However…

My regular readers will be aware that the community college at which I’m a student recently held a creative writing contest, as they do every year. I didn’t enter it last year, as I forgot about it until after the deadline, but this year I made a point to enter the maximum two short stories for the Fiction category. One of them was the zombie story I wrote for Halloween, with a few tweaks after I published it here at the Chef’s Hat. The other was essentially an edited-down (to fit the contest’s 2,000-word limit) version of the second half of the hero-free western that I posted this past summer. I submitted them right before the deadline and waited to see what would happen.

The deadline was November 10th. Nothing on the entry form indicated a window in which the winners would be announced, nor did my instructors know. And so, as time went on, I simply resigned myself to the fact that they had alerted the winners, and since I was not alerted, I was not one of them. Oh well, I thought. I wasn’t out anything for entering. There’s always next year; I was planning on entering it then anyway.

I got home from class yesterday afternoon at around four o’clock. I checked my school e-mail, as I do when I get home, and I find this waiting for me in my inbox:

I almost had to change my pants. Almost.

As should be obvious, “The Bloody Gold” was the title I gave to the western, and “The Dead Still Scream” was the title I gave to the horror story. For getting second place, you can see from that part of the e-mail displayed in the screenshot that I’m automatically entered into a statewide writing contest. I’ve also won $75, which is nothing to sneeze at. While it mentions “a record number of [entries],” it doesn’t say what that number was, so I don’t know how many students I beat out to not only get second place, but an honorable mention for my other story.

It was quite the shock, and to be honest, I’m still not quite sure I believe it. I’ve received congratulations from my literature instructors (word gets around in the ol’ English department, I guess), and needless to say, I’m rather proud of myself. It looks as though I can’t downplay my talent quite as much anymore, since it would seem that what talent I do have is worth something. It’ll be nice to think of this when I have those moments when I feel like my writing isn’t worth much. It’ll certainly help to motivate me to write for pleasure, which I should be able to do a little bit more of once the semester ends next week.

And so, if you’ll permit me one of my rare moments of egotism, I’m feeling pretty damn good about myself right now.

Enjoy.

I lay groaning on the soft bed. Two feather pillows cushion my head; the warm wool blankets have been pulled up to my waist. My side aches and a bruise throbs beneath the thick layer of bandages wrapped tightly around my torso. I can feel my broken ribs with every breath I take; I cry out loudly. Adrienne only laughs from the kitchen as she gets the soup ready. “That’s hardly the way to console your dying husband!” I yell. Another bolt of pain shoots through me; I immediately regret raising my voice.

“Oh, hush.” She walks into the bedroom carrying a steaming bowl of soup and a large spoon. The morning sunshine spilling through the window makes her hair shine and her skin glow. Her skirt dances around her with every step. “You’re not dying, and don’t expect to milk this for long. A couple broken ribs can’t stop a mighty knight of the Silver Hand for long, can they?”

“Pff. That mule was trying to kill me. I’d expect my wife to show a little more sympathy.”

“You know he doesn’t like being hooked up to that plow, Adrian. He kicks at you every year when it’s time to plant, and if you hadn’t been quick enough to get out of his way last year, you would have never had the chance to give me our baby.” She rubs the swell of her stomach and smiles sweetly. I smile with her.

“I suppose you’re right; he could well have given me worse than a couple broken ribs.”

“I’m always right, Adrian.” She kisses my forehead. Her perfume tickles my nose. “That’s why you married me.”

“Oh? All this time I thought it was because I got such a kick out of our names being so similar.”

She swats me lightly on the top of the head. “I made some soup for you.”

“I see that. It smells good.” She takes some onto the spoon, blows on it gently, and puts it in my mouth. “It tastes good, too,” I say, smiling at her. “Your food always does.”

“Flatterer.”

“A knight of the Silver Hand never lies,” I tell her, a serious look on my face. “It’s our code of honor, you see.”

“Ah, is that it?” She smiles the smile that made me fall in love with her and I forget the broken ribs for a moment. She gives me another spoonful of soup; I hadn’t realized just how hungry I was. “I can’t see why you don’t just get rid of that mule. He gives you nothing but trouble. Those ribs agree with me.”

“When it comes to plowing a field or pulling a heavy load, he’s the best mule I’ve ever seen.” I take another spoon of soup. “Once you can get him hooked up, of course.” I smile at her and wink. “Besides, he and I have a competition going on. If I get rid of him, he’ll know I gave up, and I can’t have that.”

She twists her mouth, but she’s laughing with her eyes. I’ve known her too long for her to be able to hide that from me. “I’ll never understand you men,” she says. I’m pretty sure she’s feigning that exasperation. “I’ll send for Frances Hillard in the morning; she should be able to help those ribs mend. I don’t see why you, mighty paladin, can’t just put those bones back together yourself.” Now it’s my turn to get a look.

I roll my eyes. “Pff.”

She giggles and gives me some more soup. “You know I’m teasing. Do you want me to go see George and find out if he’ll plow for you?”

I swallow another mouthful of soup and shake my head. “Not right away, but go ahead if I’m not back up and moving in another couple of days. He has his own farm to tend; he doesn’t need to take care of ours too. Another few days won’t hurt the seeds or the harvest any.”

“All right.” She gives me the last of the soup and smiles. I could easily drown in those emerald eyes, and I would die happy if I did. “Now that you have a full stomach, get some sleep. I’ll check on you in a couple of hours.” She kisses me softly on the lips. “My mighty paladin.” She turns to walk out of the bedroom. Her thick chestnut-colored hair bounces in time with her steps. She makes the plain blue dress she’s wearing look like the most beautiful gown ever made. I think about how lucky I am to have found a woman like her to share the rest of my life with. My eyelids grow heavy and I don’t fight the urge to go to sleep.

Shafts of orange sunlight pour through the east windows of the bedroom; did I really sleep through an entire day? I shift uncomfortably in the bed, trying to ignore the searing pain in my side as I sit up. I peer out the window. It’s quiet outside; the rooster should have crowed by now. Perhaps I slept soundly enough that I didn’t hear it. I crane my neck as far as I can, but I don’t see anything outside. I should be able to see the chickens wandering in the yard from here. I don’t even hear birds in the trees. “Adrienne?” I call. “Where are you?”

I hear a scraping noise coming from across the house. It sounds like something being dragged across the wood floor, and it’s getting louder, coming closer. “Adrienne?” I call again. “Is that you?”

Other sounds join the scraping as the thing nears: ragged breaths and muffled, wet slurping sounds. I sit more upright, groaning when my broken ribs complain. Whatever’s making the noises is near the door; I see it as it comes around the corner and through the door. It’s Adrienne… No… By the Light, that can’t be Adrienne…

I don’t understand. It looks like her, but at the same time it doesn’t. The creature’s hair is the same color as hers, but it’s lost the bounce, now hanging limp, greasy, and dirty. Patches of it seem to have fallen out, leaving bare spots that reveal flesh that’s turned sickly grey. Its eyes, dark and sunken, look at me. It’s wearing Adrienne’s dress, but the fabric is worn bare in places, with frayed threads twisting like gnarled fingers. The dress is torn wide open in the front, and the whole garment is soaked with blood that drips from the hem, leaving a crimson trail as it shuffles into the room. Intestines spill from a gaping hole in its stomach, dangling like dead black snakes. The creature’s arms and face are slick with blood, and in its hands the creature holds the half-eaten remains of…

No. By the Light, no.

I cry out and try to stand, but when I put my weight on my feet my legs give out. I fall to the floor and fire shoots through my body; I gasp in pain. I roll onto my back and crawl away as quickly as I can manage. The thing that was Adrienne looks at me, tilting its head and staring with those cold dead eyes. With each shambling step the thing decays further, its skin blistering and blackening, growing tighter around the contours of its bones. The blisters begin to burst and thick black blood flows from each one. Necrotic patches of flesh are sloughing away, showing white bone beneath. The creature reeks of death. “Adrienne?” I whisper; it’s all that my voice can muster now. I realize somehow that I’m alone; there’s no one to help me.

The creature hisses and drops its meal to the floor with a sickening wet thud. It shuffles toward me, dragging its feet. I could get away, if only my legs would work; I can’t even feel them anymore. The creature spreads its arms and opens its mouth wide; its pointed teeth glisten wetly with blood. It has twice as many as it should. It crosses the room in what seems like an instant, hovering over me, leaning down, and reaching for my throat. It feels like the room is spinning.

I try to scream, but no sound comes out. My mouth is filled with worms.

*          *          *

I open my eyes. I’m on my back, lying atop a thick pad made of some material I’ve never felt before; a blanket made from the same stuff covers me up to my chin. Whatever they’re made out of, they’re warm. I move my eyes slowly from side to side. I’m beneath a makeshift lean-to, sheltering me from the elements. A large, smokeless fire burns close by, its heat penetrating the blanket to soak into my flesh. My head is pounding. My side throbs with every heartbeat, but the pain doesn’t seem as bad as it did before. I carefully touch my chest and find that heavy bandages have been wrapped tightly around me. My battered black armor sits in a heap near my feet, caked with my dried blood and Graka’s. I can’t see my sword.

“It’s awake,” a voice calls, its source out of my view.

I pull an arm out from under the blanket and rub my face. I haven’t had a nightmare so vivid since before I was raised as a death knight; the last image still floats in mind. Someone approaches from opposite of where the voice came from and crouches down at my side between the fire and me. He watches me in silence for a long moment, and I raise my head to watch him. I’ve never seen a man with green hair before, or one with violet flesh. A night elf, the thought comes to me through the headache. We never got many in Lordaeron. There were some at Acherus, but race didn’t matter there. I recall seeing some here and there in Stormwind and Valgarde, but I never spoke with them. He stares at me with eyes that glow golden, stroking his thick beard thoughtfully. The heavy green and brown leather that he wears creaks softly when he moves. “We were beginning to wonder if you’d ever wake up,” he says, his voice rumbling from deep in his throat. He speaks Common flawlessly.

“How long?” I groan.

“We found you three days ago, but we don’t know for certain how long you were there before that. I don’t think it could have been more than a day or two, though I could be mistaken.” I put my head down and close my eyes; lifting it only made the headache worse. I put the back of my hand over my face. “Your head hurts?” I nod. “Can you drink?” I nod again. The night elf rises and walks away a short distance; I open my eyes and watch him. I hear the sound of liquid being poured, and when he returns he’s carrying a small wooden cup filled with something pale and milky. He raises my head and puts the cup to my lips. “Drink this.”

It tastes sweet and goes down easily. I slowly sit up; my head narrowly misses the top of the lean-to. My side still burns, but my head feels lighter now. I glance at the elf. “The pain’s fading,” I remark, surprised.

He grunts and raises his long, slender eyebrows. He strokes his beard. “In all honesty, I wasn’t sure it would work. I’ve never mended a death knight before.”

“Where’s James?”

“James?”

“My horse.”

“You named that thing?” It’s the voice that had announced my awakening. I turn my head, peer around the edge of the lean-to, and see a human standing a dozen or so paces away. His hand rests on the pommel of his sword and his armor is scarred and grey. He looks down at me with a scowl on his face. A long white scar goes from the corner of his left eye to the base of his neck, discoloring his otherwise black beard where the hair grows from it.

“I did,” I say, glaring back at him, narrowing my eyes.

“That will be quite enough, Carter,” the night elf reprimands, looking at the man. He looks back at me and cocks his head to one side. “Peculiar. I’ve never known a death knight to name his deathcharger.” He nods past me, behind the shelter. “Your horse is nearby. He hasn’t gone far from you since we found you. I promise you he hasn’t been harmed. He’s quite the remarkable beast. When we found you, he was at your side, nudging you with his nose. Peculiar. I’ve known few horses to do that, and never any deathchargers. But my experience with them is… limited, of course.”

“Deathchargers are easier to kill than the death knights that ride them are,” Carter spits as he walks to the fire. I glare at him; he half-smiles. “Trust me; I know that much.”

“Thank you for leaving him unharmed,” I tell the night elf without turning my gaze from Carter. “And my sword?”

“Your sword is in my tent,” the elf responds.

I look back to him. “You don’t trust me.”

“I know that there are death knights who have broken from the Lich King and allied with us against him. Up here, though, it’s wise not to give the benefit of the doubt to any death knight you happen to find unconscious and bloody in the snow.”

“I never said I blamed you for it.”

He grunts, and I think I see the flash of a smile play at the corner of his mouth for an instant. “It seemed best to take you and mend your wounds as best as we could. If you’re allied with us, we’d be helping a friend. If you weren’t, we’d be getting an enemy to the point where we could interrogate him.”

“Either way, you’ve kept us here for three days,” Carter calls from the fire.

I cut a glance his way and stifle a laugh. “The Lich King’s servants don’t interrogate easily, night elf.”

“My name is Eredan Shadowmane,” he tells me, “and war teaches one the necessity of learning new tactics, interrogation tactics among them.”

“I might not let myself be interrogated, Shadowmane.”

“I wouldn’t expect you to. Carter and I aren’t the only ones in this little camp, death knight, and none of us are inexperienced in battle. I doubt a single wounded and unarmored death knight could give us that much trouble.”

I look at him for a moment, gazing into his unwavering eyes. “You never actually said if you trust me or not. Which kind of death knight do you think I am?”

This time the smile that pulls on his mouth lasts for two instants. “I had an inkling from the beginning,” he says, standing up. “But I didn’t know for sure until just now. I trust you.”

“Damned fool,” I hear Carter mutter. Shadowmane’s eye twitches; he heard it too.

“You seem pretty confident, Shadowmane.”

He crosses his arms over his wide, thickly-muscled chest. “As I said, when we found you, your deathcharger—I’m sorry, James—was at your side, nuzzling you. It was very peculiar; again, I think you were there for at least a full day before we found you, and that horse never left your side. How many living horses would stay by their master for so long in a place like this? When we got you in the wagon and started this way, he followed us. He wouldn’t let any one of us touch him, but he hasn’t yet made a hostile move toward any of us. He’s not picketed, and he hasn’t made a move to leave.” Shadowmane sees the look on my face and for the first time he makes no effort to hide his smile. “I’m a druid, death knight. I know animals, even dead ones. He’s different from any other deathcharger I’ve ever seen, and that means that you’re different from most death knights. Particularly in that you’ve thought to name the beast. It’s very—”

“Peculiar.”

He nods. “Precisely.”

“Am I free to get up?”

“If you think you can manage it.”

I sweep the blanket aside and look down. I cast a glance at Shadowmane. “You wouldn’t happen to have a pair of breeches handy, would you?” He smiles, nods, and walks off.

He returns with a pair of breeches, a wool shirt, and two brown leather boots. I put them on; they fit well enough. I crawl from under the lean-to into the midmorning light and stand up; my stiff muscles complain when I stretch them. I put a hand to my side and look up at Shadowmane. “You’ve done a remarkable job.”

He shrugs. The night elf stands two heads taller than I do. “We did nothing more than wrap the bandages around you, warm you in blankets near the fire, and keep watch while we waited for you to recover. Whatever healing’s been done has been your own. Your facial wounds have mended nicely, I see.” He sighs. “You must understand that though you’re no longer a thrall of the Lich King, you’re still a death knight. Druidic magic draws its strength from the life of what we try to heal. The magic that keeps you alive now is anathema to that, and it would have been futile to even try to use mine. I’m sorry.”

I grunt and shake my head. “There’s nothing you need to apologize for, Shadowmane.”

“You have me at a disadvantage, death knight. You know my name, but I don’t know yours.”

“Brandstone.”

“Ah. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Brandstone.” He gestures to the fire; a large pot sits near it on a large rock, a wooden ladle next to it. “We’ve already broken our fast, but there’s still some left. Do you eat?” When I nod, Shadowmane ladles some of what looks like a thin vegetable soup into a bowl and hands it to me.

