A Moderated Evil

In those days, I sometimes traveled the frontier alone, on foot, horse, or mule, but more often I accompanied a delivery cart, a group of settlers with their wagons, or a picket of soldiers transiting outposts. This served the dual purpose of providing me with company while also allowing me to discharge a portion of my contract with Duke Barris, which, explicitly, was “to protect, aid, and serve the citizens of the Duchy of Barris in a manner that befits my talents”. The implicit aspect of the contract, more suitable for the smoky, velvet-walled rooms of desperate, powerful men, was to prevent my settling in one place, making ties, becoming acceptable. A terrestrial contract striving to mitigate a celestial one.

My kind was, and is, a moderated evil.

“Mustn’t stare, love,” the young mother sitting across the coach whispered in her daughter’s ear.

The sharp-eyed girl, perhaps five years old, stood between her mother’s legs, treading gray mud on the tattered hem of the woman’s skirts. And, as in the case of the twenty previous admonishments over as many miles, the child continued to stare. At the sedate black of my woolen trousers and suit jacket, striving to contain the rebellious fuchsia of the linen shirt beneath. At my black bowler hat with the silvery-gray, five-lobed, cinquefoil symbol of my dread patron Bel Abis. At the matching symbol cursed into both my cheeks, eyelids, earlobes, the sides of my neck, the palms of my hands. And other places the child could not see. Would never see, if she were fortunate.

I winked at the child. She leaned back, eyes wide, into her mother’s warm protection.

“I don’t mind,” I said, flicking my eyes up to the woman. She flinched away. It was the first I’d spoken since joining them in the coach in Sandalwood, when my presence had silenced the bubbling conversation I’d heard through the thin walls. I’d observed the familiar full cycle: shock at my sudden presence, disgust at my mottled visage, the desperate scan for routes of escape, dark resignation, and the subsequent protective drawing in of her girls. The hours since had been filled with whispers, gasps, and stares.

If only Bel Abis’s appetites could be sated with whispers, gasps, and stares.

“Your face is dirty,” said the girl’s older sister, propped up on the thinly-padded seat at her mother’s side, her toes just reaching the floor. My speaking seemed to have loosened her tongue.

“They’re my decorations,” I said. I did a visual check-in with her mother, who sat stiffly, eyes closed, teeth clenched. I took her submission as permission. “Do you like them?”

The girl, who was perhaps twelve, freckled and serious, considered for a moment, then deferred with: “Do they hurt?”

How to answer? Did I want my three companions to cry in primal horror, clawing at their eyes, tearing their hair, plunging their fingernails deep into their own plump skin, digging and peeling, ruptured ligaments popping, as fat, sinew, and muscle separate from glistening bone in a squinching, pulsing riot of warm, wet, red?

No?

A lie, then.

“Not much.”

Her squinty eyes hinted at her skepticism, but she didn’t pursue it. “Where’d you get ‘em?”

Children, especially those from these farther reaches, were often my best conversation partners. Hadn’t seen my kind around, didn’t know they should be repulsed and nauseated by a Dread Saint.

“They were painstakingly and lovingly applied by my dire patron, the primordial thyng Bel Abis.” My deep voice echoed discordantly as my lips formed his name, eliciting a sharp exhalation from the mother’s nose.

The child paused to take this in. Just then, the coach juddered through a rut in the road and she fell forward, off the seat. I caught her before she hit the floor. The mother gasped. She wrenched her daughter back, rewarding my service with a contemptuous glare of warning.

Unperturbed, the older daughter continued our conversation. “What’s your name? I’m called Missa.”

I gave her my professional name. “Crux.”

“Crucks...” She felt the gravely shape of the word in her mouth.

“Missssssah…” I said, drawing it out into a breath, waggling my head like a top nearing the end of its spin.

There were two bangs on the wall behind my head, and from the driver’s seat I heard a whistle. I slid open the panel to the driver’s box. Dust puffed in my face, and I blinked it away.

“Might be trouble brewin’.” It was the shotgun. Henley, if I recalled correctly. “You wanna get up here.”

I closed the panel and turned to my companions. “If you’ll excuse me.” I climbed up on my seat and popped open the roof hatch. Then, with one hand on each side of the portal and a boot on a small ledge behind my seat, I hauled myself up onto the roof of the coach.

“No, don’t stop!” Henley yelled to the driver, a broad, flat-eyed gentleman named Dusty. Then, to me: “There…and there.” He pointed at two spots on the horizon, one on each side of the road. On the right, atop a bluff. On the left, hidden in a stand of cedar.

Horsemen.

Crouching on the coach roof, I nodded. Then, with my left hand protecting my bowler from the wind, I placed my right hand over my right eye, symbol to symbol. Like plunging from a thirty-foot cliff into a spring lake, the sick, familiar feeling pummeled me: millions of ravenous insects scrabbling, chewing, digging their way out, fleeing from my core. I clenched my teeth. It was the terrible, electric radiance of my power. Bel Abis’s “gift”.

