Blackpowder Demon
by K. D. Julicher
The evening breeze kept Miya’s nostrils free of the acrid stench of burned demon-flesh as she sliced into the fresh carcass. The gutted monster hung on a rack outside of Lord Eronall’s hunting camp. A pair of flintlocks stood near the rack, ready to grab if the body attracted predators.
Miya tried not to breathe as she worked, slicing through the oily yellow flesh of the demon. She needed to assess which of the hunters’ runed bullets had done the most damage.
The demon looked like it had been an antelope once, with four long legs ending in delicate cloven hooves. The mutated hooves looked sharp enough to slash through her wool tunic. The horns on the beast’s head twisted around each other, bristling with spikes.
Half a mile beyond the camp, the mountain range reared up out of the grasslands. Thin pine-trees covered the nearer slopes. Long canyons, cast into deep shadow by the afternoon light, snaked their way down from the peaks. Truesilver ore washed down those canyons, to be collected by prospectors from streambeds. More daring miners ventured up into the hills. Many never returned, because wherever there was truesilver you’d find demons.
Miya examined the beast’s body. One of the six bullets had gone straight through the beast, ripping a wound as wide as her fist on the other side. Master Aram would be pleased to know that Lord Eronall’s shot had penetrated the creature. He’d worked hard on runing the bullets for Eronall’s musket. They had twice the truesilver as the other musket balls, and apparently that had been effective. The other holes each were bigger around than her thumb and penetrated through to the inner body cavity.
The fur was charred around one of the smaller holes on the creature’s right flank. Miya worked her blade into the hole until it lodged against the musket ball. Careful to not damage the ball, she levered the bullet out of the demon’s firm flesh. It dropped into her hands, a flattened circle of lead heavy in her palm. She squinted. Some of the truesilver was gone, and one whole side of the ball had mushroomed out. She could tell from the curves of the wind rune it was not Master Aram’s standard demon-banishment recipe; the bullet was neither Aram’s work nor her own. Master Aram might be able to tell more.
Miya turned away from the carcass and found herself face to face with a stranger. She took a step back.
He wore leather leggings and a tunic with a fringe. His skin was deeply tanned, his bright green eyes deep-set in a hard face. His yellow hair was pulled back in a braid, and he was scowling. “That’s my kill,” he said, jabbing a thumb at the demon.
Miya shook her head. “This is Lord Eronall’s trophy.”
“But my kill. I have been tracking him all day,” the man said. “I put a bullet in him yesterday that would have meant his death, sooner or later, and I tracked him here to finish the kill.”
The stranger wasn’t much older than Miya, now that she got a good look at him. His face bore lines of sun and wind, and he spoke oddly.
Miya clenched her hand around the strange bullet she’d taken from the demon. This one must belong to the stranger. She didn’t know whether he was right, that it would have killed the demon.
“You should speak with Lord Eronall’s squire,” she said. “I can take you to him—”
The man’s expression and tone did not change, but Miya caught how his eyes tightened. “No, I will not enter your camp. You are interlopers. Your camp reeks of truesilver. Every greater dire beast for a hundred miles can smell it.”
“Lord Eronall bought wards for the whole camp,” Miya said. She pulled hers from under her tunic and held it out at the end of its thong. “Best he could find in all Theianbridge.”
The stranger threw back his head and laughed. Stung, Miya let her ward drop back to her chest. “Do you know the difference between a fell-touched creature like you killed today and an actual dire beast?” he asked, his keen eyes on her. She flushed under his continued scorn. “The way we trackers know them apart? Dire beast scat is full of demon-wards. You might as well wrap yourself in bacon. Tell your master his scouts have stirred up trouble. Old Three-Eye is awake.”
“Old Three-Eye?” Miya asked, equal parts irritated and worried.
“The true master of these mountains,” the stranger said. “A dire-bear. He has lived ten years in these mountains, and if you know anything about fell-touched creatures that alone should terrify you.”
She shivered. “Fell-touched creatures go demon or die in months.”
“He has absorbed more magic than a dozen lesser creatures, and has still not gone fully demon. You won’t want to be here when he does. He has scented you and he will come.”
If the stranger was telling the truth, they were in terrible danger. Master Aram would know what to do. Miya clenched the bullet she’d taken from the demon’s corpse in her hand like a talisman. “I, I,” she began, and then fled.
“I wouldn’t worry,” Master Aram said. “Lord Eronall’s a skilled hunter. He knows how to defend a camp. Show me this bullet you found.”
Miya handed Master Aram the stranger’s bullet. He set it down on his workbench and reached for his spectacles. Around them, the camp prepared for supper. Miya relaxed at the familiar sounds and smells.
