“Can’t think but it wouldn’t.”
“All right, then. Just so’s you know, and don’t blame me.”
“I wouldn’t be, uh!, too likely to — ohHOhhhh, that’s some big fuckin’ pile of — ”
“What-all’d I tell you, Mister Morrow? Pain hurts, that’s just what it does; ain’t no easy way ’round it, nice as it’d be if there was. Now, just hold on one tick more yet, and let me do what I gotta.”
Something ran through him then, stem to stern, like the very hairs of his skin were all set afire at once; he fell back, slipping on offal. Felt his arm snap out, twist this way and that — Jesus, it seemed as though the movements must be earthshakingly huge, though he suspected they were anything but. At the same time, a violent shiver of arcane light buzzed blue all along his break, re-righting it. He could’ve told the exact moment his shoulder popped in, had that not been rendered fairly obvious by its precise coincidence with the second he began to vomit.
Sympathetic hands grasped his shoulders, one white-skinned and female, the other male and brown. “Just ride it out, Ed,” Carver told him, in one ear, while Morrow hacked and shook.
Thanks for the advice, never in life would’ve occurred t’me to take that option, Morrow wanted to grump back soon as the pain-haze cleared, which was thankfully fast — but at that very same instant, he looked up once more to see Berta abruptly transfixed and staring even higher, tears streaming down her stately face.
“Oh God,” she said, quiet, like she didn’t even know her mouth was open. “Oh God, oh, Clo. What that damn woman did to you.”
“Poor sissy,” Eulie agreed, gripping Berta’s hand tight. “But . . .
ain’t much we can do about it, I s’pect. So we best be movin’ on, before . . .”
Too late for caution there, though.
Above, Clo and Ixchel orbited each other, a moon split in two, vomiting the last of Pinkerton’s ill-gotten witchery back and forth between ’em like they were passing a bottle, while the Rev — back from wherever he’d disappeared off to, now the real fight was mainly over — danced attendance, picking off stragglers with nuggets of verse tossed like Ketchum Grenades. Here a And it came to pass . . .
that Joshua . . . said unto the captains of the men of war which went with him, Come near, put your feet upon the neck of these kings, there a and David went out, and fought with the Philistines, and slew them with a great slaughter; and they fled from him. Which “they” sure did, like blast-frightened rabbits, and to no particularly good effect, either.
Clouds of dust, blasted sand and mist hung roiling along the plain’s east edge, obscuring the way back to Camp Pink. Before it, a lone cavalryman in an officer’s uniform — Washford, no doubt, even if it was impossible to pick out variations in backlit skin from this distance — galloped back and forth before the remnants of the Thirteenth, yelling orders, organizing its retreat. Morrow saw the skull-faced hag’s eyes light up, tracking the rider’s movements, and groaned to himself. Every instinct he had to attack, intervene, distract just for a moment warred hard against the helpless, hopeless knowledge of the exact uselessness of any such effort — not to mention just what a poor reward it would be for Carver, Berta and Eulie, getting ’em killed alongside him even after all this.
He drew breath to order the others away — and spasmed head to foot in a wriggling jolt, not painful this time but fire-streaked cold and thrilling; almost exactly like the icy ecstasy of spilling blood to empower Chess, another nahuatl epiphany boiling out of him. Except this one was . . . sharper, more controlled: a lasso tightening on his brain, rather than a gush spilling outward.
All of the above came in half an instant — joined, in the next, by a presence so startling it left no room even for joy.
Ed — it’s Yancey! We found him, Ed; we got him! An image followed here, stamped on his brain like some instantaneous tintype: hollow, insubstantial, yet indisputably the face of the real Chess Pargeter, alive with whatever the Enemy so viciously lacked. We’re at Old Woman Butte, in Chaco Canyon — a greyish flat-sided sandstone tower, rearing above the desert — get here, soon as you can! Please, Ed. Pl —
With a whipcrack of pain, the connection snapped; Morrow cried out, staggering back onto Carver’s supporting arm again, as Berta and Eulie gaped. “Jesus, Ed!” Carver exclaimed. “The hell was that?”
