Chapter 25
The wretched cultist leaned back and flicked Dust’s neck restraint. The cold circle rang out like a crystal glass tapped by a silver spoon, throbbed between his teeth and back into the nape of his neck, building and building. It hurt. Damn but it hurt. Dust took a deep breath to keep from grunting, knowing it would only excite these people if he did.
“Do you know what this is?” the wretch pointed to the iron instrument around Dust’s neck. His tormentor was emaciated with a pot-belly, much like the others he’d seen further up the subterranean temple, and her eyes were so deeply sunk into her face it was hard to pick them out. On this withered excuse for a face, her ugly smile thrived like mould. She and another cultist led him, drained, compliant and beaten, down a steep passageway into the bowels of the earth, dragging him by a length of chain attached to the black circle that nearly choked him.
“No,” he said when the ringing pain began to fade. The iron around his neck and two manacles around his wrists gripped him like cold, dead hands and added to the freezing underground atmosphere. He shivered. For the first time, he actually shivered.
“It’s a Bond,” her companion cultist said. Parts of his weak moustache had fallen out through his life of excess, making him look like a worn carpet. “That Which Sins enjoys holding people. ‘Specially people like you. And this,” he tapped it too, sending more spasms through Dust’s skull, “is a guaranteed way to keep you held.”
“That so?” he hissed.
The wretch nodded eagerly. “It absorbs magic.”
Patches scratched behind his ear and licked the dirty finger. “And we know your strength is all magic. Mahrey told us so.”
“So you ain’t going nowhere!” she cackled.
Their grips on the chains loosened as they both laughed. When they affirmed their grip, they nearly pulled Dust over. This ‘Bond’ explained how they felt so strong despite having not seen a good meal in days, why his legs were even heavier than before. He’d put feeling drained down to Resistance’s brutal punishment and his own despair but had been too quick to write off his body.
The cultists, razor thin coyotes with half the intelligence, stopped their laughing and dragged him round ninety degrees. They’d arrived. Dust now faced a doorway set into the corridor, carved out using great sweeps of some impossible blade and fitted with a door so secure an angry buffalo couldn’t knock it down. A drip landed on his head. When he looked up, he saw stalactites condensing above him.
“Here we are.”
“Home sweet home,” Patches said.
“Home sweet home!” the wretch echoed.
They unlocked the door with two keys, one in a lock above the handle and another in one below it. The mechanisms were so heavy they had to use both hands to tease it open. Both then put their backs into pushing the heavy door open, a marvellous feat considering their emaciation.
Inside was a six foot chamber hewn using the same blade as the door, a rough hole shaped like a recently-vacated pore. There was no other exit, not even a drain set into the floor for when he needed a piss.
“Looks nice,” Dust said.
“Looks nice, he says.”
“Trying to be strong.”
One of them kicked him into the room, the blow sending him sprawling to the floor.
“Not so strong now, are you, Wanted Man?”
Obviously not.
“No-one’ll be wanting you now, will they?” the wretch asked.
“No-one except him.”
“And that… well, that’s a fate worse than death.”
The door shut behind him and was locked twice. Cold earth settled into his new, weaker body and the Bond dug into his neck like a whore’s urgent nails. The cultists were still giggling as they walked away and their chittering echoed back to him for minutes.
It took him a while to roll over and sit up. The cold dug deeper and deeper, up through his ass and into his core, as he did so. Scooting back to the round walls, Dust used their curvature to get to his feet. At least they’d left him his shoes. He stepped away from the stone and got some respite from the constant of the stone cell.
Was this how normal people lived? This uncertainty of movement, this flesh that loses its heat, strength that comes to a quick end and breath that abandons you after a simple fall. At least he understood people’s hatred and fascination with him now; the difference between having the Bond and not was immense. What he didn’t get was how they coped with it? How could Naismith follow him into the Badlands when she lived in such a limited frame?
Dust walked over to the door and rested against its frame. Compared to the stone walls, the metal was warm as a desert stone at midday.
