotting horses that spread out into the wide courtyard as they broke the confinement of the tighter streets.

“Steady men!” someone called from further down the barricade.

Pastor Daniel joined them before the last of the torch-bearing riders filed into the square, followed by a stream of armed Christians who ran to cover or take up positions on the steps before the doors. Steel-shod hooves sparked embers across cobblestone as horses whinnied and wagon wheels creaked. Distant men called out with authority through obscuring fog, and were answered.

One guttering torch drew closer, illuminating its bearer as the man emerged from the mist on horseback. A line of black rune tattoos stretched across his cheek above a cropped beard, and his long, dark hair lay piled atop his head in a coiled braid. His visored helmet sat tucked into his elbow, while his free hand rested on the pommel of a longsword sheathed at the saddle.

The rider called out with a deep, sure voice, “I am Gaspar Ironson, Judikar of southern Montania.” His handsome features contorted into a sneer as he surveyed the defences: “I have been charged by the Ancestors to arrest a traitor amongst your people.”

The Departure

The Descendant’s leader halted contemptuously close to the defences, arrogant in his assumption of safety as he addressed the congregants. Auron’s heart galloped in the silence following the Judikar’s accusation of treason. They knew. They knew he had survived where his family had not. He should have died with them, should’ve fought back—and now everyone would know too.

The scattergun trembled in Auron’s hands as mounted soldiers took up positions across the stone courtyard, the chill wind bringing the scent of horses and lamp oil to the barricades where the rest of the Christian men stood ready to defend themselves.

Ponderous footfalls sounded from the fog. A hulking shadow rose above the riders, resolving into vague shape as it strode forwards into view. A spike of fear stabbed through Auron’s chest as a colossal brass construction emerged, flaring with torchlight and carrying the squat weight of its body on two mechanical legs that cracked stone under sculpted feet.

An Aruktavach.

Auron had never seen so much as a drawing of one, but he recognized the war suit by reputation. The broad body of the machine stood armoured with layered plates, excepting a rectangle of coloured glass centred near the top through which the pilot must see. Two articulating metal arms rotated and flexed under wide pauldrons, like a musician warming up before a performance.

A thin blue flame hissed in the palm of some strange, oversized claw where the first arm ended. Auron shivered as the second hand swivelled, tracking the maw of a fearsome, long-barrelled cannon across the length of the barricade and back.

Pastor Daniel stood on the steps before the church and raised a voice too loud for his slight frame, polished from countless sermons. “Peace be upon you, cousin. You will find no traitors here, only God-fearing folk living as the Lord intended; and well within the confines of the Pact.”

Auron leaned deeper into the upturned cart, willing his legs to stop shaking. The men around him would see his fear, and know he was unworthy. Candles showed in the streets leading to the square as townsfolk edged out of their homes to investigate the disturbance. God, more to see him exposed.

He seated the brass butt-plate of the gun into his shoulder, hidden beneath the folds of the draped blanket about him, and steeled himself to swing the twin barrels up to shoot the unarmoured head of the pagan before the man could name him. His hands, however, were as feeble on the weapon as the first time Pa had let him hold it as a child.

“I doubt that very much, priest.”

The Judikar lifted a gloved fist to his ear. The sound of booted feet and creaking leather straps filled the courtyard as a contingent of men-at-arms dismounted and streamed forward around the Aruktavach to support their commander.

The Descendant soldiers’ armour gleamed in the torchlight, masterfully wrought, and incised with flowing scroll-work. Enamelled colour showed in the recesses to highlight both the craftsmanship of the armourers, and the individuality of the warriors; despite the visored helms obscuring their faces.

Auron saw no seams or gaps that the scattergun could penetrate from the front. He narrowed his eyes at demonic runes showing on the broader steel surfaces, painted with the same precision as the rest of the construction, and passed his gaze over the varied arms of the soldiers; two-handed swords standing bare and ready for violence, or long polearms headed with hammers and axes that could reach over the narrow width of the defences.

Parchment rustled, and Gaspar Ironborn produced a long document studded with red wax seals and devilish symbols darkening its surface. He pulled the curling edges taut and read aloud, “Governor Klein, bearer of the seal of Kinship, charges the garrison of Jasserhall to make with all haste to Pasture and deliver this proclamation to the followers of the dead god.”

