CHAPTER 15
BLOOD AND ASHES
Gideon’s stomach burned as though it were full of twisted nails, but the inventor’s mind, shaped by the cold logic of machines, went on working through the desperation.
Crawling like a worm across the rough rock, he dragged his own body to the tool crate that had fallen over in the mud.
His hands, shaking and unsteady, groped the bottom of the chest until they found what he was after: black porous stones of mineral coal, the remains of the fuel used in the forge back in Bitter Creek.
With one last breath of hot air, Gideon broke the larger stones against a rock and threw the pieces toward Nero and Elena.
“The taste… the taste is horrible…” Gideon’s voice came out torn, a thread of life smothered by the poison. “But swallow it! Swallow it fast! The coal sucks up the poison before the blood does! Swallow!”
Nero did not hesitate. With his jaw locked, he took the piece of black rock, crushed it between his molars with a dry sound, and swallowed the bitter, choking dust dry.
Elena, twisting with pain, copied the hunter, forcing the coal down her throat while tears of pure nausea ran over cheeks painted with dirt.
But Gideon was not finished. If the horses died, none of them would come out of that canyon alive.
Driven by an insane and dying adrenaline, the machinist dragged himself to the black stallion and the other horses.
The animals were already beginning to fold at the knees, their eyes rolling.
Gathering the rest of his strength, Gideon put his left arm around the first animal’s neck, locking it in a desperate embrace.
With his right hand he forced the side of the beast’s jaw upward, prying the horse’s mouth open, and shoved a generous fistful of coal stones straight down the animal’s throat.
He repeated the process with the other horses, one by one, ignoring the feeble kicks and the risk of having his fingers taken off by their teeth.
The instant the last stone went down the pack horse’s throat, Gideon’s body gave out entirely.
The inventor collapsed on his back in the dust, his eyes fixed on the dark sky of the canyon. His strength was spent. He went out.
The Line of Defence
The mineral coal began to work minutes later like a black sponge inside the guts of Nero and Elena, waging a violent battle against the arsenic.
The burning did not go away, and the nausea was almost unbearable, but the black lines clouding Nero’s vision began to disappear.
Focus came back into his glacial blue eyes.
He rose slowly, wiping the blood and black dust from the corner of his mouth with the back of his glove.
“Elena…” Nero hissed, his voice harsher than usual.
“Get on your feet. They’re coming down.” Click-click-click-click!
The clacking sound of the Faceless tongues was right on top of them now.
From above, leaping from rock to rock with the agility of starved coyotes, more than a dozen grey silhouettes came dropping toward the oasis.
They carried rough spears tipped with chipped bone and hatchets of flint.
The smell of rotten meat that travelled with them fouled the air of the gorge.
Elena propped herself against her horse’s flank, pulling the double-barrelled pistol with fingers that still shook.
She could barely hold herself upright, but the hatred in her eyes was stronger than the effect of the poison.
Nero walked with heavy steps to the pack horse, which was coughing and foaming a black saliva but stayed on its feet thanks to Gideon’s sacrifice.
The hunter took hold of the bronze handle of the rotating reaper mounted at the animal’s flank.
With one violent pull he swung the body of the gun on the articulated mount, aiming the ten steel barrels directly at the slope down which the cannibals were pouring.
“You want meat?” Nero muttered between his teeth, setting his feet in the dirt. “You’ll eat lead.”
The Purging of the Canyon
The first cannibal leapt from a rock less than ten metres away, a bone knife raised in the air, his rotten teeth wide open in a soundless scream.
Nero turned the crank at full force. The roar of the rotating reaper broke the silence of the Ca?ón de las Sombras like continuous thunder.
A storm of fire and black-powder smoke jetted out of the ten spinning barrels.
The first savage was virtually torn apart in the air, his body disintegrating before it ever touched the ground under the impact of the heavy . 44 calibre balls.
Nero went on turning the crank, sweeping the slope in a hundred-and-eighty-degree arc.
The bullets tore immense splinters out of the stone walls, turning the bluffs into a trap of lethal shrapnel.
The cannibals trying to press forward were reaped down by that invisible and devastating line of fire.
The sound of Gideon’s engineering echoed off the rock, smothering the screams of the dying Faceless.
Elena, positioned just behind, fired her gun at two savages trying to flank the horses through the shadows.
The crude shot dropped the first, and she used the butt to disfigure the face of the second, who fell bleeding into the clear and poisoned water of the spring.
In under two minutes the shooting stopped.
The thick powder smoke hung over the oasis like a dark fog.
The ground was covered with smoking brass cases and with the remains of the clan that had tried to turn them into a banquet.
The few survivors left up in the heights fled into the depths of the caves, terrified by the power of the iron demon.
Nero let go of the crank. The metal of the barrels was red and ticking with heat.
He coughed, spitting a mixture of soot and coal into the sand, and looked down.
Gideon was still unconscious near the horses’ hooves, his breathing weak but steady.
The inventor’s improvised plan for survival had worked.
They had cleared the canyon, the poison had been checked, and the horses were alive.
“Let’s get Gideon into a saddle,” Nero said, wiping the sweat off his forehead and looking at the dark horizon beyond the mouth of the gorge. “This place is already dead.”
Elena tied the inventor crosswise over the chestnut mare’s saddle, using the same rope with which the Faceless had hung bones from the dry branches of the gorge.
Then she filled the canteens — not at the crystal spring, but with the last of the warm water still left in the bottom of the skins — and spat into the stone pool before turning her back on it.
High above, in the heights of the Ca?ón de las Sombras, something began clicking its tongue against its teeth again. This time, nothing came down.
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