Yazdegerd and Roxana stumbled toward the great shining house at the end of the plain. The horse had panicked and refused to go on and nothing he did could coax it further. Roxana and he were used to running on bare feet but they had fled with only the bare minimum they could gather. They carried horse blankets, a little water, a handful of nuts, a little vinegar, a clasp knife, a fistful of pilfered denarii and their six month old son, Julian.
(They told each other Yazdegerd was the father. Not one of the soldiers who regularly inflicted themselves on Roxana - and on Yazdegerd when they were drunk)
They were no longer on the border, that much was clear. The grasses and flowers were unlike any they’d seen. So too the black towers strung with rope. Strange fortifications dividing the lands into parcels with abatis of metal. It wasn’t the first time this had happened. When the soldiers got lost and blamed the scouts and the unfortunate local guides recruited at swordpoint and the “filthy fucking fire worshipers” who twisted the terrain and summoned visions of things that couldn’t exist. Its apparition was perfectly timed. The soldiers caught them fucking and decided to cut off Yazdegerd’s balls. Roxana endured their abuse, acted suitably chastised, then freed the stablehand before the smithy could heat the gelding knife.
The back door of the strange caravanserai swung open. A small, dark man - just a shade darker than the slaves and the olive skinned men who were no doubt hot on their tail - stepped out. He wore an apron and breathed smoke from a root held in his mouth, like the Scythian herbs the soldiers sometimes plundered from caravans along with gold and wine. If they had the drop on him the slaves might have stood a chance, but he spotted them scampering on bare feet across the flat black expanse of oily stone surrounding the house. He stood and smoked and watched them with interest.
Well, so be it. They were both experienced at begging and they were clearly no longer in the border region, where a merchant might fear the dueling armies of the Empire and the Great King and surrender a pair of runaway slaves to save his house from the fires. Roxana held the baby and her husband dropped to his knees.
“Sir, please, we beg your hospitality. We are but poor travelers set upon by bandits. We escaped with nothing but our lives, which we pledge to you if you will grant us your protection. I swear by the Storm King and the Great Sun and the Crucified Man and the Flame Eternal that by your mercy we will serve you faithfully.”
The smoking man responded in a language they didn’t understand. The sound was similar to the speech of the soldiers and the occasional word was familiar. There was no indication that he, in turn, had understood any of the Iranic slave’s babbling.
So be it. There were other forms of supplication besides the ancient rites. Roxana handed Julian off and knelt in front of the man. She lifted his apron, leaning forward when he stepped back into the wall bewildered. Yazdegerd turned away, speaking to the baby so his son would remember his words and not the sound of his mother sucking off a stranger. He wished he could do it for her but he knew that his wife would make a better first impression. Although he had been told by men who sampled both that his mouth was better.
A set of symmetrical crashes echoed across the plain. Two plumes of white smoke rising over a crowd of brightly attired revelers a mile or two away. A festival? Religious games with ritual combat? The sound was like thunder, much louder than the slave’s voice or his wife’s throat. It upset the child, who began to cry.
Edith Falling Drum used her powerful voice to keep the group moving toward the roadhouse. The dust storm filled her mouth with earth every time she opened it. She wanted to wretch and cough and flush her eyes with water but she kept shouting so the crowd could hear her and follow her voice, although they couldn’t see her with visibility suddenly reduced to mere feet. The 333rd made the snap decision to evacuate the site as the cloud rolled in - the trucks wouldn’t have sheltered everyone and trying to drive under these conditions was suicide, even just a short distance. La Momia wasn’t even two miles away but shuffling through the dust storm, arms linked to prevent anyone being lost, it might as well have been on the moon.
Edith briefly wondered about the thing in the rock, seen for a second before the freak haboob devoured the sun. The hand of black stone, embedded in the rock and released by the impact of the steel ball, whole one moment and fingers snapped the next before being obscured by the cloud. She stopped thinking about the hand almost immediately. The important thing was to follow the dirt road and make sure nobody got lost.
Animal hung on to the back of the King’s baldrick, and Angela hung on to his cartridge belt behind him. It would have been easy to shoot the King in the back. Press the lemon squeezer to his head and end his reign. But it didn’t work like that. He was no Robert Ford. It needed to be a fair set duel and everyone had to see it. Waiting to kill the King irritated Animal as much as waiting to fire the cannon had irritated the King. He also noticed, and this annoyed him even more, that the thunderbird picture around his neck was gone, cord snapped or knot undone. He reached with his free hand to fondle it and it wasn’t there.
Gnaeus crouched in the dust with his handful of soldiers. They had almost caught up with the escaped slaves when the dust storm hit and forced his little troop to dismount. Horses hobbled and hooded to protect their eyes from the neverending stream of grit, he left a man to manage the beasts and led the remaining three forward on foot. The dark cloud was utter misery to traverse but it concealed their approach from the distant mass of brightly colored magi who smashed the white boulder with ball lightning.
