Devon Monk - Tin Swift

Holy hellfire. That was something Hink had never seen on the field before.

But Cedar Hunt just laughed and found himself a flamethrower. And then got serious about his butchery.

More men were jumping out of that ship. Men Hink recognized. Men who shouldn’t be walking without crutches. Men with hands where stumps had been.

They weren’t Mullins’s men. No, the ship’s crew stayed on the ship, and turned the guns on the field.

It didn’t matter how fast Cedar Hunt was. Didn’t matter that the wolf moved like shadow and smoke. They were going to be killed.

More gunfire rained down from the cliffs above them. Jack’s men had turned out the Gatling guns and were aiming them at anything that moved.

Theobald stood side by side with Miss Dupuis, that gun of his shooting out grapeshot that caught anything it touched on fire, while Miss Dupuis unloaded her shotgun, sending out bullets that exploded on impact.

They were a coolheaded couple who looked like they’d seen their share of battle at each other’s sides.

But it was too much. Too many bullets. Too easy to die. And Hink wasn’t about to get himself shot and let Mullins finish him off for good.

“Out!” he yelled. “Get in the tunnels. There’s a door that way you can bust in.”

“What about Mr. Hunt?” Miss Dupuis yelled.

“I’ll get his attention. You get running!”

Captain Hink bolted toward the stone stairs that led up to the main cannon. He was exposed, halfway up the stairs, but out of range of the Gatling guns, which couldn’t fire straight down on him since they were set back too far in the hole cut into the cliff.

Almost there, almost there, he panted as he ran the stairs.

Something hot bit through his leg and he fell forward.

Son of a bitch. He was shot. If that bullet came from Mullins’s gun he was going to dig it out and make the jackass eat it.

Hink got back on his feet and took the rest of the stairs, cussing his way through the pain.

The cannon was unmanned. Likely the boy had been shot and tumbled to his death, or had hightailed it when he saw Mullins’s ship come up with her guns.

Hink got busy, checking the cannon, clearing the barrel, adding the powder, tamping, and dropping the ball inside.

It was slow work for one man. But Captain Hink was a determined man who had no problem doing the work of two when he put his mind to it. He glanced down over the battle. The ship still hovered there, letting loose round after round of ammunition, while Cedar and the wolf seemed to have come enough to their senses that they’d taken cover behind a scree of stones.

Hink could make out six dead men on the ground, pieces and parts of them tossed about, and on fire. Cedar must have gotten the hang of that flamethrower.

Miss Dupuis and her crew were scurrying from one scant cover to the next, working their way away from the landing pad toward the opening into the mountain.

“Burn in hell, Mullins.” Hink took aim and lit the cannon’s fuse.

A chest-thumping explosion reverberated across the cliffs and sent sharp echoes over the horizon. The shot struck true. Right down the port side of the ship, knocking out her fan and blasting her hull into splinters.

Before the chunks of ship had a chance to hit the ground, Cedar Hunt was running.

Toward the damn ship.

He got up under her belly, and caught one of the netting ropes.

With the flamethrower strapped to his back, Cedar overhanded his way up that rope. When he was close enough, he stopped, triggered the flamethrower, and shot a blast of oil and fire twenty feet out, setting the ship on fire.

The ship he was hanging from by a thread.

The man was crazy, that was clear sure. But he knew how to cripple a foe.

Cedar slid down the rope, then let go. The ship rocked wildly, trying to stabilize without her port fans. Cedar was thrown more than thirty feet, but he tucked and rolled, taking the fall like a tumbler.

And then he stood up, looked around the field. The wolf, his brother, loped up next to him. As the ship above burned and wailed, Cedar Hunt and that wolf glanced first at Miss Dupuis and her people nearly in the tunnel, then up at Hink.

Cedar was bloody, burned, dirty. And yet he stood there as if he felt no pain. Like a warrior out of legend.

Likely he didn’t feel the pain. Hink had seen that on the field before too. Sometimes it took a man an hour or more to realize how he’d been broken, and what he was missing. And that discovery came on sudden and unpleasant. Some men never survived it.

Captain Hink cupped his mouth and yelled, “Inside. Tunnel!”

He didn’t wait to see if Cedar heard him, but the man had damn good ears.

The relative silence from the Gatling guns’ reloading wasn’t going to last.

He wondered if Mullins was going to try to land that fiery barge. As if in answer, a huge explosion hit the field, throwing Hink to his knees and nearly sending him tumbling down the stairs.

Dynamite. Old Jack was done horsing around with his guests.

Since he’d likely been paid by all the parties involved, he meant to kill them all. Old Jack never took a side in a conflict, other than taking as much money as he could fist, and saving his own hide.

Ears ringing, Hink got up, and got moving. Didn’t care about cover. He wanted speed. Every step down that staircase was agony, his leg getting heavier and heavier. But he pounded on, down the stairs, across to the hole in the mountain. Dupuis and her people were gone, hopefully already inside the mountain.

Just a few more yards, and he’d be there. Just a few more yards.

An arm came out of nowhere and grabbed hold of him by the waist, tugging his arm over a shoulder.

Cedar Hunt had somehow caught up, even across the distance of the field.

“Don’t need help,” Hink panted.

But Cedar kept hold of him, and half ran, half carried him despite his complaints.

Man was inhuman. The strength of him, the calm of him, the speed of him. And even though Hink had seen that on the battlefield too, to have him up close like this, the wolf guarding their rear, and then running ahead to make sure the path was clear, as if the wolf had a man’s mind in an animal’s body, sent a certain kind of dread through Hink’s belly.

Cedar Hunt had said the men they were fighting weren’t really men, but men worked up by something Strange. Hink agreed.

It was also clear that Mr. Cedar Hunt was not really a man either. Or not just a man. Same as the wolf was not just a wolf.

They were stuff of fairy tales and legends, or at least the bloody ones.

He was suddenly very glad to be on the same side of the fight as Cedar Hunt and his brother and wasn’t looking forward to a day in which that was no longer true.

They were nearly at the door now. Joonie Wright stepped out just enough to let loose a couple shots at the gunners who had reloaded the Gatlings. That copper shield device of hers wasn’t shooting bullets. When the hammer of her gun hit, the shield let out a blast of lightning that cracked across the air and dropped the Gatling gunner flat.

“Get inside,” Hink ordered.

She moved aside so he and Cedar and the wolf could enter the hill.

This was not the hall where they had been staying. As a matter of fact, it was halfway across the landing field and to the south of where they had been. Three tunnels led off in three directions. The only light came from Theobald’s foldable lantern that he’d pulled out of that carpetbag of his and lit.

“Let’s get moving,” Hink said.

“How badly are you hurt?” Miss Dupuis asked.

“The leg. It’s fine.”

“Broken? Shot?” she asked.

“Shot. And I said it’s fine.”

He pushed away from Cedar, who still had hold of him, and nearly collapsed.