Lightfall Two: Fox, Flight, Fire (Lightfall, Book 2) Read online

  Book Two

  Fox, Flight, Fire

  Jordan Taylor

  Copyright © 2014 Jordan Taylor. All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the author. Reviewers may quote brief passages in reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons or animals—living, dead, or otherwise—is coincidental.

  Adoxography Books

  Very special thanks to Leigh Allen Taylor, Matt Feisthammel, Angel Prado, and Aleksandr Voinov.

  For my mother.

  We are all each of us riddles, when unknown one to the other. The plain map of human powers and purposes, helps us not at all to thread the labyrinth each individual presents in his involution of feelings, desires and capacities....

  ~ Mary Shelley

  Eighteenth

  Blood and Hell

  By the time Melchior strikes the ground, Sam and Grip have opened fire. And Luck has panicked.

  Streaks of flame blast from revolvers beside Ivy with cracking explosions of gunpowder. The nearest two risers drop, yet she sees no more, as Luck bursts forward so violently Ivy is hurled backward, clutching on by shortened reins while one hand remains occupied by her Colt Lightning. The weight against her mouth makes Luck turn, then rear, throwing Ivy against her leg brace and the mare’s bit. Ivy cannot snatch mane with both hands full, only lunging forward in the saddle.

  Men shout, guns explode, long, cold arms reach for her in the dark, pounding heat of the bonfire crashes around her. Luck still up, still on her hind legs, throwing her head. Ivy still fighting to stay at her neck. Luck steps back, almost vertical, losing her balance.

  “Let her head go, dammit! She’ll kill you!” Not Melchior on the ground or Sam shouting at him to grab Elsewhere: Grip—yelling at her.

  Ivy drops the Colt, lets reins tear through her fingers, and takes up handfuls of red mane to keep her seat. With slack in the bit, Luck drops to all fours. In the next instant, Ivy is nearly unseated as the mare kicks behind. Ivy hears a thump, feels a jarring impact, almost thrown off over the neck, her new position at the mane sending her dangerously askew.

  Luck twists, wheels—Ivy thrown sideways, still fighting her head to keep her there rather than in terrified flight. Gunshots pound their ears, six or eight risers lie about them, more running with clothes, skin, and hair on fire, arms reaching, some so burnt they cannot make it, but fall to earth, grabbing their own heads, writhing in silence.

  Chucklehead has disappeared. Sam leans off Elsewhere’s saddle, clutching Melchior’s arm, right hand holding reins and revolver as Elsewhere backs, eyes rolling, nostrils flared. Left leg dragging, Melchior finds his feet, turning his six-shooter to face each approaching riser as it draws closest, one after another.

  Grip empties his revolver into risers pelt up about their flanks, reaching for Elsewhere and Luck. He holsters it and draws the Pocket Army, shouting at Sam to get the hell out, while Sam has his own revolver holstered, trying to help Melchior onto his own horse. Melchior cannot or will not jump up behind Sam, shooting his last rounds into flaming figures.

  A burning riser rushes El Cohete’s face. The stallion rears, bringing one forehoof down across a shoulder, the second caving in the skull. Grip aims his revolver toward Luck and shoots another riser in the head as it reaches for her.

  Jabbing Luck with her heel, slapping with the long end of trailing reins, shouting at her, Ivy forces the panicked mare up to Elsewhere. She blunders into his hindquarters as Ivy fights to turn her, sending Elsewhere starting forward. Sam, gripping Melchior’s arm, drags him as the horse lunges. Melchior shouts at him to let go as the gun is nearly knocked from his hand.

  Luck rears, this time staying low and plunging forward, trying to rip reins from Ivy’s fingers. Ivy pulls her in, kicks her in the left side. Luck charges alongside Elsewhere, nearly smashing Melchior between the two horses. So panicked she can hardly see, Ivy feels the blaze of burning risers rushing them, her and Luck now between them and Melchior, Sam, and Elsewhere.

  One hand clenched around reins and mane, she reaches with her right to grab Melchior’s upper arm. “Get up behind Sam!”

  Melchior catches another blazing black figure in the skull as it nearly reaches Luck.