The men around the barricade muttered darkly at this insult. The Descendants of Pasture had never openly mocked their faithful brethren before; but they had never appeared so armed, and in such numbers either.

“Evidence has come to light that some among the Christians have traded gold for silence, allowing the Orc incursion to penetrate our frontier without warning.” Gaspar continued through a chorus of incredulous murmuring. “The Honourable Ancestors therefore order that all farmland between Pasture and the Badlands be settled by citizens loyal to the realm.”

The Judikar’s words were met by shouts and curses from the assembled Christians, and he raised his voice to carry over the din. “These settlers have already begun their journey and are to be escorted to their new lands by the garrison. Interference with these loyal sons of the realm will be answered with death.”

“They’re taking our land!” came a voice from down the barricade.

“What about the Pact?” another asked.

“Fuck the Pact, the devils are breaking it!”

Auron’s blood ran cold, and he damned the Judikar with the rest of the defenders. The bastards were thieving the ranch, and everything his family had struggled for.

A gout of flame fifty feet long erupted from the Aruktavach’s claw, sending the nearest men flinching back behind cover. Sweat beaded at Auron’s brow as images of his burning ranch assailed him.

Pastor Daniel fought to contain the crowd’s roiling anger: “Friends, brothers, peace. Peace.” He laid a hand on a farmer’s rifle and eased the barrel down as the man shook with rage. “Do not play into their hands; they seek to anger us, and give them an excuse to retaliate.”

Gaspar motioned to the dismounted soldiers, and they converged on a gap at the barricade’s flank as he continued to read from the scroll: “Chief among the identified perpetrators of this heinous betrayal is the High Priest of the Christians, head of the so-called church in Pasture. He is to be arrested on charges of sedition, and brought to Jassarhall to answer for his crimes.”

The armoured Descendants pushed past the men at the defences as they made their way to the pastor, whose face drained of colour at this announcement. Auron breathed relief as he realized the soldiers were not here to expose him, even as the men around him clamoured and looked to their neighbours for a response to this affront.

“Hold, my brothers. Hold.” Daniel went to where a press of Christians barred the progress of the men-at-arms and calmed the tussle there. The pagans clapped a pair of iron shackles to the pastor’s wrists and closed ranks as they led him through the riotous crowd. He called for peace among the congregants as the soldiers mounted and the Aruktavach stomped back into the obscuring fog. Hooves echoed, and the creaking of wagon wheels faded with the torchlight down the streets.

Arguments exploded around Auron as men blamed each other, while others sought to extinguish tensions. A deacon weaved his way through the milling crowd, his sharp voice measured to reach Christian ears only: “Inside! Go. Do not show disunity in front of them.” The man had come to join the church at Pasture only the year before, exotic with his eastern accent and obscure past. Now he stepped into the vacant role of the pastor.

Lanterns glowed in tributary roads, and candles lit open windows where scores of townsfolk watched and whispered. One among them shouted from the safety of his own folk. The insult was lost to the distance, but it opened the way for others, and soon the pagans were jeering in chorus as more lights gathered along shadowed streets.

A firm hand on his shoulder aimed him towards the church. Auron met the steady gaze of the outlander deacon, wizened and sorrowful. “Come, my brother, join the others inside.”

Auron tapped a hand across his possessions: blanket, gun, knife, cross, cup; and turned from the man’s grasp. There was no future here. These men were weak, this community helpless to aid him in saving Abihail. His legs shook as he descended the stairway, and he fought the motion across every stone platform until he reached the bottom.

“God be with you, my brother,” called the deacon.

Auron turned to exchange nods with the man, whose sad eyes understood the futility of trying to stop him, and departed the church. The town faded behind, and the first trappings of his old life with it as his feet carried him along the unfamiliar highway leading north.

The Ambush

Tortured trees loomed overhead, their gnarled branches draped in curtains of vines and creepers swaying in the wind as countless frogs croaked dominion in the marsh. The drowned forest menaced Auron and the pitiful wagon-track folk called a road in these remote parts with shifting shadows and half-heard whispers. The musk of rotting vegetation clung to the night’s humidity, sometimes rising to a nose-burning reek as he passed deep, gurgling bogs.

