Gunlaw

There's a cold weight to a handgun that speaks of purpose. A six-shooter, the dull iron gleam of it, the forged simplicity, may seem a weapon but it is a tool, an agent of change. A philosopher or an engineer – for they are not much different - once said, give me a fulcrum and a lever of sufficient length and I can move the world. A six-shooter is the fulcrum: your finger on the trigger, the lever. A six-shooter is all about potential, about cardinality, accusations loud-spoken which cannot be retracted.

Chapter 1 – 15 years ago

"Scram, kid." 

Mikeos danced away from the minotaur's lazy swing. He ducked beneath a busboy's arm, nearly taking out a tray of ales, and fetched up amid the tatter-robes of a hunska sex-woman. 

"Not for you, boy," she husked.

A quick struggle saw him clear of soft breasts and musk-laced velvet. He pressed on, through the throng, making for the bar.

A hand, huge as a chair, took him about the shoulders, lifting him from the floor.

"You looking to get ate?"

Mikeos dangled six inches from the wet snout of another minotaur, a clansman in bull hides sewn with iron plates.

"Hey Grum!" Mikeos grinned; he liked the big warrior, except when he got to drinking his whiskey by the bucket of course. Taurs make for roaring drunks, it's the woodkin that get maudlin.
"You've come for the gunslinger," Grum said. He didn't have to raise his voice above the hubbub. He spoke so deep it just rumbled through a man.

He set the boy on his shoulder. From his perch, across a sea of heads, Mikeos could see the hearth and the tables set around it. The Frostral had yet to blow in earnest and the hearth lay cold, but the people who counted sat around the fireplace. No elbowing for space there.

Grum was half right. Mikeos had been looking for the gunslinger's arrival every day for a week. Today, however, he'd actually been running from trouble. Even so, now he really was here to catch sight of the gunman. 

"Which one is he?" Mikeos felt a twinge of disappointment. He should be able to tell. The fastest hand under gun-law should look like something. Something important. 

"The dude in the black hat," Grum said. He buried his snout in his tankard and seemed to inhale about a gallon of beer.

Mikeos could see him now. He had missed the man at first, a dark figure at the table to the left of the hearth, his back to the wall. Beside him the stairs, leading up to Miss Kitty's room and the Kitty girls behind their doors along the long corridor.

"He doesn't look so much." Mikeos heard the whine in his voice and hated it.

Grum snorted out beer foam and grunted an aside to the girl with him. He had to lean over so far that Mikeos nearly lost his seat. 

"Who's that with him?" A child of six, maybe seven, had the seat to the gunslinger's left, and a robed figure sat opposite, back facing Mikeos. 

"Some hex-witch from Ansos." 

Grum shrugged Mikeos to the floor and ran a hand over his girl, a blonde from Kitty's collection. Grum liked blondes. Mikeos hoped he wouldn't break this one. 

"What about the little girl?" Mikeos asked. 

No reply. From knee height it's hard to command a taur's attention, especially when the competition is alcohol and women.

Mikeos fought a path toward the fireplace, squeezing through a tight knot of prospectors, burly men in hemp and cheap hats. They smelled worse than the dogmen by the bar. Something wet spilled down Mikeos' neck. He hoped it was just beer. 

He won free of the crush as the hex-witch rose from the gunslinger's table. She had the bloodless beauty of her kind, and the crimson hex sliced across her forehead. Mikeos didn't want to look at that. The symbol made him cold inside his bones, but it hooked his eyes.

"You should deal with us, gunman." She watched Mikeos while speaking. "You can't win this time. Not alone." 

And she was gone. The crowd opened for her, and shut behind. 

The gunslinger sat with the child, his eyes flicking over Mikeos, just the once. His companion looked to be a girl, but with hair cut short like a street-boy. She studied Mikeos with open interest. At ten he was by far the closest to her age of any in the tavern. 

Mikeos ignored the girl. He had come to see the gunslinger, Remos Jax. Legends didn't blow into the Five-Oh-Seven every day, or even every decade, and Mikeos was damned if he'd let this one slip through the outpost without a look-see. 