“This is a basic anti-demon ball you can find in any town along the frontier,” he said, peering down at the bullet. “Just wind and common earth, nothing special. Clearly made by some runaway apprentice with barely an ounce of actual talent.” He shoved the ball at her. Miya studied the misshapen bullet on her master’s thick brown palm. The truesilver gleamed, making the runes leap out at her.
“It’s dirt-earth, not earth meaning the world,” she said. She’d heard lectures from Master Aram before about the difference between the two.
“And which rune do we use for demons?” Aram prompted.
Miya sighed. “World, of course. To remind the demon it doesn’t belong here.”
“Exactly!” Aram dropped the ball to his workbench.
“At least the one you made for Lord Eronall worked well,” Miya said. The workbench stood under a canvas pavilion, like a tent but tall and with open sides. A pair of lanterns illuminated the workbench.
“Against a minor fell-beast, yes,” Aram said. He sounded distracted. “A shameful extravagance of truesilver. Maybe it’s the amount of truesilver used, not the runes at all. Wouldn’t that be humiliation for all us gunsmiths, mmm? If all our fancy runes are worth less, literally, than the medium we scribe them with?”
“Do you think the stranger was right?” Miya asked. “About the bear?”
“Hmm? Oh. No doubt there are many dangerous creatures in the mountains.” Master Aram stood back from his workbench and stretched. He blinked. “Goodness, girl, the light’s gone. Let’s leave this puzzle and go eat dinner.” Aram closed up the small chest holding his truesilver. “What was that?”
Miya ducked out of the pavilion as the shrieks rent the evening air. More screams joined in. Across the camp, two hundred feet away, a tent collapsed in a flurry of cloth and poles.
Something roared like an avalanche coming down the mountains as servants appeared from between the tents, running and shouting.
A squire stumbled, and the thing was on him. With a wrench of its jaws and a snap, the creature ripped the squire’s head from his neck and sent it flying. It raised its muzzle, blood dripping from its maw. Two beady yellow eyes with a third eye set between and above them stared out of a long triangular head.
It was longer than the wagons, and even on all fours its head was nearly as high as the row of tents. Dark and furred, long white teeth flashing, it lashed out with a paw and pulled down another tent.
“Run!” Aram bellowed. “That’s a dire-bear!” He took off faster than she’d ever seen before.
Old Three-Eye, the stranger had called it. Miya ran, part of her mind oddly calm. What else had he said?
Lord Eronall and his noble guests charged past Miya, swords in hand. Their flintlocks were nowhere to be seen. Without time to load and prepare, the guns were a poor defense.
Run, idiot!
Miya ducked around a tent. As she rounded the other side the dire-bear was only a dozen yards away, rooting through a smashed trunk. She ran the other way, colliding with a fleeing page.
Everywhere she turned, the creature was there. She ran for the edge of camp and the bear was in the cook-wagons, knocking them over with a crash of pans and implements. It didn’t stop to eat any of the food, continuing on its rampage. Every moment a scream would rise in intensity and then be cut off. Her heart pounded in her chest.
Her chest. The demon-ward hung heavy against her. The tracker had mocked her for wearing it. The creature wasn’t after food, or attacking a threat, it was after magic. Like the truesilver that infused her ward.
She turned to run, and the dire-bear loomed over her. Miya screamed. She stumbled backward, her body shaking uncontrollably. It reared up on hind legs, showing its scaly underbelly. The demon lumbered at her. Its paws were the size of her head, its claws like daggers. Its three eyes stared out of sunken sockets.
Miya yanked the demon-ward from her neck with shaking hands and threw it as far as she could. She dropped to the ground, curling into a ball, her hands over her head. Three-Eye roared. Its breath was hot on her neck, reeking of death and brimstone.
Then it whuffed and turned toward where she’d thrown the ward. She held still, praying. The creature lumbered off.
Miya lay there listening for a small eternity that couldn’t have been more than a few heartbeats. She forced herself to rise. Three-Eye was gone.
Her legs wouldn’t move. Miya gulped and forced herself to take a step, then another. She crept away from Master Aram’s pavilion, heading for the edge of camp. Behind her more screams and shrieks filled the night.
She stumbled past the last set of tents, to the line of mostly-empty wagons. Too scared to think, she crawled under one.
She squeezed her eyes shut and lay there, listening over her pounding heart as one by one the screams died away. Miya could see the flames of the burning tents through her clenched eyelids. Rocks dug into her shoulder and hip, the dust of the ground choking her nostrils.
