Brimstone and Lily (Legacy Stone Adventures) (21 page)

Jasper’s voice managed to sound young and ancient at the same time. “That’s why it has to be you. No one who wants the Stone, who wants the power, can be allowed to have it. No one who craves the Sword and glories in its destructiveness can be trusted to touch it. That’s why all such mortals who try will be killed in trying to wield it.”

“I might’ve killed somebody here. That ain’t me. I just play-act with swords. It’s make-believe. Give this to some war hero, some strong man who wants to charge the enemy and save civilization. Give it to Mr. Lincoln and let him find a real Stone-Warden.”

The cup melted into a silvery hand. It felt as warm and giving as a real human hand. Running along my cheek in an almost paternal gesture, Jasper said, “It doesn’t work that way. The Stone finds its own master, and it’s never wrong.” Standing on two fingers like a tiny person, the hand jabbed its thumb at me and added, “If it makes you feel any better, all Stone-Wardens have felt this way. It’s a sign that you’re the right one for the quest.”

I sat up. The pained voices had all but faded away. All three deserters pinned by the tree had been freed. A light breeze cooled my cheeks where tears had wet them. “All Stone-Wardens? I’m not the first?” Somehow that made me feel better. Misery really does love company.
And my enemy, an evil company, really does love misery. Oh, ain’t I clever in adversity?

“A few, like Jeanne D’Arc. The Merchantry’s not the first bunch of lunkheads to try to run the world, you know. They’re just the nastiest, and the best at it.”

“And the lunkheads always lose?”

“So far. Don’t ruin our record, okay?”
That got a smile out of me. I held out a hand and he hopped onto it. Clasping that shimmery hand hard, I felt better. Almost like holding Eddie’s, or Ma’s, when I’d been down. “Thanks.”

“My pleasure.” He jerked my around to the north, turning into a telescope for an instant. A cartoony eye bulged out of it, then I held Morphageus again, runes all fiery. “Oh-oh!”

I leapt up, heart pounding. “Oh-oh? Oh-oh’s usually bad. What’s with the oh-oh?”

A finger flowed out of the sword tip, pointing to where all of the renegades had gone. I made a pained face. Partly because I ached from fighting, partly from seeing that they were coming back, most of them. In front jogged the guy with the saber. He didn’t have a happy look on his face. Neither did I, I felt sure of that. Because the ten or so reinforcements he’d hidden behind the hill had now joined the rest. Close to twenty angry armed men were running at us, guns raised to fire.

“Time to go, I think,” I muttered.

“Wise decision, Venerable Savior of Mankind,” Jasper snickered. “They don’t look like they’re about to export any love in your direction.”

I didn’t bother answering. I was already sprinting for the house. Raising the sword to my lips, it became a large bugle just as I started blowing. A raggedy but fierce-loud cavalry call blared through the still Virginia night. That made me glad I’d watched so many army drills around Washington City. After doing it a second time, I chanced a look over my shoulder. My pursuers had stopped, expecting horsemen to charge them. When that didn’t happen, they commenced their advance again.
Oh, well.
It’d bought me a few extra steps. And maybe Tyrell and Romulus were awake now.

With Jasper now covering my back as a shield again, I swerved to the back of the house. If Tyrell started shooting, I didn’t want to be in his line of fire. I knew he had the one pistol and his sword. He might have more weapons on his saddle that I hadn’t seen, but that still didn’t change the fact that the odds, with Romulus, were still seven-to-one. And though I might’ve been able to take down quite a few if left to myself, I didn’t dare risk showing Morphageus to Tyrell until I knew for certain whose side he was on. No good winning a battle just to have a horde of Bullies show up at his call, if he turned out to be a Merchantry agent.

My change of direction proved a good decision. No sooner had I darted to my right than a swarm of leaden bees slammed into the side of the house. It sounded like someone with an enormous arm had thrown a handful of rocks against the hardwood panels. Glass flew everywhere from a shattered window.
Whoa! Close! Run, run, run!
I skidded around the corner of the house, noticing that Alcibiades had disappeared. Did Tyrell run off and leave us? Or did the musket volley spook his mount? Not likely, since he was a war horse. But in my experience, the bravest horses could still shy at their own shadows for no earthly reason.