Naismith. The masked man had separated them as soon as they got to this little hive of his; just grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her away.
“If you don’t do what we say, she dies,” he’d said before disappearing down a warren. “I’ll see you when That Which Sins tells me the time is right.”
Poor Naismith. She wasn’t cut out for torture. These weren’t going to be good days for her. And it was his fault. A deep shame ripped through him. Perhaps it would have been better to take the shot and risk her life rather than leave her in the hands of this cult. Perhaps Resistance had been right to punish him so.
But he’d made his choice. Dust would live with it. As he always did.
After Naismith was dragged away, Dust had been stripped of his weapons and the Bond was clasped around his neck by that wretch. He looked down at it as best he could but it was too close to examine properly. He felt along its flat surface and picked out runes and reliefs, a curious mix. If it truly blocked magic then it was one of the most impressive creations he’d ever not seen. He’d known there was something more to this whole thing. And the ‘Bond’ was proof of that; its sophistication and power was far beyond what this ass-wipe cult should have been able to source.
As the cultists had guessed, the Bond robbed him his connection to Resistance; he could not feel his tattoo. If his hands were free and he had more light, he would’ve searched for it. As it was, he would just have to trust it was still there.
So he was human, kind of. For the time being at least. He would continue to feel cold and hurt and, presumably, bruise like an old peach when booted into a prison cell. Whilst he wore this Bond he might even be mortal. But it wasn’t all bad; he could probably do whatever he wanted. It felt weird though. Limiting. More limiting than the tattoo had. The name ‘Bond’ really suited it. He reckoned the shivering was what ruined the freedom. Otherwise he might have enjoyed a little respite, the first time he’d been in full control of his own actions in… Well, he actually didn’t know how if he’d ever been.
No, Dust, the Wanted Man, had never been his own man before. And now he finally was, he could do nothing with the freedom. He guessed that would be pretty funny to someone.
Dust stayed like that, resting against the door frame and shivering, for a while. He tried not to think, to let the time pass, but his mind kept going back to the man he had been; Dustin Longe, Mainly because he definitely had been free.
Dustin grew up in the ‘Unorganized Territory’ north of Texas, a bit of a wild land but somewhere a fella could set up his family if he had little money and no great love of civilization. That’s exactly what Dustin’s Pappy had done, taking a small freehold hidden away in a forest whilst they were expecting Dustin. He’d spent his youth with just his Ma, Pappy and sister, Jessie. And that was how they’d liked it.
He hadn’t ventured into Dustin’s memories very often but decided to raid them for a distraction. Casting his mind back, he saw that Dustin’s Pappy had actually run a damn tight ship when he was a lad, worked Dustin and Jessie hard from the moment they could be worked. Dustin couldn’t do anything between chores either as his Ma had tutored them from a small collection of books then, one Dustin’s Pappy would sometimes add to when he traded lumber in Texas. Stepping out of line or doing what he wanted usually earned him a good spanking and the man’s disapproval for a good couple of days. Dust still didn’t know which’d hurt Dustin more.
As he scanned Dustin’s memories, Dust realised there was only one time in either of their strange, joint lives where their actions were their own for more than a few hours; when Dustin had left the homestead at eighteen to make his way in the world. His Ma had been against it, as all mothers would, but Dustin’s Pappy had agreed it was time his boy looked after himself. So with a couple of fierce hugs from Ma and Jessie and a paternal handshake filled with pride, Dustin went south to Texas and his fortune.
There probably wouldn’t be quite as much pride in Dustin’s Pappy’s eyes if Dust ever met him. If he were even still alive; he’d be… seventy three now, not the kind of age where you enjoy living on your own. Dustin’s Ma was long dead – she’d gone during his Ranger days from snakebite – but he had no idea about his Pappy or Jessie, who would be… fifty-six by now. Probably with her own family. Probably preferred to think her big brother was dead.
In the present, Dust rolled over on the cold wooden door and looked out into the corridor. Cold, impassive rock stared back at him. Torches flickered to his left and right. Nothing to distract him proper.
