This story was written out in the middle of Texas, at a hunting lodge, during one of the Clockwork Storybook writing retreats. It was my entry in our one-day writing competition, where we each had to write a story that contained five things – one-each from the Clockwork boys. I can’t remember what I added to the required story elements, but someone put Mike Bretz on the list (he was one of our favorite community characters), and someone else, I’m pretty sure it was either Mark Finn or Chris Roberson, added a story-vital mention of hot peppers.
Copyright 2021 Bill Willingham. All rights reserved.
Comes the Hunter
In the seventh year of Coyote I came upon Bel Canto, the last of the December Men, in a small town deep in the badlands of the Old Tess. Of his former brethren, Canto left the easiest trail to follow. Riding south, down out of the rolling yellow hills of Homa all I had to do was follow the bodies – well, not bodies to be accurate. Whatever plague he was spreading reduced its victims down to bare, dry skeletons in a matter of hours.
I skirted around the blackened, deeply pitted bones of what must have been a cow. I’d heard that there were still scattered remnants of this once-abundant species down in the Tess, but I hadn’t quite believed it until now. Today as in ages past, men will boast and exaggerate and outright lie about the deeds they’d done and the amazing things they’d seen. Some human qualities don’t change.
I dimly recalled the fat steaks and juicy hamburger sandwiches of my youth, more of a distant dream than a real memory. What a waste. The dark magic which had killed its flesh so quickly wasn’t done with what little remained of the beast’s carcass. Like some persistent acid, it continued to etch and scrape away at the bones, while I watched. In a day or two at most all that would be left was drifting dust. I shuddered to think I might be breathing in microscopic parts of the creature even now.
“Are you certain that trinket will keep you shielded from whatever this is?” my shorse Derry said, anticipating my own thoughts. I touched the pendant hanging cold and heavy around my neck, under my shirt.
“Cauley promised it would.”
“You should be okay, as long as it stays in direct physical contact with you,” Cauley, the relic merchant, had told me. He’d outfitted me with my magical protections for close to half a century, as his had done father before him. “Your shorse may be another matter though.”
“Why? It isn’t alive.”
“Some of its components are close enough to living tissue to worry me. This pestilence you insist on following may be powerful enough to degrade it over time. I’m not sure even this can extend its reach to protect you both. Also, not to split hairs, my sole obligation is to you, my client. I don’t work for machines.”
“I’d rather not have to walk home.”
“Then I suggest you hurry about your business,” he’d said. “And return that thing to me. You paid only enough to borrow, not buy.” That was months ago.
I rode on, through dry yellow grass and low scrub, taking it slowly over the small humps and depressions that wrinkled the ground like an old man’s whiskered face. I took a sip from my canteen, but spit most of it back, after coating the inside of my mouth, not knowing when we’d next reach a viable waterhole. I hadn’t traveled this deep into the Interior in a hundred years. The road ahead was a mystery.
“After all these years, I think we’re getting close to him,” Derry said.
“Can you sense him?”
“No. Call it deduction. He’s on foot, and has been for some days. Any creature he might have been riding will be long dead, a victim of his own plague.”
“He could be on shorseback.”
“I don’t think so. I would have spied trail sign before now. And, at the more powerful epicenter of his spell, his shorse would have degraded more rapidly. There would be traces left in his wake. I haven’t detected any plastic residue along the way. I’m confident we’re finally closing the gap.”
As we crested a rise, she spotted the town before I did, which wasn’t surprising. When she came off the factory floor she could track the progress of a specific mote of dust in a hurricane. That was a dozen owners ago. In her current shape she was limited as to what she could see with the maintenance I could afford. But her abilities were still impressive compared to a human eye.
“I don’t see him,” she said, “but my guess is Bel Canto’s still down there, inside one of the structures. There are no signs of life in the streets, but plenty of black skeletons in and around the town. I see some living small animals some distance beyond the far side of the town, leading me to conclude that he hasn’t continued out of it.”