A kick opened the back door for me while I used both hands to pull the shield from my back and make a cup out of it.
You’re innocent cowardly little Mary Williams, remember. No magick, no fightin’ unless there’s no choice left.
I shrieked like the dainty girls at school would do whenever they saw a bug. Just because I was a tomboy didn’t mean I couldn’t be girlie when it suited me.

“Cap’n! Cap’n! Help!” I screeched, the door not yet closed behind me. As if he were a genie I’d just called by rubbing the lamp, the Reb officer appeared at the other end of the kitchen. Unlike a genie, he didn’t seem ready to do my bidding.

He pointed his giant pistol right at my face.

It was like staring into a railroad tunnel. Any second I’d see the bright light of the locomotive. Then I wouldn’t see anything else.
Oh, you’re stupid, Verity Sauveur. Dumb, dumb, dumb! Delivered yourself right to ‘em you did.
Figuring secrecy didn’t matter much now, I started to bring up the cup to make a shield of it, but it was too late. My eardrums split with the pistol’s crack before my hand got halfway up. Teeth gritted and shoulders hunched, I waited for the end.

The end came, but not for me. Tyrell had fired over my shoulder at a target behind me. Thick white smoke wrapped around my head as I felt the bullet
zizz
past my left ear. Somebody gurgled near the back door and fell heavily against the jamb. The captain dashed past me, blazed away at someone else, then slammed the door. After throwing the bolt he ran back toward the parlor, grabbing me by my coat collar. Half-dragging me with him, he growled, “Are you mad, girl? What did you do to bring them down on us?”

I shook myself loose and crouched in a corner. “Nothin’, sir. I was only makin’ my sentry rounds like you told me to. They commenced to rushin’ the house just as soon as I turned the corner.”

“Well, we’re in for it now. Must be almost a whole platoon out there. They won’t try the back door for a bit, not with two men down on their first try. They’ll go for the other door, or more likely a window. We can’t watch them all. If they assault several places at once then we’re done for. Have to hope we guess right and make them pay dear for whatever choice they make.”

Romulus kept watch at the front door, which stood open a tiny crack. He lay on his belly, peering out across the front lawn. “Nothin’ this way yet, sir.”

Tyrell reloaded his gun, which I now recognized as a LeMat revolver, using the ramrod built onto it. I’d seen one displayed by a Union sergeant once. He’d taken it off a dead grayback, or so he claimed. They were the only ones who tended to use them. It held nine .44 caliber bullets, bad news for any renegades who got close. If Tyrell stayed patient and picked his shots with care he could cut our attackers down to half-strength in a hurry. But I doubted that these seasoned fighters would be foolish enough to rush through a doorway and let him mow them down. My ears told me that they were coming from at least three different directions now.

Pulling a small blued pistol out of his boot, he handed it to me butt-first. A four-shot pepperbox, it was scarcely larger than my palm. It amounted to a revolver with no barrel. After every shot you had to turn the thing to line up the next chamber. No accuracy at all, I’d heard, unless you jammed it right up against somebody, but better than nothing, especially since I couldn’t use Morphageus.

“What’s this?” I asked.

“In case they get by me,” Tyrell replied in a preoccupied voice.

“I can’t shoot somebody,” I whined in my best poor-little-Mary voice. “Give it to Tom.” I pointed to Romulus, who turned his head halfway, keeping an eye on the front.

You’d have thought I’d asked Tyrell to boil himself alive. “Are you daft, child? Arm a slave?”

“He raised me from a babe,” I shot back, stamping my foot and pouting like I’d seen spoiled rich plantation girls do in Maryland. “Taken care of me all my life. I don’t think he’s about to kill us and join them renegades.”

With a shake of his head, the Confederate sighed, “Fool modern notions.” He unhooked the saber from his belt and slid it across the wooden floor to Romulus. “There. That’s as far as I can go.”

Romulus closed the door, stood, and drew the sword. It looked like a toy in his huge hand. The heavy steel scabbard stayed in his other hand as a handy club. “They’s goin’ ‘round the back, sir. Front’s clear.”

With a sour laugh Tyrell said, “No it’s not. That’s what they want us to think.” Hammering almost drowned out his words as musket butts pounded on the back door. “I’ve seen this bunch before. Hunted them, in fact.” He picked up his saddle and headed for the stairs. “Hellfiend Legion, they call themselves. Bounty jumpers and deserters. The scum of both armies, raiding on their own. They leave no prisoners as a matter of policy.” As two windows on opposite sides of the house were smashed in, he opened the cellar door and tossed the saddle down. “Land pirates, that’s what they are. Scum. But clever scum all the same. There’s an ambush waiting us out front, I’ll bet my mother on it. No escape that way.”

