David Drake: Balefires

"Look at this, Deehalter!" cried Kernes as he scrabbled backward. "By God!"

"I've seen skulls before," the black-haired man said sourly, eyeing the discolored bone which his brother-in-law held hooked through the eye sockets. The lower jaw was missing, but the explosion seemed to have done little damage. Unless the front teeth…

"There's other stuff in there too," Kernes bubbled.

"Then it's mine," said Deehalter sharply.

"Did I goddamn say it wasn't?" Kernes demanded. "And you can get it out for yourself, too," he added, looking down at his shirt, muddied by dirt and perspiration.

Deehalter said nothing further. He lay down carefully in the fresh earth and directed the spotlight past his head. He could see other bones in the shallow cavity. The explosion had shaken them, but their order was too precise for any large animals to have stripped away the flesh. Indeed, the bundles of skin and tendon still clinging to the thighs indicated that not even mice had entered the tomb. The stone-to-stone seal must have been surprisingly close.

Metal glittered beyond the bones. Deehalter marked its place and reached in, edging himself forward so that his shoulder pressed hard against the ragged lip of the slab. He expected to feel revulsion or the sudden fear of his childhood, but the cavity was dry and empty even of death. His wrist brushed over rib bones and he thought the object beyond them was too far; then his fingertips touched it, touched them, and he lifted them carefully out.

Kernes stopped studying the skull in the sunlight from different angles. "What the hell you got there. Dee?" he asked warily.

Deehalter wasn't sure himself, so he said nothing. He held the two halves of a hollow metal teardrop, six inches long. On the outside it was black and bubbled-looking; within, the spherical cavity was no larger than a hickory nut. The mating surfaces and the cavity itself were a rich silver color, untarnished and as smooth as the lenses of a camera.

"One of them's mine," said Kernes abruptly."The skull and half the rest."He reached for one of the pieces.

"Like hell," said Deehalter, mildly because he was concentrating on the chunks of metal. His big shoulder blocked Kernes away without effort."Besides, it's all one thing," he added, holding the sections so that the polished surfaces mated. Then, when he tried to part them, the halves did not reseparate.

"Aw," Kernes said in disbelief and again put a hand out for the object. This time Deehalter let him take it. Despite all the ginger-haired man's tugging and pushing, the teardrop held together. It was only after Kernes, sweating and angry, had handed back the object that Deehalter found the trick of it. You had to rotate the halves along the plane of the separation-which, since there was no visible line, was purely a matter of luck the first time it worked.

"Let's get on home," Deehalter said. He nodded westward toward the sun. Sunset was still an hour away, but it would take them a while to drive back. The ridge was already casting its broad shadow across the high ground to the east. "Besides," Deehalter added, almost under his breath, "I don't like the feeling I get up here sometimes."

But it was almost two weeks before Deehalter had any reason for his uneasiness…

Despite the full moon low in the west and the light of the big mercury vapor lamp above the cow yard to the north of the barn, the plump blonde stumbled twice on the graveled path to the car. The second time she caught Deehalter's arm and clung there giggling. More to be shut of her than for chivalry, the farmer opened the passenger door of the Chrysler and handed her in. Naturally, she flopped across his lap when he got in on the driver's side. He pushed her upright in disgust.

It was 3 a.m. and there were no lights yet in Alice and her husband's house. Deehalter knew they had seen him bring Wendy home in the evening, knew also that Wiener would awaken them as he chased the car. Kernes had once complained to Deehalter, red-faced, about the example he set for his nephew and nieces by bringing whores home to their grandfather's house. Deehalter had told him that under the will it was his house, and that when Kernes and Alice quit fucking intheir house, he'd consider quitting it in his. The smaller man hadn't quite taken a swing as Deehalter had hoped he might.

When the car began to scrunch down the drive past the new house, Wiener came loping toward them from the barn. He barked once every other time his forefeet touched the ground. The noise was more irritating than even a quick staccato would have been. The car windows were closed against the night's damp chill. Deehalter's finger was poised on the switch to roll the glass down and shout at the mongrel, when Wendy's scream snapped his head around.

The bank to the left sloped up from the drive, so the thing standing there was only in the edge of the lights. It was wire thin and tall-twice the height of a man at a fleeting glance, though a part of Deehalter knew that was the effect of the bank and the angle. A flat lizard-snout of teeth glittered sharply. Then the beast turned and the big car leaped forward down the drive as Dee-halter floored the accelerator. Wendy was still screaming, her face buried in her hands, when the car banged over the slotted cattle-guard and fishtailed onto the gravel county road.

Deehalter kept his speedometer dangerously above sixty for the first three miles, until they reached the tavern and gas station at Five Points. There he braked to a stop and turned on the dome light. The girl whimpered. Deehalter's big hands gripped her shoulders and hauled her upright. "Shut up," he said tightly.

"W-what was it?" she blubbered.

"Shut up, for Christ's sake!" Deehalter shouted. "It wasn't a goddamned thing!" He brought his face close to Wendy's. The girl's eyes were as fearful as they had been minutes before at the sight of the creature. "You saw a cat in the headlights, that's all. You'renot going to get everybody and his brother tramping over my farm shooting my milking herd. You're going to keep your goddamn mouth shut, do you hear?"

The blonde was nodding to the rhythm of Deehalter's words. Tears streamed from her eyes, and when she tried to wipe them she smeared the remains of her eye shadow across her cheeks.

Deehalter released her suddenly and put the car in gear. Neither of them spoke during the rest of the ride to town. When the big farmer stopped in front of the girl's apartment, she stumbled out and ran up the steps without bothering to close the car door. Deehalter locked it after he slammed it shut.

He drove back to the farm at a moderate pace that slowed appreciably as he came nearer. The night had only its usual motions and noises now. Deehalter was waiting in his locked car an hour later, alone with nothing but a memory to disturb him, when Kernes came out of his house to start milking.

After lunch-a full meal of fried steak and potatoes; Deehalter had cooked for himself and his father as well before Old John died-the big man walked down the drive and began searching the grassy bank to the left of it. Once when he looked up, he saw his sister watching him intently from the Kernes' kitchen window. He waved but she ducked away. Toward three o'clock, Kernes himself came back in the jeep from inspecting the fences around the northwest pasture. Deehalter hailed him. After a moment's hesitation, the ginger-haired man swung the vehicle up the bank and stopped.

"Come look at this," Deehalter said. The turf was marked fuzzily where he pointed. "Doesn't it look like three claw prints?" he asked.

Kernes looked at him strangely. "Claw prints? What do you mean, Dee?"

"It-oh, Christ, I don't know," said the big man, straightening and lifting his cap to run his hand through his hair. He looked glumly back past the barn to the long bulk of Sac Ridge.