Caine's Law (18 page)

“Whatever.” He waved a hand. “Forget that, huh?”

“All right.” She tilted her head to one side, then the other, and somehow he understood that she was examining the hoof with one eye at a time, doe-brown and milky blue-white in sequence.

His jaw hurt. He’d been grinding his teeth. “So, people try to backshoot you so often you’re bored with it? Or what, you’re arrow-proof?”

Her answer was only a distant shake of her head. The gelding had gone twitchy; the breeze had swung, and maybe he could smell the bowman’s blood. She released his leg, squatting patiently beside him, as though there wasn’t thirteen hundred pounds of nervous warhorse dancing around her.

“D’you think—” The bowman had gone white around the mouth. “Whilst you two flirt, d’you think I could maybe lie down?”

“Yeah, whatever.”

As she calmed the gelding and picked up its next leg, he found himself watching the sunstreaks in her hair, shifting and gently twisting in the breeze. Made him think of dawn reflected on a rippling river. When he realized what he was doing, he shut his eyes.

Flirt. Son of a bitch. The bowman hadn’t been wrong.

He might have to shoot her after all. Or himself.

He lowered himself onto a sand-colored outcrop a couple arm-lengths
from where the wounded man reclined on the grass. The bowman lay on his back, his eyes squeezed shut. His forehead glistened with sweat, despite the spring chill and freshening breeze. Having considerable experience with grievous bodily harm, received as well as delivered, Jonathan Fist knew the bowman was only now getting a real taste of how much the rest of his life might suck.

After a minute or two he admitted to himself that even if the horse-witch didn’t care about the bowman’s story, he did. People in this part of the world don’t travel alone. And questioning the man would give him something to think about. Something other than long, elegantly muscled sun-bronzed thighs, or a glance that could chill or warm or do both together but seemed in his mind to be trending definitely in the direction of warm. Maybe even hot.

He shook his head. He was, he reminded himself, old enough to know better. “Start with your name.”

“Do I have to?” Hoarse. Going faint. Blood seeping out around the belt. “Talking makes it worse.”

“I’d care, except ten minutes ago you tried to shoot me.”

“If I talk …” He licked his lips. “You got water?”

“Not with me.”

“But you can get it.”

Jonathan Fist shrugged. The bowman still had his eyes closed, but he seemed to understand. “Listen, my horses are back there. I got three full skins. Hell, you can have one.”

“I can have them all.”

“Pardon me for saying, but you don’t seem the type.”

“Start with your name.”

“Patch me real, can you? Better than this. Get me horsed and aimed on toward the rest of my life?”

“It’s possible.”

He coughed, and there was blood on his lips. Might have nicked a lung. Might just have bit his tongue when he fell. “You ain’t as reassuring as I’d like.”

“You tried to shoot me.”

“Yeah.” The bowman sucked in a halting breath, and he let it out with something like a shudder. “Folk who know me call me Tanner. My momma calls me Hack. Hackford, if she’s mad.”

“Still got your mother?”

“Sure. I ain’t old as you. Shit,
she
ain’t old as you.”

“I’m younger than I look.”

“You and me both, pappy.” He coughed again. More blood. “It’ll kill her to have to bury me.”

“She won’t.”

He rolled his head a little, and one eye slitted open to examine Jonathan Fist’s expression. Lack of expression. “That don’t sound like a promise I’ll live through this.”

“It’s still a promise.”

“I guess.” The eye drifted shut. He turned his face away. “What do you want to know?”

Tanner’s story was depressingly familiar: something of value turns up where people can see it, so people, being people, decide to take it.

Ten thousand or more horses in the witch-herd, almost all of them already broke to ride, which was enough cash on the hoof to buy a good-size town. The local warlord does a rough cost-benefit analysis and decides it’s worth paying twenty-five or thirty guys to collect the horses, and then five or six hundred more guys to use those horses to take over the range, cropland, and water holes belonging to warlords next door. The Lincoln County War with swords, bows, and magick.

And just like the Lincoln County War, the most interesting parts of the story were the hired killers.

None of them were anything resembling secrets. The local warlord, who called himself Count Faltane, wanted everyone to know just what kind of heavies he could afford. About half the witch-herd outfit was local, and the other half was a selection of imported hardguys and general-purpose psychos under a high-powered combat mage who called himself Bannon. Tanner was one of them. “I’m a hunter. Never miss a kill. Never spook the prey. First clue I’m there is an arrow in the back of the neck. Like being invisible.”

“Not to me.”

“Wasn’t hunting you, was I?”

“And don’t. Next time I won’t be in such a gentle mood.”

This outfit had been nipping at the skirts of the witch-herd for three days, but had only managed to carve off a few dozen aging, sickly, half-crippled nags. The rest of the witch-herd was smart and skittish, and always seemed to be a couple steps ahead of the men who were trying to chivvy them down into the flats. “Some of these local boys, they talk about this horse-witch, this twist who rides with the herd. Seems she’s kind of a
legend in these parts. The villagers leave out little gifts for her when the herd’s nearby, and sometimes somebody turns around to find a horse coming up behind them like they already know each other. Story is, the witch-horses are half magickal or something, superstrong and supersmart, and if you treat ’em good they’ll die for you. If you don’t treat ’em good, it’s you that dies.”

“Sounds fair.”

“Maybe it is. Except one don’t seem to be enough for some folk.”

“Somebody always gets greedy.”

“I have been known to suffer a touch of that affliction myself.”

Jonathan Fist pointed at some brown splotches on his pants leg. “This blood here? It belonged to a guy who thought he could grab some of these horses and drag them off this afternoon.”