Impenetrable undergrowth vanished into inky blackness beyond the first few feet leading into endless reeds and decaying trunks, despite the glow from the full moon above. A wolf howled somewhere, and a million glinting eyes watched from the abyss as Auron forced bare, aching feet onwards over the softer turf lining the shoulder of the highway. The tattered remnants of his buckskin moccasins lay abandoned along the road weeks—and countless leagues behind.

Auron flailed at the cloud of mosquitos and damned the drover who had directed him to the next village, insisting that Auron could make it there before the deep of night. The bastard must’ve judged him to be a vagabond; and wanting to spare his home the trouble of a starving stranger, had sent him onwards.

The last shreds of dried meat had disappeared from Auron’s burlap sack for supper the night before, along with the remaining crumbs of bread he had earned through chopping wood for an old widow two days and four settlements ago. He had counted on earning his breakfast in the morning, and more food to sustain him on his journey as he caught up to the elusive Gunslayer; but here he was stumbling over sodden wagon ruts and exposed stones instead.

His stomach growled, indignant in its neglect. Auron wished Abihail were with him; she would have no trouble luring in some toothsome creature for supper. A noose of emotion tightened around his throat, and he banished memories of her to prevent the flashes of impotent rage that accompanied thoughts of her captivity.

Auron spat out a mosquito and shifted the twine sling of the scattergun from one throbbing shoulder to another as he walked, careful to pad the biting string with the wool blanket over his opposite side before he let the weight of the weapon settle there. The gun made him an oddity to locals as he passed through their pagan world on his way north, but Auron figured its presence had spared him trouble a time or two along his travels from rough men who eyeballed him darkly in small groups on saloon porches.

He’d made good progress over the last weeks, but catching up to a man a-horse was no easy feat. Auron walked hard, and had asked after his strange quarry in enough settlements to know that he was gaining ground as he crossed the Riverlands; a thought that drove him past what he had previously thought were the limits of his exhaustion, but even those reserves weren’t boundless.

The soles of his feet burned, and he resolved to curl up on the driest part of the path for the night if only wetlands showed around the next bend. To his relief, a pair of lights came into view, shining in the distance against deep shadows cast in the lee of a log palisade glowing in the moonlight.

Auron’s head bobbed with exhaustion as he limped along the track to where two lanterns hung, one on either side of a tall, shadowed gateway. The gatekeeper would deny a stranger entry until morning, of course, but at least Auron could rest within reach of civilization.

No one moved in the darkness of the wooden gatehouse where the sentries should be as Auron set his possessions down among the low ditch grasses where he would make his bed for the remainder of the evening.

A satisfied groan escaped him as he collapsed to the ground. His feet throbbed with relief as he rolled to his back and settled his head onto outstretched hands, drawing up the blanket to cover his exposed skin from the endless mosquitoes. Auron’s stomach made its emptiness known again with a predatory growl, and he forced his thoughts from hunger.

The full moon illuminated the wide clearing before the wall of sharpened logs enclosing the village, so radiant that familiar constellations in the sky faded around it. Auron recalled one of Pa’s childhood stories, a ridiculous one about how men had somehow walked on the moon before the Second Coming, smiling as he remembered how he was naive enough to actually believe it at the time. Auron’s face hardened as his thoughts turned to other bullshit fairy tales told in the same lap.

A howl split the night, uncomfortably close. Auron sprang up to sitting, his hand finding the scattergun beside him reflexively. Wolf. His eyes went to the empty guard post above the gateway. Maybe he could convince the man to let him in.

A handful of canine calls answered the first, seemingly just within the edge of the marsh overlooking the clearing. Wolves. Auron slung his possessions about himself as he stumbled to his feet on protesting legs. He looked again to the gateway, and noticed that whatever doors should be barring the way stood open wide. Still there were no torches in the darkness, no shouted challenges from the gatekeep. Had the way been clear this whole time, unnoticed in the shadows of the wooden arch? Or had someone opened the gates to admit him? Auron didn’t care.

He staggered through the gateway on cramping muscles, leaning against the rough-hewn timber comprising the support arch as he passed. The town was deathly quiet, and deep shadows pooled between sturdy buildings unlit by candles or torches.

“Ho, gatekeep!”

Auron’s hair stood on end as a flurry of howling rent the answering silence. He turned to face the clearing where a handful of beasts broke cover from the woods, loping towards him—impossibly quick, with a gait he had never seen before.

