Merkabah Rider: The Mensch With No Name (9 page)

Kaftzefoni
howled and kicked his horse. He charged between the buildings, intending to run
the Colonel and Purdee both down. He looped his bullwhip around his saddle horn
and dragged Wilkes behind as he came. It was horrible to see the man’s body
jump and careen off the corners of the shacks.

Gersh
ran out into the alleyway, right into the path of the snorting animal. He dug
in his feet and thrust his big shoulder at its forelegs. The animal shrieked
and crashed into him full speed, but proved the lesser force and flipped
entirely over in the air, sending Kaftzefoni tumbling end over end from the
saddle.

He
landed face first behind Gersh, and his big black horse crashed down on his
back with a squeal.

In
the time it took for the horse to roll off of him, Gersh retrieved the broken
barrel of salt, swinging it up like it was a sack of flour. He turned and
hefted it high over his head.

Kaftzefoni
pushed himself to his hands and knees, shaking his head, and Gersh brought the
heavy barrel down on him. The force drove the bullwhip man flat on his belly
again and broke the barrel to hoops and splinters.

The halite inside burst out, burying him in big white heap of
crystalline gravel.
There was a muffled scream. The crystals grayed
swiftly. Only the man’s big bare arms protruded from the rock salt mound, and they
clawed at the earth, stiffened, and shriveled to bubbling yellow brown husks
that melted away before Gersh’s eyes.

* * * *

The Rider reached the crest of the hogback about the same time the girl
shed discovered Sheardown’s broken body. He dropped from the back of the fiery
ether-horse and let it return to nothingness. Then he made his way through the
boulders on foot.

There,
on the black ridge above the green plain, crouched like a boar beneath the red
sky sat Ketev Meriri, the demon cannon. In the Yenne Velt it was no bronze cast
Napoleon, but a weird amalgam of demon and machine. Its body was covered with
tarnished gold scales, but whether
this were
some kind
of unearthly barding or its real hide, the Rider couldn’t tell. Between the
scales poked long, quivering black bristles, so the Rider thought perhaps it
was the latter. Its bulk at first appearance was round and ponderous, but it
seemed to rest or, to be chained upon a great black iron ball, which it clung
to with four spindly clawed legs like a ferret’s.

It
looked to be able to propel itself by scrabbling at the great ball, turning it
beneath like a balancing acrobat. The iron was covered in a myriad of
crisscrossing scratches, which showed the lighter metal beneath. It had no real
face, just a flared, gaping tube of gold much like a cannon mouth that
protruded from the place where had it been a dog, its snout and eyes should
have been. It had a kind of mouth, as a long row of wicked, blood encrusted
upper teeth hung down like stalactites from a drooping black lip beneath the
golden barrel. A long tail hung down its back, a tail of shining, exposed
rat-like flesh and bone threaded or fused with links of thick chain.

Mazzamauriello
held the end of the chain like a lanyard. He was unaware of the Rider’s
presence. He stood poised to order another round of death,
squinting
his blank white eyes down at Varruga Tanks. Why had he stopped firing in the
first place? The Rider didn’t know. The other shedim he had spied through the
Colonel’s glasses were not here on the ridge. Why had they gone below? He crept
closer. There wasn’t much time.

This
was Ketev Meriri, the infernal cannon. A creation of Lucifer, such as it was.
Could Lucifer truly create anything though, or could he but splice together some
hapless corrupted
angel,
or some malformed spawn of
Lilith’s with alchemical devices and infernal machinery beat out by the glowing
hammers of the Fallen in the furnaces of hell?

Whatever
it was, the thing had at least an animal’s intelligence, for it stirred at the
Rider’s approach. And though it had no eyes or nose that he could tell, there
came a hollow snuffling from within the gun muzzle face, and the chain tail
rippled and clinked, and a greasy brown salivation spilled from the jawless
maw.

He
hesitated to approach it. It was said in the
midrash
that the gaze of this demon was gorgon-like—sure, inalterable death. It was
strongest during midday between the middle of the month of Tammuz and the ninth
of Av, which it was now. It had to have eyes then, down in the bottom of that
cannon muzzle. Perhaps it had been fitted with the tube to bring to heel its
power, like a biting dog fitted with a muzzle and leash, or a skittish horse
with blinders.

The
clawed feet curled and the iron ball groaned and shifted slightly.

The
Rider rushed up, drawing his Volcanic. He would jam the barrel into its face
and shoot, and hope for the best. He could not possess the soulless
Mazzamauriello and thus push the cannon back down the ridge. It had to be
destroyed, or disabled at least, here in the Yenne Velt. Between the spiritual
and physical planes there was correspondence. If he defeated it here, it
couldn’t rain down iron on the people below.

He
prepared to leap on the thing if he must, but something strange happened. The
creature did not scrabble to turn and fight or lash its chain laced tail to
alert Mazzamauriello. Instead, it seemed to relax its clawed feet, laying them
flat. The snuffling sound stopped and became a steady, if labored breathing.

The
Rider stood beside it, ready to leap off the ridge if it made a move.

But
it did not.

It
waited.

For
how many eons had it existed thus? Was it in pain? Had it volunteered to submit
to Lucifer’s art and now regretted it, or had it been an unwilling experiment
to begin with?

The
Rider didn’t know. He did know that as he placed an ethereal hand on the cold
metal and angled the barrel of his pistol inside, Ketev
Meriri,
Bitter Destruction (Bitter of its fate perhaps?) did nothing to prevent him.
Its hot breath beat down on his gun hand.

He
pulled the trigger. The gun bucked, and the ring filled with blue-white fire.
The entire form of the entity shuddered, and then the ball rolled out from
underneath it, and it crashed to the ground and did not move. It was like
putting down a suffering animal.