  “Drop the damn gun!” Sam shouting at him, leaning from his saddle as Elsewhere dances in place.

  More, running, reaching, mouths wide, while Melchior finally drops the Colt to grab Sam’s arm. Luck rears again, trying to turn, tearing Ivy’s hand from Melchior’s sleeve. A massive shape bursts past, cutting Ivy and Luck off from the fire: El Cohete strikes out with both forefeet, hooves smashing into blazing victims. Grip curses them as he fires the pocket revolver almost in Ivy’s ear.

  Holding Sam and the cantle of his saddle, jumping with one leg, Sam still pulling him, Melchior manages to clamber behind among packs and bedroll.

  “Turn!” Sam yelling at her, reining Elsewhere around to face back down the mountain road.

  “No!” Ivy fights to keep Luck from following. “Into Santa Fé! We will lose them before we get there!”

  “Too many that way—go!” From Grip, shooting another riser nearly out from under Luck.

  Luck jumps, bolting after Elsewhere, who runs south. With Grip’s last shot, the buckskin follows, tearing past both the panicky mare and overloaded gelding.

  Blind with darkness after flaming risers, Ivy clutches mane and reins, leaning forward, no air in her lungs, heart pounding fast as Luck’s flying hooves. Smoke and reek of putrid, burning flesh still fills her nose. Along the rough wagon road, sure Luck will trip and break her leg and both horse and rider will die at any moment. Down the slope, away from chasing risers, past more coming up from this direction.

  El Cohete crashes across one, sending the silent, almost invisible specter tumbling away in the dark. Pounding hooves, rushing wind, puffing horses fill Ivy’s ears. Fresh air reaches her. Light from the fire fades behind.

  The horses run on in panic for two, three, four hundred yards, a mile, before they can be slowed. A canter, then a fast walk with much huffing and gasping.

  Sam says something. Grip answers.

  Ivy’s ears ring. Her own breath takes all her focus as she trembles in her saddle.

  She looks around as Elsewhere halts. Sam throws a foot over his mane to dismount while Melchior remains on behind. He staggers, catches his horse’s neck, then leans on Elsewhere while Melchior inches himself into the saddle. Ivy feels she can see Sam trembling even by starlight, or perhaps it is her own blurred sight. Hat pushed back on his head, he presses his face to the dark gelding’s neck: the only horse who had not reared, not even panicked.

  Ivy longs to dismount, give the mare a rest and unstick herself from this rigid position, catch her breath, steady herself without also having to steady her horse. But she cannot move, shaking so badly she knows her knees would fold if her feet touched earth.

  Melchior takes up Elsewhere’s reins. Sam walks beside, his arm across the gelding’s neck.

  Grip starts back to them on El Cohete, glancing at the five in darkness. He turns the buckskin and starts off, not back the way they ran so blindly, but west and north, starting back toward the city by the long route.

  Long and cold and dark and painful. None willing to stop to make camp in this territory now. None even mention the possibility.

  Sam walks the whole way, Grip dismounting as well for a good hour or two as the terrain grows steeper. Ivy knows she must give her own exhausted, hot, hungry horse a break, but it is a long time before she can bring herself to slide off that sidesaddle.


  When her boots touch rocky ground, she clutches the stirrup for support, shaking anew, chill of night adding to her shivers. Her breath comes short. Sights and sounds and stink of the fire wash over her.

  Her new gun is gone. They have no proof of having dispatched a single riser for a bounty. Chucklehead is gone, Melchior crippled, and she could have gotten each of them killed because she did not heed the warning signs of darkness combined with smoke while still a mile away. She could not even fire a shot, could scarcely control her horse, dropped her gun at the first sign of trouble.

  And she thought she could undertake this bounty hunt.

  She presses her face to Luck’s shoulder, tears soaking into the sweaty coat.

  A warm arm slips across her shoulders. She knows from faint pipe smoke and stronger peppermint it is Sam. But needs no such hints.

  He pulls her cloak from her saddle bundles and wraps it over her. Ivy leans on him instead as she starts again up the mountain, leading her horse, tears running silently down her cheeks in darkness.