“Shit.”

Auron heaved one tall door, and then the other as the wolves closed the shrinking gap. The animals crashed into the barrier as the second gate clapped shut, snarling as they fought to breach the narrow seam where the opposing boards met. Auron threw his weight against the timber as one side crept open in the face of the onslaught. Where the hell was the door bar? The bracket where a post should be dropped stood empty, and no proper beam stood nearby.

One of the wolves whined with savage desperation as it tried to force an oversized snout into the gap. The creature panted to match the galloping rhythm of Auron’s heart, filling his nostrils with the meaty scent of death. The gates crept open as Auron’s strength slipped away.

“Shit!” Auron swung the scattergun from his shoulder and heaved against the doors as he dropped the weapon into the bracket—securing the gateway; for the moment at least.

The gun was too narrow, and the doors buckled open a few inches as Auron backed away. Unnaturally large claws reached through the gap, raking slivers of wood to the ground as they fought for purchase. A furious, basso roar raised a thrill of fear up Auron’s spine as his eyes sought refuge somewhere among the darkened buildings.

He chose the road before him, stumbling over the packed earth, calling out for help as he scrambled away from the wild cacophony rising from beyond the gate. Timber boards echoed the impacts of frenzied bodies against it as Auron forced himself into a sprint through the abandoned street.

The silent houses lining the road ended abruptly. Auron ran into the village market, a clearing paved with cobblestones; populated only by the skeletal frames of vendor’s wagons and stalls. He stopped, searching for a way forwards, and planted his hands on his knees to force enough breath to call out again as the crash of splintering wood and triumphant howls rang out.

A girl’s cry for help rose loud and steady somewhere near the centre of the square. Auron ran blindly towards it, shouldering aside a cart to clear his passage. He saw her in the cold moonlight, a slender figure in a pale dress topped with a bonnet, standing fixed before a tall pole; her arms slung behind her back to secure her there.

Auron’s legs shook as he eyed the far side of the clearing where the darkened alleys offered a chance, however slim, of escape. He moved first towards those sweet shadows, but paused as the image of Abihail came unbidden to his mind. He couldn’t leave her. Not again.

Auron drew Pa’s long Bowie knife from its leather scabbard as he rushed forwards. The girl was stiff with fear as he closed in, and Auron watched over his shoulder to where the beasts would surely emerge at any moment behind them. Auron stammered with fear and shallow breath as he sawed through the first ropes binding the petrified figure to the stake: “We’ve got to run, girl. Be ready when I say.”

He frowned as he noticed the pattern of knots and layers of rope; far in excess of what would be needed to keep a girl restrained… but not more than what would be needed to keep a straw-filled dummy upright.

“Oh…” Bloodthirsty growls behind him stood Auron’s hair on end, and he turned to face the pack. “Shit.”

These were no mere wolves. Twice as tall in the shoulder, with elongated limbs ending in wicked claws. Four of them bounded out along the clearing, sniffing the air warily with grotesque snouts and eyeing him with vicious hunger.

The centre-most of them barked authoritatively. The monstrous animals came forward, bear-sized claws clicking against cobbles as they yipped and snarled, encouraging each other to the kill.

Auron staggered back as the nearest beast strode forwards, rising on its hind legs as it closed the distance so that now it stood taller than him. Moonlight danced along the silver edge of the Bowie knife in Auron’s trembling hands as he levelled it at the looming creature. He gasped in realization as the monster stopped just out of reach, recognizing the human musculature visible beneath a pair of furry teats. Werewolf. Auron felt the presence of two others encircling him, but he could not break the paralyzing gaze of the first.

“Get down you fucking idiot!” came a rough voice from behind him.

Sharp ears perked up, and the werewolf stayed her wicked claws in the instant before striking. Long strands of frothing saliva dangled from the fur around her maw as her wild eyes sought out the source of the noise. A savage scent surrounded the beast, musky and rotten as the marsh.

Auron’s palsied legs failed him, and he tumbled backwards to the cobblestones.

“Now!” called a voice like gravel.

Crack-crack. Two rapid gunshots split the night, followed a heartbeat later by a second pair; and the throaty whine of a kicked dog. A cheer filled the air as shuttered windows in darkened houses overlooking the square burst open, and the first ragged volley of arrows skittered over stones or thudded into market stalls. Crack-crack. A third pair, and the werewolf towering above Auron flinched as two dark holes appeared among the short fur lining her chest.