So his mind went back to eighteen-forty, when a young Dustin had ventured out with five dollars and a determination to make something of himself. After trekking through the wild forests and into Texas, hunting game and dodging Indians, he’d landed a job lifting and shifting for a railroad company. Made a few friends there too. It’d been hard work followed by hard drinking but he’d enjoyed it, especially learning from men who’d been making something of themselves for years.
Of course, they’d actually been drunken fucks lying about having a family back home because they drank their pay every month but, well, Dustin Longe had been a young fool.
Mere chance was what saw him end this brief flirtation with freedom. It started when a fella by the name of Big John had joined the labourers in early forty one and really shaken up the place; he was a mean drunk, a fighter and a bully. Folk let him get away with it because he was built like the trains they lay tracks for and twice as ugly. People adapted, made sure to give Big John a tithe of alcohol every now and then and include him in any plans or schemes and that was that.
Then Dustin’s birthday came. The fellas – Micky, Sammy J, Dark Meat and Carlos – had clubbed together to get him a small bottle of special whiskey, gone all the way to the nearest town to buy it one night. They’d presented it to him out of the blue that night and the plan had been to get royally wasted on that fine liquor.
Big John hadn’t liked this plan because it didn’t involve him. So he’d barged into the group’s camp fire and taken the bottle from Dustin’s hand just moments after he’d been presented it. He started downing it like it were water. None of his friends had done anything as the poorly-shaven, rough galoot drank away their evening’s entertainment.
But Dustin had. He’d stood up, squared to the man and taken a shot with his young fists. Got him square in the jaw too, knocked the bottle right out of his hands. Big John struck back but wasn’t used to fighting someone who wanted to hurt him; he took risks a smaller man wouldn’t and so got as badly injured as Dustin had. They were both sporting shiners, broken lips and deep gashes by the time the railroad’s orderlies broke up the fight.
A Texas Ranger had been passing through that day and that was where chance came in. Isaac Smith, Smitty to his friends, knew the railroad’s foreman – a man called… Dust tried to find the name but it wouldn’t come to him. Anyway, Smitty had been in the area and decided to see his friend while he was there. So he happened to be dining in the foreman’s tent when Dustin and Big John were dragged in, bloody and dirty, to answer for their crimes. The situation was explained by Hank, the chief orderly, and the foreman had fired them both on the spot.
“I won’t have seditious and unruly men working my line,” the Foreman had bellowed, a great gruff man who wore a scratched monocle he’d most likely found.
Smitty had said nothing, just watched them the whole time, twirling his greased moustache thoughtfully.
The fighters were marched out and told to gather their things and leave within the hour. Dustin, being young, had hoped his friends would kick up a fuss and was bitterly disappointed; the fellas were distraught but they weren’t about to risk their good thing by saying too much. He’d had some pats on the shoulder and they’d patched him up as best they could but that was all.
In the cold, dead night of his birthday, Dustin had made his way south-east toward the town his expensive present had come from. Shivering like a witch’s tit, beaten and hurting in his heart, the young man hadn’t considered that Big John might still be mad with him. He hadn’t known how much danger he was still in when he’d set himself down in a pretty poor place, wrapped a blanket around himself, and fallen asleep.
Dust would’ve gone spare at him.
Dustin awoke two hours later and went for a piss. It was as he put his pecker away that Big John punched him in the back of the head, knocking him to the ground. Then he wrapped those meaty fingers around Dustin’s neck, giving him just enough room to breathe, and lifted the young man into the air, ignoring the kicks and wheezes that Dustin gave him in return.
“You shouldn’t ought to have done that, boy,” Big John said. “You got me kicked outta a job I needed. Now, I’m gonna take something from you that you’ll be needing.”
Big John had tightened his grip with one hand and drawn a piece of sharpened flint with the other. He held the home-made knife right before Dustin’s crotch, which set the boy kicking with a renewed vigour. Which, in turn, made Big John grin.
“Say g’bye to your vegetables.”
If he could’ve screamed, Dustin would’ve.