She listened for the thudding paws, the roar of the dire-bear, her hands clenched into fists, face wet with tears.
After the flames died down, long after the screams ended, even after the fear drained from her body, Miya lay limp under the wagon, unable to move, as the horizon gradually changed to gray. Somewhere after the first bird sang, she lost consciousness at last.
A string of curses in a language she didn’t know but a tone she understood well enough woke Miya from her sleep. Terror filled her again. Someone had come to finish what the demon started.
She rolled onto her stomach, staying under her wagon. The camp, what she could see of it, was a mess of ruined, burned tents. Blackened objects stuck up here and there from the ashes. A lone figure picked his way through the debris. He stooped and picked something up, looked at it, and chucked it away with another unknown curse.
The morning light caught his blond hair. The tracker from last night. Miya elbowed out from under the wagon.
He turned toward her. Even from here she could see the astonishment on his face. “You,” he said. “You’re alive?”
“You were right,” she said. Her voice shook. He approached slowly, keeping his hands open and nonthreatening.
The camp was as close to hell as Miya had ever imagined. Chunks of flesh, bloody or burned, littered the ground. Ripped shreds of cloth that had escaped the flames lay like autumn leaves.
The tracker reached her. He put an arm gently around her shoulders and turned her away. “You don’t need to see this yet,” he said. “Come.”
She nodded and let him guide her away, his hand resting on her shoulderblade. He had left a horse and pack mule a little ways off. Miya, at the tracker’s gesture, sat. He handed her a waterflask and then dug into his packs. Miya eyed the long musket in its scabbard on his saddle and decided she was glad to be around someone with a weapon, after last night.
“My name is Eraki,” he said in a conversational tone. “I was afraid you would be attacked but I never expected this much devastation.”
Miya drank deeply, her hands shaking on the flask. “I’m Miya,” she said. “Am I… did anyone else escape?”
Eraki shook his head. “I saw no sign of any other survivors,” he said. “Old Three-Eye hunted at least three down as they ran. But not you. Why?” He took a leather bag from his pack and opened it, producing a round of flatbread. Breaking off a hunk, he handed it to her.
Miya took the bread but did not eat. “I remembered what you said. About the ward. I took it off and threw it. Then I hid.”
Eraki nodded. “Good thinking,” he said. “Eat. It will help.”
Miya bit the bread. She washed the dry mouthful down with water. Her hands stopped trembling. “Lord Eronall wanted a dire-bear for his trophy room,” she said. A giggle bubbled up in her. She grabbed for the water and drank, trying to quell the reactions a part of her knew were all wrong. She swallowed the water and her laughter. Looking up at Eraki, she said, “We never should have come here.”
Eraki nodded, looking worried. “You came to his mountains with noise and smoke and truesilver in such quantities to drive any fell-touched beast mad. And now… now I fear no one for two hundred miles will be safe.”
“Won’t he just go back to his den?” Miya asked.
“After the truesilver he has consumed?” Eraki asked. “How much enchantment was there in your camp? How much magic? A ward for every poor fool? Who knows what sort of magical equipment?”
“Only Lord Eronall’s flintlock had any magic in the working.”
“Oh, only.” Eraki shook his head. “You fool cityfolk come out here where you have no idea what you’re doing, and you bring a curse on all the people of the plain.”
“What people? No one lives here!” Miya said. “My master is dead, and everyone who came with us, and you’re making it sound like my fault!”
“There are three hundred souls in the nearest village, twenty miles to our east. Do you know what will happen after Three-Eye digests his meal?”
Miya shook her head, a sinking feeling in her stomach. “I don’t know.”
“That much truesilver will cause even a dire-beast as old and wily as he to lose control. He will become a full demon. One strengthened by ten years in our world, one not easily vanquished. He will rampage through the nearest towns and villages until someone stops him, and that may take months. Longer if he returns to the hills. Your expedition brought this down on their own heads, but my folk will pay the price.”
Miya’s head throbbed. “It’s not my fault!” she said.
“But they will suffer nonetheless.” Eraki looked grim. “And we will suffer first. By tomorrow he will be changed. He will smell us, and come for us, and kill us. My skinwards help me pass under the nose of lesser demons, but Three-Eye will be a true mankiller.”
“You can’t know that for certain,” Miya insisted. “Maybe he’ll just go away, maybe the truesilver will kill him…” she trailed off. Even raised in a city, behind solid walls with strong men standing guard, she knew enough about demons to believe Eraki’s words.
“Try to rest.” Eraki stepped away from the horse. “I am going to see what I can find in the wreckage.” He strode off toward the camp, leaving Miya behind.