Valerian said he saw the hand of the Great God Magnus emerge from the stone in the moment before the storm swallowed the horizon. He said it with the strong implication, though he didn’t voice it outright for fear of catching the back of his commanding officer’s hand, that the recovery of such an artifact took precedence over the pursuit of the slaves. It annoyed Gnaeus but he couldn’t completely dismiss the man’s jabbering as mere fanaticism. The Godly man had read the bones that morning and convinced Gnaeus that the soldiers should leave their lances and heavy banded armor at the camp, and to cover their faces with veils of cloth thin enough to see through. All of which had proven prescient. But he wasn’t willing to prioritize a statue hand over the recovery of his property.
In truth he wasn’t mad the skinny little stablehand had despoiled his Parthian plaything. He knew he wasn’t the only one who had fucked her. He ordered Yazdegerd’s balls removed because he considered the both of them, male and female, his to fuck and mutilate as he pleased. And he didn’t want to spend any more time in this strange land than he had to.
Sabinus emerged from the whirling dust. He signed with his hands that the other should follow him. Gnaeus elbowed Valerian, who kicked Cornelius, and the three of them followed close behind the swarthy scout. His scowl became a grin that involuntarily skinned his teeth, so the cloth pressed against them and the sand stuck to it became wet with drool. He gripped the hilt of his spatha and it seemed to swell in his hand, mirroring the rush of blood to his penis.
The crowd of exiles filed into La Momia, shoved through the door one by one by Sgt Eaton like paratroopers leaping out of a plane. They beat their coats and pants and overturned their sand-filled shoes into a plastic garbage can brought out by the owner. Colonel Bhoja bought pitchers for everyone to celebrate a successful shoot and to facilitate a more convivial atmosphere as they waited out the storm. The WNN crew interviewed him silhouetted against a window, red-lit and miked up so he was audible against the wind hammering the panes. Namond sketched the hand in his notebook and watched Edith chastise her son for sneaking sips of beer while her daughters filled up their glasses behind her back.
It was a little crowded and the boys from Danny O’s church ended up sharing a table with a Persian couple and their infant son. The couple wore sweatpants and Led Zeppelin shirts much too large for them and jealously guarded their cheeseburgers like they expected the strange Black men to take their food. But the churchmen recognized the few words they could coax out of the couple as Latin, and responded with a few broken words of their own. They poured beer for their new friends. The baby couldn’t understand any language but could feel his parents’ affect change as they let themselves believe they were safe for just a moment. He gurgled and smiled.
At first the King of Swords found it hard to enjoy his pint and patty melt. It was a cut above the usual frozen Sysco slop that passed for barfood but the thought of all the cleanup that still had to be done at the firing range stopped him from getting drunk. He wasn’t blind to the way the twin gunslingers in neon button-ups eyed him across the bar. Also, he recognized the stone hand from inside the boulder. It was a larger version of the wax replica he had seen in the secret museum in the basement of the old Pythian castle in Arcata, displayed alongside the taxidermied body of Watson Brown and the skull of a Lovelock Giant. The Right Hand of Comte Saint Germain, First and Last Man. Its destruction was just about the worst omen imaginable for him. The 333rd may have fired the cannon but it was forged from swords that came out of his throat. It was his gun that smashed the right hand of the master of the universe.
Then he saw the woman across the room and he immediately forgot about all that. Along with the pair of Parthians she was there when they came in, but he had been one of the last people inside and hadn’t noticed her until a gap in the crowd silhouetted her beneath the plaster statue of Akhenaten. Seated at the faro table under the Pharaoh. Naked. Black hair and pink nipples shaded cranberry red by the windows. Just a tiny bit horse faced in a way that sent a squirt of interest to the cock and balls packed tightly in the King of Swords’ jeans.
“Do you know the rules?’
Her voice was just a little nasal.
“Yes.”
“Do you really?”
He stared at her. She licked her lips.
“Beat the house and I’ll grant you a wish.”
She made the cards leap from hand to hand. The snap of her arm sent a satisfying bounce through her little breasts.
“And if I lose?”
“If you lose you’ll take my seat.”
“As the dealer?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll be naked?”
“Yes.”
“I can get naked for you without playing cards.”
That got a snotty little wheeze of laughter out of her.
“You’ll still have to play cards.”
He had already shrugged off his Hessian blue jacket and he shrugged the shoulder off his sandblasted wife beater. He had the physique of a soldier lost in the jungle, half muscular and half starved. The dust further irritated his skin and gave it a sunburned texture. He looked like a wound man, flayed and awaiting the insertion of weapons.
Faro was a poor choice of game for a man who had just bitten the right hand of God. There was an element of probability but at the end of the day it was largely luck and the house edge, while narrow, tilted the odds away from the players. The cards on the betting board were suited hearts rather than the traditional spades. The Suicide King goggled up at him, sword jammed gormlessly through its own skull. Perhaps an admonition to stop thinking with his blade.
He sat at the table and contemplated his wager.
A moment later the gunslingers joined him.
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