Close in, Remos Jax looked more like a fast hand should. Mikeos had thought he might be a bit younger, but leather-skinned and flint-eyed would do. His gear was still a disappointment, but at least all that black-skin and mole-hide drew attention to the revolvers at his hips. Colt 45s. Silver handled seven-shooters. Mikeos knew it all from the 'Oh-Five Herald. He had the newsprint folded into a neat square in his back pocket. 

"How come you're in here?" The little girl had gotten beside him somehow. "You're just a kid."
"I'm ten," Mikeos said. "Besides, my mother—" He bit the words off and shot a quick glance up the stairs. "How old are you anyhow?" 

The girl smiled. "Old enough." She had strange eyes, pale, with a draw to them. "Why're you here?"
Mikeos looked back at Remos. "Is it true he's going to fight? They say the sect are sending a champion." 

"He always fights." The girl smiled again. She turned back to the gunslinger. "Here, Remos! You've got an admirer. Aren't you the hero of men!"

She didn't sound like a kid. Mikeos looked down, feeling the blood rising in his cheeks. Before he could turn away, something cold seized him from behind, lifting him by the neck. 

"Hello Mikey." A dry voice hissed into his ear. 

Shit. He'd forgotten about the corpser. He hadn't thought it would follow him into the tavern. He stopped kicking and tried to think. The grip on his neck hurt like hell.

"Hi." His flesh crawled under the corpser's fingers. He wondered how quick the rot set in.
"I chased you halfway across the Oh-Seven, little boy. Did you think I was just going to stop?"

Around them the conversation had muted but the tavern still bubbled with chatter. It would take more than a corpser to put a damper on the evening.

"I've got the dust." Mikeos tried to reach for the pouch under his shirt. His arms wouldn't work. "You can have it back."

"I'm going to need a little . . . interest on the loan, boy." The corpser stank worse than the dogmen and prospectors both. Mikeos felt his stomach heave. 

"Look, she just needs a bit more." 

"She can pay a bit more then," the corpser said. "She can whore a bit more. Can't she? Boy?"

Mikeos couldn't answer. His lips felt numb. His mother would be upstairs. Working, or sleeping off the last of the dust. During the day she lay with whoever or whatever had the money and the inclination. By night the dust took her off to the deadlands and she'd lie with his father. At least that's what she said. She saw his father in the dryland and they'd do the things they did back when Mikeos was just a babe. And every day she'd wake a little more grey, a little more thin.

"Put him down." Grum's deep rumble reached into his daze. Grum had been sweet on his mother once upon a time.

The corpser let him drop. He drew a long white knife from within his trench coat, the blade as narrow as a finger. Hush spread across the tavern fast as a gunshot.

"Go play with your human, Bull-boy."

Grum frowned, his face rucking up into ridges and folds. The corpser might not be able to reach from one of his horn tips to the other, but it doesn't pay to mess with dead-kind.

Mikeos managed to sit, sensation making a slow return to his limbs.

"Leave him be." Grum opened his cape to reveal the axe at his side.

The corpser flung out his empty hand, quicker than any dead thing should move. A scatter of dust hit the taur's snout.

"Eich." The corpser spoke the death-rune as Grum reached for his axe. The taur fell, like a mountain falling, and the iron plates on his robe clashed when he hit the ground.

He didn't move. No-one moved. Death-runes aren't spoken lightly and the corpser had the room's attention.

Grum's girl screamed once into the silence, then shut her mouth.

"Now, Mikey, we can settle our account. A tongue or an eye will suffice. Both make good voodoo. Child blood is always sweet. You can keep the dust, your mother's slate will be clear, and we'll be even for the chase."

Mikeos tried to scramble away but his legs were still uncoordinated and he got tangled in a chair. He'd never had a day go so spectacularly wrong so fast. The corpser bent toward him, the skin around its mouth cracking into a grin over yellow teeth. An animal horror filled him and he felt his bladder go as he howled.

"Don't do that." The little girl stepped between them.

"What?" The corpser straightened. "What are you?"

"I'm older than you, thing that was Elver Samms," the girl said. "And I'm meaner than you. Better run now."

And to Mikeos' amazement, it did. "

[I've written other books if you can't wait for more :)  

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