She ate the bread. It tasted like ash. Everything was gone. Everyone was dead.What would become of her? She was five hundred miles from home with no master, no money, nothing.
Miya stood up and brushed her tunic clear of crumbs. She took a deep breath and choked on the smoke and carrion smell. Swallowing past the lump in her throat, she made her way toward the camp.
Miya let her eyes slid past the chunks of flesh everywhere. Once she passed a head, no body in sight, staring blankly at the sky, but most of the bodies had been torn into mercifully small shreds. She found one of Master Aram’s wrought-iron lanterns lying on its side, the glass all smashed out. The sight brought her up short. She crouched by the lantern, touching its battered frame. She’d spent so many hours working in its light, Master Aram’s strong hands guiding her through new rune patterns. He had been the father she’d never known. And now he was gone and she was alone, hundreds of miles from home, with a demon lurking who knew where.
She wandered for a while until she found the wreckage of Aram’s workshop. The canvas awning that had protected his worktable had burned. The worktable itself had been knocked over. One end bore burn marks, but the flame had not taken hold of the solid wood. Lord Eronall’s servants had grumbled at the difficulty involved in hauling that table all the way out to the mountains, but Master Aram insisted. He’d always said for good work you needed good light and a good surface.
She picked through the debris until she found his small lead-lined chest, thrown a dozen feet from the workbench and on its side. Truesilver was worth a fortune. If the vials were intact and she could get back to civilization, she’d have enough money to live on for a few months. Master Aram would have wanted her to survive. She felt dead inside right now, but sooner or later she would wake up from this walking nightmare and then she’d want food, surely. Or shelter, or a hundred other things she’d always taken for granted.
The locks were still secured but the hinges were smashed; she was able to pop the whole lid off and set it aside. Inside were the little bottles of truesilver. All but one had smashed, the truesilver leaking out and pooling in the bottom. The final stoppered bottle held a half-inch of liquified truesilver. She took it out, wiped it off, and set it beside the chest. She tilted the chest, to try to recover some of the rest, but the truesilver had already hardened into the wood.
If Eraki was right, that much truesilver would attract the demon like a flame attracted moths. The lead-lined chest ought to hide it from the demon’s senses. Placing the last bottle in the chest, she fit the lid back on top. Miya hunted around. She found a length of cord that had secured the pavilion’s edges to a stake and wrapped it around the chest, holding the lid in place.
What else could she salvage? She located her engraving kit, scattered on the ground near the workbench. Two of the chisels were broken and several tools were missing, but half the kit was intact. Not that it was any use to her. Without a master she would never become a full rune-smith of any sort. No one would take her on now, half-trained and nearly of age. Her future was dead with Master Aram.
Eraki came toward her, his arms full of flintlock guns. He piled them on the ground nearby.
“What are you planning?” Miya asked.
“How did your hunters kill the fell beast yesterday?”
“Lord Eronall’s bullet did the trick,” Miya said. “The rest were less effective than your bullet.”
“Your master made this lord’s bullet?” Eraki asked. “I have hunted many demons. You put a runed bullet in them and you follow them for days waiting for them to die. That one yesterday fell almost immediately.”
“My master was a genius,” Miya said. “He argued a lot with other runesmiths about whether it was a proper use of magic at all. Mixing lead and truesilver, wasting time making a single runed bullet instead of crafting a better runed rifle. He came out here to prove his point.” She frowned. “But your bullet was better than any of the others, despite the runes. Wind and dirt for killing a demon?”
“Of course,” Eraki said. He was studying the guns and sounded distracted. “The demon had been a pronghorn once, and pronghorns are creatures of wind.” He held one musket up. “All the guns are the same caliber. Strange.”
“My master insisted,” Miya said. “That way he only needed one set of molds and could concentrate on runing them the way he wanted.”
“If we could find some of those bullets, perhaps we could kill Three-Eye.”
“I thought you said nothing would stop him,” Miya said.
“The truesilver he consumed is no doubt changing him even now,” Eraki said. “Until he completes the change, he will be disoriented. Like a true bear, just out of winter sleep. He will be strong and vicious but it might be possible to kill him if we had better runed bullets. Mine won’t do more than anger him.”
Miya shook her head. “Master Aram was experimenting, trying to find a bullet that would be effective against demons,” she said. “What killed that dire beast yesterday was an experimental shot, a bullet with three times as many truesilver runes as the others. The other bullets barely scratched it.”
“Are there more?” Eraki asked.
“I don’t know. Lord Eronall had them. They might be in his tent.” She came over to the flintlocks, looked over the one in Eraki’s hand, and frowned. “That’s his gun, and it’s broken.”