More windows crashed open, and some of the more foolhardy townsfolk emerged from doorways with pitchforks and trade tools. The other three wolves abandoned what had been a fine hunt moments before, fleeing wildly through the market; crashing into carts and stalls as a hail of gleaming projectiles darted in the moonlight, raising bestial cries as they struck home.

Auron pointed the knife up with both hands as the largest monster’s eyes flicked back to meet his, hatred burning in their hellish depths. The terrifying, blended facial features of woman and beast pulled back grotesquely as she snarled and reached upwards, her wicked claws gleaming in the light as she prepared to disembowel him.

A bullwhip snapped, the sharp report of its impact ringing Auron’s ears. A tight leather coil appeared on the werewolf’s upraised arm, tethering it to the wielder. Malicious eyes flicked up to somewhere beyond Auron. The creature bared a glistening array of fangs and radiated a deep growl of murderous intent.

A man answered the challenge, his voice crisp and threatening; like river ice cracking underfoot: “Bring it on, bitch.”

The stranger hauled on the whip, pulling the werewolf’s arm down across her body and shifting her off-balance. Auron scrabbled away over cobblestones while the beast was occupied, dropping the Bowie knife to give his hands better purchase as he crawled.

Wild war-cries split the night as townsfolk hounded the other abominations. Flights of arrows tagged the werewolves, their bladed tips shimmering in the moonlight. The projectiles staggered the beasts, slowing them enough for those armed with bludgeons and tools to fall upon them; forming circles of jeering men taking it in turns to gather their courage and strike the flailing monsters.

The Gunslayer stepped out of the inky recesses underneath the roofed porch of the nearest house, spurs jingling over the thump of his worn leather boots on each wooden step. His eyes glowed in the darkness beneath the wide brim of his hat, and the bronze badge pinned to his vest blazed in a moonbeam as he strode over the cobbles, keeping tension on the corded whip in his off-hand while he approached.

A wisp of gun-smoke drifted from the skyward-pointing barrel of the revolver in the Gunslayer’s other hand as the man thumbed the hammer down. He slid it smoothly into the holster on his belt and reached across his body for another—but before he could free the gun, the werewolf reared back on the leather cords, bringing the man into striking range.

The monster roared, tackling the Gunslayer to the ground as he fumbled with a second pistol at his hip; pinning him against the stones. The beast dipped her shaggy head to tear at her quarry’s throat, but the man pulled tight on the whip, catching snapping teeth on the thick leather handle. The Gunslayer struggled with his holster as he fought to keep razor claws and fangs from his flesh, drawing his weapon just as a long, lean-muscled arm struck out and knocked it from his hand.

Auron froze on the ground as the brass-framed handgun clattered across the cobblestones beside him. Etched runes scrawled across the surface, each demonic symbol’s angular recesses inlaid with vivid blue gleam. There was no rotating cylinder to hold cartridges, nor did the ammunition appear to be magazine fed; only a grip, barrel, hammer and sights declared it a firearm.

The Gunslayer groaned as the werewolf dug its claws into his chest in an effort to free her jaw from the whip. “Shoot her,” he said through clenched teeth, eyes flashing towards the fallen gun.

An arrow hissed over the beast’s shoulder, and a wretched wolf cried out in agony somewhere in the night. The flow of time slowed around the square cluttered with splintering carts and desperate acts of violence. A cool lick of wind tousled Auron’s sweat-drenched hair as he stared uncomprehendingly at the pistol.

The Gunslayer grimaced in the tearing embrace of the she-wolf: “Shoot her!”

Auron’s eyes narrowed on his last and only chance. He snatched up the surprising weight of the weapon and sat himself up as time resumed its normal course. He levelled the thick barrel at the beast and settled the sight posts over the centre of his target. The hammer clicked back under Auron’s thumb; though no visible mechanism cycled a fresh cartridge into the weapon’s chamber. He pulled hard on the trigger anyways.

Auron’s heart skipped a beat at the moment of firing—an invasive feeling of loss stabbed deep within his core, draining away some vital essence there. The gun bucked in his hand, and a blue-tinged bolt of incandescence flashed out from the brass muzzle—igniting swirling embers in Auron’s vision, and missing the struggling werewolf by inches. There was no cracking report of spent gunpowder; a clipped, high-pitched whine accompanied the shot instead.