I drink the soup from the bowl and nod my thanks. “I’m grateful to you for seeing to my wounds, regardless of whether your usual methods worked or not. It’s more than I would have expected.”

I look around while I have my breakfast. The camp is in the middle of what looks to be the same forest in which I fought Graka, only farther north. Pines surround us, but this round clearing thirty or forty feet wide provides enough space for the crackling fire, two tents, and a large wagon. The ground is covered with a thin layer of snow and pine needles. The lean-to had been built mostly from pine boughs. A horse is picketed at the other end of the camp alongside two massive black cats, each as tall as an ox and twice as long. The cats sit on their haunches and watch me with curiosity, cocking their heads from side to side. The firelight glistens on their exposed fangs.

Carter sits across the fire, glaring at me with his hand still on the pommel of his sword. An old man, as small as a child, sits on the wagon, seemingly unaware of my presence. He’s wearing long purple robes and holds an old book in his short, plump fingers. He gingerly turns a page. A white mustache grows thick from beneath his prominent nose and a ring of ivory-colored hair encircles his otherwise bald head. A gnome. Another night elf, a female, stands by one of the tents. She looks to be as tall as I am, with hair the color of a robin’s egg, cut to her jawline. A blue tattoo, a shade lighter than her hair, streaks like a dagger over each of her eyes down past her cheekbones. She clutches a long green cloak around her. I catch her eye for a moment before she turns back into the tent.

I turn around to see James walking toward me from behind the tree. I smile and go to him, stroking his muzzle when I reach him. “Hello, James,” I whisper. “I hear you kept watch over me while I was asleep.”

“Peculiar indeed,” I hear Shadowmane mutter behind me. I pat James’s neck once and turn back to the night elf. “We found a body not far from where we found you,” he tells me. He slowly strokes the beard that goes past his chest. “It was another death night. It was wearing Scourge armor, at any rate. We think it was an orc, but it was too mangled for us to be sure.”

“It was,” I say softly. “Her name was Graka; her intent was to either take me back into the Scourge or kill me. She’s the one to thank for my injuries. James here is the one to thank for her death. You may well have met her instead, had he not saved me.”

“A noble act,” Shadowmane says approvingly. “It seems as though he is more than simply your steed.”

“He is. James has been my friend since Acherus.”

“Peculiar.”

I crouch beside my armor and lift the remains of my breastplate. I sigh and shake my head. Graka did considerable damage; the plate is mangled and dented, the cuts from her blade jagged and sharp. “It’s a wonder you were able to get it off me.”

“It wasn’t easy. In any case, we have a small store of armor at Stars’ Rest. You should be able to find something that fits you there. You can bring that with you if you like; someone may be able to repair it for you, if nothing else.” I grunt acknowledgement.

“My sword?” I ask, looking up at Shadowmane. “You said you trust me, after all.”

“That I did.” He turns his head to one of the tents. “Elianore!” he calls. “Bring his sword!”

The female night elf quickly emerges from the tent, carrying my sword in its black leather scabbard. She reaches us and hands it to me, looking at me with curious eyes. “Hello,” I say to her. I take the sword from her hands. The runes’ magic explodes to life inside me; the runeblade sings in celebration of its return, a song that only I can hear. I force the magic under control, something that I’ve found easier and easier lately, and sling it onto my back. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome, death kn—Brandstone,” she says. Her voice is soft. She smiles. “I’m glad that you’re feeling better.”

“So am I.”

“This is Elianore Skysong,” Shadowmane says, putting a hand on her shoulder. “She’s a gifted druid in her own right. That’s Jarven Cogspark on the wagon, a mage quite proficient in the arts of fire. I’ve been quite thankful for that fact in these wastes. Jarven!” The gnome starts and looks away from his book. A beaming smile breaks out on his broad face and he lifts a hand in greeting.

“You’ve already met Carter Mills,” Shadowmane says as he gestures to the man near the fire. Mills looks at me with unwavering eyes. The night elf leans close. “I hope you won’t fault him for his cynicism, Brandstone.”

“Not to worry,” I mutter back.

Shadowmane strokes his beard and glances from side to side. “It looks like you’re recovered enough to travel. It was incredibly risky to stay in this place as long as we did. Despite how empty Dragonblight looks, Brandstone, it’s far from quiet. Wintergarde Keep to the east is fending off the Scourge that pour from the crypts below the fields. Naxxramas has come to Northrend and besieges the keep from above. To the west, our forces try to hold off the nerubians that swarm from the ruins of their underground kingdom. And to the south, Malygos’s blue flight takes advantage of our stretched armies to wage his Nexus War. The other flights are involved too, allied with us, but with the Scourge on one side and Malygos on the other, victory isn’t close to certain. I don’t know what your intentions were when you crossed into this Elune-forsaken wasteland by yourself. I can’t force you to do anything, but it would be wise for you to stay with us, I think.”

“My intention,” I grumble, “was to go north into Icecrown, fight my way to the Lich King, and kill him.”

Shadowmane chuckles with dark humor. “Then perhaps it’s best that you received the beating you did back there. One does not simply walk into Icecrown and knock on the Citadel’s door. You would be cut to pieces before you had crossed a league into that cursed domain. It’s not a place you go alone. Just look at the damage a single death knight was able to cause you.”

“I was there, remember?” I purse my lips. If I learned one thing from my battle with Graka, it’s that I can no longer expect to be able to fulfill my wishes alone. My pride nearly got me killed; it won’t do me or anyone else any good for it to go all the way next time. The Silver Hand was a brotherhood; we guarded each other, and that made us stronger than we would have been alone. I need to be able to trust others again—and let myself be trusted. My only other choice is to die again, and for nothing. I can’t change what I’ve become. I’ll be best served by mastering what I am now. If there are people willing to ally themselves with me, it would be foolish not to take advantage of that.

“We’re going to Stars’ Rest,” Shadowmane says, breaking me away from my thoughts. It’s an encampment not far from where the nerubians have been launching their assaults. You’re welcome to come with us and lend whatever assistance you’d like, but you’re free to go wherever you wish. Our forces will push into Icecrown, Brandstone, but patience and strategy will serve us better than blind fury and empty-headed bravado.”

“Experience has been kind enough to point out my foolishness.” I think for a moment and nod. “All right. I’ll go with you.” No better time than the present to change, I suppose.

“Excellent.” He turns away. “Pack up your gear, everyone!” he calls. We’re leaving as soon as we can!”

Cogspark extinguishes the fire with a blast of frost from his fingertips. I gather my beaten armor and walk toward the wagon. Mills gives me an icy look as I go past. I set my gear in the wagon and turn. Skysong approaches me, carrying the folded blankets from under the lean-to. “Don’t let him worry you,” she says. “He’s been very stressed lately.”

“Forgive me if I don’t leap to embrace him, Skysong,” I tell her more sternly than I intended to. “In my recent experience, when someone makes it that obvious that they don’t like me, they eventually act on it. If he tries anything against me, I’ll beat him bloody.” I take a few steps and pause. I turn back and look her in the eyes. “And if he so much as touches James, I’ll kill him.”

Her white eyes widen and she opens and closed her mouth a few times. She swallows, nods, and clears her throat. “I see,” she says as she hastily turns away. “Well, it’s—it’s a pleasure having you with us, Brandstone.”

I smile. “Thank you.”

It doesn’t take long to get the tents folded and stowed in the wagon with the rest of their gear. Shadowmane hitches the two massive cats like oxen to the wide, tall wagon and they pull without complaint. Shadowmane, Skysong, and Cogspark ride in the wagon. Mills rides his horse on the wagon’s left side and I ride James to its right.

Shadowmane is concerning himself with watching where the cats are going, Skysong is busying herself with a map, but Cogspark watches me with a curious smile on his face. I raise an eyebrow. “Shadowmane and Skysong seem to trust me implicitly. Mills hates me implicitly. You, though, you haven’t shown me much one way or the other.”

“That’s true,” the gnome says with a smile, his mustache twitching as he speaks in his nasally voice. “I don’t have enough data to know whether or not I trust you yet. Statistically speaking, though, I have to admit that Eredan is a better judge of people than I am. He’s better at evaluating the certain… intangibles that make up a personality. If he’s comfortable with you, I’m comfortable with you.” He winks at me. “In all frankness, however, I’ll reserve my final judgment until I see how you behave in battle. My intuition tells me that you’re a man best understood in the midst of combat.”

I grunt. “I think your intuition is correct, Jarven.”

He smiles with satisfaction. “It usually is.”

Not only was this a story that I wanted to write for myself, it is a story that I plan on entering into the short story contest I mentioned a post or two back. (You can enter two stories in the “Fiction” category, and I was planning on modifying one of my previously-posted westerns for my second entry.) That explains why this story is a bit shorter than my others have been; the contest has a pretty firm maximum of two thousand words per fiction entry. I always like feedback on my work, even if I don’t receive very much of it. So I humbly ask that if you read this, leave a comment or shoot me a line on Twitter or the like. Constructive feedback is always appreciated, and that goes double for this post. If I decide to enter this into that contest, the deadline of which is the 10th, I want it to be as polished as possible.

I hope you enjoy it.

He thought he heard someone screaming. He paused out of instinct on the cracked remnants of the sidewalk and grunted, looking and listening for anything that might tell him where the sound had come from. Screams were common those days, and they usually told him that there was a meal nearby but this scream was different. He had been hearing it for weeks now, though each time was like the first to him. The sound had been omnipresent at the beginning, but now he only heard it three or four times a day. It was always the same scream: a man’s voice shrieking loudly and desperately. It always sounded close, as though the man was practically touching him, but he could never find him. The scream only ever lasted for a few seconds, and once the sound faded he would forget he had ever heard it. Time held no meaning for him now; all that ever concerned him was the moment he was in and the unnatural hunger that followed him wherever he went.

The sound died away and he stood motionless, his mouth agape and dripping thick white drool. His unblinking red eyes stared straight ahead. The city was silent but for the sound of the warm wind rattling through the limbs of the trees that still stood here and there. He couldn’t feel the heat of the sun beating down on his exposed grey flesh and coming up at him in waves off of the pavement. Across the street ahead of him, a pile of rubble blanketed the wreckage of a truck that had driven into the brick wall of a bank. Behind him, thin wisps of smoke still curled from the black husks of the sedan and the minivan that had crashed head-on into each other. Abandoned vehicles, undamaged and ignored, sat in silence parallel-parked against curbs or with open doors in the middle of the street. Dry bones, picked clean and serving no further purpose, littered the sidewalks and alleyways. A single raven cawed from the steeple of the nearby church that sat on the corner. It wasn’t a thought so much as a fleeting image that crossed his mind and seemed to tell him that it wasn’t always this way, but the city had been empty and silent for as long as he could remember. Another moment passed and the image vanished, and he forgot what “remembering” even was. He moaned and continued on.

Movement to his right caught his eye and he slowly turned his head. He saw another of his kind half a block away, wet with blood and englutting the carcass of a cat underneath the awning of an empty convenience store. He groaned loudly and began walking toward the feast. The sight of blood kindled his ever-smoldering hunger, sending him into a bestial fervor. He stepped into the street and growled sloppily, intending to fight the meal away from its current owner. The wind shifted and a new smell met his nostrils, stopping him.

He turned his head and body back around and breathed deeply into lungs that didn’t work correctly anymore. Smell was the one sense he could still count on, and there was no mistaking the sweet scent that came into his black nose now. It was not as fresh as the bloody mess of meat that called to him from across the street, and it was a wonder he even noticed it at all, but it was closer, and his insatiable hunger demanded immediate satisfaction. He worked his stiff legs, making them carry him faster. The smell was coming from the church, wafting out of one of the broken stained glass windows. He stretched his arms out, leaning into his shaking, shuffling steps, his fingers wriggling like grave worms.

He came around the corner and looked at the building. Spittle flew from his mouth with each ragged breath that escaped his throat. The doors of the church had been broken in, lying in splintered heaps just inside. He climbed the stone steps that led from the sidewalk to the doorway and breathed in. The smell was coming from inside. He stepped across the broken doors, oblivious to the thick splinters that jabbed into the soft spongy flesh of his naked left foot. They pushed farther into his foot with each step, and the wounds began to bleed thick black blood that he trailed behind him as he shambled across the plush red carpet of the aisle toward the altar, where the bodies lay.

There were three of them, though the number was irrelevant to him; all he cared about was the flesh. A thick cloud of flies lifted from the carcasses at his approach, buzzing around him. Some left through broken the windows or through the entrance whence he had come. Others returned stubbornly to the swollen, festering, maggot-ridden corpses. A few came to him, landing on his exposed flesh or crawling unnoticed into his ears or up his nose.

He dropped to his knees before the bodies and hissed satisfactorily. He examined them for a moment, his eyes soaking in the bounty that he had found. They had been there for some time; their flesh was almost liquefied now, and in some places more maggot than human. The bodies were close together, their arms wrapped around one another. One was bigger than either of the other two and another was hardly as large as a small dog. Some of the flesh on each body was gone, exposing bones, as though someone had beaten him to the first meal from the corpses. Between the three of them, though, there was more than enough to calm his unceasing hunger, if only for an hour. He reached down and wrapped his long, bony fingers around the arm of the smallest of the corpses. A quick tug was all it took to rip the limb from the body with a sickening wet sound.

He heard the scream again, loud in his head. “Stop!” it yelled, piercing the buzzing of the flies. He tightened his grip possessively on the arm and looked around, hissing. The scream refused to stop. He howled to the ceiling and brought his meal to his face. The rotten flesh all but exploded when he bit into it; blood, drool, and maggots stuck to his face and ran down his chin onto his chest. He moaned and hissed and snarled as he tore at the meat, angrily trying to shut the bodiless cry out of his mind. “No!” it echoed in his mind, seeming to come from within him. He squeezed harder. The flesh popped and oozed between his fingers. The brittle bones snapped. He ate his meal even more ravenously now, and soon his face was slick with the juices that flowed from the putrid meat. Maggots writhed and twisted on his face. Still the screaming voice wouldn’t leave him alone.

Driven by the hunger, he devoured the rest of the flesh and dropped the bare bones. He tore at the stomach of the largest body, ripping away the tattered remnants of a shirt and peeling skin and flesh away as though they were wet paper. Blood covered his emaciated arms to their elbows by the time he reached his goal, pulling twisted black intestines from the bloated body and biting into them voraciously. He moaned in animalistic satisfaction. A fly settled on his lidless right eye. Still the screaming went on. He lent his own scream to it, a loud, guttural moan.

He dropped the slimy mass of guts and crawled over the bodies, his weight popping their flesh as if the corpses were giant pustules. He grabbed one of the heads and bashed it against the marble floor before the altar, smearing it with blood and pus, until the flesh sheared away and the skull split. He broke away chunks of bone and reached into the head. He ripped out a chunk of the soft grey brain and consumed it, his flesh burning with his bestial drive to feed. The screaming in his head only grew louder.

A sudden sense of being trapped came over him. The scream grew so loud that his vision went black and all that he could feel was the overwhelming sensation of being in a room that was shut out from the rest of the world and getting smaller and smaller with every passing moment. The scream had never been so loud in his head, and it mingled with the cry coming from his own mouth until it seemed like they were now the same voice. An instant later a memory returned to him, and then another, until he was suddenly aware of what he was, what he was doing, and what he had once been.

It was a sensation that was common when he was at the height of his feeding fervor. The memories always vanished as quickly as they appeared, and once they went away, he had no recollection of the moment, no lingering sense of what he had been before this had taken him. Now, though, in the moment, he remembered what he had been weeks, months earlier—he had long since lost the ability to reckon time, even when the memories came back to him. He realized that the screams he heard in his head were his, coming from some part of him that was still there, locked away in what was left of his mind, only slowly getting weaker and weaker as time went on. There was some part of him left, locked away in the deepest recesses of his mind, but it could do no more than bring these momentary returns of memories. Try as that speck of himself might, it could do nothing to control his body. Whatever force had returned him from death was too strong, and it wouldn’t be long now before the last part of him that was still human was swallowed up and gone forever. Soon this existence would be all he knew, and nothing would matter to him except filling the hunger. Soon he would never be able to look at the piece of plastic hanging from the torn, soiled remains of his white jacket and know that the words “Dr. George King” had any meaning, nor would he remember that the picture next to the name was what he had been before this. Perhaps, the fleeting thought crossed his mind, that would be a blessing.

