The Sheriff of Yrnameer (33 page)

“A Big Red Lifter?” asked Cole, trying to control his excitement.

“Yes, I suppose you could call it that.”

“No no no. Was it that model? A Big Red Lifter?”

“Well, I’m not sure. How would I know?”

“Was it big and red, with
BIG RED LIFTER
, trademark, on the side?”

“Why, yes, I guess it was. Is that important? Hey, where you going?”

˙  ˙  ˙

The next morning Bacchi was gone. He took with him a baiyo, a gun, food, and water. More tellingly, he’d also taken the coordinates that Kenneth had provided that indicated the location of Runk’s encampment.

“I knew it,” fumed Cole, pacing the floor of the jail. Nora, Joshua, and Mayor Kimber watched him silently. “I
knew
it! I shouldn’t have trusted him!”

He angrily kicked the door of the cell shut, then had to catch it when it rebounded back in his face.

“Stupid door!” He slammed it again with the same result, then repeated the gesture a third time.

“Here, Sheriff, let me get that for you,” said Joshua as Cole wound up again, gently taking the door from him and easing it shut.

“You think he’ll come back?” asked the mayor.

“Come back? Come
back
?” said Cole. “Yes, he’ll come back, with Runk and all his men.”

“You think that’s where he went?” asked the mayor.

“Where else,” said Nora. “He’s saving his own skin.”

“He sold us out,” said Cole. “He’s heading to Runk right now.”

“Cole,” said Nora, “he knows everything. All our plans, everything.”

“I.
Know
.”

“So what do we do?” asked Kimber.

Cole stopped pacing and turned toward them, meeting their expectant gazes. “I—”

“You’re going after him!” blurted Joshua.

Cole grimaced in frustration. “Joshua …,” he said, his eyes closed. God, the kid could ruin a moment. He shook his head and took a moment. “I’m going after him.”

“I
knew it
!” said Joshua.

Mayor Kimber agreed that it would be best to keep it quiet for now.

“We’ll keep it simple,” he said.

Cole knew Joshua would want to come, and was ready for it. You have to stay, he was planning to say. While I’m gone, you’ll have to be in charge. Except the kid had disappeared, gone off somewhere to sulk.

As he walked out the front gate, leading a baiyo, Cole murmured to Nora, “You’re in charge.”

“Of course,” she said.

Cole waited until he was several hundred meters away from the village before he tried to mount the baiyo. On his fourth try he got it, lying forward on its neck and clinging tightly until it stopped spinning in agitated circles. He then rode unsteadily away toward the east.

About a kilometer outside of town he passed a copse of trees. About ten minutes after that, Joshua silently led his baiyo out of the grove and climbed effortlessly onto its back. Then he set out after Cole, taking care that his pace matched that of the sheriff.

It was a hard three days’ ride, leaving Cole sunburned and exhausted and so sore that the agony of staying in the saddle was exceeded only by the agony of walking. The landscape grew increasingly harsh as he moved eastward, the green fading to green brown to brown green and then finally just to brown. He did not catch up to Bacchi.

By the evening of the third day he was past the foothills, the mountains rising before him to jagged, unfriendly peaks. Massive boulders littered the landscape, remnants of some past seismic event. The vegetation was sparse and spiky.

He had paused by one of the boulders to drink from his canteen and check his coordinates when he heard the Firestick 21 (“Scare them just by chambering a shell”). He took the appropriate action, which was to freeze.

“Looking for something?” said a voice.

There was a gun pushed against the side of his head. He wasn’t sure what it was, but it was big and heavy and at this range the caliber probably didn’t matter so much.

Runk’s face loomed in front of his own. It was an exceptionally repellent face, pockmarked and scarred and disfigured, like something that had been gnawed on and spat out and had emerged tougher and angrier for the experience. It was an outer ugliness, Cole knew, that did not quite do justice to what lay within.