The she-beast must’ve felt the shot’s passage, for she forgot her prey and whirled to face Auron. A wave of primitive emotion spread across her face where predatory triumph had been moments before. The werewolf’s exaggerated features made it hard for Auron to place at first, but he recognized the feeling he himself knew all too well as the pistol’s hammer clicked back again. Fear.

Auron managed the trigger better this time, though his heart still thumped at the moment of firing. The revolver drooped in his weakening grip, and he squinted to sharpen his vision as a sense of lightheadedness settled over him.

A rim of light glowed in the centre of the werewolf’s chest; the thin band of energy encircling a perfectly round wound showing clearly a portion of house wall across the square. Malice faded from monstrous eyes, and the werewolf’s lanky frame toppled like a felled tree to the cobbles.

Ragged cheers and breathless curses spilled from the townspeople in the square as the last canine whines faded, lost to the dull thumping of laymen butchers on dead flesh. Auron let the weight of the handgun settle to his outstretched legs, trembling still below the frayed and faded denim trousers. He gagged dryly while his shoulders laboured for breath as the supine form of the Gunslayer stirred before him.

The man rolled to his side, facing Auron. His wide-brimmed hat flopped to the stones, exposing a thick shock of greying hair. The folds of his open duster draped across his cotton shirt, shredded from the werewolf’s attentions and dyeing more crimson by the second. He spat a generous mouthful of blood and saliva to the ground, coughing while he searched an inner jacket pocket with a weakened arm.

Auron’s head swam as he dragged himself over the cobbles. A handful of concerned townsfolk gathered around the man, unsure of what to do next. Auron brushed by them, and reached past the Gunslayer’s cool hand to find what the man was searching for; the potion of healing in its corked vial. Auron upended the vessel, letting the swirling liquid empty into the man’s mouth. The onlookers opined amongst themselves and called to others in the square or the barred homes around.

The Gunslayer sat upright, coughing and rubbing his lacerated chest as his wounds knitted themselves shut. “Shitfire,” he said, and reached out to accept the strange handgun from Auron.

The first lanterns appeared in the square, held aloft by those who had sheltered during the battle. Names were called and answered as families sought loved ones among the combatants. An excited murmur grew with the crowd as word spread and more townsfolk gathered to witness the aftermath of the battle.

Grateful hands brought Auron to his feet, swaying as the crowd jostled him and clapped his back. His hearing faded to dim ringing as a spike of nausea lodged in his throat. Auron covered his mouth and tried to clear the crowd, but his body convulsed and he doubled over to vomit across the stones.

“Don’t worry about him; he’s just sick from the runes.”

Auron sensed the Gunslayer beside him, and he wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve as he rose to meet the man’s smouldering gaze. Without the hat to shade them, the Gunslayer’s blue eyes glowed with hidden power. Auron fought the urge to look away, and shook the man’s proffered hand; keeping it in his calloused grip longer than was comfortable.

“Don’t I know you, boy?”

Auron blinked but kept up the pressure of his handshake. “Auron. Pasture, couple weeks back.”

“Marrick,” the Gunslayer named himself and grunted thoughtfully, letting the handshake end. His voice sharpened: “Took you long enough to catch up. The fuck you doing walking into an obvious ambush, boy?”

Auron shrugged. “Heard wolves behind and a girl ahead.”

Marrick laughed, a dry and hollow sound, “Yep, that’ll do it I suppose.” He turned to fetch his hat from the ground, finding it pressed into his hands by a woman with a flirtatious smile instead. He winked at her and passed through the milling crowd to make a count of the slain monsters in the square.

Auron edged free of the villagers, trailing behind Marrick in his inspection. His stomach churned as the Gunslayer produced a short knife and probed one of the twin gunshots wounds in a monster’s chest. Smaller than the she-wolf he had faced, a cub really…or a child. The beast’s tongue lolled from its slack mouth, flopping as its body shifted under Marrick’s boot while he dug two deformed bullets out from the wounds. Both projectiles glinted through a coating of blood in the moonlight before they disappeared into his duster’s pocket.