He heard a sound behind him and spun around, dropping the piece of brain to the floor. A woman stood silhouetted in the doorway, a shotgun cradled in her arms like a babe. “You’ll even do it in a church, you bastards,” she snarled. She pumped a round into the chamber.

He stood up and took a step away from his meal. Blood dripped from his mouth and fingertips. Maggots crawled on his flesh, consuming it as they consumed that of the three corpses. He stretched his arms out and took another step. “Help me,” he wanted to shout, but already the scream was dying and the voice was fading to silence. The only sound that passed his teeth was a wet and gurgled “Braaiins.”

Had he been aware of it, he would have thanked the woman for the 12-gauge slug that was sent into his skull.

As far as WoW goes, I moved my main over to Rith’s guild a bit over a month or so ago. All of the other guilds that I’ve had characters in, be they on my main server or others, have been already well-enough established that things went off without too much trouble. I can see the difference now with <Milites Ignoti>; being a fresh new guild, things have been exceptionally slow. We only have four level 85 toons in our roster right now, and when one or two of us aren’t on it makes for events falling through. I’m sure that the guild leveling system introduced in Cataclysm proves to be a double-edged sword in this regard; I doubt that at this stage many people would be willing to move to a guild that hasn’t reached level 3 yet. It’s a catch-22 in a way. We need more people to level the guild faster, but having a low-level guild could very well be causing people not to join. Right now Rith is the only other person I know who plays on the server; everyone else I knew either doesn’t play anymore or plays on a different server.

I’ve had a chance to do more Heroics, however, though it’s nothing special anymore. I’ve had a chance now to do all of them except Stonecore. I haven’t even done either of the “new” troll ones yet, and those are so passé now that no one even talks about them anymore. I know that I could easily queue for them by myself, but it doesn’t have the same impact as when I do it with people I know. I read with interest the news of the recent Firelands nerfs, but since I haven’t even set foot inside the Tier 11 raids, I couldn’t relate to how they made people feel one way or the other. If there was ever a time when I felt totally unqualified to have an opinion on something, it’s as relates to that. So perhaps you can understand why my WoW posts have been as infrequent lately as they are. Were I to update you on my in-game exploits more often, there would be many posts adding up to little more than “I did my Hyjal dailies today.”

It’s not all bad, though. The slowdown in-game has its benefits. I was able to do a lot of reading over the summer, spending many a night with a book instead of the computer. (Something I still do now.) Thanks to Twitter talk about the HBO series based on it, I discovered the “Song of Ice and Fire” series and devoured the first two books over August. Since classes have started up again my pleasure reading has slowed somewhat, but I’ve just started the fourth book in the series, and I’m enjoying them very much.

Classes are going well. I’m taking a couple of literature courses this semester: one on Shakespeare (English 213) and another on horror, fantasy, and science fiction (English 218), and I like them both. My instructors are continuing the trend of teachers whom I like. I’ve just finished the first draft of my first essay for the 218 class, an analysis of Dracula. It’s fun, but there’s a lot of reading involved for those classes, so that takes up quite a bit of my time. The college has also hired me on as a tutor for the basic computer classes, based on the recommendation of one of my instructors from last semester. I’ve only been doing that for a week, but I’m enjoying it so far, and I get paid for it too. The college is also sponsoring a short story contest next month, and I plan on entering it. I’m thinking about modifying one of my previous stories in order to conform to the word count requirements. I doubt that I’m anywhere near talented enough a writer to win a contest like that, but there’s no harm in entering it, I suppose.

That about sums up recent events, I think. The next Brandstone story should be going up within the next week or two, for those of you who read those. Now, as it is Sunday, I’m going to go watch some football and see if the Lions really are for real this season.

When I got the first letter last year, I filled out the questionnaire, mailed it back in, and quickly enough forgot about it. It so happened that somewhere in the middle of July I remarked that my year in the system was almost up and that I hadn’t been called in yet. I don’t know if I believe in jinxes, but not two weeks later, toward the end of July, I received that second letter informing me that I had been selected for that week of service wherein I had to make those daily calls. If you follow me on Twitter, you may recall my posting a scan of that letter–with my personal information blacked out, of course. Although I got that letter in the tail end of July, they send them out around six weeks in advance, so my actual “week of service” was the 22nd of August through the 26th, which meant that I had to call in last weekend for Monday’s instructions, Monday night for Tuesday’s, and so forth.

While I doubt that there are many people who champ at the bit to get conscripted into jury duty–and I certainly wasn’t–it wouldn’t have been too bad had I gotten the summons a month or two ago. As fate would have it, though, the next semester at the college I attend starts on the 29th, so for the last month I’ve been dreading the possibility that I might miss the start of my classes because I’d be sitting on some trial. August (which was an altogether unpleasant month to begin with) wore on, and finally last weekend came and I had to begin my daily call-ins. There were no trials beginning on Monday, which, while not always a sure thing, I hear is the standard. Tuesday held the possibility of a trial beginning, but my group was not among those required to make a second call-in on Tuesday morning. Wednesday and Thursday brought no new trials, and there had literally been zero trials started in this county on a Friday in at least the last several decades, so I presumed that I would escape the week unscathed. Yet what would my luck bestow upon me but a summons to the courthouse this morning dark and early. As you can well imagine, I was rather displeased. I had to go in on a Friday, which was not only unheard of, but severely reduced the chances of my having to sit on a trial that ended before my classes started.

In the time since I received the actual summons letter last month, I’d pondered what kind of cases I might be forced to sit on should it come to that. I don’t live in a particularly large county, but there are still serious crimes committed here. Shootings, sexual assaults, and the like are more common than reasonable people would prefer, but there are also the typical reports of drug offenses. I was, and still am, certain that no prosecutor would ever let me be a juror for something like a marijuana case, since, as someone who believes that drug laws are unjust, I could not in good conscience vote to convict someone of a drug offense, regardless of judge instruction or the “letter of the law.” As I’ve refined my beliefs in the last several years, I’ve come to see the merits of jury nullification–a fact that might not gain me many friends, but hopefully won’t cost me any, either. But I digress. Since making the call last night, I wondered what kind of case I would be placed in the jury pool for, and whether or not I would be called up for voir dire. The possibility existed that I would be excused simply because there were more people in the pool than needed.

It isn’t very often that I intentionally wake up in the summer while it’s still dark, but I did this morning. I groggily ate, dressed, and made my way to the Hall of Justice (no sign of Superman or Green Lantern) well on time. I was placed with the other people summoned for jury duty in a room that was more spacious and comfortable than I had expected it to be. The clerks were friendly enough when they took roll of those who had shown up and those who hadn’t bothered, and told us what to expect. The pool of potential jurors turned out to be somewhere in the fifties, and with only one trial scheduled to start today, I felt that my chances of not having to serve were reasonably good.

We sat in that room for a little over an hour before the bailiff came in and escorted us to the courtroom. I noticed that there was neither prosecutor nor defense attorney present, and the judge–an amicable fellow who sounded exactly like Matt Frewer–informed us that not long before we were called into the courtroom the prosecutor had dropped the charges in the case. For fun, he read off the names of those who had been randomly chosen to be brought up for voir dire, and mine was among them, so I got off lucky there. The case, which had been ongoing in one way or another for five months, was to have been one in which a sheriff’s deputy was charged with sexual assault of a female prison inmate, but the prosecutor kept modifying the charges and details to increase the chances of conviction, but never specified what the misconduct or assault entailed. He thus dropped the charges with the right to refile them at a later date. Several of the men in the pool expressed disdain that there would be no trial once they learned what the case would have detailed.

Had I gotten past the questions, it may have been an interesting case to see unfold, with the theme of abuse of authority on the part of a cop, but since they said that it would have taken at least a few days, I’m glad that it fell through. I won’t be missing any classes now, which is important to me. The judge said that scheduling issues earlier in the week forced them to put the trial today, so my fellow potential jurors and I had the honor of having the first Friday jury summons in Muskegon County history. The best part is that this counts as my serving, so I won’t have to worry about being called back in for at least another year. If there’s a next time, maybe I won’t have to worry about putting my life entirely on hold for it.

The air is almost cold enough to burn even my lungs. The very wind is an enemy here; it howls and roars around James and me like a beast. I passed into this wintry emptiness called “Dragonblight” four days ago and it’s growing colder and harsher with every mile that James’s legs carry us. I’ve paid little attention to the passage of time since I left Valgarde, but it has to have been at least three, maybe even four weeks. It’s been several days since I last saw another person. It’s been snowing for nearly two days straight and fat flakes are whipping and dancing in the air around us. The accumulation has risen almost to James’s knees, but he presses on as though the snow isn’t bothering him. His hoof prints behind us are filled almost as quickly as he makes them. The monotony of this place is broken only by the occasional tree daring to fight the elements or by the bones of some massive, ancient creature looming in the distance. Maybe I should have stayed in the Grizzly Hills, but Icecrown is to the north, and the way there takes me through Dragonblight. Killing the Lich King’s servants can only do so much good; I need to take my fight to him.

I watch the sun, a faint point of light shining through the thick grey clouds, move slowly across the sky as the hours creep onward. Trees are getting more plentiful as we move north; a small forest of pine stands silhouetted in the distance, the green of its needles looking almost black. Our path takes us through the forest; perhaps it’ll give us a reprieve from the biting wind. I nudge James’s sides gently with the heels of my boots, urging him on just a little faster toward the thicket.

The trees are farther away than they looked; it takes nearly thirty minutes for us to reach them. They loom over us, their trunks thick and their branches scraping loudly against each other. Snow falls from the limbs as they flail in the wind and a light dusting of the needles too weak to hang on rests atop the snow at the trees’ feet. The thick blanket of branches provides some shelter from the unrelenting snow and the broad trunks shield us somewhat from the vicious icy wind. After being in the barren Dragonblight plains for so long, the sudden scent of pine overwhelms me for a moment.

There’s a sudden noise in the tree limbs above. I stop James and look up into the branches. One of them snaps and tumbles to the ground in a puff of snow. I catch a fleeting glimpse of a dark shape shifting in the tree directly in front of us. I narrow my eyes. Something’s up there, and it’s either trying and failing to be stealthy, or making no effort to be. James nickers and shifts, walking backward a few steps. I put a hand on his neck. “Who’s—?”

I don’t have a chance to finish my question before something large and heavy leaps from the tree onto my chest, knocking me from James’s back and onto the snow. I hit the ground hard, snow and pine needles billowing into the air, the breath knocked from my lungs. I hear James neigh loudly and run off, his hoof beats quickly fading to silence. I groan and rise to my knees, shaking my head to clear it. The thing that hit me is several feet in front of me; I hear its rasping breath. When I open my eyes I see a ghoul as tall as I am staring at me with empty black eyes. Its face is framed by coarse, straw-like strands of yellow hair that hang flaccidly from its scalp and soiled, worm-eaten remains of clothes cling to its rotted brown flesh. The ghoul’s decay is such that I can’t tell if it was male or female in life; I can’t even tell if it was human. Pieces of pale grey bone show in places where the flesh has completely rotted away. An empty hole sits where a nose had once been, an ear hangs by a thin string along the side of its head, and its teeth grow unnaturally, twisted and yellow, so long now that they’ve destroyed the creature’s lips. Black spittle drips from its mouth and it wheezes as it stares at me, motionless but for the twitching of its hands. Strips of blackened necrotic flesh dangle from the bare bones of its fingers. Thankfully I’m upwind.

Snarling, I draw my sword, freeing it from its scabbard with an air-slicing swoosh. Its magic fills me, tingling up my arm, invigorating me; the runes shine with cold, bright light. I hold the runeblade tight with both hands and glare at the ghoul, my jaw clenched and my cheeks hot with rage and magic. “Where did you come from?” I ask, but the ghoul is probably beyond understanding now.

The creature takes a step forward and raises a skeletal arm, pointing a long, desiccated finger past me. “Misss…tresss…” it hisses, slowly and with effort, the words heavy, wet, and thick with slobber. “Misss…tresss will… kill… you…” I hear a loud thump behind me and I spin to face the sudden noise. A tall, slender death knight in scarred black armor stands at full height twenty or twenty-five feet away. Next to her hovers the animated skeleton of what had once been a gryphon, the bones of its wings flapping with soft click, click sounds. Bright, sinew-like streaks of icy blue magic keep it together. It stares blankly ahead, giving its attention to nothing. I narrow my eyes as the death knight stares at me, smiling, her eyes glowing with the same cold magic that mine do. This is a face that I knew once, a face that I had forgotten. She was there at Acherus. I was raised alongside her; we trained together and fought for the Lich King together. I thought that she had been killed at Light’s Hope.

She smiles a toothy smile, her fangs glistening and sharp. She’s an orc, or at least she was an orc in life. Her skin is a pale, dead grey. She stands a head taller than I, and her armor, black as Arthas’s soul, shows the marring of heavy combat. Solid spikes, forged as part of the heavy spaulders, jut menacingly into the air, and the rest of her armor is similarly adorned. A long cloak is clasped at her shoulders; it billows loudly in the wind. She wields a massive-headed axe in her right hand, hoisted over her shoulder. Its runes glow a red as dark as blood, singing the magic that only a death knight can hear. She brushes a strand of her coal-black hair away from her face with her free hand. “Hello, Brandstone,” she says softly, just loud enough for me to hear, the smile never leaving her thin, pale lips. “It’s been a long time.” Orcs’ voices are bad enough to hear when they’re alive; the hollow echo that now fills hers now only makes it worse.

My eye twitches. Blood is pounding in my temples and I fight to maintain control of myself. The magic is yearning, begging to be let loose upon the death knight before me; I realize that it’s not quite as hard to get control back now. I keep track of the sounds of the ghoul shifting behind me, moving to the side but still keeping its distance. “No, Graka,” I growl in return, “it hasn’t. How many of you escaped your fates at Light’s Hope? How many of you did the Lich King keep in his grasp? I thought that all of us who hadn’t been freed were killed there.”

“Well, thinking never was your strongest suit, Brandstone.” She swings her axe over, grasping it with both hands now, caressing it as though it were a lover. She looks upon it rather than me as she speaks, as though I’m just an afterthought. The ghoul snarls sloppily and takes a few steps toward me. “About two dozen of us remained with the Master and came back here with him after the battle at the Chapel. He does not forsake his children, Brandstone. Not those who are worthy. You and the others slipped away from him on that cursed ground because you’re weak. I and the others who came back to Northrend with the Master were strong enough to remain in his service.”

“I would hardly call Lord Mograine ‘weak,’ Graka.”

Graka shrugs slightly, smiling with one side of her mouth. “Believe whatever you like to make yourself feel better.”

I cast a glance at the skeletal gryphon, lifting itself higher into the air. She must have been on it, flying too high for me to see, waiting for the right time to show herself. “How long have you been following me?”

She thinks for a moment. “Nine days.” The death knight chuckles. “Word of your accomplishments wasn’t contained in Valgarde. We have ways of acquiring information.” She smiles again, showing me the white razors that pass for her teeth. “You know that. Single-handedly entering Utgarde Keep and returning alive—” She snickers. “Well, as ‘alive’ as you can be, at least. And with the Ashbringer, no less! My, haven’t we grown noble since our flight from the Master?” Graka tsks, shaking her head. “It’s a shame, really. Perhaps if the Master had known you had such potential, he would not have sent you to Light’s Hope. He would have taken you here to Northrend to be a general in his mighty army.”