The lookout who captured him had roughly tied a blindfold over
his eyes and marched him up a narrow rocky path, prodding him in the back with the Firestick 21 as Cole stumbled along, trying to spot stones and rough spots through the small space between the blindfold and his nose. After a while the path grew steeper, then leveled out, then descended, switching back and forth several times. Cole heard voices and laughter and was aware of a commotion around him as Runk’s men gathered to examine the captive. Then the blindfold was removed and he was face-to-face with Runk himself.

“Well well well,” said Runk. “Hello, Cole.”

Cole fought to keep from gagging on Runk’s breath.

“Hello, Runk,” he wheezed.

“And good-bye, Cole,” said Runk. “Shoot him.”

Cole heard the hammer pulled back and squeezed his eyes tight, then yelped as the firing pin hit an empty chamber with a loud
click
.

Runk and his men roared with laughter, falling all over each other at the hilarity of the scene.

“Ha ha ha ha ha!
I was just playing with you, Cole!” said Runk, slapping him several times on the cheek in a friendly manner. Cole barely felt the blows—Runk’s hand was about the size of a small coin. In this it was proportionate to the rest of his body, which measured slightly more than twelve inches in height. But perched as he always was on Altung’s massive, rocklike shoulder, his eyes were level with Cole’s, and about three feet higher if Altung got off his knees and stood up. They were, thought Cole, the carbon-based version of Peter the ‘Puter.

“Ohh, damn, it’s just like old times, huh, Cole?” said Runk, still laughing.

“Yep. Boy, I sure miss those halcyon prison days …,” said Cole.

“So, tell me,” said Runk, “what is this I hear about making a deal?”

It was later and they were sitting by a campfire. They’d offered him rotten bread and stringy dried meat and harsh liquor and some qhag to chew if he wanted it. He declined. The rest of Runk’s men where sitting around their own fires, eating, cleaning weapons, discussing whatever desperate criminals discussed in the requisite coarse voices.

The camp was in a flat, sandy depression, surrounded on three sides by towering cliffs that were dotted with caves. The only way in was through a narrow pass, easily defended. The living quarters consisted of ramshackle structures set randomly throughout the camp, half building, half tent. It seemed senseless to Cole to set up in such a barren, hostile environment, but that was Runk.

Cole had looked around but hadn’t spotted Bacchi. He casually asked Runk if he’d seen him.

“No,” said Runk. “But I’ll kill him if I do.”

Earlier, the Yoin had noticed him and approached.

“Why, it’s the poet!” he said.

Someone else laughed.

“He’s not a poet.”

The Yoin turned sharply toward the cynic.

“Have you ever heard his work?” demanded the Yoin, his hand moving toward his weapon.

“Well, I—”

“HOW do you KNOW he’s NOT a POET if you HAVEN’T HEARD HIS WORK?”

“It’s just that—”

The Yoin equivalent of an angry letter to the editor broke out. When it was over and the erstwhile critic was being carried away, the Yoin turned to Cole and said, “My apologies. May I have your autograph?”

“So tell me,” said Runk, pausing to spit out a tiny droplet of qhag-stained saliva. “Why would I trust you?”

He was sitting on Altung’s lap now. From somewhere up above, Altung expelled a large blop of qhag juice, which hit the fire with a heavy splat and sent steam hissing forth.

“Careful, idiot!” said Runk. Altung rumbled something in response. Cole was never sure if he could actually speak, or even think. He had, however, once seen him punch his fist directly through a singulite-reinforced safe door.

“As I was saying, why should I trust you?”

“Because you know me, Runk. I’m as dishonest as you are, and a complete coward. Why would I take a risk for these people?”

Runk laughed, then spat again. Altung followed suit, sending another gout of steam up from the fire.

“Idiot!” said Runk. “Still, why should I help you?”

“Because I’ll be helping you.”

“Why do I need your help? Those people are weak. We could ride over there now and kill everyone, barely break a nornog.”

Cole wasn’t sure what a nornog was, but he understood the general gist.