“He could have backtracked,” I said.
“Not coming back this way. I’d have seen him.”
“Or it might mean that his plague finally petered out before he moved on.”
“Yes, that’s another possibility. Do you believe it?”
“No.”
“Then should we go down there and see if we can’t put an end to this?”
“I suppose so.”
As I rode down into the valley, I checked the gun on my hip, riding tight and heavy in its freshly oiled cross-draw holster. It was a gesture born out of long habit, but useless in this case, since I’d run out of rounds months ago. Though I’d held onto my expended brass, no gunsmith I’d passed in the past month had been equipped to refill them with the basilisk-tipped reloads I used. In hindsight, perhaps I should’ve let that one smith in Homa City convert my pistol back to using simple lead and gunpowder when he’d offered. Too late now.
I still had my rapier though, hanging down along my left leg. It was a good blade that held an edge and had a fine balance. It had seen me through many a dicey predicament. I’m told it had a name once in the long ago and had even been blooded in battle against a real dragon, up in one of those northwestern seacoast towns. If so, any name it might’ve carried was long forgotten now.
As I approached the dead town, the blackened bones of fox and rabbit and other small wild creatures began to give way to human skeletons, adult and child. Most lay alone where they fell, but some were wrapped around each other, in couples or small groups, as if they’d held onto each other, even through the agony of having their flesh reduced to powder over a span of minutes.
“I can hear muffled noises coming from that structure,” Derry said. She directed me towards a single story brick and clapboard building with a wooden boardwalk running its length. Wooden beams coming up off of the boardwalk supported a mesh ramada overhead. It was woven of saplings that were harvested when they were still wet and limber. They were dry and brittle now. But they still cast a nice shade over the porch. A hand-painted wooden sign hanging down from the ramada showed a picture of a glass mug filled with a foamy, amber liquid. It was the more or less universal sign of a public house.
“Someone’s definitely inside,” she said.
“Stay watchful,” I said. I dismounted in front of the tavern and stepped up off of the dirt street onto the raised boardwalk.
“Call me if you get into trouble. If I can’t fit through the door I’ll come through the wall.”
The doorway was an open hole with nothing but shadow beyond. The remains of a pair of batwing doors lay discarded on the dusty floor, just to one side of the entrance. As soon as I entered, anyone inside would have me at a momentary but considerable disadvantage, while my eyes adjusted from the bright afternoon sunlight to the gloom within. But since standing silhouetted in the doorway would give someone the same advantage, I walked right in without pausing.
A few steps inside, I stopped to see what I could see, ready to defend myself if need be. No one attacked me immediately. After a few seconds I could see that there were more human skeletons on the floor. Dozens of them. There was a polished wooden bar that ran the length of one wall, with a long mirror behind it. Its corners and edges had been acid etched with decorative filigrees. There was a round brick fire pit in the middle of the room with a large metal tepee tent flue and iron roasting spits secured above it. Big meals were cooked there, providing further evidence that the deep lands of the Old Tess still boasted some of the huge meat animals that had long ago died off most everywhere else. A dozen small ceramic pepper pots were lined up along one lip of the cooking pit’s curving brick wall. Their various colored glazes indicated the thermal severity of their contents. According to the ones laid out here, the former patrons liked their meals spiced in a range that began with merely wicked and extended all the way up to dragon’s breath lethal.
Several tables were arranged around the indoor cooking pit and a man was seated at one of them. He was slim and dressed in segmented black and amber. The armor was finely decorated and looked expensive. It would most certainly be spell-strengthened enamel over paper thin, molded sheet plast, as light and maneuverable as the simple brown cloth I wore, but impervious to anything short of a high-powered rifle shot. His jet-black hair and beard were cut short and immaculately trimmed. Like me he carried a rapier as his blade of choice, but his was already unsheathed and lying across the table in front of him. Its elaborate basket hilt was carved in the likeness of entwined rose stems – thorns and all – with each needle sharp thorn tip pointing outwards, forming a nearly 360 degree circumference of protection around his sword hand.