My eyesight thus enhanced, I examined our would-be attackers. The one on the bluff, tall and rangy, black hat, resting on the withers of a sorrel quarter horse with a white star. His blood was icy; today was a day that the sun rose, and this was an hour that started at the top. Also, he had a bad tooth that wanted pulling, and was in need of spectacles. This last bit was unfortunate as it washed away the deterrent effect of the Dread Saint garments I wore. I’d prevented many attacks just by being present, but today would be a fight.

I was not overly upset. Sometimes the gremlins needed out.

The second rider, in the trees, was in actuality two. A shaggy lump of muscle on a stocky gray quarter horse with bowed tendons in both its front legs. A skinny boy with an old rifle and a new hat, crouching next to his saddlebags in front of a chestnut Morgan. The man was sleepy, but the boy’s heart raced and his face was flushed.

I rotated in my perch to scan in a full circle, and spotted a fourth rider, a woman in a grimy duster, trailing us. There was no turning back.

Their plan was simple: The lookout on the bluff would charge down at us from the right, shooting and whooping like a maniac. We’d turn left to take shelter in the stand of trees, only to find two more attackers there, but by then we’re off-road and slow. Pot committed. And if we spotted them early, as we had, or if the attack started and we had our wits about us, if we tried to turn back we’d run into our shadow.

Simple, probably had been effective for them in the past. Maybe even cowed their victims into not fighting back. If they were the best kind of bandits, nothing got hurt except some egos and strongbox locks. And if they were the worst kind, well, their victims might yearn for a quick death.

But it didn’t matter.

Not today.

Intent, even the glint off the glimmer of a thought of doing injustice, was sufficient to draw Bel Abis’s heavy-lidded gaze. And as its agent, its Dread Saint, I was compelled to act.

“One rider behind, and two in the trees,” I said to Henley.

The guard set his jaw and nodded. “We’ll spring it, but,” patting the driver’s shoulder, “we stay on the road.” To me, “Then you can justify your existence.” Henley was a practical, unsentimental man. Didn’t mind my methods. Maybe even approved of them. He wasn’t alone in that room, but it echoed inside and its doorway was hidden.

We barreled on, like wolves to the slaughter.

While Henley busied himself queuing up stashed rifles, shotguns, and bags of ammunition, I cracked the hatch open and stuck my face in.

“Highway men ahead,” I said. “It’s gonna be a fight.”

The mother gasped and pulled her daughters in. The tiny girl sensed her mother’s panic and buried her face, wailing, in the woman’s skirts.

“You might wanna get down on the floor,” I said.

Missa pushed from under her mother’s arm, strained her neck up at me, and said, “What’re ya gonna do?”

I flicked the brim of my bowler and said, “Make ‘em pay.” I closed the hatch.

When I turned around, the rider on the bluff had already begun his charge down the hill, waving his black hat like a pirate flag and hollering like we were cattle in a chute. When he’d traveled half the distance, he donned the hat and pulled a rifle from his leg scabbard.

“Keep on, Dusty,” Henley said to the driver, and raised his own rifle.

“Hyeh!” Dusty yelled. “On now, Tommy!” The four-in-hand, a team of mighty Percherons he’d picked up at the last stage in Sandalwood, charged ahead.

About this time I sat up tall, steadying myself on the narrow rim that surrounded the roof. I wanted to give them one last chance to see me, see their folly, and let us pass. For my trouble, the lookout aimed down his rifle and fired. Too far for any accuracy, but his intention was clear.

So be it. Bel Abis would have its victuals.

The rider reached the road and stopped about two hundred yards away. Inside rifle range, but too far for my purposes. Henley let fly with his Winchester, if only to put the lookout on notice. Again. Again.

We rambled on. Closer. The lookout returned fire, at least one bullet chewing into the wall of the driver’s box between Dusty and Henley. The man had to realize at this point we didn’t intend to turn or stop.

Almost there…

The lookout raised his arm, but not holding the rifle. Instead, he pointed to the trees.

Balancing on my knees, I placed my hands to the sides of my neck, symbol to symbol–

And the world exploded.

Or, rather, the road in front of the horses exploded. The panicked team jerked to the left and off the road, wrenching the coach with it. The sudden momentum shift tipped us up on the left front wheel and shattered the axle. I flew to the right while the wagon tumbled onto its left side.

I landed in the road, shattering something in my right shoulder and driving the air from my lungs. My hat was gone. Clouds of dust filled the air, along with equine screams. I knew the cover wouldn’t last long. Lungs burning, my right arm going cold, I dragged myself around the toppled coach, trying to put it between me and our attackers. As I rounded the corner, the two lead horses of Dusty's team galloped by, nearly trampling me, dragging their torn leather traces.

I took quick stock. The wheelers, still attached to the wagon by a tangle of leather and chain, were writhing and kicking on their sides. Dusty, holding himself up on one leg, was busy cutting them free before they hurt themselves beyond healing. Henley was crawling around on the ground; at first I thought he was senseless, but I quickly realized he was retrieving his scattered weapons and ammunition.