“Ain’t losing good silver, boy. This job don’t pay that well,” said Marrick, catching Auron’s eye, though he let the villagers’ gleaming arrows be where they lay on cobbles or in flesh as he toured the bodies and retrieved his bullets.

“Good enough for a night’s work,” said Marrick after the pocketing the last piece of mushroomed metal. He clapped Auron on the shoulder with a bloodied hand and pulled him towards the villagers gathered before a public house with lit windows through which the screech of tuning instruments carried.

“Let’s have a drink.”

Epilogue

Auron leaned against the thick slab of lumber that served as the tavern’s bar, watching Marrick as he worked the mortar and pestle atop the ale-slicked board, grinding herbs and chattering like a backwoods showman with the mesmerized crowd gathered around them. He poured the powdered ingredients into a roiling cauldron suspended above the fire encased in a field-stone chimney.

“Now we add a thumb of dried beater-root,” said Marrick, producing a puckered item from a seemingly endless supply of interior pockets with a snap of his fingers and a flick of his wrist. He held one finger aloft to gather the crowd’s attention, “But not just any beater-root…”

Spurs jingled in the hush as Marrick crossed to a woman who had managed to incrementally increase the acreage of her already considerable cleavage as the night wore on by way of unlacing another furrow on the front of her embroidered wool dress, and closed the gap between them with sensuous familiarity. He raised the shrivelled root aloft before her pouting lips and met her flirtatious gaze, “… it must be a beater-root twice-kissed by a beautiful woman.”

The woman’s chestnut hair cascaded over one shoulder as she leaned in slowly, maintaining eye contact with the Gunslayer as she closed the gap, further revealing the slope of her chest as she planted a kiss on the root.

“One,” Marrick called over his shoulder to his audience.

She leaned in to plant a second kiss, but Marrick snatched the root away and met her lips with his own instead. One of the woman’s hands snaked out behind his back and pulled him closer by the thick hair on the back of his head. The crowd laughed and hooted, delighting in Marrick’s game.

The Gunslayer pulled himself free several moments beyond what was appropriate and brandished the beater-root above his head before adding it to the mortar. Marrick ground it down and scattered the powder over the surface of the concoction he was brewing, stirring it three times with an ash-wood stick he had ordered brought to him earlier.

“Finally—finally my friends,” Marrick renewed his hold on the crowd, “we have one last ingredient to add. One that I, Ancestors witness, cannot provide.” Marrick pulled his leathery face into a comical frown. “Do we happen to have any young, unmarried ladies present?” He raised his eyebrows in exaggerated suspense.

A general wave of accusatory noise rose over the crowd’s chuckling, and Auron’s eyes followed pointing fingers to the slender blonde serving girl he had been trying not to stare at all night.

“Our little actress!” cried Marrick, crossing to where she stood blushing behind the bar. He motioned for her to join him before the crowd, and guided her to where Auron studied his half-drunk mug of ale with feigned intensity.

“This is the girl who was supposed to cry and lure in the wolves,” said Marrick to Auron, who acknowledged her with a nod and an instant of eye contact, “and great bait she would’ve made my friends,” cried Marrick, raising his drink in a salute and grabbing the scruff of Auron’s shirt with his off-hand, “were it not for my young ‘prentice here!”

The crowd roared, laughing from the ale and the ease of a sense of safety long denied to the village. Auron’s neighbours clapped him on the back and sloshed beer into his glass, calling for him to drink. The cool, malted rush seemed to quench some of the embarrassed heat from his cheeks; and the finer details of faces, clothing, and words blurred through the steamy haze gathering in his head.

“I’m afraid, my dear, that we must rely on you for the crowning ingredient in our little potion.” Marrick let the expectant silence build while the girl kept her gaze fixed to the floor before her. “A single hair from your pretty little head!”

The girl’s shoulders drooped in relief, and she combed her fingers through the wavy blonde mass until she came away with a solitary golden thread. “That will be all miss,” said Marrick with a wrinkled smile.

Auron caught the girl’s eye as she turned, but this time he held it; grinning over the rim of his cup as she smiled at him before returning to her place behind the bar. His eyes followed her, and he imagined running his hands through the softness of the loose blonde waves cascading over her slim shoulders as he drained his mug. He remembered the Gunslayer as she disappeared behind the press of bodies, and forced his eyes back to the demonstration.