Tyrell cocked his pistol and shoved me down the basement steps. He hollered at the top of his lungs, “Upstairs, everyone! We’ll sell our lives dear from up there!” Booted feet stomped across the floors of the empty house. Motioning for Romulus to follow me, he whispered, “That should buy us time to secure this door. Going upstairs is a death trap for us and they know it. They’ll look up there first and they’ll be careful about going up the steps.” He pushed us down the steps, swept our footprints from the floor with his hat, and closed the door. It boasted a strong lock on the inside. I wondered why. If they’d sealed up slaves in the cellar as punishment, or while waiting for a sale, the lock should’ve been on the outside. Determined men would make short work of it, but then they’d have to fight their way down a narrow stair, silhouetted in the doorway if we blew our light out, with no place to hide from that awful gun.

With the door shut it was black as Hades. Our well-prepared guardian struck a match, though, and soon an oil lamp that had somehow survived the looting showed us our new refuge from a hook at the base of the steps. The basement looked a mess, but not as clean-picked as the rest of the house. An old mattress, boxes of rags, a broken pitchfork, spare bottles of lamp oil, a rack of spoiled pickles in jars, and other assorted junk items cluttered the lumpy dirt floor. No windows, even the usual tiny ones most cellars had, were in the upper walls. Somebody had wanted this place to be tight. And it was…a nice tight prison for us.

“What now?” I whispered, pausing to listen as heavy feet clumped above us. “Once they see that we ain’t upstairs after all, they’ll have only one other place to look.”

Nodding in agreement, Tyrell murmured, “Don’t I know it. But this is the best of a lot of bad choices. No way out for us means no way in for them. They won’t be keen to come down those steps one at a time to be picked off. They’re raiders. That means they prefer easy takings and running to fighting skirmishes. If they were lovers of battle they’d never have left the army.”

“But won’t they just wait us out?”

“No point. Come dawn they’ll be at risk of being spotted by a cavalry patrol from either army. That volley they fired at you will have piqued someone’s interest, this close to Washington. When the sun comes up they’ll want to be hiding in a patch of woods someplace. The Legion is badly wanted by both sides.” He started tearing rags into long thin strips, indicating that we should do the same. “Besides, they’ll have already noticed that we have no loot worth the fight. Tactical logic dictates that we aren’t worth the casualties they’d take.”

He tied a rag strip across the railing of the stairs, less than a foot up. I saw what he wanted and added mine. Soon we had a tangle of tripwires ready for anyone who came at us. Romulus soaked the treads in oil to make them slippery, as well. We piled the heavy wooden rag boxes up in a wall at the bottom of the stairs. Throwing the mattress over it, we took shelter behind our barrier. The second we did so the cellar door exploded from a series of mighty kicks. Musket balls splintered the front row of boxes. Crazed voices screamed doom at us and shadowy figures clattered down the steps.

So much for tactical logic.

17/ Pickles

I dove for the room’s opposite corner as my Marshal bodyguard took the head from the nearest foe.

It bounced into my lap, blood splattering my face.

Explosions, gun smoke, and curses pretty near overwhelmed my heightened senses. Tyrell took down the first three men with as many shots.
Guess they drew the short straws.
One fell near the door and got hauled back up by his fellows. The other two rag-dolled down the steps to crash into our box wall, scooting it back a foot and demolishing our careful tripwires. I squeaked, not just to stay in character as pitiful Mary. Men had been shot dead in front of me, their hot blood pooling near my foot. I scrunched back. This wasn’t like skewering Bullies, who most likely weren’t alive the way we’d think of it, or muck monsters. Real red murder was being done in this small space, to protect me. I hoped I’d prove worth all the slaughter.

As soon as the door had been cleared another pair charged us, hoping that the first wave had undone our defense. They found out different, as both went down to the captain’s deadly aim. A quarter of the Legion had died already, heaped at the foot of the stairs. I thought of the awful battle at Shiloh in Tennessee, where the dead in the Hornet’s Nest were said to have been stacked like cordwood. My young mind boggled at the thought of hundreds, even thousands, being massacred like this.
No wonder men desert the army, if they’re exposed to this sort of thing on a regular basis.