As the fog dissipated from my brain, I realized my earlier mistake: the boy had been crouching in front of his horse, but it wasn’t a saddlebag in front of him. It was a plunger box, wired to dynamite buried in the road. Their contingency plan in the event the coach didn’t stop or turn toward the trees.

The coach’s top hatch, now a vertical doorway, popped open, ejecting Missa.

“Are you well?” I panted. “Your family?”

“Yes,” she said, brushing hair from her eyes. “All of us.”

“Bring them out, behind the coach. Put more wood and steel between them and the bullets.”

She nodded and ducked back into the darkness.

“Saint!” Henley yelled. He was at the edge of the toppled driver’s box, ducking out and taking quick shots with his rifle. “Three are coming from this side. The fourth will be here soon, from behind. It’s now or never!”

I ran to the back end of the coach and peered. Emerging from the settling smoke and dust came three riders, rifles popping.

“Stand down, now,” yelled the meat mountain on the gray. “We have you dead to rights, and more on the way.”

I took three quick breaths, gritted my teeth, and with a wheeze lifted my right hand up to the symbol on one side of my neck, and put my left hand on the symbol on the other side. The familiar agony filled my insides. Then, grimacing, I stepped out into the line of fire.

I didn’t say a word. Just stared at the lookout, aiming his rifle at me. The magic swirled, focused.

Suddenly, the lookout flinched, dropping the rifle and slamming his hands to his face with a howl. His partners looked over, one on each side, wondering if he’d been shot. If only. For then his agonized head shot straight from his body, like a Chinese rocket propelled by a spray of atomized blood. The tattered sphere, still wearing a black hat, flew a dozen feet up before landing and rolling lazily into a mud puddle. A few seconds later, his body slid off the horse.

The boy froze in his saddle, screaming as if his bible’s admonitions had come to life. The man on the gray yelped unintelligibly and jumped off his horse, putting it between him and me.

Luckily, I didn’t need line of sight. I slid my left hand inside my coat, between the buttons of my linen shirt. Touched the symbol over my heart. The electric insects boiled out of me.

From behind the gray horse I heard a haunting, mournful cry. It must have spooked the horse because it kicked and galloped away, leaving a clear view of the devastation behind: the stocky man was vibrating, shaking like a leaf in a cyclone, his arms flailing above his head. Blood seeped from every pore of his body, and from his eyes, ears, mouth, and nose, but instead of dripping to the ground, it rose, carving hundreds of spidery pathways, a torrent of crimson teardrops pouring upward into a vortex in the sky. The sound he made is perhaps best neither described nor remembered, but if compelled, I’d compare it to a squealing pig tumbling headlong down a sheer slope coated in glassy shards.

At last, his body deflated, his remains collapsed into a ruined heap of pale, flaccid tissue.

I turned robotically to the boy, and three things happened at once.

First, the boy fell from his horse, tossed his rifle, and threw himself, screaming, praying, and begging, prostrate on the dusty ground.

Second, I heard caterwauling behind me and turned to see the mother and her girls peeking around the back of the coach. The mother’s face had drained of all color aside from the shimmering blue of her streaming eyes. She held her younger daughter’s face crushed to her breast. And Missa…Missa looked on with what, at that harried, suspended moment, was an inscrutable expression.

Third, the fourth rider came lurching up behind them, saw the devastation, cried something unintelligible, reared her horse, and turned for the hills.

Unblinking, I raised my left hand to my mouth and touched the symbol on my tongue to the one on my palm. Around that obstruction, I whispered, as best I could. Words of woe, of torture, of razor blades and magma, of stinging barbs and acid, of timeless, deathless pain. The fourth rider screamed and dropped from her horse. She held her hands to her ears, trying to block it out, but the sound was inside her. “Make it stop!” but it would not. She batted at her invisible tormenters. “Get out of my head!” but they would not. Finally, her solution was to pull the Bowie knife from her hip and plunge it into her own ear.

I turned back to the boy, still groveling and weeping.

“Stop!” said the mother, finally. “He’s just a boy!”

But I didn’t stop. I couldn’t. Bel Abis wanted dessert.

I slid my left hand into my shirt again, popping two abalone buttons, until it rested on my belly. On another symbol.

The boy burst into flames. White hot hellfire, hissing twenty feet into the air, casting long shadows in the middle of the day. Mine fell on the young family.

The boy didn’t suffer long.

I turned, drained. Dusty finally released the two trapped horses, and they leaped to their feet and ran into the trees. Henley pulled the mother into his arms; her baby between them, she buried her face in his chest. He wouldn’t look at me, couldn’t face the truth of his convictions.

I discovered Missa at my feet. She handed me my hat. “I like them.”

“What?”

“Your decorations. They look like the daisies in my mom’s garden, but when their season has passed and they’re withered and ashen.”

“Thank you, Missa.”

“It’s Melissa, really.”

“I like Misssssssah.”

“I like Crucksssss.” Her mouth smiled. But her eyes…

Her eyes reflected the boy’s smoldering remains.

They told me to find this girl again in a few years.

When she was old enough to assume a contract.