Marrick laid the hair in a coil atop the cauldron’s bubbling surface; letting it brew unstirred for several moments before he waved for the barkeep to remove it from the flames. “Now then, let all who faced the wolves this night come forward,” said Marrick as the serving girl returned bearing a tray of horn cups, filled halfway with beer.

Into each went a ladle full of Marrick’s potion, and the drinks were set upon the table before the combatants. None touched theirs until the last cup was served, and Marrick held his own aloft. “This draught will banish any trace of the werewolf curse within your body, which it can enter through even the lightest scratch or drop of blood,” he said with an air of solemnity, letting his strange eyes settle over each of the men around the table in turn. He nodded to a man across the table who stood and raised his brew to the assembly.

“Let us empty our mugs, my brothers. To those we lost this last, cruel winter; may the Ancestors bear them to their halls.” The men murmured the words ‘Ancestors bear them’ in chorus and set to upending their cups.

Auron drank, determined to drain his mug in a single pull. The ale rushed down his throat like water, nearly tasteless even with Marrick’s treacly potion swirling in the centre of the amber beer. His snorting breath reverberated past his ears as he paused midway, but he managed to tap an empty cup down onto the tabletop in the same ragged rhythm as the rest of them.

The drink sat awkwardly in his stomach, and Auron fought the feeling of sickness rising in the back of his throat. His eyes sought the serving girl between increasingly long blinks, but he couldn’t find her in the vague shapes and noise around him.

A rough hand grasped Auron by the scruff of his shirt. “Don’t you be puking, boy. I’ll just make you drink another.” Marrick pulled him to his feet and steered him stumbling through the crowd until they thudded across porch boards outside.

“Today’s your lucky day, boy. Seems like you impressed somebody tonight, and she’s waiting for you in the stable.” Marrick chuckled like the gravel crunching beneath their feet, his breath sour with ale.

The Gunslayer sensed his reluctance and stopped before the open doorway. “Don’t be bashful boy. It’s natural as anything; now get in there and make me proud,” he slurred, pushing Auron over the threshold.

A lantern glowed somewhere within, casting its low-wicked light over strands of straw and hay carpeting the floorboards. Horses stamped in their stalls, their animal scent mixing with the rich aroma of grass fodder as Auron followed the light.

His heart raced, and a thrill of excitement electrified his body as he balanced himself with one hand against the wall. His hands itched to caress the serving girl’s fair blonde hair as he staggered around the corner of the farthest stall, where the gate stood open and inviting.

She stood in the shadowed corner of the enclosure, her face downturned under her bonnet. The girl’s hands grasped each other nervously, and she waited, mute.

Auron’s hammering heart raised a blush on his face. Though he had spent long hours imagining the feel of a woman, he had never been with one before. He felt like he should speak, but his tongue sat stubborn as a mule. He cleared his throat and stepped forward; managing finally, “Ho, miss…?”

His swirling vision settled for a moment as he waited expectantly for the girl to name herself, and he recognized in that moment the pale fabric of her dress from the market square earlier.

Ale-fuelled laughter erupted from the neighbouring stall. Marrick and a handful of village men rose into view, leaning on each other for support as they swayed with drink and delight at their prank.

Auron’s face burned with embarrassment as he studied the sleeves of the dummy where straw poked through.

“Twice!” Marrick stumbled in to join Auron, “Twice you fell for it!” The Gunslayer slumped against the wall and hugged his ribs as he fought for breath.

Blistering rage rose within Auron as the other men came in to clap him on the back and tousle his hair, insisting on their good nature. His hands balled tightly as Marrick writhed in the straw, kicking out with his worn boots as he cackled.

The straw girl toppled rigidly into the corner, and a thin smile crept across Auron’s face as the absurdity of the moment settled over him. His lips widened, and a noise escaped him that he had not made in the long weeks since the raid.

He laughed, starting first with a humoured grunt, followed by another, before growing to cathartic, shuddering relief with each fresh inhalation. His sides ached, and he eased himself to the straw-strewn floor.

“Go to sleep, boy,” Marrick managed through receding fits after the village men had left them. The Gunslayer carried the dummy by its waist from the stall and called back to Auron over his shoulder as he returned to the tavern.

“You’ve got a long walk in the morning. Ain’t no such thing as a day off for a Gunslayer.”