“Message,” Morrow gasped. “From — a friend.” He paused, wondering how to explain, and lost his chance almost immediately — for just then, Eulie glanced up and shrieked, eyes bugging. Morrow and Carver whirled together to see Ixchel and Clo descending on them without much speed — why bother hurrying, with nowhere for the four to flee?
Briefly, Morrow wondered if they’d somehow sensed Yancey’s calling, or if that coincidence was sheer fluke.
Didn’t matter either way, he supposed, and shifted his grip to his empty shotgun’s barrel, raising the stock like a club.
For a moment, he thought the boom that echoed out ’cross the plains was more thunder, another hexacious levinbolt called forth to fry them where they stood. But a second later, as the sadly familiar whistling roar of incoming mortar fire ripped across the sky, Morrow understood his own error.
“Down!” he yelled, grabbed Berta and dove face-first into the dirt, while Carver yanked Eulie down likewise. Above, Ixchel and Clo actually drew up, revolving one scant moment before the projectile struck. The shell burst between them with a flare of eldritch, oily light that painted both once-women in stark black silhouette, then shrouded them in colourless fire, evoking a single shared shriek of inhuman pain.
Ixchel plunged groundward like a dry leaf spit out of an autumn bonfire; Clo rocketed skyward instead, a day-born comet, fiercely trying to extinguish her fire against the wind.
Out of the dust-fog came an earthshaking roar, and the dust itself roiled apart to reveal somethi
ng Morrow’d as yet only glimpsed in sketches and half-built frameworks: the newest version of Doctor Asbury’s hex-powered “ghost-train,” twice as massive, sporting three armed and armoured cars in a chain — a true Land Ironclad, slabbed in iron plates like Merrimac and Monitor alike, with gun-muzzles thrusting out on all sides. The foremost still smoked, evident source of the missile that had struck down the demon women — a “hex-mine,” Asbury named it. Off the side of the foremost cab, Captain Washford clung to a steel bracket in the open air, sabre drawn and flashing in the murk.
At impossible speed, the arcanistric behemoth roared across the plain aimed for the fallen Moon-Lady, only to collide with Clo as she streaked down upon it out of the heavens, still ablaze like Lucifer: Struck the roof and bounced off, a stray firework scraping ’gainst stone, then arced smoothly ’round and came back down to land on all fours, clinging. With every star tattooed on her body manifesting seared pinholes of volcanic light, her clawed hands tore at the armour ’til battle-forged steel yielded to alien might — long strips peeled back same as hide would, torn edges glowing red with heat. The ironclad began to weave back and forth, yet maintained speed toward Ixchel, the ceiba forest, the walls of New Aztectlan beyond. More shells burst forth, borne on tongues of fire; explosions inked in unnatural hues of green, blue and purple mushroomed up out of the ceiba trees, setting off chain reaction shockwaves which shattered row after row of those black monstrosities.
The push’s up and running again, praise Christ, Morrow thought, frankly amazed. As all the while, left writhing on the ground directly in the Ironclad’s path, Ixchel howled fit to burst — so loud it bruised the soul, shook the very dirt they stood on, and almost made it seem like she was about to pry the whole Crack’s lips open using just her voice alone.
“Goddamn yes!” Carver yelled, dancing like a madman; Morrow didn’t doubt but that he’d have drawn his gun and sprinted to join the attack, had Morrow not seized his arm at the last moment to haul him ’round. Carver glared at him, furiously. “We gotta help him, Ed, for love of all — that’s the Captain out there!”
“Captain’ll live or die on his own, with nought for us do about it — ’cept fall alongside him, things go bad as they probably will!” Morrow yelled back. “What we gotta do get out of here, soon as we can — find a place, Old Woman Butte, in Chaco County . . .”