The Incorruptibles Read Free

water even while arrow-struck. One shot after another, he levered the rounds, his hands moving blindingly fast.
    He stopped firing only when it was clear they were gone. Disappeared into the grasses, subsumed by sky, eaten by earth. Who knows how they move? They appear and disappear. They’re beyond man. Beyond dvergar .
    ‘Ia-damn. Ia-damn.’ He said it over and over. He was pale then, and I couldn’t tell if it was from the arrow wound or the after-effects of gunwork. I’d felt each of those rounds as they loosed. I didn’t like to imagine their effect on him. ‘Got to follow …’
    ‘No, you’re struck.’
    ‘You see that other one?’ Fisk tried to push me away. ‘Carrying something. Maybe a settler. Ia dammit, he took a settler.’
    ‘Nothing you can do about it. Here.’ I grabbed his arm and laid him down. He still clutched the carbine. No telling how many bullets were left or how much damage he’d done his immortal soul.
    There wasn’t much blood coming from his leg, so it didn’t look as if he was going to expire from blood loss.
    ‘We gotta get back to the Cornelian . We’ll get this out.’
    He groaned, pushed himself up off the ground and hobbled west, toward the White Mountains and our horses.
    He stopped and turned to me. ‘Don’t let all this auroch meat go to waste, Shoestring.’
    Opening my oiled satchel and withdrawing my longknife, I went to the nearest auroch, still warm to the touch. I took its tongue and liver and, moving to the next animal did the same. I harvested the carcasses until my satchel was full of meat, bloody, still warm.
    Then I jogged to catch up with Fisk, the eyes and breath of the plains upon me.

THREE
    Banty was wet and miserable by the time we returned to the Cornelian and the gurgling waters of the Big Rill.
    The leaden clouds had opened up, the sun slipped behind the mountains, and the land was dark and rainswept.
    Banty’d managed to start a fire and set up a lean-to in the lee of a bank break. The ponies, still tethered together, stood stamping and steaming on the sand. A johnboat lay on the shore, while a legionary and two lascars moved among the ponies with a feedbag.
    We came into the firelight and Cimbri, the legion prefect, raised his whiskered head. He wore his oiled greatcloak and uniform. His phalerae from old campaigns, those brass and golden gilt plates indicating his rank and accomplishments, peeked from the open flaps of his coat – small, but conspicuous, and absolutely necessary to enforce his command, given his low birth. Cimbri’s wide-brimmed hat bore the crossed spears – two pila – of the classic Ruman legionary of old, before Hellfire and artillery had been introduced. A bragging stick was jammed into his belt alongside his six-guns and longknife. Cimbri looked as irritated as Banty looked miserable.
    ‘There you are, dwarf. Where’s the pistolero?’
    By then I was leading Fisk’s black, who kept tugging at the reins and pulling away until I had to hobble her front legs. Fisk was awake, but he’d gone into some kind of muttering dream while his leg oozed blood. I keep a flask of cacique on my person for medicinal purposes – solely medicinal, on my honour. He had drained it the moment I’d handed it to him.
    Cimbri noticed Fisk, slumped on the black, and raised his eyebrows.
    ‘Trouble?’
    I hopped off Bess, and moved to help Fisk down. Cimbri stood up, kicked at Banty, and said, ‘Fool. Go help.’
    We got Fisk under the lean-to and I retrieved the whiskey from the packhorse that carried what Bess wouldn’t. Fisk was delirious, almost insensible, but not quite far enough gone not to take a swallow. A man’s got to be pretty far gone not to swallow when whiskey is at hand.
    I gathered up my barber’s bag, scissors and clean linens, pliers and hacksaws, and spread out them out on a scrap of clean canvas. I split Fisk’s britches from cuff to crotch and pulled the flaps out of the way. There was blood, but not too much of