“I always wondered why they called you Belamandus of the Iron Rose,” I said. “Now I guess I know.”
Bel didn’t move from his seat, but continued to drink directly from a brown ceramic liquor bottle – one matching the dozens that were stacked behind the bar. As he drank he regarded me with alien eyes that were ochre at their edges and faded to a bright and piercing vermilion in their centers. Any sane man would run from those eyes. I wanted to as well, but didn’t have the choice.
“Why aren’t you dead?” Bel said, when he finally spoke. “My spell is one of the Nine Terrible Workings. Everything for two miles around me in every direction should be no more than dust and memory.”
“What can I say? You have spells and I have counter spells. That’s the way of those in our profession.” That was a lie. What spells I once had available to me had been spent long ago in the pursuit of the eight other wizard knights in Bel’s order. In killing them I’d exhausted the powers I’d painstakingly built up over the ages. What few magical protections I still enjoyed were those lent to me by Cauley’s medallion.
“Help yourself to a drink,” Bel said, with a gesture towards the bar. “These townsfolk are a generous people and everything’s on the house. You might as well join me and refresh yourself while I ponder what to do with you.”
I selected a bottle from behind the bar and sat across from him at his table. As I sat he gestured again in an offhand way and I felt the prickly sensation of a general interrogation spell crawling over me.
“Ah, I see now,” he said. “You’re the one, aren’t you? When I became aware that someone was following me, I naturally assumed he was no more than a simple bounty hunter, with more greed than sense, or even just an overly curious pest. I stopped here to let you catch up to my killing radius, so that I could be on my way again without distractions. But you’re no simple bounty hunter, and though you take pains to appear the ragamuffin you’re more than another itinerant spell soldier. You’re the Intrepid Slayer, the doom-bringer of my brethren.”
I answered with a small incline of my head.
“Your name is Nemesis.”
“Not originally, but its one of the names some call me now.”
His interrogation spell continued its work, feeding my private and dreadful histories to him as we sat and drank and passed the time. I didn’t try to block its progress with any of the non-magical mental techniques still available to me. I wanted him to see the terrible powers I’d wielded in the past, and maybe assume I still had access to them. I wanted him to learn as much as he could stand to take in, as fast as he could take it, so that he didn’t have time to sift the information and perhaps discover how vulnerable I was, should he decide to make our coming duel a battle of spells rather than blades.
Bel’s face, which had before only showed indulgence and confidence, now began to take on an aspect of astonishment.
“And more! I can see that now! You’re the original deicide! Long before you hunted us, his most ardent disciples, you killed the First Magus who made the world!”
Now that his fear and passion was up, it was time to turn it into anger.
“You can argue all you like whether or not he was a great magus,” I said. “In terms of raw power I’d even have to agree with you. But he was never a god and never made a thing. Instead he used his powers to shit all over the Earth, until it ended up in the awful state it’s in now. Believe me, friend, he was born into our world and born human, just like you and me.”
“Blasphemer!”
“Back in the day your First Magus was just another asshole by the name of Mike Bretz. He was a rude drunk, a moocher and a card cheat who happened to stumble into a lot of undeserved power. He died last year still owing me the thirty-five bucks he stole from my wallet a dozen centuries ago, when I was foolish enough to let him sleep on my couch one night, after his girlfriend had quite rightfully tossed him into the gutter.”
Bel began sputtering his rage, but still issued no challenge. I hoped one more good twist of the knife should do it.
“Your god didn’t die well,” I continued. “He begged for his life and had pissed himself well before I began to blast and bleed him in earnest. He was right about one thing though. His moronic followers would try to destroy the world after his death, in order to make good on his claim that the place couldn’t survive without him. Hunting you fools down turned out to be quite a chore. I’ve never heard such blubbering and pleading as when I’d finally get one of you genocidal nuts cornered. But I should have known. Cowardly, degenerate gods can only breed cowardly, degenerate acolytes.”