The
Rider backed away, and watched Mazzamauriello jump and stare at the cannon. No
doubt in the physical world it had simply collapsed, the carriage breaking
apart, or the gun inexplicably dislodging.

Mazzamauriello
cursed and stomped and flung down the chain tail. He wasted little more time,
and leapt onto a black pony (it had white eyes in the Yenne Velt, marking it as
an unnatural beast—possibly some kind of demon itself). He kicked the animal
and it went down a side path.

The
Rider fumbled for his talisman and conjured his ether-horse. The dwarf was
headed back to Varruga Tanks.

* * * *

Gersh hunkered down over Wilkes and turned him over. It was too late for
the freighter. He didn’t know when the man’s neck had been broken, probably
when he’d struck one of the buildings as he was dragged. He was a mess of
bleeding cuts, exposed flesh and dust.

The
Colonel helped Purdee to his feet.

“Why
the hell did your gun work and mine didn’t?” Purdee wanted to know as he
inspected his torn coat sleeve.

“Sheardown
loaded yours,” Gersh said.

“That
rotten little curandero,” Purdee spat. “He was one of them?”

“He
was with them,” Gersh said, getting to his feet, “but not one of them.”

“Don’t hardly make no
sense,” Purdee said.

The
Colonel had his field glasses out and was looking through them at the ridge.

“I
wondered why they’d stopped firin’,” he said.

“Rider
do
for that gun?” Purdee asked, wiping sweat and grit
from his shining forehead.

“He
must’ve,” said the Colonel smiling. “It’s off the carriage up there. Don’t know
how he did it, but it’s lyin’ busted.”

He
lowered his glasses and sighed.

“I’ll
tell you what. I never seen nothin’ like what you did today, son,” The Colonel
said to Gersh in awe.

Gersh
smiled as a cool shadow passed across his face and made him glance up. He had
done amazing things this day. He had always been capable of great strength, but
he had never felt tested before, even with all the tricks old Hash had got him
to do. Something had been born in him this day. Knowing there were things such
as these men he had fought, and knowing he had the power to face them, it gave
him a sense of worth he had never had before. He felt he had a purpose. And
that purpose was with Rider.

Rider
could teach him. He could learn from Rider who he was, who his people were, and
what he must do with the power God had given him.

His
heart felt warm as he thought these things.

When
the dwarf leapt at him off the roof of the stone hut, when he landed like a
squirrel on his shoulder, and sunk his little needle teeth into the side of his
neck, Gersh hardly felt it at all.

He
did hear the little man’s voice speak rapidly in his ear.

He
did feel the hunk of his own flesh splat wetly against his cheek as the black
dwarf spit it out and jumped back down.

The
blood coursed down over his shoulder and was dripping from the ends of his
fingers by the time he fell forward and Purdee caught him in his arms.

“Easy,
kid,” the black man whispered close in his ear, straining to ease him down.

He
heard shooting, and he felt a flaring fire in his neck, and then he felt
nothing.

* * *
*

The
Rider stood in the circle, leaning for a moment against the ruined wall. There
was dried blood on his hand and leg, but the correspondent wounds were already
closed and wouldn’t scar. He shook his head like a man trying to let water out
of his ears, and he waved feeling back into his prickling arms and lurched
unsteadily into the sunlight, fumbling for his pistol, as the first sound that
had met his ears upon returning to his body had been gunfire. Gershom was not
here.

He
nearly fell when he got outside, but something solid and warm stopped him. He
blinked his bleary eyes and saw it was the last friend he’d expected to greet
him.

The
onager’s hide was blackened with soot and ash, and the
tips
of one of its ears was
shorn off, but it seemed otherwise remarkably
healthy.

He
couldn’t keep the smile from his face.

“How
in God’s name did you survive?” he exclaimed, forgetting to be reverent in the
unmitigated joy of the moment.

The
animal nipped at him, but it was without its earlier malice this time.

“Oh
alright, alright, I’m sorry.”

He
pressed his forehead against the side of the onager’s head.

“Alright,
help me.”

He
drew his pistol and leaned heavily against the animal. It seemed as they went
that the pale onager relied equally on him. Its gait was slow and stumbling,
and the Rider noticed streaks of dried blood leading from both ears. When the
artillery had hit the animals, it must have deafened him. But how had it not
killed him? He had heard the screaming horses, seen the state of the bull that
had been caught in the explosion. Perhaps it had somehow shielded the animal.
The onager had a habit of keeping to the far edge of the pen away from other
animals after all.

“Mazzamauriello!”
the Rider called drunkenly, shaking his head again. The psychic pains Sheardown
had inflicted on him in the Yenne Velt had left him groggy upon his return.
He’d never experienced anything like being shot with his own implements. The
dwarf would kill him if they met now. He wondered where Gershom and the others
were, if they were alive.

“The
little man’s gone!” Purdee yelled.

The
Rider and the onager went around the corner of the ruined saloon in the
direction of the black man’s voice.

“But
he left you a message,” Purdee said as they came into view.

The
Rider closed his eyes and nearly slid down the onager’s flank.

When
he opened them, what he had seen and prayed briefly was not so was still there.

The
massive youth was lying like a colossal pieta in the arms of Purdee, who had
wrapped his bandanna around Gershom’s thick neck in a vain attempt to stop the
blood that colored them both scarlet and fed a wide pool in the dirt.

He
was pale and sunken, his cheek resting like a sleeping boy’s against Purdee’s
breast.

The
Colonel was standing nearby with his hat off, and Marina and her boy were
weeping, the boy into the belly of his mother, and she into the Colonel’s
shoulder.

Trib
leaned against the stone wall of the hut, and his tired eyes were red limned.