“I would rather die,” I hiss, hot with rage. The tingle of the runes’ magic spreads through my arms and into my chest, turning into a blazing fire that demands to be unleashed upon her.

“Die again, you mean?” She laughs, throwing her head back. The terrible sound echoes off of the trees that surround us. “Your release from the Master has clouded your vision, Brandstone. You are a lost sheep, but the Master is a kind shepherd. He is willing to forgive your sins and welcome you back into the flock. You have shown just how great a soldier you can be.” Graka smiles, trying to look tender but only looking more like a demon. Nothing can disguise the evil of the magic glowing in her eyes. “All you need is a firm, guiding hand to show you which side is the righteous one.”

“You have a very perverted view of what righteousness is, Graka.”

The death knight shrugs and grunts. “Well, perhaps ‘righteous’ isn’t the best word, but look around you. How long have the Alliance and the Horde been fighting the Scourge? Are they any closer to defeating us? Each one of their warriors that falls serves only to bolster our ranks. And all the while, the Master sits untouched upon the Frozen Throne. His army fights on, never tiring, never stopping. Do they honestly expect to defeat him here, in his domain?” She shakes her head as she appraises me. “And you’ve joined with them?” She takes a step forward. “You know as well as I do that you can do nothing to turn the odds in their favor, Brandstone. You know as well as I do how unstoppable the Master is. Why? In your release, why have you decided it wise to aid them?”

“I was one of them once,” I say softly, glaring at her with hate-filled eyes, my tight chest burning with the hot fury of the magic. The same fury burns within her; I can see it in her eyes. “And so were you, Graka. The Lich King took everything that made us what we were and turned us into monsters. He didn’t even grant us the honor of a proper death.”

“So kill yourself.” I stare at her, surprised. Graka smiles at my inability to hide my shock. “It honestly hadn’t occurred to you before? Nothing’s stopping you from falling on your sword, Brandstone. If your existence is so agonizing, do it. I won’t stop you. And the Master no longer can either. Go on. Do it now.” She smiles that putrid smile again, raising an eyebrow. “I’ll even bury you.”

I’m forced to wonder why I haven’t. What’s stopped me from just finding a quiet corner of the world and ending it all? “I can’t let it happen to anyone else,” I reply, trying not to let myself be beguiled by her taunting. It’s what she wants. She wants me to lower my guard and give her the opportunity to strike. “No one deserves this. Not even you.”

She laughs. “So what do you expect to do? Climb the steps of Icecrown Citadel all alone, walk to the Throne, and run the Master through? Oh, my, you’ve become rather conceited, haven’t you? I’d thought that you would understand just how powerful the Master is. He’s invincible, Brandstone. No one can defeat him. His armies are going to wash over this world and cleanse it.”

“You’re insane,” I spit at her.

“Am I?” Her eyes light up. “Imagine it, Brandstone. No more war. No more Alliance, no more Horde. Just one people, together, unified, serving one all-powerful Master. Isn’t that what you fought for when you were alive? Peace? That’s what the Master wants. The only reason we find ourselves at war is because they can’t see that, but by fighting, they only hasten his victory.” She reaches out to me with her left hand, madness in her cold blue eyes. “The Master wants you to come back. To come home. He’s offering you a second chance, Brandstone. You can come back willingly and all of your sins against him will be forgiven and forgotten.”

My jaw hurts from being clenched so tightly. I squeeze the handle of my sword until my knuckles crack. The ghoul takes another tentative step closer, its wheezing breaths coming faster now. “The Lich King is a blight on the world, Graka. I’m sure there was a time when you thought the same, before he took what made you you away. I’m going to kill you, and then I’m going to go to Icecrown and kill him.”

Graka’s face twists into a visage of hate. “You blaspheme against the Master.”

“I do,” I snarl.

Her lip twitches. The ghoul takes another step and hisses. My heart is beating faster. “You aren’t human anymore,” the death knight says, her voice crackling with malice. “No matter what you’d like to think. You can accept that and come back to us, or you can die a meaningless death here, alone in the cold wastes.”

“Go to Hell.”

She shrieks and leaps forward, cocking her arms back for a massive swing of the axe. The ghoul howls and runs toward me. I spin around, striking out with my sword in a wide horizontal arc. The blade catches the ghoul in the midsection and I slice the creature in half just above its waist. It shrieks, black blood gurgling in its throat and spraying out of its mouth, and both halves of it collapse to the snow with a loud whoomp. The foul obsidian viscera that empties out of it stains the white snow. I turn back at Graka as she comes down with her axe. I roll to the side with not a fraction of a second to spare; I feel the wind from the weapon as it sails past my head.

I jump to my feet and rush her, bringing my sword down. Graka brings her axe up, blocking my blow with the shaft, and pushes against me, shoving me back several steps. I turn aside and let her momentum carry her unsteadily forward; she stumbles with a curse and I slice my sword at her. I cut her cloak in half with a rip and strike her armor; a loud hollow clang of metal on metal echoes off of the trees. She falls to the ground face-first and the axe slips from her fingers. I turn the sword around in my hands and stab down at her back; Graka rolls aside and kicks out with her feet, knocking me down and sending my weapon to the snow in a thin cloud of white mist.

She springs to her feet and leaps for her axe. I reach out with my arm and grab her with a crackling rope of black magic, pulling her through the air to me. As she reaches me, I bring my legs up fast and hard, kicking her in the stomach and sending her flying over my head. She hits the ground solidly several feet away and rolls to a stop against a thick pine. I get up and grab my sword. As my fingers wrap around the handle, I feel the binding of her own death grip around me and I’m pulled quickly through the air to her. She rams heavily into my chest with a dense, spiked pauldron when I reach her, denting my armor and jarring my senses. I taste a little blood in my mouth as I hit the ground, my head spinning. “The magic won’t be your savior here,” Graka snarls at me, standing over my groaning form. “I’ve embraced what you’ve thrown away. Before your final death, I’m going to make sure you realize just how weak you really are.”

The snow around me hisses and steams, boiling away in the red light of the magic she casts beneath me and around me. It sears into my armor, into my flesh, burning me. I howl in pain and struggle to my feet. Her plate-clad fist connects with the side of my face, spinning me around, blood dripping from my cheek onto my chest. I stagger back, dazed, but thankfully her blow pushed me away from the decay on the ground. The snow around us is turning into slush; it’s not easy for either of us to maintain our footing in the muck. I spit a clot of blood onto the ground and glare at her, my vision quickly returning. I yell a primal challenge at her and charge, attacking her with fast strikes. She’s agile, despite her heavy armor, and ducks and weaves away from the blows, taunting me by allowing them to come within inches of her. Graka laughs at me and I grind my teeth. I can’t let myself lose control. The magic is trying to take over and turn me into a beast. I force myself to control it; I can’t let her capitalize on my mistakes.

She sidesteps another strike and lashes out with a hard fist. I block it with my arm and kick her in the gut with the front of my shin; she groans and doubles over. I uppercut her lowered jaw, knocking her back. My spiked gauntlets cut deep into her flesh and her jaw slams shut. The death knight’s pin-like teeth pierce her bottom lip, splitting it, and she howls Orcish curses at me as crimson blood courses down her chin. I reach out and send a howling blast of frigid magic at her. She grunts in pain and falls back; I take advantage of her lost balance with a hard swing of my sword. She turns a second before the blade would meet her neck and my weapon digs a shallow groove in her thick spaulder with a loud echoing clang. Graka drops to the ground and immediately swings her legs out, tripping me and sending me into the slush.

I stand, brandishing my sword, cocking my arms for another attack, and she throws out her hands as if to try and stop me with them. Too quickly for me to react, the air around me and the ground beneath me flash-freezes and I, with a startled grunt, find myself caught in a strong casing of ice. My legs are frozen to the ground, a thick layer of ice crawling up them past my hips and wrapping around my chest. Strong, immobile tendrils of ice reach up from the ground and wrap around my arms and hands; I can’t move them at all. The cold cuts deep, biting through my armor and into my flesh. I cry out.

Breathing heavily, Graka grabs her axe. She turns to stare at me, her eyes returning the hate that fill mine. With her tongue, she laps up the blood that still flows from her lips, and she smiles. “Such potential,” she hisses. “You waste it, Brandstone. What do you seek to gain in this futile struggle against the Master? Are you looking to reclaim what you had before your resurrection?” She laughs bloodily. “It’s gone, Brandstone! Your humanity died with you, just like the orc died with me. Don’t you understand what I’ve been telling you? The only meaning our existence has now is to serve the Master. We’re soldiers in his mighty army. It is our duty to lead his forces against the living, to rub this world clean of their filth, and bathe it in the new dawn of the Scourge. You don’t have a soul anymore. You know this. All you have now is emptiness, and only the power of the Master’s magic can fulfill you now. He speaks to me. He is with me always. He used to be with you, Brandstone. But you’ve shunned him and forsaken him. You’ve thrown away the second chance that he so graciously offered you.” Graka’s fingers tighten around the handle of her axe and she smiles. “I told you, Brandstone, that your death will be as meaningless as your life was.”

The icy chains are beginning to weaken, but they’re still too strong for me to overcome. They shatter when her axe strikes them and my head rings like a chapel bell when the blade bites into my armor. I feel three ribs break and my vision blurs. Something wet and warm is running down my side. The runeblade falls from my limp hands and blood floods my mouth. I stagger, but when I hit the ground I don’t remember falling. I struggle to my hands and knees, groaning. My head’s still spinning. I vomit a glut of blood and wince.

Graka watches me stagger to my feet, her axe hoisted on a shoulder. An amused look is on her face, blood still dribbling from her chin. She’s toying with me, and it sickens me. I lean against a tree for support, my body refusing to catch its breath. “You would be dead by now,” the death knight says offhandedly, “if you weren’t immune to our diseases.” She shrugs and chuckles. “But I’ll make the most of it. If I can’t kill you efficiently, I’ll kill you agonizingly slowly. I’ll enjoy it. The Master laughs with me, Brandstone. You angered him when you rejected his kindness, and now he laughs at your pain. He laughs at your agony. And he laughs at your death.” She lifts her eyebrows. “Perhaps he will have me raise you again! But not as a death knight this time, no, no. You’ve proven yourself unworthy of that kind of power. No, you will be ghoul, perhaps, or maybe we’ll simply tear you apart and sew you together with the rest of the abomination pieces!” She steps closer, licking her bloody, swollen lip, drinking the blood that oozes from her body. “Do you see the futility of this now, Brandstone, now that it’s too late for you?”

I swallow the blood that fills my mouth and growl. It burns on its way down and sits heavily in my churning stomach. I can heal myself, if temporarily; all I have to do is tap the blood and use it as a catalyst, but I must let the magic surge and risk letting it take over. With death so close, though, I don’t have much choice. It takes all the strength I can muster to hold the magic in check and let it do only what I command it to, but it obeys me and I feel new strength flow into me. I cry out and dig my fingers into the tree, snapping the bark and cracking the wood beneath. My heart surges; I feel the heat of my invigorated blood flowing through my veins.

I rush forward and punch Graka’s face with as must force as I can, cracking her cheekbone and eye socket. She cries out, as much from surprise as from pain, and staggers back, her hands loosening from the axe but not releasing it. Blood flows from the gashes that my metal gauntlet tore into her flesh and she spits three teeth out, cursing at me as her face swells and blackens with bruises. The death knight staggers back and I fall forward, struggling to maintain my balance. I shake my head to clear it and look at her ravaged face, her eyes glaring at me with the malice of the whole Scourge in them. “I’m not as weak as you take me to be, Graka,” I snarl at her. I can already feel the temporary strength that the blood gave me beginning to wane.

“Perhaps not,” she spits as she gets her equilibrium back. “But you’re still weaker than I am, and that’s what’s most important right now.” She hoists her axe and smiles, the red light of her blade’s runes reflecting sickeningly on her mangled features. “You look tired, Brandstone. Rest yourself. Sit against the tree there and just…let yourself go to sleep.”

I try to ignore the burning pain shooting like lightning from my broken ribs. I glare at her. “What’s the matter?” I wheeze. “Aren’t you good enough to kill me while I’m standing?”

She licks her lips slowly. “Stubborn to the end, I see.”

I spread my feet and steady myself, looking past the haze and the pain. Bracing myself, I thrust my arms out and cast a pool of decay at her feet. Graka yelps and staggers as my magic burns her as hers did me. Her knees buckle and she stumbles. I run as quickly as my shaking, unsteady legs can move me and I crash into her, my shoulder colliding with her chest, our armor slamming together with an ear-splitting screech. I hear something crack inside her and she vomits blood. I’m sure that the blow hurts me as much as it hurts her, though; a wave of numbness shoots down my arm and into my chest. We both grunt in pain and topple to the ground, my body atop hers, her axe slipping from her grasp just out of reach of her stretching arm.

I straddle her stomach and grab her neck with my hands, squeezing as hard as my weak fingers will allow. She gags and growls, grabbing at my wrists with her own uncertain fingers. I press my thumbs into the middle of her throat, jabbing them in as far as I can. Her good eye bulges and she squeezes my wrists even harder. “I’m not so easily beaten!” she garbles, and with a mighty groan she turns us over, and I find myself on my back with Graka atop me, her hands at my throat.

Graka laughs. Blood drips down from her wounds, spattering wetly on my battered armor and face. I clutch her wrists, barely strong enough to keep her from getting a tight enough grip on my neck to strangle me. We grunt, groan, and curse, each struggling for position. She leans down, her face inches from mine. The heat of her breath is like acid on my flesh. “What do you think, Brandstone?” she taunts, cocking her head as if she were examining an animal in a cage. “What am I squeezing out of you, if you’re not alive anymore?”

Quickly, I release her wrists and slam the heels of my hands against her temples as hard as I can. She shrieks and falls back, clutching her head and writhing on the ground. I get dizzily to my feet and stagger to a tree, bracing myself against it, hugging it, hoping that the world will stop spinning soon. I’m gasping for breath, my vision is blurry, and everything hurts. I can’t fight much longer. I’m lightheaded; blood still courses down my side beneath my battered armor. I didn’t know a death knight could bleed to death.

Graka howls behind me loud enough to rival a banshee. I feel the dark rope of magic around me again and I’m pulled violently away from the tree. She doesn’t bring me to her this time; instead, she uses her foul lasso to throw me into another tree. I strike it with my back and I cry out, loud and rueful. I feel my armor dent and hear the massive tree trunk crack from the impact. A shower of pine needles falls to the mud and I slump heavily to the ground. I try to get to my feet, but my legs won’t work. She stands hunched in the grey slush, staring at me. Her arms hang limp; her breathing is heavy and labored. A long string of bloody spit hangs from her lip, dangling to her chest. We glare at each other silently for a long moment, the hatred in our blazing eyes saying plenty for both of us. Finally, she grabs her axe and takes a step forward, her boots making wet sucking sounds in the slushy, bloody mud. “Enough,” she tries to snarl, but it comes out as more of a haggard, tired whisper. “No more games. I’m just going to kill you.”

I rise to a seated position, leaning against the tree. I can do nothing more than wait for the final strike. I stare at her, unblinking. If I can’t die on my feet, I’m going to at least die with my eyes open. She hisses and raises the axe as she nears. I can tell that it isn’t as easy for her as it was when our fight began. She takes another wet step. I grit my teeth.

When did it stop snowing?

There’s thunder in the trees—distant, but growing closer. Thunder? No, that’s impossible. My brain must be dying already. No… No, I’m definitely hearing something, and so is Graka. I turn my head toward the sound and she follows my gaze. The death knight yells in surprise when a massive black shape crashes through the thicket into her, knocking her to the ground. I blink. “J—James?” I mutter weakly.