Eraki set the gun aside. “The action is smashed. We don’t have time to repair it.”
Miya picked up another of the flintlocks and inspected it. “This one looks all right, but I won’t know without firing it.”
“You know how to shoot?”
“Of course,” she said, indignation rising in her. “I’m a bullet-smith. I can cast bullets, load a gun, and fire it. I hit what I’m after, too,” she bragged. It wasn’t an exaggeration. At least from a bench, she always beat the other apprentices.
“Then we can hunt Old Three-Eye together,” Eraki said.
Miya backed away. “Oh no we won’t. We need to flee before that thing is a full demon. It killed everyone!” She recalled the hot breath, the light glinting off its claws, the awful smell of blood and fear and shook her head.
“When Three-Eye is a full demon, tomorrow or the next day, he will be looking for blood,” Eraki said, his voice patient but grave. “Human blood, because we are easy prey but rich in magic. He will hunt, and he will come to the villages on the river, and he will find my family there. My sister and her children. My grandmother. My cousins. None of them even know their danger. I must stand between them and disaster.”
Miya forced herself to breathe normally. He was right. If they didn’t kill Three-Eye now, it would hunt them down before they reached civilization. “Then we need to find Lord Eronall’s rune-bullets.”
Lord Eronall’s tent yielded a fine linen shirt that Eraki put on under his leathers, a can of rich tobacco astringent in Miya’s nostrils — she stuffed that away in a pack she’d salvaged, for sale later — three different runework daggers, all rejected by Eraki as showy and useless, and no runed bullets. They found Eronall’s other musket a little ways off, the barrel bent over back on itself. It had not been fired. Miya inspected it, wondering if there might be a bullet in the barrel, but she had no way of extracting it from the twisted ruin of the gun in any case.
Lord Eronall’s torso, missing its head and limbs but still wearing most of his embroidered silk jacket, also lacked bullets. Miya overcame her revulsion to search the pockets, trying desperately to pretend that Lord Eronall’s abdomen was not there. His bullet pouch wasn’t there, either, and it should have been. The strings that had tied the pouch to his belt were still there, the pouch itself ripped away. “Nothing,” she reported to Eraki, looking up from the body to meet the tracker’s worried eyes. “Three-Eye found the bullets,” she said. “I think he ate them.”
Eraki looked away. “Of course he did,” he said. “Then we face him with lead, and steel.”
That was suicide. She should urge him to flee. They couldn’t take on the demon. If they left now perhaps they could find a place to hide before nightfall. No one would blame her, if they ever knew.
Miya sighed. “I can make rune-bullets,” she said. “But I didn’t make Lord Eronall’s. I don’t know what combination of runes worked on that demon yesterday. If I had found even one of his I would be able to craft more. Without an example, I’d just be guessing.”
Eraki frowned. “I just buy whatever is available. How many different combinations are there?”
“Master Aram has been using several recipes,” Miya said. “We thought that the earth with body seemed most promising, it’s similar to what I’d put on a spear for demon-fighting. To remind the creature that it is not of our world, but the magical realm, and make its body refuse to operate here. But I don’t know. Any of the recipes might work, or none of them.”
“Then make several,” Eraki said. “We will try them all.”
“I don’t think Old Three-Eye will stand still while we take multiple shots at him,” Miya said.
“Leave that part to me,” Eraki said. “I will scout out our place, while you make the bullets. Yes? And quickly. It’s nearly noon now and we have no time to waste.”
Eraki returned as she was putting the finishing touches on the third bullet. He looked over the three lead rounds, each half an inch in diameter. The silvered runes gleamed in contrast to the dull finish of the bullets. “Are these enough?”
“If anything works, it’ll be one of these,” she said. She put the bullets into the lead-lined case and closed it up, placing it in a pack. “Are you sure of your plan?”
“No,” he said, “but I haven’t thought of a better. Come.”
He lead her from the ruins of the camp toward the distant mountains. The open ground was strewn with small bushes and clumps of yellow grass. Miya picked her way over rocks and around scrubby juniper trees. Here and there a lizard emerged to eye her, or a chipmunk skittered out from under one clump of waving sage to another.
The bag slung across her back held more lead balls and all that remained of the truesilver, in its lead-lined case. She’d found a long-barreled pistol in the wreckage that looked undamaged and would take the same caliber of round as the flintlocks they’d salvaged, so she’d shoved that into her belt and carried a powder horn over one shoulder. She almost clanked as she walked, like a man-at-arms weighed down for battle.