“You’re wrong,” said Cole. “You don’t know what they have planned for you. They’ve got tricks and traps and all sorts of stuff. You’ll lose a lot of people.”

Runk appeared to think about it. He looked around the camp, as if calculating acceptable casualties.

“A
lot
of people,” said Cole again. Runk was still thinking. “And you might not come home with the food.”

This appeared to have some effect.

“Do it my way,” said Cole. “You still get to have your fun—you ride in there, terrorize everyone, maybe shoot one or two if they resist, and in the end? You get the food. Or maybe they’re not interested in that?” Cole jerked his head in the direction of Runk’s men. “Maybe they’re patient enough that it doesn’t matter.”

Cole watched as one of the creatures sitting close to a nearby fire took a bite out of his meal, growled, and dumped it on the flames.

“Nah, they probably wouldn’t mind,” said Cole.

Runk spat. Altung spat, splattering Cole’s boots.

“So what do you want?” asked Runk.

“You have a Big Red Lifter. They built them with a spare Artemis coil. I need it to repair my ship and get off the planet.”

“And in return?”

“You get your food and have your fun, risk free.”

He told them everything. The plan, the preparations, the traps, everything, drawing diagrams so there would be no mistakes. The next morning they sent him on his way. Altung, at Runk’s direction, handed him the Artemis coil, the device about the size and shape of a doughnut.

“Thank you,” said Cole. “Now remember: they’re expecting you in five days. I take the watch the night before the fourth day. You come in the morning, early. The gate will be open. No one will
be awake. They won’t have time to mount a defense. But listen,” he said, and leaned in close so he could whisper to Runk, “I’m leaving. But if you break your promise and hurt anyone, I’ll be back.”

He leaned back. Runk was staring back at him with a flat, dead-eyed expression.

“I’m
kidding
!” said Cole. Runk’s laughter was still ringing in his ears as he rode off.

Joshua saw it all.

He had followed Cole the whole way from the village, always staying just barely within sight, doubting that Cole would bother to look back and see if he was being followed. At night he shivered under a blanket, not wanting to build a fire. Every so often Cole would get too far ahead and Joshua would dismount, searching the horizon with the binoculars and scanning the ground for tracks. By the second day it occurred to him that Cole hadn’t once done that himself and he wondered at it, trying to figure out how Cole was able to track Bacchi with such confidence, and why he wasn’t riding faster.

A few kilometers outside of the camp he dismounted. He took the saddle off his baiyo and hid it between some boulders, along with his bag. Then he let the baiyo wander free, knowing it would come when he whistled.

He slipped into the camp when Cole was captured, using the commotion to pass unnoticed. When Cole had his conversation with Runk at the campfire, he had been hiding in the shadows of one of the tents. When Altung was handing the Artemis coil to Cole the next morning, Joshua was perched on a rock, peeking over the edge, heart pounding.

He didn’t want to believe it. He couldn’t.

Tears were rolling down his cheeks as he watched Cole ride off. He waited for Altung to carry Runk away, then rolled over to get up. There were three gun barrels pointing at him.

Bacchi was waiting for Runk in his tent when he returned. He was sprawled out on a pile of rugs and pillows, pouring himself some
wine from a flagon. He barely looked up when Altung pulled back the tent flap and entered, depositing Runk on a specially constructed chair.

“Enjoying the wine?” asked Runk.

“You know where that cute little detour he outlined takes you?” said Bacchi, ignoring the question. “Right past the afterburners of his ship. He’s not planning to fly anywhere. He wants the Artemis coil so he can fire up the engines just as you pass, and then fry all of you.” He sipped the wine. “This stuff is crap.”

They threw Joshua onto the dirt in the center of the camp. A ring formed around him, the men laughing and jeering at him. Someone kicked him in the ribs and he gasped, curling into a ball. Another kick landed. Someone else produced a long, curved knife.

“Enough!” he heard a voice say. “Get him to his feet.”

Altung reached down with one hand and lifted Joshua to his feet by his head. Runk examined him, scowling.