  Nineteenth

  The Eagle By Night

  They follow Grip blindly. Ivy cannot stop hearing screams of their horses, smelling smoke and rotted flesh, feeling heat of flames. Mostly, the sight of burning risers and terror in her own stomach keeps making her shudder.

  They go in silence, pausing only for water when they reach a narrow stream. Melchior tries to dismount and give Elsewhere a break. Sam tells him to stay where he is—the extent of the night’s conversation.

  Ivy remounts after an hour. Or two. Exhaustion closes her eyes while fear makes her start upright in the saddle more often than Luck shies, even at her worst. The mare herself walks on with her head low, hooves stumbling.

  Ivy wonders if she only imagines the faint tinge of gray in the eastern sky when she looks up to discover an adobe building heralding Santa Fé.

  Already moving at a tired walk, the company stops at the edge of town. They have swung all the way around the small city and are entering, to Ivy’s amazement, from the north, not far from the cathedral. Not that they can try for a room at this hour.

  Is she imagining the smell of smoke still tinting the air, like the light? Ivy allows Luck to stop altogether as they move wearily in. Grip rides ahead on El Cohete, looking left and right and skyward. No one runs or shouts in the streets. Nothing moves in pre-dawn cold and hush. The bonfire, miles to the south, is invisible, though Ivy is certain now she can still smell the blaze.

  Past Grip and El Cohete, the big cur trots. Ivy never saw him rejoin the group after he bolted from the bonfire like a scared rabbit. Now he strolls in as if he has just been for a walk. Grip watches the dog down the main street, jogging purposefully south and east, toward the farrier’s. After studying the easy gait, Grip shifts to look at the rest of them. He says nothing, but nods in the dark and moves on.

  They ride to Dr. Hintzen’s, hooves dragging, Luck’s head down at her knees, Elsewhere’s eyes closed, following Sam with his nose brushing Sam’s arm.

  Sam knocks, pulls a bell cord, then helps Melchior dismount. Supporting him as Melchior hops on one shaking leg, Sam looks up at Ivy.

  “I am sorry, Ivy. I do not know if the livery—”

  “That is all right, Sam,” Ivy says, mind a fog, just aware enough to recognize the problem. She holds out her hand for him to pass her Elsewhere’s reins. “I’ll manage. It will be true morning soon. You stay with him.”

  The door opens, lamplight streaming out. Sam turns to the doctor, but glances back with anxious eyes.

  “She can come with me,” Grip says, turning his horse.

  Ivy follows, having to thump Luck and pull hard on Elsewhere just to get either animal back to a walk, so dazed she cannot hear what Sam and the doctor say behind them. The light from the door vanishes.

  Grip leads them to the farrier’s open stable, where he gingerly dismounts.

  Ivy sits dumb, half-asleep as Grip turns his horse into a loose box, strips away tack, brings a little water, and throws in hay. He tends to Elsewhere next, dropping the bay’s saddle on a saddle tree, then leading him to another box. He finds this occupied and must move the inhabitant to a regular stall before returning to Elsewhere.

  Then he is standing beside Ivy. “Mean to remain there?”

  Ivy gazes down at the man in a stupor. She can see his face now, the eastern sky showing a hint of gray. A grim, dirty face. Patch over one eye, scar underneath, behind the cheekbone. She wonders how he got the injury. Bounty hunting? Related to his crippled right hand? She has taken him for older, past thirty. Now ... for the first time she wonders. His face is not, after all, lined. If he scrubbed away dust and did not scowl so much....

  “Grip,” she whispers, feeling her voice cannot reach him from such a huge distance. “I do not believe I can stand.”

  He sighs, beckoning her with the first fingers on his left hand. Luck stands like stone as Ivy inches her right leg from the saddle brace. The leg is made of steel, bending it in any position other than this locked one, ludicrous. She must use both hands to pull her knee from the brace through skirts. She almost falls, but catches Grip’s arm as she pulls her left foot from the stirrup and slides down the horse’s side, facing him. He lets her lower herself on his arm, then pulls her to a crate to sit.