“Spells or steel?” Bel cried, getting to his feet.
Finally.
It was the traditional challenge between fellow wizard knights and it saved my life – at least for a few moments longer. His challenge gave me the choice, and since I couldn’t hope to survive a duel of sorcery, I’d match him blade to blade.
It was simply a matter of making him mad enough to blurt it out.
“Steel will do,” I said and drew my weapon.
“Outside, where I’ll have room to kill you with proper elegance, even though you deserve no better than to be chopped down like a wild dog!” Wild dog was a bit of a redundancy these days. Those that survived had long ago lost their affinity for our company and traveled in massive feral packs. Bel took up his sword of roses and stomped out through the doorway.
I waited a bit before following. Let him think I was afraid to rush to my death. I actually took the time to see if there was anything in the tavern that could help me eek out a small advantage in the coming duel. Lacking his magic armor I was already suffering a considerable handicap. I didn’t find any holdout weapons behind the bar – no concealed guns, nor so much as a common burn stick or zap dancer. I searched quickly beyond the bar and reluctantly settled on a thing or two that might possibly come in handy, if everything went my way, the planets were aligned, and the gods were in my corner. By then Bel was calling for me to come out and face my doom.
I did.
He was in the middle of the street, about twelve feet away and facing me with his sword out. Derry was at least a dozen yards down the street in the other direction, caught within some sort of restraining field. She was held fast and I could see a wild look in her eyes and a bit of foam at her muzzle.
“I sensed the true nature of your riding animal,” Bel said, “and put it in a cage. I make no accusations that it would’ve tried to interfere, but it’s best to be sure that this will remain a private affair between the two of us.”
Too bad. My plan was to cheat exactly in the way Bel had anticipated. I’d hoped to circle with Bel until Derry was directly behind him, at which point she could rush up and stomp him to death, before he knew it. I tried to think of something else while we took our places opposite each other.
We came engarde and I tapped at his blade’s foible a bit with mine, just a few tentative engagements at maximum separation to test the dexterity of his grip and the strength of his wrist. Both were fine. He easily disengaged his tip each time, in small deft circles, without ever letting it wander off target.
He circled a bit to his left and I followed suit to keep position, but dragging my trailing boot just a bit to see what kind of dust I might kick up. A few dim puffs blossomed about waist high, which seemed promising.
Suddenly Bel beat hard against my blade and kicked his forward foot forward into a lunge. I let my blade circle and came around in a high outside parry to block his attack, but he’d already anticipated me, and dropped his blade into a low attack while continuing his lunge. I responded, parrying low whilst simultaneously backpedaling in an ungainly and undignified effort to restore some distance between us.
It worked – mostly.
Instead of opening me up from groin to belly, his low line attack simply nicked my forward thigh. He recovered out of his lunge and pressed his immediate initiative. My retreat had kicked up more dust though and he stepped forward into the growing cloud. That was a mistake. He should’ve let the initiative go while he retreated and regrouped. Instead he fully immersed himself in my dust, just as it rose to eye level, leaving him blind and disoriented, if only for an instant.
One instant was all I needed.
I engaged his blade in a binding parry and rode my blade down his, letting its shaft act as a guide way through the concealing dust directly towards his body. I felt my point come up solid against his unprotected chest and stop hard.
Damnation.
I’d hoped the stories about my sword’s history were true and that it had enough raw magic in it to overpower the refined magic of Bel’s armor. They weren’t and it didn’t. I should’ve remembered my own dictum: men tell tall tales. I had a good sword, but nothing beyond that. I recovered from my lunge and retreated again, further down the street.
Bel followed me, smiling a smile of certain victory.