James neighs loudly, stamping his front feet on her chest and face; her armor crunches loudly. Her flesh rips and her bones snap, her frenzied cries of pain rising earsplittingly. James shakes his head, his mane whipping wildly. Graka’s cries turn into a shriek, which slows to gurgled moaning, which fades into nothing. Her flailing weakens, slows, and stops, until the death knight’s just a silent, still presence on the ground. James snorts and shakes his head one last time before walking over to me. He lowers his head, his eyes staring into mine, and I weakly put a hand on his neck. “Thank you,” I manage to wearily mutter. He blinks and nickers.

I cry out in pain as I force myself to my feet, using James’s bulk to brace myself while I catch my breath. When the fog clears and the pain dulls just enough for me to be able to walk on my own, I hobble slowly to Graka. She’s dead, of that there’s no doubt. Her armor is dented and mangled; her exposed head is a smashed, beaten pile of meat and bone. Blood oozes from her remains, slowly spreading out and mixing with the slop. Groaning from the effort, I find my sword and slowly, painfully, slide it back into its scabbard. I leave her axe where it lay.

“Well,” I wheeze to James as I reach him, “let’s get back on course, shall we?” He lowers himself, and I slide myself onto his back. I take the reins and, lying over him, my head on his neck, urge him into the forest, leaving the carnage of the battle behind us. He walks on slowly, as if to make the journey as comfortable to me as possible. Pain shoots through my body with every step he takes. My head is spinning and I feel dizzy. Blood still flows down my side. My fingers slip from the reins. My body goes numb. I fall from the sad—

My Dearest Eric,

It’s been too long since I last wrote to you; I hope that you’re not upset with me for it and that this letter finds you well. The boats bringing the grievously wounded and dead from Northrend have been more frequent these last few weeks, and there’s been greater need for my services as both healer and leader of funeral services. I often find myself tending to patients long into the night; it seems that most nights I come home to find Malcolm already asleep. I wish that I could be there more for him; it’s not fair to a boy his age for his mother to be away so much when his father’s gone too, but the other priests and I have an important part to play in this war too. I know he understands—at least, he understands as much as a boy his age can understand something like this.

You should see him, Eric; he’s growing up so fast and he looks more and more like you every day. It seems like just yesterday that he was nursing for the first time, doesn’t it? He talks about you all the time. He’s already talking about joining the Alliance army when he’s old enough and following in your footsteps; he’s so proud of you. He’s always asking me to tell him stories about when you were a young soldier when you and I first met. He wants to know if you were always so brave, and I tell them that of course you were. I tell him that he’ll be just as handsome in his armor as you. He wishes that they hadn’t sent you so far away, but even at his age he knows how important it was that you go, even if he might not know exactly what’s happening in Northrend. He knows that you’re a hero to everyone here. Everyone’s been wonderful to him, and he’s even made some friends at school. It’s nice to see that the community is really banding together and looking out for each other during the war effort. Something peaceful is coming from these dreadful times, and it gives me a little hope.

It’s summer here now; the trees are green, the flowers are blooming, and even Stormwind itself is full of beautiful sights. I often go to the park there during those times when I can take a break from my duties and just sit on the grass and smell the blossoms in the trees. It won’t be long before they bear fruit. The night elves have a way of tending their gardens so that they always have the biggest, most delicious fruits and vegetables, and they’re always willing to let me buy some from them when it comes into season. Seeing the elves tend to their plants with the love and care that they do makes me wish that I had the time to put the effort into growing one of my own. Malcolm saw his first night elf the other day, by the way; he couldn’t believe that someone could grow that tall. It broke his heart when I had to tell him that he wouldn’t get that big.

They’ve had to raise taxes again to help pay for the war effort, and it’s placed an extra strain on things. I know that it’s for a noble cause, though, and I’ll bear it. Lisa Preston in Goldshire is able to grow her own garden in the summer and she’s willing to share from it. Jacob Hornsby’s given me a discounted price on the beef that he raises ever since I saved his little girl from that snakebite last year, so we’re getting by all right. I’m able to keep enough for Malcolm’s schooling; that’s what’s most important to me. (His teacher told me that he’s the class’s best student.) I just hope that the extra taxes make a difference in Northrend. I don’t know what it’s like there, but I do know that it’s hard, cold, and tiring. Those of us still at home haven’t forgotten.

News isn’t always easy to come by down here; even when I’m in the city working, most of my time is spent trying to save men and women too young to be that close to death, and I don’t get many chances to ask about the latest happenings. When I do get news, there’s no way to tell how recent it is or even if it’s nothing more than a rumor. I know that we haven’t won yet, though; the Lich King is still alive. I wish I knew if our prospects were good, though. I heard yesterday that the Argent Crusade is starting to gather for its assault on the Citadel. I pray that the war is close to over now.

I’ve seen too much death in these last months, Eric. I’ve had to bury soldiers who were barely adults. A part of me hopes that Malcolm grows out of his desire to be a soldier; I don’t want our little boy to be killed on some battlefield half a world away. I know he’s proud of you and wants to be like you, but I hope that by the time he’s old enough, there isn’t any need to send our armies to faraway continents. He’s never seen me cry when I imagine him coming home dead or dying on one of those boats. I find myself crying a lot these days and praying to the Light for strength more than I used to need to. I’ll try my best to stay strong, though; if we all gave in during times of despair we’d be destroyed.

I miss you, Eric. The bed is so big and cold and empty without you being able to share it with me. It seems like you’ve been away from us forever. Every night I lie awake and think about you: when we were young and you were courting me. When we took long horse rides deep into the forest. The day you asked me to marry you. I’ve cried myself to sleep too many nights remembering the day you left on the boat to Northrend. There have been times when I wished that you had never joined the king’s army—that you could have stayed with us and we could have been a family. Malcolm deserves to have a father in his life.

I love you, Eric. I have since the time I first saw your big brown eyes and that goofy grin. I hope that wherever you are now you’re warm and happy and safe. And I hope you always know that you have a wife and a son back home who miss you and love you very, very much.

All my love and more,

Rebecca

*          *          *

Rebecca Carter looked at the letter for a moment before brushing a tear from her cheek. She put the pen back in its holder and put the stopper on the ink bottle. She gently blew on the pages to dry the ink, stacked them together, and neatly folded them into thirds. She took an envelope from a drawer in her small writing table and signed it in her long, flowing script. Carefully, she slid the pages into the envelope and sealed it with hot wax. She slid her chair back and stood up. She put the envelope in her traveling bag and adjusted her dress.

Slinging the bag over her shoulder, she stepped outside into the warm sunshine. There was no school today and Malcolm was busy fighting imaginary orcs with a wooden sword in the front yard. He turned when he heard the door open and ran to his mother. She looked down at him and smiled; he was sweaty and filthy, as he usually was when he wasn’t in school or in town with her. She put a hand on his cheek. “You have an affinity for dirt, honey,” she said warmly. He giggled.

“Are you going to the city?” he asked, smiling, his eyes wide.

“Yes,” she said. “I have some things I need to buy and I want to send a letter to your father.”

“I want to come!” he said, dropping his sword to the ground and jumping up and down. Dust billowed from his body every time his feet hit the grass. “Can I can I can I?”

“I’m sorry, sweetie,” Rebecca said after the slightest pause, frowning, “but I’m going to be in town too long and do things that wouldn’t interest you; you’ll get bored.” She smiled weakly and pulled at his shirt. She remembered it being white that morning. “Besides, you’re too dirty. You wouldn’t want to be seen in Stormwind looking like that, would you?”

“Aw, Mom,” he whined, stamping his foot. “I can get cleaned up fast, I promise!”

“The answer is still ‘no,’ Malcolm,” she said sternly, crossing her arms. “Maybe you can come next time, honey, okay?”

“Aw…”

“You know I don’t approve of backtalk, Malcolm Samuel.”

“Oh, all right. I’ll stay here.”

“That’s my good boy.” She smiled and knelt down. She hugged him, not caring about the dirt. She kissed him softly on the forehead. “I’ll try not to be too long. You stay by the house, all right? Go to Mrs. Preston if you need anything.”

He smiled and kissed her on the nose. “Okay, Mom.”

She hugged him tighter and closed her eyes tightly, fighting against the tears that were threatening to break loose. “I love you very much, Malcolm,” she whispered softly into his ear.

“I love you too, Mom.”

She kissed him one last time and let him return to protecting the house from the orcs only he could see. She hitched their brown mare to their small wagon and got onto the seat. She put her bag alongside her and took the reins. She clucked to the mare and turned her onto the narrow two-track path that led away from their small house down past Goldshire and on to Stormwind. She turned in the seat and waved to Malcolm before she went around the bend that would put him out of view, but he wasn’t looking.

The gates of Stormwind came into view nearly an hour later, towering majestically into the sky above even the tallest trees of Elwynn. She passed through them, returning the smiles and waves of the guards who greeted her. She glanced up at the row of statues paying homage to heroes of the Alliance. Some of them still lived beyond the Dark Portal, maintaining the Alliance presence in Outland; the whereabouts of two others were still unknown. She had passed through the city’s gates innumerable times, but the sight of them and the statues in the Valley of Heroes never ceased to amaze her. She frowned, though, when she remembered that there were far more heroes who would never receive recognition beyond their name carved into a small stone in a cemetery somewhere.

The trade district of the city was abuzz with activity. The streets were still a little damp from a rain shower the previous day. Signs were posted in windows and on stands next to market doors advertising discounted prices on merchandise. Tradesmen patrolled the streets or had built makeshift stands where they could, loudly calling out the services they offered for sale. The smell of freshly-baked breads wafted on the breeze, meeting her nostrils and reminding her that he hadn’t eaten since breakfast seven hours earlier. Young boys scurried to and fro, dragging barrels and carrying shovels, cleaning up after horses as quickly as they could to keep the city presentable. She could hear the faint calls of the auctioneers on the other end of the district barking prices faster than she could follow them. The weekend auctions brought people from all over the area; it wasn’t unheard of to find the occasional traveler from Dun Morogh at a Stormwind auction looking for a bargain.

The sound of her horse’s hooves on the cobblestone street blended with those of dozens of other horses, and the voices of over two hundred people all mixed and mingled in the air, all combining into a unique sound that was pleasing in its own way. She waved to a few merchants and visitors that she knew, some from her profession and some from her personal life. She guided her mare through the throng, avoiding people and other horses. Her own shopping could wait until her most important errand was finished.

She breathed a sigh of relief when she crossed a bridge over the city’s canal and entered the cathedral district; the crowd was decidedly less thick there, with only a handful of visitors coming to pray or visit with friends who happened to live there. She found lately that large crowds quickly bothered her. Three priests, overlooked by the massive stone cathedral, sat alongside the bubbling fountain in the middle of the square; Rebecca nodded at these men and women of the Light when she passed them. She looked up at the cathedral, closed her eyes, and said a silent prayer, as she did by instinct whenever she entered its presence. The cathedral was an imposing sight, dwarfed in the city only by the Keep to the east, where King Wrynn and his son lived. She never visited the Keep, though, but even if she did she would still find the cathedral the most impressive structure in all the Alliance. It was an honor to her to be able to serve from the renowned church in Stormwind. She could feel the Light’s warmth whenever she was in its presence.

She reined in near the cathedral and stepped down from the wagon, grateful to be able to finally stretch her stiff limbs after the long ride. She tied the reins to a rail and patted her horse’s neck, whispering softly to her. She took her bag and slung it over her should and walked behind the cathedral and passed an iron gate into a lush grass field. The grass was carefully tended to by both man and elf, keeping it trim, thick, and lush. This was the only grass in the city that gave off such a sweet fragrance; the smell intensified when the grass was stepped on. Tall trees were spaced evenly along its perimeter and narrow stone walkways had been set through it. The small stone blocks were placed so close together that no weed could grow between any two of them. Birds chirped in the trees and the wind blew caressingly. It was an idyllic place.

She walked down the main path, the soles of her boots making the softest click, click sounds on the cobblestones. She held her head down and her eyes were closed in prayer; she had walked this path too many times to count and she could do it by memory now. She turned right after a time and walked down a path only wide enough for one person. She slowed her pace when she stepped off the path onto the thick cushion of grass and made her way down one of the many rows of stones that filled the area. Some were large and some were small. Some were plain and some were intricately carved. She finally stopped in front of one and knelt down carefully, adjusting her dress with precision beneath her. She took her bag from her shoulder and set it in front of her. The stone before her was short and plain; nothing more extravagant could be afforded at the time it was finally needed. She smiled a slight, bittersweet smile and wistfully traced the carvings on the stone with the very tip of her finger, just barely grazing the letters.

ERIC CARTER

FATHER and HUSBAND

SOLDIER of the ALLIANCE

FALLEN in BATTLE

NEVER FORGOTTEN, FOREVER LOVED

“Hello, Eric,” she said, reaching into her bag and taking out the envelope. “I’m sorry I haven’t visited you in so long. I hope you understand that I have my own duties that keep me away.” She held up the envelope and smiled, her eyes glistening in the shafts on sunlight that came through the boughs. “I wrote you a letter.” A smooth, polished white stone held down an old, weather-worn envelope in front of the grave marker. She removed that envelope, put it in her bag, and placed the new letter gently under the stone.

“Malcolm wanted to come with me today,” he said sadly, a tear breaking free of her control and rolling down her cheek; she let it fall. “I told him that he wouldn’t be interested in the places I had to go today, and I suppose that’s true; I do have to do some shopping, and you know how much he hates that.” She paused for a heartbeat. “I don’t want him to know that you died. It was hard enough for me when I got the news; what would it do to him?

“He’s strong; he takes after you. But what if he’s not ready? I know he’ll have to learn the truth one day, but he’s so young. He knows about death; how could he not, with the war on? He’s never had to deal it so personally, though. He’s never had a pet. We’ve had Alice since before he was born. Am I wrong if I don’t see any harm in letting him keep dreaming of his hero fighting for the Alliance far away?”

She was silent for a few minutes, ignoring the tears that fell from her eyes. “It’s hard to believe that it’s been nearly a year already,” she said at last, her voice barely audible. “I dream about you every night, Eric. I dream about when you were a fresh recruit, so tall and proud. I dream about when you would hold me under the moon and tell me you’d never leave me.” A sob escaped her throat and she put a hand over her mouth. “I wish you hadn’t gone.” She hung her head, her hands over her eyes in a futile effort to stop the tears from coming. “I wish you hadn’t gone. I miss you, Eric.” She took a cloth from her bag and dried her eyes. She took several deep breaths and smiled unconvincingly. “I’m sorry.”

She bent her head back and looked at the sunlight sparking through the branches of the trees and shining warmly on her face. She closed her eyes. She leaned forward and kissed her husband’s name in the stone, but she didn’t stand up. She only knelt there, looking at the gravestone and reliving memories that she couldn’t remember not having.

Her other errands could wait.

“Did you hear me, my son?”

John van Howe sat on the rickety wooden chair at the small wobbly table in his jail cell, methodically spooning cold beans into his mouth. He occasionally broke the monotony by taking a drink of water or tearing off a piece of the hard day-old bread and softening it as much as it could be softened in the bean juice before eating it. Cold beans and stale bread were essentially all that they ever fed him, although one breakfast they had given him two biscuits that were still fresh enough to pretend to be warm, along with almost enough butter to be able to taste. It didn’t particularly matter what they fed him; everything was so bland that nothing seemed to even have a smell. He’d have killed for some salt. He smiled when the thought crossed his mind; salt wouldn’t be the pettiest thing he’d ever killed for.