  He strips off the mare’s saddle and bridle, ties her in a stall, then brings hay and water before Ivy finds him again beside her.

  “Up,” he says.

  “May I ... stay here? After first light, I can go to the boarding house.”

  “No one will be about for a good hour or two and that English hag will not stir herself for three. Come with me.”

  No, somewhere far back in her mind where she used to be a real human being—used to be a proper young lady even—she knows that is not right. Melchior is her cousin and she feels sure she would accompany Sam anywhere. But she cannot follow this man to some ... lodging, she assumes.

  She shakes her head.

  He grabs her upper arm and lifts her from her crate.

  “Stop it.” She tries to inject some venom in her voice, yet fears she comes off sounding weak and exhausted and childish. “I can remain here.”

  He pulls her up several streets, along rows of small adobe houses, spaced more and more apart. She could fight, tell him she will not be treated like this. She should at least be angry. But she is not. She is hardly even afraid.

  She staggers with him to the far end of a row, where he releases her. He walks around the side of the house to tap at a window. Limping.

  “You weren’t bitten?” Ivy gasps, trying to see if there is blood on his trousers in the gloom.

  “What?” He taps again.

  “You’re limping. You were not bitten, were you? They didn’t ... get you?”

  He shakes his head irritably. “Sore. I’m fine.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “You don’t suppose I would notice if one of those abominations bit me?”

  Ivy says nothing, fighting down the ripple of panic in her chest. Everything is all right. Hours ago. Far too long.

  Grip leans almost against window glass, calling, “Rose, it’s me. A favor.”

  He must hear something from within because he turns and limps back to a side door, reaching it just as it is opened.

  Ivy stares as Rosalía, in white nightgown and shawl, materializes in the gloomy doorway.

  “What happened?” she whispers.

  “Just got in. Could you ... put up a guest for a few hours?”

  Rosalía looks past him to Ivy, standing mute and bewildered in the dusty road. “Ivy. Come in. And welcome. Are you hurt?”

  “She’s fine,” Grip mutters and turns.

  Ivy walks hesitantly forward, Rosalía stepping out, reaching an arm around her shoulders to pull her in.

  “Thank you for the saddle, Grip,” Rosalía says. “Es hermoso.”

  Grip gives no indication he heard, limping down the dark street.

  Her wor
ds remind Ivy of her own predicament and she says, “Thank you....” before Rosalía closes the door, pulling Ivy gently with her.

  Rosalía takes her through a main living room to the doorway of a little bedroom. She closes the door behind them in silence, then strikes a match to light a candle on a chest of drawers. Ivy is as startled as she can feel under the circumstances to see the little wood-framed bed and trunk crammed into the tiny space along with the chest. The locals seem to leave doors open all day, yet Ivy has seen few of these spaces hosting such Eastern furniture. A woven mat adorns the floor and vibrant fabrics hang from the walls, though Ivy can see little in her fogged state and by the light of the feeble candle. The room smells of horse and sweet scent of yucca blossoms mingling with woodsmoke and leather.

  Rosalía drags her dilapidated Spanish saddle off the hump-backed trunk, easing the thing to the floor and quietly lifting the trunk’s lid. She pulls out extra blankets, stacking them on the bed, then tells Ivy to take off her boots and, leaving the candle, slips back through the door.

  Ivy sits at the edge of the bed, thought gone, emotion nearly gone with it. At least she remembered to thank Grip for bringing her. She should thank Rosalía. Mostly, she should sleep.

  Rosalía tiptoes back, nudging the door closed behind her, with a wash basin in her hands and hemp towel over her arm. Ivy has scarcely started on laces of one boot. Rosalía leaves her burden on the chest of drawers, removes Ivy’s boots in a moment, then helps with lace.

  “I don’t have a spare nightgown, but you can sleep in your chemise,” Rosalía whispers. “There are no men in the house besides my father, who is blind.”

  Ivy nods as Rosalía smiles at her. She does not seem bothered. Strange. Ivy feels sure she herself would have been bothered had she been in her own home, own bed, in the very early hours of morning, and a near-stranger was dropped off to spend the night in her own bedroom.