Lightfall Four: Risk, Rise, Rebel (Lightfall, Book 4) Read online

  Book Four

  Risk, Rise, Rebel

  Jordan Taylor

  Copyright © 2015 Jordan Taylor. All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the author. Reviewers may quote brief passages in reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons or animals—living, dead, or otherwise—is coincidental.

  Adoxography Books

  Very special thanks to Leigh Allen Taylor, Matt Feisthammel, and Angel Prado.

  For my mother.

  Conspiracies, since they cannot be engaged in without the fellowship of others, are for that reason most perilous....

  ~ Francesco Guicciardini

  Fifty-Seventh

  Sol Valle

  The creek glints below midday sun and a cloudless sky. Faint sound of water conceals breathing from five humans and eight horses, making it the only noise across the windless valley in which little grows and no wild creature stirs.

  Ivy sits motionless in Corra’s saddle, sungoggles and Stetson in place. She inhales slowly, holding air. Horse, sweat, leather, steel, baked earth, pine. Nothing.

  She looks across the mile-wide, golden valley into which the creek trickles. Far south a row of shacks runs along each side of a wide dirt road. Several more structures stand scattered a stone’s throw away, along with empty corrals, dried out corn fields, and bean and pepper patches.

  Not a bird calls. No coyote yaps or prairie dog barks. Only a fly buzzes past Ivy’s ear.

  Corra’s head is lifted, her own nostrils flared, ears twitching. Ivy looks around. The yellow cur has vanished. She spots him one hundred yards back up the slope they just descended, lapping at the creek.

  No sign of Es Feroz. Ivy feels certain her fox is not coming on this trip, sure now she ventured no farther than the eastern bank of the Rio Grande.

  She lifts a brass canister from its leather loop on her saddle horn, below the water bottle strap. Holding a button with her thumb, she flicks the device outward with a motion of her wrist, extending it ten inches. She pulls sungoggles to her forehead to peer through the telescope. Pens empty of livestock, no one about, no crops taken in. Not a recent abandonment. Not a recent attack.

  “Anyone aim to speak on the obvious?” Melchior asks.

  All eight horses flick their ears toward the sudden voice. Chucklehead shifts in place.

  “Allow us to assume it is unnecessary, Mr. L’Heureux,” Grip says. “However, take initiative if you must air your observations.”

  Ivy lifts her long reins, squeezing slightly with both heels well forward on the mare’s ribs so Corra will back a few steps, allowing Ivy to pass the telescope to Grip on El Cohete. She knows he has no affection for devices, but he takes it without a word.

  “Something unfortunate befell the good folks of Sol Valle or we’d know sign of feathers by this distance,” Melchior says, untroubled by Grip’s retort. “As we counted on grain at this outpost, are we giving a miss or riding in, short of invite, to stock before crossing the border and facing red desert?” He looks around.

  “Did you say, ‘sign of feathers’?” Ivy asks, having scarcely heard his words after.

  Melchior frowns, looking more confused than put out. “Know what I mean.”

  “Do I?” Ivy glances around to Sam, who shakes his head, his brows knitted as he looks across the valley to the silent settlement.

  Grip passes the telescope to him.

  “Show of hands?” Melchior goes on. “Who’s aiming for the feed?”

  He raises his right hand and Ivy, after another look toward Sol Valle, does the same.

  “Who’s aiming to miss?” Melchior asks.

  Sam and Rosalía raise their hands. Volar stirs, though Elsewhere, water dripping from his muzzle, seems to be dozing off even in the few minutes’ pause.

  Grip does not move.

  Melchior looks at Ivy. “We’ve the fastest horses anyhow. Keep your four-round handy.” Jerking his thumb toward Sam, Grip, and Rosalía with their pack horses, all to Ivy’s right. “They’ll go on, skirt west. We’ll scout and circle town. Light a shuck if there’s expired rips, or wave them in with the pack horses if feed.”

  Sam appears taken aback, though Ivy feels the plan has merit, particularly for something her cousin thought up. She even understood him.