Even if the meal had been one he could enjoy, he wouldn’t have been able to. There was a small barred window in his cell close to the ceiling. Its purpose was little more than to let light in during the day, but the cell was small enough and he was tall enough that if he stood on his toes he could catch a small glimpse of the outside. He hadn’t needed that glimpse the last three days; the sound was all he needed to know what was going on out there. The rhythmic sawing and hammering had been going on almost ceaselessly since they started, and each day the sounds seemed to come closer and closer to that window. His hanging the next day was to be the first ever in the county, and they were going to make a show of it. They’d bought the best lumber that they could buy and were building the finest gallows that they could build, being careful that every cut was perfect and that every nail was precisely placed and hammered in straight. They’d weighed him the day he was sentenced and had fed him just enough to keep him alive while they built the gallows; they didn’t want him to get too heavy for the length of prime, expensive rope they’d procured. He knew that they were building the gallows just outside his window to taunt him with that endless noise. Right now they were testing the trap door; even if he wasn’t constantly reminded of the schedule, that noise was sign enough that the construction was almost complete.

Two or three times a day the young, gangly deputy would come into the long room in the back of the marshal’s office that housed the six cells and smile at him, the only prisoner in the jail at that time. “It’s comin’ along real nice out there, Johnny,” he’d say. “You should see it. Bet you like havin’ that music to listen to in there, don’t you?” And he would laugh every time like it was not only the first time he’d said it, but the funniest joke ever uttered. Van Howe would just stare at him and smirk right back without uttering a word. The deputy wanted to get a rise out of him, but van Howe wasn’t going to give it. He didn’t intend to give them any more satisfaction than the knowledge that they’d finally caught him.

He spent most of his waking hours thinking about Bob and Charlie. He would have never gotten caught if they hadn’t turned on him and sent him right into the law’s waiting arms. Maybe he should have been more careful, but he’d ridden with Bob and Charlie for a long time; he thought that he could trust them. They were the most feared gang in Texas; they’d killed a lot of people, stolen a lot of money, and raped a lot of women in their time together, but in the end Bob and Charlie proved that they were cowards when the last posse got too close for comfort and they shot his horse out from under him. They knew it would distract the lawmen long enough for them to get away; hell, those two were small potatoes compared to John van Howe. He’d been a wanted man long before he hooked up with those two, not to mention being the leader of the gang once he did, and sure enough, the posse was perfectly happy ending up with just him. He was surprised that the town had even put on the pretense of a trial; when they caught him—and it had cost the posse three men to do that—he fully expected to be hanged from the closest tree. But they tied him up and brought him back, charged him and tried him for what he’d done there, and sentenced him to hang, all legal-like. Maybe they thought they were mocking him by going through everything properly, even though everyone and his brother knew that John van Howe was practically the definition of “guilty.” He had never bothered denying the things that he had done.

He had always taken pride in his resourcefulness. He was smart for a man in those parts; he thought ahead. He was also agile, swift on a horse, and had a way of slipping right through fingers that were sure they’d squeeze the life out of him. He’d been on the run for one thing or another most of his life now, and he’d been confident that he’d never get caught. He always thought that he could escape from any town, any posse, and any situation—and he had been able to for years. Keep just a couple steps ahead of any posse for long enough, he knew, and they’ll eventually get frustrated enough to give up and let the next one catch you. It was a game to him, and it was a game that he had been winning until Bob and Charlie decided to stab him in the back. The more he thought about it, it was the fact that those two bastards had gotten away and he hadn’t that made him the angriest. At the very least they should be on that gallows with him, and it made his blood boil to know that they wouldn’t. He’d give anything to make sure they got theirs in the end too.

“Did you hear me, my son?” the preacher on the other side of the bars repeated.

Van Howe glanced at the old man in his black robe, a Bible clutched before him in his long, pale fingers, and smiled. He took another spoonful of the tasteless beans. “I heard you just fine, preacher,” he said with his mouth full. “And I ain’t your son.” He swallowed the frijoles and ripped off a chunk of bread, sweeping it through a puddle of thin, watery juice before shoving it into his maw.

The preacher lifted his head and stood straight. “You’re going to die tomorrow,” he said in a flat tone with a hint of arrogance. “You won’t harm me with your disrespect and blasphemy. Frankly, you’ll only assure yourself a place in Hell if you refuse to be saved. Surely even a man like you fears for his soul.”

“Even a man like me, huh?” Van Howe laughed around the stale bread and turned to look at the preacher. He wiped a line of saliva from his chin with the back of his hand. “So even after all the things I’ve done in my life, I just need to say ‘Jesus is my savior,’ and I’ve bought a ticket through the Pearly Gates?”

“Crudely put,” the preacher said, staring down his nose at van Howe, “but yes, if you’re honest in your heart. Our Father is a just God; He doesn’t want to see any of His children go astray.”

Van Howe swallowed, shook his head, and ate the last of his beans. “Then God’s an even bigger idiot than I took Him to be,” he said disgustedly, pushing the empty plate away.

The preacher shook his head. “Is your defiance worth an eternity of torment?”

Van Howe pushed the chair back and stood up. He walked to the bars and leaned forward, pressing his face against them. The preacher stepped out of reach, should van Howe try to grab him through the bars. “Preacher,” van Howe said softly and coldly, “if goin’ to Heaven means spendin’ the rest of eternity with people like you, I’ll be happy to go to Hell.” He grinned. “Besides, I’ve gotten out of worse spots in my life; who says I couldn’t get out of Hell too?”

“You’re a foolish, arrogant young man,” the preacher lamented. “It’s a shame that you’ll have to learn the price of your wickedness this way.” He straightened his robes and looked into van Howe’s cold eyes. “Perhaps,” he said icily, “some souls just can’t be saved. All the same, I hope that God will still have mercy on yours.” He turned and walked down the rows of cells.

The deputy, who had been silently watching the conversation, opened the door and let the preacher out. He turned to follow, but paused and looked back at van Howe, still pressed against the bars, watching. “It ain’t very nice to be rude like that to a preacher, Johnny,” he said with a crooked smile. “It’s bad luck.”

“Ain’t no such thing as luck, deputy,” van Howe said. He stepped back from the bars and walked to the small, uncomfortable cot wedged in a corner of the cell. He lay down and put an arm over his eyes. “Just skill. You can do anythin’ if you’re good enough. And if you can’t, well, that just means you weren’t.”

The deputy laughed. “I dunno about that, Johnny. Sure as hell looks to me like your luck run out.” He sneered. “Or maybe you just wasn’t as good as you thought you was.” Van Howe said nothing. The deputy grunted and twisted his mouth in disappointment. “It’s a shame we can only kill you once, you son of a bitch,” he said as he pulled the heavy wooden door shut and locked it with a loud clang.

Van Howe had been awake for over an hour when the deputy opened the big oak door and walked with the marshal down to the cell, their footsteps falling heavily and loudly on the cold stone floor. “Mornin’, Johnny,” the deputy said cheerfully as he opened the cell. “Nice day today. We thought we’d take you out for a stroll. ‘Fraid it won’t be a very long one, though.” Van Howe said nothing when they locked the manacles on his wrists behind his back; he only smiled at the deputy. The deputy snarled and pulled him out of the cell. He pushed his prisoner toward the heavy door. “Move it,” he ordered. He leaned close to van Howe and smiled. “I don’t figure that grin to last a whole lot longer, Johnny,” he whispered. “You should enjoy it while you still can.”

They marched him outside into the cool midmorning sun, the deputy holding him by the back of the shirt, the marshal covering him with a well-used Winchester. Van Howe was met by a gathering of nearly two hundred people, with more steadily arriving on horseback or in wagons from towns as far as twenty miles away. Hangings were always events, and since this was the county’s first, all the more so. That they were hanging a man as well-known and reviled as John van Howe was just a bonus; most of the people coming to town simply wanted to see their first hanging. He caught several eyes as they walked him around behind the marshal’s office. Conversations stopped and people stared at him as he stared at them with a grim half-smile on his face. Most of onlookers simply stared at him in rapt silence, but many yelled profanities; someone threw a poorly-aimed road apple that splattered against the side of the marshal’s office. The throng followed the three men to the gallows, at which there was already a crowd of several dozen waiting to watch the spectacle of a man dangling from a rope. That gathering quickly grew as townspeople and visitors alike vied for the choicest spots to watch the execution of John van Howe. Soon the area in front of the gallows was swarming like ants with people.

The gallows stood only thirty feet from van Howe’s cell, facing away from the building. It was tall and wide, built from thick, heavy pine boards. A set of solid stairs led to the large square platform where two tall posts supported a beam from which hung the perfectly-knotted rope. The noose swayed tauntingly in the slight breeze as though it were waving to van Howe. The preacher stood on the platform near the rope, wearing the same robes and clutching the same dog-eared Bible in his hands. The deputy shoved van Howe against the steps. “Up you go, Johnny,” he spat.

Van Howe walked up the stairs and faced the crowd, amused that people who considered themselves good Christians would enjoy seeing the spectacle before them. Shouted curses reached his ears. “You still have a chance to save your soul, my son,” the preacher said softly, leaning toward him. “Join me in a prayer for it before you leave this earth.”

Van Howe looked at the preacher. “Preacher,” he said with a sardonic laugh, “God would laugh His fool head off if He heard me prayin’.”

The preacher frowned and stepped back, nodding sadly. “So be it.” He looked at the marshal and nodded once. “I’m done here, marshal. You may do your duty now.”

The marshal handed his rifle to the deputy and walked to van Howe. The deputy moved to the other side of the platform and wrapped the fingers of his free hand around the lever that worked the trap door. The marshal forced van Howe onto the trap door—though he offered little resistance—and took the rope, putting it over van Howe’s head and tightening it a little. He laid the knot carefully over van Howe’s shoulder and stood in front of him and slightly to his right, allowing the best view for the crowd. He pulled a crudely-folded piece of paper from his shirt pocket and opened it. “John van Howe,” he read in his loud, deep voice, “you have been found guilty by a jury of seven counts of murder, two counts of rape, and six counts of theft. In accordance with the laws of this state, you have been sentenced to hang by the neck until dead. Do you have any last words?”

Van Howe spat on the marshal’s boots and smiled at him. “I just hope that Hell has better food than that slop you’ve been feedin’ me the last week, marshal.”

The marshal’s eye twitched once. “May God have mercy on your soul.” He looked at the deputy. “Proceed,” he barked. The deputy smiled one last time at van Howe and jerked the lever back. The last thing John van Howe thought was that Bob and Charlie should be hanging next to him. The last thing he felt was the floor disappearing beneath his feet and his body falling toward the earth. He died with a smile on his face.

*          *          *

Bob McMillan and Charlie Cribbs sat at a table in a back corner of the saloon. It was nearly midnight, and they were two of the only five customers left. The three others were engaged in a card game in the middle of the room; none of them were sober enough to keep his money for long, so the bills and coins made their rounds from man to man to man in a fairly predictable fashion. Ten oil lamps placed around the room provided plenty of light, and a thin cloud of tobacco smoke hung near the ceiling. The barkeep was cleaning glasses at the far end of the bar. The mostly-sober piano player in a corner near the batwings banged out a Dixieland tune, playing more for himself than for the others. McMillan and Cribbs each had a bar girl on his lap. The two men looked and smelled as though they hadn’t bathed in nearly a month, but as long as the money and drinks kept coming, the women forgot to complain. The soiled doves wore thick makeup, smelled like whiskey and their trade, and neither was particularly attractive, but the two men had been without women for some time, and they would make do with what they could buy.

They each had a substantial poke; after abandoning van Howe two months earlier, they had robbed three stagecoaches and added to the funds that they had pilfered—and hadn’t yet spent—during their last excursion with their former ringleader. They had lain low for a time after the stage robberies to let the law lose interest in their capture before crossing into Oklahoma territory. If anyone had recognized McMillan and Cribbs since they crossed the border, they either didn’t care or were too afraid to do anything. Their reputations weren’t as feared as John van Howe’s had been, but they had been his partners for a long time, and people still watched their backs when word got out that Bob McMillan and Charlie Cribbs were in town. That night, though, they were content with their whiskey and the women they had rented until dawn.

McMillan put a coin in the generously-displayed cleavage of the brunette sitting on his lap. “How ‘bout another bottle, darlin’?” he said with a grin, staring at her with lustful eyes. “I’m thirsty again.”

Smiling, she pulled the coin free and held it tightly. “Comin’ right up, Bobby darlin’,” she slurred, kissing him on the cheek—or rather, the thick, unruly growth of wiry brown whiskers that all but hid his face from the eyes down. She slid clumsily off his lap and straightened her dirty dress awkwardly before staggering to the bar and getting another bottle of watered-down whiskey. While McMillan was just beginning to feel the tingle of alcohol in his limbs, she was well past merely being “drunk;” for every drink McMillan had had, she had had three.

As she sauntered back, trying to look alluring but succeeding only in looking soused, McMillan glanced at his cohort on the other side of the table. Cribbs had his face pressed solidly against his whore’s, and his hand was working vigorously up her skirt. “Jesus Christ, Charlie,” he cursed disgustedly, “go get a room if you wanna do that. I don’t need to see that.”

Cribbs separated himself from the blonde long enough to cast McMillan an inebriated grin. His woman wasn’t hogging their whiskey like McMillan’s was; he was feeling no pain. “Turn yer head an’ you won’t need t’worry about it, Bob.” He laughed and returned to his work.

“I still have to listen to it, you dumb shit,” McMillan groused. Cribbs ignored him. “Stupid son of a bitch.” McMillan’s woman came with a fresh bottle. She sat—or more accurately, fell—back down on his lap and slowly pulled the cork from the bottle with her teeth. McMillan smiled at her and tilted his head back, his mouth agape. She tipped the bottle over him, letting the amber liquid fall pour into his waiting gullet. She poured a mouthful into him before taking two generous pulls herself.

McMillan hardly waited for her to swallow the liquor before he pulled her close and kissed her hard on the mouth. She felt more beard than lips, but he wasn’t paying her to be disgusted. “How ‘bout me an’ you get ourselves a room upstairs, darlin’?” he asked her with a smirk. “I just can’t wait no more, an’ I like a little privacy when I do my business.” He cast a disparaging look at the completely distracted Cribbs. “Unlike some people.” Cribbs didn’t hear the remark.

The brunette stood up and took McMillan’s hand. “Why, Bobby,” she purred, “I didn’t think you’d ever ask.” She giggled and helped him to his feet. He grabbed the bottle of rotgut and took a swig as they stumbled their way to the staircase leading to the row of rooms on the second floor.

“Don’t let nobody bother us,” McMillan called to the bartender, grabbing the railing.

McMillan paused on the stairs and he, along with everyone else in the room, turned their heads to the batwings when they squeaked loudly as someone came in. At first McMillan thought that the wind had blown them open, but he quickly saw the image of a man standing at the entrance, holding the batwings open and looking from face to face, scanning the barroom.

He was tall and lean, with wide shoulders and narrow hips. He would have been handsome if he had not been so disheveled; many days’ worth of unshaven whiskers grew from his face and wildly unkempt hair stood at random angles on his head. There was no emotion on his face. He was clad in an old, well-worn pair of jeans and a tattered shirt that was more yellow now than white. A fine layer of dust covered him from head to toe, giving his entire body an almost faded appearance. Indeed, whether from the dust drifting from the man’s body or his own vision, McMillan couldn’t bring the man into focus. He wondered if he was perhaps more drunk than he had thought he was. As the newcomer looked around in silence, turning his head slowly from side to side, it looked to everyone that his neck was bent at an odd angle, giving the look that his head was cocked as though listening to some far-off sound. He smelled musty. He took a few steps into the saloon, letting the batwings swing noisily closed behind him. His boots fell loudly, heavily, and with a hollow sound. He wore no spurs and was armed with neither gun nor knife. He caught McMillan’s eye and his expressionless face suddenly changed when his lips moved ever slowly upwards in a wicked grin. When he smiled, his white teeth shone with a dim glow in the lamplight. The presence of the silent stranger squeezed the hearts of everyone in the saloon with fear. Two of the card players turned and ran out of the saloon; the other remained seated, watching the stranger, his muscles paralyzed with inexplicable fright.