The land rose gently. Eraki made for a rock outcropping that shot up like a hand reaching skyward. His horse and packmule were tethered nearby. He led Miya into the shadow of the rock. It towered fifteen feet over her head and was twice as long. Just beyond, the ground fell away steeply into a ravine.
“This is our place,” Eraki said. “I spotted Three-Eye while I was scouting. He’s sleeping in a hole a little way off. We’ll bring him here, along the ravine.”
Miya eyed the drop-off. The ravine must be twenty feet deep. The walls looked too steep to climb, but she didn’t like counting on it to protect her. “I don’t know. Even if we can lure him in here, what if he climbs out before we can shoot him?”
“He’ll be too busy chasing his prey to notice you up here,” Eraki said. “Take a look at where the guns are and let me know if you think we should place them somewhere else.”
He had set four flintlock muskets along the edge of the ravine, propped up on rocks, at intervals of a few yards. Miya walked between them and checked her field of fire. Each position offered a clear view of the ravine. “These’ll do.”
“Prepare the guns,” Eraki said. “I will wake the beast and lead him into the ravine. You wait. When he is here, shoot him. Try not to miss.”
“You’re going to let him chase you?” Miya’s jaw dropped. Eraki’s tone seemed so reasonable. “He moved faster than I could blink,” she said. “He’ll have you before you’ve gone three feet!”
“I trust your magic. Trust me,” he said. “Be ready. You will have your shots.”
“And if the three aren’t enough?”
“Then I will entertain our friend long enough for you to make another shot,” Eraki promised.
This was madness. No one could taunt the dire-bear and live. He was going to enrage the beast and lead it right to her. Fear rose again in Miya’s gut. “This is never going to work.”
“We have to try,” Eraki said.
What would be worse? To have the angry dire-bear turn on her after it savaged Eraki, or to run off now and spend hours in fear before it caught her?
“All right,” she said. “Let’s do this.”
As Eraki disappeared down the wash, Miya went to the first musket. She hoisted it up, the weight awkward in her hands, and set it butt-first on the ground. It was taller than she was.
Working through the familiar action of loading the gun helped calm her mind. She leaned the gun against her shoulder and unslung her powder horn. Miya filled her measure, then poured it down the barrel. She listened for the demon’s approach as she worked, but all she heard were bird-calls and the buzzing of grasshoppers.
Miya took the first bullet from the lead-lined box. Its base rune was the symbol for earth, just as Master Aram had taught her. Not dirt-earth, but the world she inhabited, as opposed to the magical realm where demons and all magic came from. She traced the lines with her eyes. Earth, combined with being and body, to remind the demon’s body that it doesn’t belong here.
Eraki’s round from the pronghorn-demon only yesterday had used dirt-earth, and it had been more effective than Master Aram’s normal rounds. Only Lord Eronall’s nearly pure truesilver bullet had beaten it. Maybe her master had been wrong? Now was not the time to experiment with runes. Not with her life on the line.
Miya laid the patch across the mouth of the barrel, then set the bullet on it. She pulled out the ramrod and shoved the bullet down the barrel.
“Wind and fire, bring me luck,” she whispered, reciting the words of an ancient blessing. “Earth and sky, smile on me.” Master Aram would scold her for such superstitious nonsense.
Master Aram was dead.
No! This was not the time to think of that. Miya added a dash of powder to the pan, then pulled back the hammer and carefully set the loaded and primed gun back down. All she had to do now was sight it and pull the trigger.
She moved to the next flintlock. The second bullet had the wind rune and the blood rune entwined, and the symbol for fire moving away from them. Master Aram’s design ought to freeze the blood in the demon’s veins. It was a spell that didn’t work at all on humans. The human heart was too strong to succumb to that sort of treachery. But a demon was particularly vulnerable to internal disruptions. The trick was getting the magic inside the demon in the first place.
The last bullet was a mess of carving. Heart and earth and the most complicated working of true-being Miya had ever managed all worked together, the curves and flourishes of one winding in and around the others without ever touching. Master Aram had shown her the design, and she’d done her best to replicate from memory, but it was the shot she was least confident in. Hopefully one of the other two would do the job and she wouldn’t need to rely on the experimental design.
Returning to the first musket, she set out the box with the bottle of truesilver and her engraving tools on another rock alongside, just in case she should need a fourth shot and have a chance to create it. It seemed a fool’s chance, but she’d take it if she had to.
Preparations done. She sank down on her haunches beside the musket, staring down the canyon, hoping that the dire-bear wouldn’t come after all. Maybe it had gone off to the mountains to feed. Maybe Lord Eronall’s face had disagreed with it and it had died.