  “Our show of hands was for determining action rather than voting on a decision?” Sam asks, handing the device to Rosalía.

  “Burning daylight, Sam. Snails, waiting for all you to speak’s like waiting for a jackalope to skin itself into your pot. Shoot or give up the gun.”

  “We were thinking, Mr. L’Heureux,” Grip says, his tone cold. “Sometimes a process requiring a few moments, which you would not understand.”

  “What you playing?” Melchior asks him, kneeing Chucklehead toward the distant settlement. “Staying put?”

  “Mel, this is not a workable—”

  “Shifting?” Melchior calls back to Ivy.

  “You know, Sam, it does make sense.” Ivy pulls her sungoggles back in place and lifts her reins. “We’ll take a look first. They are the fastest. You all can move around to the west. We will signal you once we have inspected the settlement.”

  “We should not split apart in country we suspect to be contaminated,” Grip says.

  “Come with us if you like, though someone must remain with the pack horses. We cannot all ride in.” Ivy clicks to Corra, who follows Chucklehead. “If there is trouble, what would be the sense in that?”

  “Ivy, are you certain about this? It feels ominously like Smoke Junction, for which you were not present.”

  “We will take every precaution, Sam. It is not as if we could choose an option which holds no risk if we want more supplies. Keep an extra pair of eyes out for us, all right?” She pushes Corra to catch up.

  Behind her, Grip mutters in Spanish about stupid people being allowed to make life or death decisions for others, then orders Rosalía to take the pack horses around the settlement. This starts an argument about him being churlish, her not even having a close-quarters firearm, and ... something. Ivy’s Spanish is still too poor to catch more details. She wonders what Rosalía thinks of their plan, but Rosalía would not speak up due to Grip’s hostility over her being with them at all.

  Ivy and Melchior move their mounts at a jog, then walk to the edge of the silent settlement of Sol Valle. Though a trickle still flows past the edge of town, the summer has been unkind to the valley: dusty brown and gold with little growth beyond Russian thistle.

  Buildings have a stripped, tired look about them—bleached by sun, windblown in the now still valley, windows broken, doors hanging open. They pause to listen.

  Ivy glances at Melchior. She shakes her head. He presses a finger to his lips, then salutes her with the same finger. Ivy glares after him as he nudges Chucklehead off with his knee.

  The smell ... yes. She does detect the old smell; musty, rotting smell. Yet air is so still. The horses toss their heads, huffing in deep breaths, lashing their tails. Chucklehead shies at nothing.

  Ivy draws her four-round. They must have been here. But now? If so, they will be sunning, waiting for food. And they will hear the horses even without the extra allure of human voices.

  They pass outlying buildings without trouble, yet Ivy reins back at the row of opposing timber structures. The idea of riding through an alley....

  She turns Corra and, with Melchior and Chucklehead following, starts around one side, at the rear of the buildings. They circle town, venturing to more of the scattered structures and scouting two s
mall stables stocked with visible sacks of feed. They do not even appear torn open by raccoons or nibbled by rats.

  She recalls Raton Pass and scans doors and windows for boards or barricades. She looks for ash or burnt-out buildings. She sniffs as they pass an old stable.

  Nothing.

  Ivy lets out her breath. Perhaps the people of Sol Valle, good or otherwise, moved on, escaping before attack. If they did meet a tragic end, the agents of the deed are gone.

  She glances at Melchior, who lifts his eyebrows.

  Ivy nods. As he dismounts, she looks around to see Grip to the north. El Cohete has his ears pinned. He backs, then steps up as Grip keeps him there. Much farther away, Sam and Rosalía wait with the three pack horses. As Ivy looks at them, they start forward. Grip does not move any closer.

  Melchior leads Chucklehead to a feed shed at the back of a loafing box. He throws one split rein in a loop around the top rail of the fence extending out from the shelter as Ivy dismounts.