“Thought,” Tanner said. “Not thinks.”

“That’s right.”

“Well, I don’t think, I hunt.” Tanner shook his head and grimaced. “Hunted.”

“Killing the horse-witch won’t get you these horses. She’s not your problem. Your problem is you.”

“I suspicion that’s true for a lot of people,” Tanner said. “How about that water?”

“In a minute. Tell me again about this Bannon guy.”

“He’s the boss. Him and his pal Charlie. Bannon don’t have a lot to say, but Charlie makes up for it. There’s a man as loves the sound of his own voice. Good-Time Charlie, he says the girls call him, and he can tell a story, I confess. Show you the pictures too, just like being there—as pretty a sightcaster as I ever saw.”

“Bannon.”

“There’s juice and a half in that one. On the trail out here, we flushed a K’rrx raiding party by accident—in full shell and big enough to do us the kind of harm as don’t heal,
and
backed by a couple of them ghostsingers of theirs. Bannon didn’t even get off his horse. None of us did. After about a minute, most of them was in pieces, and those as still whole was all over afire. I never even touched my bow.”

Jonathan Fist had some experience with hostile K’rrx himself. “I’m impressed.”

“You say that like it don’t often happen.”

“It’s been a while.”

“This is me returning the favor of you letting me live. People who get
on the boss’s wrong side come down with a bad case of dead. That
you’ll get hurt
trick of yours is pretty nifty, but I don’t recommend you try it on Red Bannon.”

“Red?” Fist frowned. “That’s his name? Red Bannon?”

“That’s what we call him, ’cause of his hair and beard. Red as a fox, though on him it’s more bear, as he’s a more bear-size sonofabitch. Charlie calls him Lazz sometimes, but he don’t like it. I don’t even know if Bannon’s his family or his given.”

“Or just fucking made up.” Fist looked at the ground, and allowed himself a couple of seconds of hoping he was wrong. “So Bannon’s big, red-haired, and a bust-ass combat magicker. This Good-Time Charlie, the sightcaster who backs him up—he wouldn’t be a hand or two taller, skinny as a straw? Laughs like a donkey getting kicked in the balls?”

“You know them.”

“Not exactly.” He rubbed his eyes, which turned into a futile attempt to massage away an oncoming migraine.

A few days tracking down his daughter’s stray horses. Like a vacation. Camping in the mountains. Fresh air and spring water instead of smoke and whiskey. And instead of all that, he had somehow stumbled into another fucking meat grinder. Would have been nice if somebody could have posted a sign or something.

It’s a little late to spot the grinder once your dick’s already caught.

After a while, the gelding trotted off and the horse-witch came over to the two men. “Let’s see that shoulder.”

Both men looked askance. She said, “Well?”

Jonathan Fist moved out of her way. Tanner chuckled wetly. “Me dying ain’t keeping you from something, is it?”

She uncinched the belt. One of those little knives was in her hand. She cut his tunic around his shoulder and peeled it back. “You’re not dying.”

“And if I was, would that have been important enough to get you over here before you finished trimming some goddamn horse feet?”

“No.”

Tanner blinked, frowned, blinked again, and looked over at Fist, who opened his hands and turned his palms upward. “You asked.”

“I guess.”

The horse-witch reached inside her jerkin and brought out a big pinch of some kind of leaves that were dark and shriveled-looking, but still moist. She put them in her mouth and chewed thoughtfully, not unlike a contented horse with a mouthful of sweetgrass.

“You are nothing like a normal person,” Tanner said.

She nodded absently and scooped the chewed leaves from her mouth with two fingers. After packing the leaves into the wounds, she plastered the sodden tunic back over them and rewrapped the belt around his shoulder. “You’ll heal clean.”

She stood and started walking up the slope.

Color was already returning to Tanner’s face. “That feels … damn. Did you really just …?”

His voice trailed off. She walked like she’d already forgotten about them both.

Fist went after her. “Hey, wait a second. Hey!” Dammit. “What the hell’s your name, anyway?”

She paused at the crest of the slope. “They’re worried about the blood,” she said. “And there’s an ogrillo up on the bluffs.”

“Who’s worried? And—” He squinted toward the bluffs. “You can
see
him?”

“The herd knows.” She nodded toward the shallow defile where Tanner had left his two horses. “They’re all right now.”

Tanner’s horses came walking cautiously up toward them, as though they’d been waiting only for permission. Fist stared. “I don’t understand you at all.”

She looked bored.

“If I hadn’t stopped him, he would have
killed
you—”

“I get killed all the time.”

“—and you’re
helping
him, and what the fuck is
I get killed all the time
supposed to mean?”

She winked her ice eye at him. “Permission.”

“Bullshit.”

She started walking back through the rocks, heading for the ravine and the herd. “They love him.”

“What, his horses? Are you fucking kidding me? ‘His horses love him’ means he’s a good person?”

“Better than you.”

“Well, no shit,” he said. “Who isn’t?”

She kept walking. The big bay she’d been riding rounded an outcrop and ambled toward her. Tanner’s horses picked their way up through the rocks, nickering warily as if calling for him but afraid of getting an answer.

He beckoned to them, feeling ridiculous. “He’s down there. It’s all right.”

They came on like they understood him.

He looked back downslope toward Tanner. “Your bow’s up here. The knife too. Hell, even the arrows. It’ll be a while before you’re shooting again.”

“If gratitude from me means anything—”

“Thank me by staying out of my way. Killing somebody after saving his life makes me feel like an idiot.”

“Nobody wants that.” Tanner waved his good hand. “Thanks anyway.”

“Fuck off.” He was already trotting after the horse-witch.

Again.