A flock of tiny birds scattered up from the brush down in the canyon, wings flapping hard against the air. Miya leaned forward, heart racing. The wind whispered through the brush. Her ear caught a distant thud, then the sound of a rock clattering downhill and a crashing sound of some huge body pushing through brush.
A moment later Eraki came racing up the canyon faster than Miya had believed possible. He leapt over boulders, wound his way through the scrubby cottonwoods, and made it looked easy. Then the dire-bear emerged, crashing through the brush.
Miya’s fear-tinged memories hadn’t lied. It was huge, it was fast, it was terrifying. Miya stood transfixed until Eraki shouted, “Shoot it!”
Then her limbs unfroze. Miya took up the first musket. Her heart pounded in her chest as she knelt in the dirt. Barrel still supported on the rock in front of her, she put its stock firm against her shoulder, sighted along it, and waited til the bear was only twenty feet away and ten feet below. She could see its beady yellow eyes fixed on Eraki.
Miya squeezed the trigger. The powder in the pan exploded in a flash of fire and white smoke. The smell of burning sulfur filled the air as a cloud of smoke issued from the mouth of the gun with an ear-splitting bang. The gun kicked in her grip, driving back hard into her shoulder and knocking the wind out of her. Miya gasped for breath, the musket dropping from her tingling fingers. Her shoulder ached, her ears rang from the shot.
The bear roared in anger. Miya blinked. Peering through the white gunsmoke, she saw the bear rear up on its hind legs. Blood oozed from its shoulder, but she couldn’t see the wound through the demon’s wiry fur. The creature seemed annoyed, not mortally injured. Damnation! Those runes had been her best hope, and it had barely tickled Three-Eye.
Miya ran for the next musket. She dropped to the ground, set it against her shoulder, wincing at the pain as it jarred her freshly-bruised body. She waited for a moment as the smoke thinned out. The bear still stood, looking around confused. Eraki had vanished. She pulled the trigger.
Again, the double explosion deafened her and smashed the gun against her shoulder. This time it came with a sharp pain. Her arm went numb. The bear roared again. She coughed as the acrid smoke filled her lungs. Eyes watering, she peered downward. The bear was on four legs again. It stared right up the wall of the ravine toward her. It started forward. Miya couldn’t breathe. The creature was coming for her.
“Heya!” Eraki shouted. He stood up from his hiding spot farther up the ravine, thirty feet from the bear. “You! Hells-spawn! Over here!”
Three-Eye’s head swung round. It growled. It lumbered off toward Eraki.
She scrambled for the last gun. The demon was hunting Eraki. The tracker stood atop a rocky outcropping that jutted out of the ravine wall, just a bit higher than the bear’s head. The bear prowled toward him. “Take the shot!” Eraki shouted.
Miya tried to aim. Her arms shook. The muzzle of the gun wavered. She set it down, drew a deep breath. The bear reared up on hind legs and swiped at Eraki. He leapt as its arm passed through where his legs had been, then came back down. The bear roared and swiped again.
Miya steadied the gun. As she squeezed the trigger, Eraki screamed in pain.
The flash in the pan stung her cheek and left her eyes dazzled. She lowered the muzzle and backed away. Her throat clenched as she peered through the smoke. Her hands trembled and her legs didn’t want to move.
Eraki had vanished. The bear was still there, roaring in anger and swiping at something with one paw. Eraki moaned in pain. The bear was trying to get him, clawing at the cleft in the rocks where he lay.
The dire-bear wasn’t dead, but it had been wounded. Eraki was in trouble. She might get one more shot. Her bullets had barely touched the creature. What good would one more shot do?
The pronghorn yesterday had reacted to the wind rune, because it was a creature of wind. Old superstitions that her master had told her to ignore said every animal had an element associated with it, and that demons responded to their host-body’s element. Aram thought the notion unscientific.
What were bears? She should know this.
Of course, bears were earth. Dirt-earth, the rune Aram hated most and never used on his bullets.
Miya dropped to her knees in front of her engraving materials. She picked up a bullet and the engraving tool. Her hands shook. She held the bullet in her left hand, willing her throbbing shoulder to let her hold the ball still, and began carving runes with her right. She didn’t have time for all the neat flourishes and careful details. Miya just sketched the outlines of the earth rune from the simplest design.
Every few seconds she glanced up. From here she couldn’t see over the lip of the ravine. Eraki’s moans grew less frequent. The bear roared and snarled in anger. She listened for any sound of rocks shifting or scrabbling claws.
There. Good enough. Miya laid a hand on the chest with the truesilver. She hesitated. If she opened this box, would the demon come for her?