Then a shot rang out and a bullet bounced by Big John’s feet. The giant dropped his prisoner in shock and the boy fortunately landed on his feet. Dustin didn’t need two opportunities to make a run for it so he sped away.
Big John started after him but another shot impacted in front him.
“How about you leave the young man alone, friend?” someone shouted. It was Smitty, sitting atop his horse with a rifle aimed at Big John. He wore his Ranger’s uniform proudly and had one eye screwed shut to give him better aim.
“Don’t think you can stop me, lawman,” Big John shouted back. He swayed slightly; it seemed like he’d carried on drinking after they’d been run out.
“Don’t think I won’t put a bullet in you, friend.”
Big John licked his lips, taking a moment to weigh the risks, then waved a dismissive hand at Dustin. “You ain’t worth it,” he said before turning and limping away.
Smitty rode down to Dustin when Big John was out of sight, his rifle still in his hand. Dustin had remained exactly where he was for fear of what might happen if he moved; he’d heard tales of the Rangers but this was his first time interacting with one and he didn’t want to piss the guy off.
“You alright, son?” Smitty asked.
Dustin nodded.
“Don’t say much, do you?”
“A man who says too much is a man who seeks trouble,” Dustin had said almost without thinking; it was one of his Pappy’s favourite sayings.
Smitty had laughed. “Now ain’t that right. Is it true what those orderlies said about you, son? That you took on that lump after he stole your booze?”
“Kind of.”
“Kind of?”
Dustin then looked at Smitty defiantly. “It wasn’t that he stole my booze, sir; it was that he stole a present from my friends on my birthday and no-one else would say a word about it.”
Smitty had given him an appraising look. “You ever shot a rifle, son?”
“Used to hunt with my Pappy all the time.”
“You any good with it?”
“He wouldn’t have kept taking me out otherwise.”
Smitty nodded. “How would you like to work for the Government?”
And that was how he’d ended up in the Rangers. Five years of regular service followed, five years of keeping the peace and fighting Indians and cultists and harriers. Then came the Mexican War and the Yellow Band. Being in the Yellow Band was Dustin Longe’s last memory.
The Yellow Band wasn’t the name the Government’d given them; the other Rangers called the group that on account of them not taking an active part in the war. Dustin would’ve fought if he’d been asked but someone needed to round up deserters before they became harriers. So Dustin spent most of the war gathering up Americans and shooting those who wouldn’t come peaceably for a trial. It wasn’t a great time of his life but it was necessary.
And then… darkness. Dustin’s memories ended with the Mexican War still being contested. There was nothing until Dust’s first memory, when he was found in the Badlands by an Indian and then captured by mercenaries.
The absence of memories was uncomfortable as any wound he’d ever received and prodding it did nothing to improve his mood. He looked up at the ceiling, presuming that his Word was being held above him, and wondered what the cultists had planned for that piece of his soul. The Word had supposedly been taken before he’d become the Wanted Man so it didn’t contain anything of Resistance but it was still his. He felt sick when he considered what they might do to it.
Maybe the Father had been right. Maybe he should be taking better care of his soul. It wasn’t something he thought about all that often. Dust wasn’t a man given to introspection unless the circumstances were extreme… like, for example, when he’d been captured by a cult of That Which Sins. Perhaps he’d be more philosophical, as well as a better fighter, if he were whole. At the very least, it’d make situations like this less likely.
Someone knocked on his door. Dust stepped back, heart racing; without the Bond, he would’ve been able to hear them long before they could knock and so wouldn’t have been surprised like this. He didn’t like the feeling.
They knocked again. “Dust?” they asked. The voice was faintly familiar.
“Yeah?”
“Step back.”
Dust did so. Then a great blow struck the door and its metal hinges screamed as they were sheered. The slab of metal fell inward and landed at Dust’s feet with a crash that echoed terribly within the confined cell. Behind the destroyed doorway stood a figure he knew very well and another surprise that cut through him like he were a ten year old.
“Shadows Fade?!” he exclaimed.