Joseph Lewis - Halcyon

Dear gods of heaven and earth. Qhora stared. How can I get past such warriors? How can I save the captain? How can I save myself?

“Aker!” Khai roared. He strode to the edge of the train platform to survey the rail yard below him. “Aker! If you wish to continue in my service, you will show yourself now!”

There was no answer.

Mirari leaned close to Qhora’s ear. “Now?”

“Not yet,” she whispered back.

“You and you.” Khai indicated two of his men. “Search the yard.”

The two men jumped down from the platform to the dusty ground but stopped short. Qhora saw a man step out from behind the row of old freight cars at the rear of the yard. She recognized Aker, but his features were obscured by a half-mask of red and black ruin down the side of his face. And extending from behind the safety of the freight cars there was a hand holding a matte black revolver.

“We have Aker!” a man shouted. “He’s wanted for murder and he’s going to stand trial in Marrakesh. Leave this place now.”

Khai grunted. He nodded at the Osirians assembled beside him and said, “Go get him, and kill whoever else is back there.”

“Now?” Mirari whispered. “It must be now!”

Qhora leapt up and ran across the street. “Stop! Stop! All of you!”

The Sons of Osiris, scattered across the yard, turned to peer up at her. Khai frowned over his shoulder at her. “You.”

Qhora dashed to the edge of the platform some fifteen yards down from the elderly man in green and stared back at him. “You can have Aker. There’s no need for more killing. No one will try to stop you.” She shouted across the yard, “Captain? It’s Qhora! Let Aker go! Do it now, please!”

The black revolver pulled back behind the freight car and Aker staggered forward, an angry glare twisting his bloody face.

“Very good,” Khai said. He glanced at her. “You see? Civilized people are so much more useful than barbarous ones.” He called out to his men, “Kill the foreigners and bring me their possessions.”

“No!” Qhora shrieked as she drew her stiletto and ran toward Khai.

The older man merely shifted his weight and raised the tip of his searing white blade. Two of his men down in the yard paused to watch their master while the others proceeded toward the freight cars. “Hm.” Khai peered at her through tired eyes. “Will your soul teach me to speak your barbarian language? Or to ride on birds?” The corner of his mouth twisted up for a brief moment.

A single gunshot cracked across the train station, echoing off the pale blue sky. Khai’s head snapped to the side as the man twisted forward and tumbled off the platform into the rail yard.

Tycho strode out of the shadows, the smoking white revolver in his hand. He came to the edge of the platform and fired a second shot into the body below. “That’s for Constantia.” He picked up the blazing white seireiken. “And this is for Philo.”

Salvator and Mirari stepped out from the station office to stand beside the dwarf. The green men in the yard had stopped short when the first shot was fired and now they stood all over the space between their dead master and Aker exchanging confused and angry looks.

Qhora looked at the Hellan and then she looked out at the Sons of Osiris. “All of you, listen to me! Go now and we’ll let you live. Go home!”

The swordsmen formed ranks, six facing the platform and five facing Aker and the locomotive behind him.

Qhora eyed the nearest orange seireiken as she called out, “Captain! Look out! They’re coming for you!”

Taziri Ohana stepped out from behind the freight cars. She had her left arm raised with a silvery revolver mounted on her silvery brace. Beside her was the Mazigh detective with the black revolver. They leveled their guns at the green men.

“This is your last chance to leave!” Qhora shouted. “Go now!”

The six warriors facing the platform charged forward. Salvator whipped his rapier about in flashing circles and fell back as two of the fiery blades came at him. Mirari whirled away with her long knife and hatchet in hand as a third man came at her.

Qhora raised her stiletto to hurl at the fourth man in front of her, but then a gunshot rang out and the man dropped to the ground. Tycho fired again and again, killing the two closest to him, and then he turned and shot the man chasing Mirari across the street.

“You’re a very good shot,” Qhora said.

“I have good eyes,” the Hellan said with a weary little smile. He pointed his revolver at the last two men near Salvator.

Click. Click.

Tycho’s eyes went wide. The two swordsmen stopped, turned, and charged back toward the dwarf. The one on the left held his seireiken high in both hands as though ready to chop the Hellan in half from brain to bowels. The one on the right held his blade low and to the side, preparing to slice his target across the waist.

In that moment, Qhora saw the useless gun shake in Tycho’s hand, and she saw the gun fall to the ground. It thudded on the planks of the platform with a hollow wooden thump.

Qhora leapt forward, reaching out toward Tycho, reaching toward his shoulder to dig both hands into his shirt and haul him bodily away from the two men, but she missed.

Tycho wasn’t there anymore. He was running toward the two men, and he was clutching the white-hot seireiken in both hands. The first attacker sliced straight down and the Hellan hurled himself aside to let the orange blade crunch into the platform boards. At the same moment, the second man sliced across and clanged his sword against the one lodged in the platform floor. Tycho swung the white sword in a level arc and it smashed through both of the fiery blades and blazed through both men’s knees. The men fell to the ground, silent and still and pale. Their broken swords lay in pieces on the platform, gray and cold.

Before she could speak, a chorus of gunfire drew Qhora’s gaze out to the rail yard. The other five green men all lay on the ground, all of them groaning and writhing as they clutched their shattered knees and bloody legs. Their swords lay bright in the dust, illuminating the haze with their hellish glow.

“There! Do you see that?” the detective shouted at the men on the ground. “That’s what happens when you bring magic swords to a gun fight!”

And the captain muttered back something that sounded like, “You do know it’s not really magic, right?”

Qhora looked around the platform and the street and the yard. Everyone was gone, or dead, or whimpering. No one was running. No one was shooting. A soft, warm breeze gently brushed the dust away to better reveal the stillness of the train station. Taziri put her fingers to her forehead in a little salute.

Qhora waved back. Then she hopped down from the platform and walked slowly and quietly across the gravel yard, stepping carefully over the train tracks and bodies, and looked up at the last man in green still standing.

“Aker El Deeb.” She said it calmly and softly. “You killed my husband. You stole his soul. Where is your sword?”

The man glanced back over his shoulder.

“It’s here.” Taziri pointed to the ground. “I destroyed it. Melted it down. All the souls are free. Lorenzo is free, Qhora. It’s over.”

He’s free. He’s at peace. It’s over.

Qhora cleared her throat and looked at the bloody, haggard face of Aker El Deeb. “Were you under orders? Were you hired to kill my husband?”

He spat in the dirt. “No.”

“That night, did you come to rob us?”

“No.”

“Did you come to rape me?”

He grinned. “No.”

“Would you have killed the rest of us that night, if you could have? Me, Mirari, Alonso? My baby? If you could have, would you?”