She threw back the lid and picked up the bottle of liquid truesilver. She ought to apply the metal directly into the runes with a brush, but she didn’t have time. She instead unstoppered the bottle and poured the truesilver on the bullet, turning the ball so the metal flowed into the runes. It clung there in the cuts she’d just scored across the lead. Bits of truesilver dripped onto her fingers and tunic, drying quickly. If the runes didn’t work, maybe the sheer quantity of truesilver would.
Miya went to the flintlock. She peered over the edge of the ravine.
The demon was gone.
Miya skittered back from the ledge. She looked around, sure the bear was coming up behind her, but there was no sign of it. She peered down again. Below her was a pool of blood, dark against the sand of the ravine. Demon ichor was yellow, not red. The blood must be Eraki’s. She hadn’t heard him moan recently. He might be unconscious, or dead.
The bear could be anywhere. Miya sat watching. A horsefly buzzed her, but the world was deathly still.
Her mouth was dry. Her insides twisted. She needed to get to the horse and ride out before the monster appeared again. They had failed, and the best she could do now was warn the nearest settlement.
Eraki might not be dead.
She didn’t know where Three-Eye was. It might be waiting for her. Who knew how clever the demon was? She had one shot and couldn’t even take that if she didn’t know where the bear was. She picked up the flintlock and lay it across her lap, found her powder horn and filled her measure. She lifted the powder measure to the gun’s muzzle and hesitated.
Eraki was lying down there in pain, in need of help.
He was nothing to her, just some tracker who had come across her camp. He had kept her out here in danger. This wasn’t her fault. But if she didn’t help him he’d die for sure.
Miya peered over the edge of the ravine. There was a place a little further along where she might be able to scramble to the bottom. Then what? She couldn’t carry him.
Miya sighed and took the long-barreled pistol from her belt. She loaded the last bullet, then primed and cocked the pistol. She put it back in her belt and went to fetch Eraki’s pack-mule.
The mule followed along behind her, finding better footing than she did. She scrambled her way down the side of the ravine, her feet sliding here and there, catching herself on outcroppings of rock and all the time aware of just how loud she was. She was so far past terrified all she felt was numbness.
The mule stopped dead. Miya pulled at its lead. It put its ears back and brayed. Its eyes were wide and staring.
Miya turned, her hand reaching for her pistol. Three-Eye reared up from behind a boulder. Yellow ichor ran down both its shoulders. All three of its eyes were tinged red. It slathered and roared as it waved its huge claws.
Miya screamed. She got her pistol out. The bear advanced. She couldn’t aim, couldn’t breathe, she just pointed her pistol and yanked back on the trigger.
The pistol bucked in her hand. The muzzle rose, throwing her off balance. The shot rang out. The bear roared as the ball blew a hole right through the center of its chest. Ichor sprayed everywhere. Miya screamed again and dropped to the ground, covering her head with her arms. She squeezed her eyes shut and waited for the bear’s claws to rake her open.
There was an enormous crash. Miya cracked one eye open. Three-Eye lay on the slope in front of her. Rivers of ichor stained the ground bright yellow.
Miya got to her feet carefully. Her heart still pounded. She swallowed down the lump in her throat and forced herself to step forward.
The bear was dead. Miya skirted it, pulling the reluctant mule with her. Even now she didn’t want to get too close. She expected relief but was still too numb with fear to feel anything.
Eraki lay in a hollow of rock nearby. He had a deep gash in his side and a cut on his head, but he still breathed. Miya hunted through the pack-mule’s burdens til she found some bandages and clean water. She sponged off Eraki’s wounds. He woke up partway through. “Three-Eye?” he croaked.
“Dead. Lie still. Talk later,” Miya said. She bound up his wounds and gave him water. In a while, when he felt able to sit, she helped him up and he leaned against a boulder.
They surveyed Three-Eye’s body together. Eraki, his hand pressed against his wounds, talked her through how to remove its heart and burn the organ, then take off its head and burn that separately. “Now he won’t come back,” Eraki said. “The rest of his corpse is worth good money in the right places.”
“What sort of places?” Miya asked. The fear she’d been living with since the camp attack at last began to ease. Her heart filled with loss and regret, but also with hope.
“The same places that could use a bullet-smith capable of taking down Three-Eye,” Eraki said. “Shall we speak of those?”
Miya glanced up at the sun, now low enough in the sky that the walls of the ravine cast dark shadows over them. “Let me build a fire, and we’ll talk.”
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K. D. Julicher lives in Nevada, with time split between writing and adventures with her husband and four children. Her plans to find ways to combine the two proceed apace.