Though we might be closely matched in skill, I was handicapped by the need to find a vulnerable target between the joints of his armor, where he could cut or pierce me anywhere at all. He’d already drawn first blood on my thigh and it was beginning to hurt and leak blood, just as he’d expected. He could afford to prick and nip at me all day like this, taking ever-greater advantage as I grew constantly weaker. That was pretty much what he did. After a few minutes I was bleeding from a half-dozen small cuts on my legs and arms. I’d have to think of something soon.
To buy time, at the end of a small flurry of blade work, when both of us tried to attack and riposte and riposte again, I suddenly drew my pistol and pulled the trigger. The hammer fell on an empty chamber of course, but it still caused him to flinch and retreat, giving me enough time to step up and place a thrust between the two plates of his elbow joint.
I missed by less than an inch, but that was enough to count against me. He recovered into his engarde stance entirely uninjured. I dropped the useless pistol and continued to look for an opening. Maybe if I could circle him back this way he’d trip on it. Then again, as long as I was indulging in some wishful thinking, maybe the earth would just open up and swallow him.
Though his armor included a helmet covering the back and top of his skull, Bel’s face was left open and unprotected. Call me a cynic, but I was suspicious. I advanced with a few not too well aimed high attacks that were designed to let him parry, but in a way that would keep my point coming back close to his face each time I disengaged and presented the same attack, over and again. Each time my tip got anywhere close to unshielded flesh, some of the decorative overlays around the edges of his helmet would flow out and create a protective armor mesh between blade and face. It happened instantly – far faster than I could press an attack.
“Cheater,” I said without passion, as we circled some more.
“Not at all,” he said. “Had you thought to bring such armor, you’d be better off as well. No steel or stone or any other cutting or bludgeoning material can get past my defenses. You’re beaten already and just haven’t realized it.”
“But it’s not perfect,” I said. “It didn’t close up to protect against getting dust in your eyes. You should tell the lazy armorer who made it for you that you didn’t get your full money’s worth.”
“I’ll consider that next time I see him,” he said – rather that’s what he started to say, but before he could get the full statement out I had stepped back again, bringing me temporarily out of range of even the deepest lunge and started violently kicking dirt up towards his face as fast and as accurately as I could.
I have no idea if it worked, because all I could tell for certain that I’d accomplished was creating a much bigger cloud of dust in the middle of the street. Bel had disappeared somewhere inside of it. While waiting for him to reappear I reached into my pocket with my non-weapon hand and drew out one of the small ceramic pepper pots from the cantina – the one with the forest green glaze containing the hottest powder. In another second I could begin to make out Bel’s outline again.
I advanced in a single deep lunge, plunging forward with my blade. Bel parried hard and I let him carry my blade far off target, which was fine, since it brought his blade off target as well. For a single instant we were staring at each other, mere inches apart, with no steel separating us. That’s when I threw the entire pot’s worth of bright crimson pepper dust in his face. His intuitive helmet did nothing to intercept it.
Bel went down, on hands and knees in the dirt, coughing and sneezing, spitting and screaming in pain. I stepped up to him and took my sweet time finding just the right opening between overlapping segments of his scalloped armor. Then I placed my blade tip in the breech and drove it home, hard against underclothes, skin, muscle and bone, until it found his vitals.
Later, after the magic fence around her faded, Derry and I rode south out of the town, which may or may not have had a name. If it did I never found sign of it. Bel’s sword and the dismantled pieces of his wonderful armor were tied in a bundle across the back of her saddle.
“Why south?” Derry said, after we’d gone a ways. “Our hunt is finally over. At long last we can go home. I’m in need of a thorough refitting.”
“Because all signs indicate this may still be cattle country. Once we get forward of Bel’s two mile death radius, we might get lucky and find one.”
“To what purpose?”
“If you’d ever had a beefsteak you wouldn’t need to ask.”
“This form I’ve taken is a grass eater. I doubt I’d enjoy the meat of any animal.”
“Then we’ll find you some grass as well. That’s likely to be where the cows are anyway.”
Bravo. San Cibola by way of Gilead. Loved it.