Gunlaw

Gunlaw 39

Chapter 26

In the desert there's little call for stealth. On the white sands the three of them would draw any eye turned their way. Still, Hemar led a cautious path, lingering in the depths between dunes and making swift transits over each crest. Even so, the fact they reached the ruins' shadow unchallenged was down to the complacency of whoever held command there, and to the expanse of remains giving such a long perimeter to patrol. They walked the last miles in the hours before sunset, the sun still striking parting blows between the blessing of shade on the eastern slopes of each dune. Hemar took them in from the direction of the deep desert, a place where nothing lived.

Before they made their final approach Mikeos settled in the lee of a dune, a hundred-foot wave of whispering sand, and checked the revolver. He took brushes, picks, and oil from his pack, muttering as he worked on the weapon. "Should've been the first damn thing you did ... gotta get your head straight, Mikey ... looks like he's been growing potatoes in this ... had to be a horse that needed shooting ... what are the odds." He released the cylinder, swung it out, eyed the chambers, swung it back. With a small screwdriver he removed one screw from the side plate, shielding his work from the wind.

"Problems?" Jenna asked, some part of her pleased that a gunslinger understood the workings of his weapon even if men didn't understand how to make them.

"Sand's a killer for guns. Dune's not the best place for this." Mikeos continued the disassembly, placing cylinder, ejector rod and half a dozen screws and pieces for which Jenna had no names in his lap on a roll of suede. His fingers moved with a swift surety that drew her closer. She blamed the sharing of their blood for the want she felt. The gunslinger worked a soft wire brush into the weapon's nooks and crannies, blowing continuously to free and dispatch tiny pieces of grit from the mechanism. She imagined herself the focus of such attention, and shook the foolish notion from her.

"Any good?" Jenna asked. She tipped the sand from her boot and wriggled her toes in the dune. The boot would fill up again soon enough, but for a few steps it would feel better.

"It's a piece of junk. Bottom of the range, badly maintained, barrel's too worn to put a bullet in the same place twice, and it's like to lock up on me at the worst moment." He grinned and spun the revolver's skeleton around his trigger finger. "But it beats the hell out of an iron bar!" Two minutes later the gun was once more complete. Cleaned, oiled, fired on empty until the cylinder spun. Mikeos chambered six bullets with religious care, then holstered his weapon. "Ready."

The Ruins, like Small Stones and The Table were vast blocks of stone without ornament or entrance, seemingly without purpose. Some towered a thousand yards and more into the sky, some lay half buried in the sand, others had fallen into a confusion of fragments each larger than any work of man. The wind sang around them, the shadows moved, the desert sighed and shifted. To Jenna it felt like a place where time itself was put to the test. Human lives were smeared out quickly beneath the passage of years but the work of the Old Ones resisted, stubborn and obdurate. They entered in the narrow gap between two huge blocks. A network of such voids and cracks led them deeper.

"This way." Hemar beckoned from the turn. He sniffed again. They were following his nose, trusting the convolutions of the wind to bring them warning of trouble ahead. Twice they passed openings to shafts that dove beneath the fallen stonework, but both times Hemar declared the workings disused. He led them on, taking one turn then another. The blocks were close together, just as at Small Stones, creating the impression of being constantly at the bottom of the deepest well. Looking up proved inadvisable, the bright slices of sky offered between the stone gave Jenna vertigo and left her near-blind when she returned her gaze to the shadows.