McMillan’s hand fell limp from his evening partner’s, hanging numbly at his side. He stumbled from the stairs back to the floor and looked at the newcomer, his mouth hanging open and sweat beading on his forehead. Cribbs had forgotten about his exploration and risen to his feet, licking his lips and glancing from the newcomer to McMillan and back again. His hand hung uncertainly halfway toward his gun, quivering, the fingers flexing slowly. The piano player’s last note faded away to nothing; he too stared with quiet fear at the newcomer, along with the women and the bartender. The very sight of this stranger brought tightness to their chests. None of them could find the strength to say a word or move a muscle; they could only stare at him. They couldn’t figure out why they were so frightened; they only knew that they were.

It seemed like an eternity before McMillan was finally able to speak, finally blurting out “Jesus Christ. Johnny?”

“Hello, Bob,” van Howe said with a wide grin, looking at him with his head cocked strangely. His voice was little more than a hoarse whisper, but the words came clearly to their ears. He turned toward Cribbs. “Charlie. It’s been a long time, ain’t it?”

“Johnny,” Cribbs said, moving toward him with morbid curiosity, squinting through the haze of alcohol and moving his hand a little closer to his gun. “They hung you two months ago!”

Van Howe pursed his lips and grunted. He arched an eyebrow. “Two months? Damn, it feels like a lot longer than that.” McMillan and Cribbs chilled to their cores when van Howe’s hollow eyes met theirs, as though he was staring sightlessly through them. “I see you’ve been keepin’ busy since you left me for dead back there,” van Howe rasped, looking briefly at the women. “I figured I’d find you bastards in a place like this. Looks like I was right.”

McMillan swallowed twice; his mouth was suddenly dry and his tongue felt thick in his mouth. He wanted to take a drink from the bottle in his hand, but he couldn’t move his arm. He could only stare into van Howe’s empty eyes. They’d hanged John van Howe; it had to just be his eyes playing tricks on him. But everyone else could see him; what did that mean? “Johnny, they woulda kilt all of us if we hadn’t-a done that,” he muttered. He realized he was trembling. “You knowed that yerself.” He felt more afraid than he ever had.

Van Howe took another step forward and McMillan staggered back. The bottle slipped from his numb fingers and clattered to the floor—it didn’t break, but spilled whiskey wastefully onto the floorboards. “You dirty cowards got scared and shot my horse from under me so you could run away,” van Howe said. His voice held venom that struck McMillan to his very soul. “We could have outrun ‘em; we always did. We could have holed up somewhere and outlasted ‘em. But you got scared and gave me right to ‘em so you could get away!” His grating whisper rose to a shout; the light seemed to fade from the room for a moment when he yelled. The bartender ducked below the bar. The women huddled together under a table. The piano player held perfectly still, praying he wouldn’t be noticed.

“It wasn’t nothin’ personal, Johnny,” Cribbs insisted.

Van Howe looked at him and his lip curled in a twisted sneer. “‘Nothin’ personal,’” he hissed. “I took you filthy bastards and let you ride with me. I gave you your share of everythin’. But when you thought the goin’ was getting’ just a little rough, you stabbed me in the back. I was a sorry son of a bitch, but I always looked out for my own. You should have hanged right with me if it’d come to that, you little shits.” He chuckled; when he did, there was a rattling sound deep in his throat. “Well, I’m gonna make things right and take care of that unfinished business.”

Cribbs’s hand dipped toward his gun. “Go ahead, Charlie,” van Howe said with a horrible smile. Cribb’s hand froze in the middle of the action. “It won’t do you no good. Not anymore.” He turned his body and started walking slowly toward Cribbs. “Even if you had killed me instead of my horse, it wouldn’t have done you no good.” Cribbs’s hand fell away from his gun as though he had forgotten any plans to use it.

“This ain’t real,” McMillan shouted. “Yer dead! They kilt you two months ago!”

“It’s real, Bobby,” van Howe said over his shoulder, his voice like ice. “I could always get out of the worst spots. I could escape any posse. I’d let ‘em nip at my heels just long enough to get confident, and then I’d let ‘em eat a couple mouthfuls of dust.” He laughed. “That ain’t changed one little bit, Bobby.”

“What are you gonna do, Johnny?” Cribbs sputtered, quivering as van Howe drew closer.

The sound of approaching hooves caught their attention, distracting them. They all, van Howe included, turned to the batwings as the sound drew closer; a single horse was coming down the street very slowly, its hooves suddenly the only sound that they could hear. Even the bartender peered over the edge of the bar to look. The sound grew louder and louder, until the horse’s steps sounded like cannons in the dead stillness of the night air. At last the sound stopped, just outside, and they heard the soft groan of leather when the Rider dismounted. His footsteps were like thunder as the he stepped up onto the boardwalk and walked slowly and steadily to the batwings. The Rider pushed the batwings open and stood there for a moment as van Howe had, staring with a blank expression at the assembled faces. “No,” van Howe murmured.

The Rider stood a hand over six feet tall and was dressed in the darkest black that any of them had ever seen; his clothes absorbed all the light that reached them. He had a wide-brimmed, low-crowned hat and a long coat that made the softest rustling sound when he moved. His clothes were spotless, showing not a speck of trail dust, nor was there a wrinkle to be seen in them. His boots bore no spurs and shone with bright polish. He was unarmed. His only exposed flesh was his clean-shaven face, hard-angled but soft; his skin was as white as his clothes were black, and looked like it glowed, contrasted against the unyielding darkness of his clothes. The flesh seemed to radiate the light that the clothes took in. His hair, long and golden, hung just to his shoulders. The bartender slowly rose from behind the bar and the women came from under the table to watch the silent Rider. His eyes gleamed with ruthless intensity; the silent assembly felt compelled to stare into those eyes, and as they looked further into them and he looked into theirs, they could see cold fire burning deep within them.

Van Howe was the first and only one of them to show any reaction. He swallowed hard, a twisted look of fear on his face. “No,” he muttered again, staring into the Rider’s eyes and stepping away from him, though his legs suddenly felt heavy. “I got away. I escaped! There’s no way you could have caught up with me!”

“You can never get away from me, John,” the Rider replied. He spoke softly; his voice was like velvet, but the words were hard and compelling. He folded his gloved fingers before him. “No one can. You aren’t the first one to think he can escape and return here to continue his wickedness. It’s time to go back.”

“No!” van Howe screamed. He pointed at McMillan and Cribbs, but they didn’t seem to notice him anymore; they could only stare in silence at the Rider. “They turned on me! They deserve the same thing! Don’t you care about justice? Take them too!”

“You never cared about justice, John,” the Rider replied, calm and cold. “But they will get theirs. It may not be for many years, but in the end, they’ll have to answer just as you did. This isn’t their time. But your time has already passed, John, and you must come back and reap the rewards of your life.”

Van Howe recoiled when the Rider walked toward him, but he couldn’t run. He couldn’t make his legs move. McMillan, Cribbs, and the others could only watch the spectacle, entranced. The Rider put a hand on van Howe’s shoulder and the hanged man shrieked a soul-chilling shriek. The flames in the lamps flickered and threatened to go out. For a moment darkness flooded the room. “No! No! I got out! I earned it!”

“You’ve only earned what you’re going back to, John,” the Rider responded as he walked van Howe back outside. Van Howe’s legs moved as though he wasn’t the one controlling them anymore. The others followed them, peering out over the batwings or through the dingy windows. The Rider mounted his horse and shook the reins. The animal, as black as the Rider’s clothes, turned and began to slowly walk down the street. Van Howe kept pace alongside it, his head hung in defeat. Any desire to escape seemed to have left him. The two quickly became nothing more than shapes in the fog that had rolled in from nowhere; they faded from view a little more with each step, and it wasn’t long before the two shapes vanished completely into the darkness, leaving stillness and silence behind them.

McMillan, Cribbs, and the rest looked outside for a long moment. It wasn’t long after van Howe and the Rider had vanished that the fog lifted. The people of the saloon turned from the outside and returned to their activities. None of them could remember why they were staring out into the dead night.

Patch 4.2 has been live for a little over a week now, and I’ve had a chance to examine some of the new content. By “some,” I mean the new daily hubs. I’m enjoying them so far; I think they did a good job showing the attempts to hold off the assault in Hyjal while at the same time establishing a foothold in the Firelands. I look forward to seeing how the story develops as the quests progress. A couple of the vendors at the end even have items I could use.

It’s pretty unlikely that I’ll be seeing the Firelands raid anytime soon. I’ve resigned myself to the fact that my hunter’s guild is dead; most nights it consists of one other person and I on, and we keep mostly to ourselves save the occasional congratulating for an achievement. Rith’s on a road trip with her family; I may move my hunter over to her guild when she gets back, we’ll see. I haven’t done any dungeons since the Heroic I mentioned in my last WoW post. They may not be as difficult as they were at the beginning of the expansion, but I still hear enough horror stories to make me hesitant to do them with complete strangers. As much as I’d like to see that content, the potential stress isn’t worth it. I have to laugh when I realize that content that’s “current” for me has been old hat to most people for a while now, almost to the point that Wrath Heroics were, if the anecdotes are to be believed. I admit that it’s nice not having to always set aside blocks of time each week; there are times when it’s good to be able to just hop on when I feel like it for how long I feel like it, but it’s hard not to get a little jealous sometimes when I hear people talk about raids and hard modes and the like. Granted, I was never in a guild that did hard modes, but I can’t help but have little twinges of envy every now and then.

I like to do the best that I can with what I have, though, even when the most challenging thing I typically do is a quest wherein I have to kill an elite. It’s a bit disappointing, however, that the majority of the resources that I find are designed around what’s best for endgame: tailoring a build around a certain hard mode boss fight, reforging based on raid-level gear, that kind of thing. It’s been rather difficult to find out how which stats I should favor given my hunter’s spec and item level, or how to best approach tanking on my 83 death knight. The closest that I’ve been able to find is Mr. Robot, though I have to take its word that the information it gives me is accurate.

None of this should be interpreted as complaining; I still like the game and have plenty to do. It just feels odd to be as out of the loop as I am in terms of content seen.

Rays of the sun, rising over the hills, sliced through the clouds and shone down on Indigo, warming the chill spring air. The cow town was just beginning to awaken, and the streets of the modest burg were slowly starting to liven. Soon the town would be abuzz with activity, from shopkeepers selling their goods, to punchers coming in for supplies, to men passing through looking for work. Visitors were common in Indigo from dawn until dusk, that time of year, and so no one paid much attention when the five men rode slowly in from the east, even at the early hour.

They had the brims of their hats pulled low over their faces and they moved their eyes back and forth from one side of the street to the other, taking in every detail that they could. It wasn’t the most noteworthy of towns, little more than one wide main road with a single cross street that divided the town roughly into quarters. The main street was where the majority of the businesses stood. Two saloons competed with each other on either side of the street; painted ladies on the balcony of one of them called shrilly and without answer to the five strangers as they rode past. A bank stood in the middle of the town, its thick stone walls rising proudly and conspicuously toward the sky, higher than any other building save the church near the western end of town. A two-story hotel advertised soft beds and clean sheets. The wares of the three stores added up to just about anything a person could need, and the smells coming from the small restaurant next to one of them reminded the five of the meager breakfast that they’d eaten.

“I want somethin’ t’ eat, Stu,” one of the men said dejectedly in a deep, rumbling voice. He was tall and thickly-built; his body strained against the confines of his clothes, which had to be custom-tailored to begin with. His bulk was a combination of muscle and fat, and if he were any heavier his horse would have been unable to carry him. He lifted the battered brim of his old hat and looked at his boss with small, dark eyes under hairless brows. “We ain’t had nothin’ each but a cold biscuit, an’ I’m hongry.”

Stu Matthews turned his head and glared at the big man. “You knew the plan before we even set out, Terence. Pat laid everything out right in front of us; it won’t work if we stop so you can fill your fat stomach.”

“Yeah, but—”

“‘But,’ nothing. We play our cards right and we’ll be in and out in less than half an hour. Then you’ll be able to eat all you want. Okay?”

Terence Johnson cast his eyes down and nodded; his stubbly jowls shook with the motion. “Okay,” he said sadly.

Matthews smiled. His teeth were bright against the tan of his smooth young skin. “Good.” He turned away from Johnson and went back to watching the street. “Keep an eye out for law, everyone. We shouldn’t have to worry much this early, but it doesn’t hurt to be careful.”

Sean Cartwright rode up alongside Johnson and put a hand on the big man’s shoulder. “Buck up, Terence. We need you all here, got it? This won’t work if you’re in there all mopin’.”

Johnson grunted. “Okay.”

Cartwright patted Johnson’s shoulder and smiled as warmly as he could manage behind his thick, unruly growth of black whiskers. “That’s a boy, there. Tell you what. We get this all done an’ split up, I’ll buy you the biggest supper you ever ate.”

Johnson’s eyes lit up and he smiled widely. “You mean it? Aw, yer th’ best, Sean.”

“I sure am,” Cartwright replied with a grin. “An’ don’t you forget it.”

Cartwright’s brother Jim looked at him askew as he fell back a horse length. “You ain’t really gonna buy that stupid fat fuck anythin’, are you?” he asked in a fierce whisper.

Sean chuckled and spat. “Naw,” he chuckled softly. “But we can’t have him cryin’ in the saddle when we need him in there with as many marbles as he’s got left.”

Jim scowled at Johnson’s back. “Son of a bitch is lucky he’s strong as he is; he wouldn’t be worth moose piss otherwise. I swear he’s lucky he remembers his own name.”

Sean laughed softly. “I bet he would if we didn’t call him by it all the damn time.”

“Enough talk,” Matthews said sharply as he reined in before the looming front of the bank. “We’re here. Everyone remember your places. In and out. Nothing funny, nothing different from the plan, and we’ll be out before these bastards know what hit them.” He stepped down from the saddle, his boots kicking up pockets of dry dust, followed by the other four. Johnson grunted when his feet hit the ground. Matthews pulled the rawhide hammer thong from his pistol and loosened the gun in its holster. He looked each of his men in the eye. “Don’t just stand there with your thumbs up your asses,” he snarled softly, his voice coming out in a sharp hiss. “Let’s go.” Jim Cartwright pulled a shotgun from his saddle boot and followed Matthews to the thick oak door with his brother and Johnson. The fifth man took his position on a bench not far from the bank’s door, his pistol close at hand but hidden beneath his jacket. He leaned back and put his scuffed boots on the railing on the edge of the boardwalk, looking as natural as he could but keeping two careful eyes out for anything about which he would need to warn the others inside.

Matthews pulled the door open and stepped inside. The others came close behind and spread out, guns drawn. There were only four other people in the wide, lamp-lit main room of the bank at that hour: a guard just inside the door, the teller, and two customers at the counter. Jim Cartwright quickly struck the guard in the temple with the stock of his shotgun and the man fell to the ground, unconscious and bloody, before he realized what had happened. He pulled the guard’s .44 from its holster and stuck it behind his belt. He leveled the Greener at the teller and smiled. “Howdy,” he crooned. “Nice mornin’, ain’t it?”

The teller slowly lowered his hand below the counter. Matthews strode forward quickly and stuck the barrel of his .45 inches from the man’s face. “Best not,” he drawled. “Jim, close the curtains and lock the door. Terence, you put these two gents against the wall there and keep an eye on them. Sean, check them for guns.”

“Okay,” Johnson rumbled. He gestured to the wall with his Walker Colt. His finger only barely fit through the trigger guard. “Move,” he ordered. He pulled the hammer back. “You stay still an’ don’t move.”

“Keep yer mouth shut an’ just watch ‘em,” Jim Cartwright spat at him.

“Okay.”

Matthews smiled at the teller and arched an eyebrow as he looked to the safe in the back of the room. “Well, then,” he said softly and pleasantly, “now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, why don’t you go open that safe and give me all of the money you have in there in nice big bags?”

The teller’s face twitched and he stepped back. He pulled at his collar, sweat beading on his face. He swallowed hard. “And if I don’t?” His face trembled, betraying his false courage.

Matthews frowned and made a sound deep in his throat. “You think your life is worth that much, do you? Do they really pay you enough to die for other people’s money? Let’s be realistic, friend.” He licked his lips and nodded to the safe. He eased the hammer back on his pistol, the cylinder turning with a slow click, click. “Do the smart thing.” The teller nodded weakly and staggered to the safe on wobbly legs. “That’s a good boy.” He turned his head slightly. “How’s it look, Sean?” he called over his shoulder.

Sean Cartwright pulled the curtain of one of the windows aside an inch and peered out. “Looks nice an’ quiet so far, Stu,” he answered.

“Good. Keep an eye out in case Ed misses something out there.”

“Right.”

The teller fumbled with the safe. “You’d best make it quick, friend,” Matthews called in almost a singsong voice. “I said it’s not worth your life, but I can sure as hell put a few bullets in your legs if you don’t hurry up. Hell, I may just change my mind altogether. Quit playing and just open the safe.”

The lock opened with a loud clack. “See how nice and smooth things can go?” Matthews said with a wry grin. His eyes widened and his smile grew when he saw the stacks of paper bills and glimmering cold inside. “My, that’s pretty,” he cried. “Isn’t that just damn pretty, boys?”

“Yeah,” Jim Cartwright answered with a lustful gleam in his eyes. “Beautiful.”

“Prettiest damn thing I ever seen,” Sean Cartwright mused.

“You bastards,” one of the customers growled from against the wall. “You think you can just come and steal this town’s hard-earned money?”

Matthews stepped away from the counter and walked slowly to the man, his footsteps loud on the hard wooden floor. Sean Cartwright chuckled. Jim Cartwright spat on the floor. Johnson smiled. Matthews tossed the man’s hat aside and grabbed him by the hair with his left hand. He threw him to the floor. “I do, as a matter of fact,” he said calmly. “I also think I can do this.” He struck the side of the man’s face hard with the toe of his boot. The man cried out and lay writhing on the floor, his cheek and mouth bloody. Johnson laughed. “What do you know?” Matthews reflected, his voice like ice. “Guess I thought right. You want to try and stop me?” The man said nothing else. Matthews waved his hand as though shooing away a fly. “Jim, prop this son of a bitch back up against the wall.”

The teller began filling the last bag. “Best hurry up,” Sean Cartwright called from the window. “This town’s wakin’ up quick. We’re sure to get noticed leavin’ as it is.”

“Right,” Matthews grunted in reply. He pointed his gun at the teller. “You heard the man. Why don’t you start packing that bag like the devil’s biting your ass, hmm?”

The teller nodded, quickened his pace, and soon had the last bag filled. He tossed the five of them onto the counter. “Thank you for cooperating,” Matthews said with a cold smile and a twinkle in his eyes. “Didn’t that make everything go so much more nicely?” Without another word, he leveled his pistol and fired, sending a bullet between the teller’s eyes and out the back of his head, splattering the wall behind him with blood and brains. He died with shock on his face.

As the teller fell, Johnson quickly and with a chortle shot the two customers in the backs of their heads; their limp bodies slid noisily to heaps on the floor, leaving scarlet streaks on the wall. Sean Cartwright killed the unconscious guard with an unceremonious bullet to the brain. Matthews holstered his pistol and tossed a bag of money to each of the Cartwrights. He gave Johnson two and hoisted the last one over his left shoulder. “Time to get the hell out, boys,” he said with urgency in his voice. “Someone’s bound to have heard those shots.”

Sean Cartwright threw the door open and they ran out, leaping onto their saddles with as much haste as they could muster with the heavy bags of cash in their arms. Already people were coming out onto the street and flocking toward the bank to see what had happened. Matthews jerked his pistol from its holster and fired two quick warning shots at the closest group of people, sending them scattering for cover with shouts of surprise and fear. “Ed, come on!” he shouted, but Ed Jennings was already halfway to his saddle as the call came. He grabbed the reins, jumped onto the back of his horse, and turned it as Johnson threw one of the money bags to him.

They put spurs to their horses’ flanks and sped out of town, leaving nothing but a thick cloud of throat-scratching dust and four dead, bloody bodies behind them. Someone fired half a dozen shots in vain after them. As the people of Indigo gathered to see what had happened, a single laugh of victory reached their ears from the escaping killers.

*          *          *

The sod-roofed cabin was solidly built out of thick, dark, heavy logs. It was hidden away deep in a dense forest thirteen miles northeast of Indigo at the end of a small ravine. Tall, wide trees grew on three sides of it, hiding and shielding it. The front was accessible only by a narrow winding path that was all but hidden to those unaware of its existence. A stream ran thirty feet behind the cabin, and there was an abundance of small game to provide food. Patrick Beck didn’t know who had built the cabin, nor did he know when or why, but it was old and, most importantly, was abandoned when he had found it seven months earlier. It had only taken a minimal amount of work to get it habitable again, and he had taken the effort to further hide the path leading to it. He didn’t make a habit of staying there very often; he preferred the civilization of towns, where he didn’t have to work for every meal, but the cabin was as good a hideout as he could ever hope to have.

He stood outside the cabin, watching the path and listening for anyone who might be approaching. Broken patches of sunlight shone down through the thick branches above. He cursed under his breath as he rolled a cigarette. He was the kind of man who rarely got a second look. He was of average height, with a stomach that stuck out just a little over his belt. He had a pudgy face covered with a two-day growth of pale yellow whiskers. His bottom lip was conspicuously prominent and a second chin quivered when he spoke. The only things overtly threatening about him were his eyes, cold and blue, which gleamed with a deep intelligence and malice. The .44 low and tied down on his left leg was well-used, and had seen the deaths of a dozen men in its day.

He struck a match and lit his cigarette He pulled deeply and slowly blew out a thick cloud of smoke. The rustling of leaves met his ears and he looked to the path, narrowing his eyes and putting a hand on the butt of his pistol. Soon he could hear voices and Terence Johnson’s heavy breathing and he grunted, taking his hand off the gun. The five men came into view around a bend in the path not far from the cabin and he took a long final drag on the cigarette before dropping it to the ground and grinding the life out of it with the toe of his boot. “You’re late!” he called. It was a deeper voice than would be expected from a man who looked like he did. “Was there trouble?”

“No, we didn’t have any trouble,” Matthews replied as they reined in on their tired, lathered horses. He swung down from the saddle, took his hat off, and wiped the sweat from his forehead with the sleeve of his shirt. “We just made extra sure to cover our tracks.”

“I see,” Beck muttered. “It went off as planned, I take it?”

“Like a song,” Matthews said with a grin as he held up the bag of money he carried. Beck looked to the others and their bags of cash as they dismounted.

“Very good, very good,” Beck said happily with a rumbling drawl. He looked Matthews in the eyes and narrowed his. “You didn’t spend any, did you?”

Matthews shook his head. “Not a penny. And neither did any of them.”

Beck nodded. “Good.” He cocked his head toward the cabin’s door. “Come on inside.” He opened the door and stepped inside. The others followed him, Johnson stooping to avoid hitting his head on the top of the doorframe. It was a one-room cabin, but that one room was big enough to accommodate the five of them. A cot sat against the far wall and a fire roared in the big stove to the side of the room. A table and two chairs sat in the middle of it. The table was bare save for cigarette makings and a few battered tin cups. “I made coffee,” Beck said, gesturing without looking to the black pot on the stove.

“Any whiskey?” Jim Cartwright asked, looking around. “Never been much of a coffee drinker.”

“I made coffee,” Beck repeated, casting him a fiery glance. “Help yourselves.”

Jim swallowed and grinned sheepishly. “Right. Thanks, Pat.” He didn’t get any coffee.

Beck pulled one of the rickety chairs away from the table and sat down. Matthews dragged the other along the dirt floor and sat down beside him. “Put the bags on the table,” Beck ordered, removing the cigarette makings and sweeping the cups to the floor. He smiled at the money bags when they all sat before him and grinned at Matthews. “Not bad for a morning’s work, eh, Stu?”

Matthews nodded and chuckled. “Not bad at all, Pat. We got us a good crew here.” He arched an eyebrow and looked at the four men standing awkwardly in front of them. “We couldn’t have done it without them.”

“I’m sure.” Beck opened one of the bags and carefully emptied it onto the table. He licked his fat lips at the sight and took in a deep breath. “Damn, but that’s pretty,” he muttered. He cleared his throat and picked up a stack of bills, ruffling it with his thumb. “Like music.” He set the money down and carefully stacked the rest of it while the others watched, dividing the bundled stacks of paper dollars from the gold.

“I never seed that much money afore,” Johnson rumbled. He smiled. “There must be a hunnerd dollars there!”

“Christ, Terence,” Jim Cartwright said with disgust, “didn’t you ever learn to count? Never mind. You’re so stupid you’d think ‘red’ was a number if I said it was.” Johnson grunted and looked in silence at the money as Beck sorted it.

Beck sucked on a tooth for a moment, looking at Johnson with a wry half-smile. “Well, now,” he said loudly. “Now that we have it all stacked up, it’s time to divvy it up and give everyone their fair share.”

“‘Bout time,” Sean Cartwright muttered. Beck cast him a glance but said nothing.

“The gold goes to Stu and me,” Beck said, placing a hand over the shining stacks of coins. “We agreed on that at the beginning.” The others nodded and grunted their acknowledgement. Beck scooped the coins into one of the bags and set it on the ground next to him. “Now,” he continued, lacing his fingers together on the table and looking the others in the eyes one by one, “we had originally agreed that we’d split the paper dollars six ways between all of us, but I’ve been doing some thinking while you were out taking care of this job.”

“What kind of thinkin’?” Ed Jennings interrupted from the back, moving forward a step. Matthews pushed his chair back a few inches and his hand moved unnoticed toward the butt of his pistol. He watched Jennings and the others with careful, hawk-like eyes.

“I was thinking,” Beck continued, leering at Jennings and making no effort to hide his contempt, “that since I was the one who planned this whole thing, and Stu’s been my right hand in these things for a hell of a lot longer than we’ve known any of you, I’m changing the distribution of the money.”

“What do you mean?” Jim Cartwright demanded with suspicion in his eyes. “Changin’ how?”

Beck’s lip twitched in a slight smile. “I’m the one who planned all of this. I scouted out that godforsaken town, I checked inside the bank, and I looked at what the people’s habits seemed to be. If it weren’t for me, you wouldn’t be seeing a cent of this money. And since none of this would have happened without me, I don’t think that just a sixth of the money is fair to me. So I’m taking half. Stu’s getting a quarter of it. You can divide the rest however you want.”

Matthews cackled.

“You son of a bitch,” Jim Cartwright snarled, balling his fists.

“Lying bastards,” his brother hissed.

Johnson took off his hat and scratched his bald head. “Is that still a lot?”

Jennings looked from Matthews to Beck, his eye twitching in anger. “That ain’t right,” he spat. “You know it ain’t. You already got the damn gold!”

“And I’m taking half the paper money too,” Beck replied, inching his left hand below the tabletop toward his gun. “I’m the boss here, don’t forget. I decide how the money gets spread. You knew that when you hooked up with us. A quarter of it spread between the four of you is still plenty fair, I think. It’s better than the nothing you’ll get if you keep pushing me.”

“Fair, my ass,” Sean Cartwright swore.

“Pat’s the boss,” Matthews said with a twisted smile. “He makes the rules. I don’t recall any of this ever coming up for a vote. Do you?”

“Pat’s smart,” Johnson said slowly, turning his hat in his hands and staring at the stacks of money on the table. “Maybe he’s right. Maybe he deserves more. He didn’t plan it, we wouldn’t have nothin’ at all.”

Beck grinned wickedly and licked his lips. “Well, I guess you’re not as stupid as I gave you credit for, Terence.” Johnson grinned as the insult went over his head.

Jim Cartwright pushed past Johnson. “Don’t be dumb, Terence,” he growled, staring at Beck. “He’s tryin’ to cheat us out of our share of the money! We did all the work! It was our asses that was on the line back there while he was sittin’ his in this cabin! Yeah, he planned it, but if it weren’t for us, we wouldn’t never got the money!”

Johnson said nothing. Sean Cartwright stepped up next to his brother. Matthews and Beck stared at them, and Ed Jennings took advantage of the lapse in attention to slide slowly and silently to the other side of the room, keeping to the relative darkness of the back.

Beck slowly rose to his feet, followed by Matthews. They held their hands close to the butts of their guns. The Cartwrights glared back with hateful eyes, and Johnson put his hat back on his head, looking at the two pairs of men in confusion. “We still gonna get some money?”

“You really want to do it this way?” Beck asked Jim Cartwright. “Because if you do, I can tell you right now that you and your brother are going to be dead on the floor and you’ll end up with the same thing you had before I took pity on your sorry stable-mucking asses: nothing. Is that what you want? Because it won’t make a lick of difference to Stu and me.”

“You ain’t got more right to that money than us,” Sean Cartwright said. “We ain’t gonna let you cheat us out of ours.”

Beck smiled and chuckled. “If you think you’re fast enough.”

Matthews spat on the floor and Ed Jennings, in the shadows cast by the fire, glared at his back in silence. A shot each to the back and Matthews and Beck wouldn’t be able to cheat anyone again. He wrapped his fingers around the butt of his pistol and began to slowly ease it out of its holster. “I didn’t forget about you, Ed!” Matthews cried with a laugh, spinning around as his pistol appeared in his hand, belching fire and smoke with a deafening roar. Jennings grunted and his pistol fell back into the holster as Matthews’s bullet hit him in the left side of the chest. He fell to the floor with a groan, kicked once, and did not move or speak again.

Johnson gave out a surprised yell. The Cartwrights reached for their guns. They were fast. Matthews jerked the hammer back on his pistol and quickly turned back around, firing at Jim Cartwright at the same time that Jim fired at him. Matthews’s bullet hit Jim in the chest, knocking him to the ground with a weak moan. His gun hit the floor with a dull thud and Jim Cartwright’s heart stopped beating. Jim’s bullet struck Matthews in the throat and he spun to the ground, gurgling and choking on his own blood. He died quickly.

Sean Cartwright was fast, but Pat Beck was faster. Sean’s gun was just rising when Beck’s pistol roared twice, sending a pair of bullets into the younger man’s chest. Sean tried in vain to raise his arm to fire, but the limb refused to move. With a final muffled curse he fell forward onto the table, toppling it under his weight and sending stacks of bills into the air and onto the floor. The sack of gold coins fell and several spilled out onto the dirt. Sean Cartwright was dead before he hit the dirt.

“You killed Sean!” Johnson cried out, as though he had just realized what had happened in the last few seconds. He grabbed his pistol and jerked it free of its holster.

Beck fired two shots as quickly as he could work the hammer and trigger. The bullets hit Johnson in the chest and stains of blood began to spread quickly on his shirt, but the huge man refused to fall; he only staggered back a step. With simple-minded fury he raised his gun and fired a shot, striking Beck in the chest and dropping him to the ground. Beck’s pistol slid from his limp fingers and he soundlessly worked his mouth a few times before the light in his eyes went out forever.

Johnson slid his pistol back into its holster with weak, trembling fingers and looked down at his chest to see what was causing the throbbing pain and saw the wet crimson stains. His jaw trembled. “Okay,” he grunted softly before he toppled to the floor and breathed his last, his sightless eyes open in childlike surprise.

The cloud of gunsmoke slowly cleared away and the echoes of the shots faded. No one, save the animals outside, had heard the seconds-long struggle, and not even they had seen it through the thick, heavy walls of the cabin hidden away deep in the forest. The stacks of bills sat there in the silence, worth nothing now to men who thought that it was worth their lives. The firelight danced on the glittering surfaces of the gold.