  He pushes back his hat, stepping into the dim shed. “Plenty of oats and corn. Recoup all they’ve eaten so far. Get us across Arizona Territory. Enough hay for our work besides.” Melchior grabs a sack and tosses it out to her.

  Ivy still has Corra’s reins in hand—though she holstered the four-round—and she is not expecting fifty pounds of flying oats to come her way. An instant later she sits in dirt, the wind knocked out of her, gasping dust, the heavy sack across her lap.

  Melchior appears in the shed doorway with another sack. “What’re you sitting there for?”

  “You—are—” Ivy chokes on oat dust, heaving burlap off her jacket.

  “Couldn’t take that sack?” He seems honestly bewildered.

  “Certainly. If you had handed—you—you’re a—”

  “Go on. Can’t draw anything fresh not already aimed at these ears some time or other.” Melchior throws down his sack ten feet from the shed and returns to grab hers, starting a pile for the pack animals to collect. “Should be able to haul out four and hay. Too heavy for them, already loaded, but they’ll have a good supper and cut down.” He walks back past her for another.

  Why does he still upset her? How can it surprise her that it does not cross his mind to offer a hand?

  Ivy looks up at Corra, stroking her nose. “Seventeen years is a long time to forget in a few months, isn’t it?”

  Corra jerks her head high, snorting.

  Chucklehead tries to rear against the fence.

  A yell from the shed, a muffled thump of heavy impact, and Melchior flies outside, crashing to his back in dirt almost on top of Ivy. Over him a great, decaying former human grapples for his face; Melchior’s hands on its neck, every muscle strained against the deadly strength of the riser determined to sink teeth into his flesh.

  Ivy has the four-round in her hand as Corra rips free. Not a second to consider the ramifications of using it in this situation—better to be electrocuted than bitten. She fires at point-blank range into the riser’s skull, inches above Melchior’s own face.

  The riser is hurled sideways, blank eyes wide. The whole figure convulses in spasms which snap dead muscles into rigid immobility. Melchior lets out a fresh shout of pain. His hands seem locked, holding the riser in place, then he throws the body from him.

  Shots from a revolver and larger weapons beat on Ivy’s ears as she grabs Melchior’s arm, pulling him away, looking up at the same time. To see more.

  Running from doorways, climbing through broken windows, bursting from stables, sprinting, silent.

  How? How could they possibly be in hiding?

  Melchior seems unable to breathe, mouth wide, hair on end. Static shocks Ivy as she touches him. He clutches his chest as she pulls him to a sitting position, shouting at him to get up.

  Ivy aims the four-round past him to catch a black-eyed former child only yards away. Another follows, struck as the child is thrown backward in spasms, stiff with the electric current.

  Front ranks running from farmhouses are dropped by bullets from Grip or the others. Chucklehead rears, jerking the rail from the post, kicking up clouds of dust.

  Ivy tugs Melchior after her as he fights to get his feet under him.

  A decayed rancher lunges for Chucklehead and she shoots. The cartridge strikes the jaw rather than skull, but the gray figure is thrown to dust, convulsing as the shock surges up the brainstem. The stallion tramples it, also receiving a jolt, leaping almost on top of Ivy to get away. His rein rips free of the fence rail as she releases Melchior to catch it.

  One round left.

  Now on his knees, Melchior draws his revolver. He gasps for breath. Though able to see through sungoggles, he takes two shots to catch one in the skull as it runs for them.

  Ivy grabs Chucklehead’s near stirrup. Reins tangled in her left fist, four-round back in the holster, snatching the saddle, she throws herself onto his back.

  Melchior and the others shoot past them. A struck riser, traveling on momentum, crashes against the stallion’s hind legs. He kicks, throwing Ivy over his neck. She seizes his mane and keeps her seat, using a tight rein to pull him around beside Melchior.

  Melchior shoots as Chucklehead charges up against him, trying to run. The impact almost throws Melchior to the ground, but he catches his packs and fire-shooter behind the saddle.

  Ivy reaches to grab his arm. His stirrups are too long for her to make use of them in the saddle and she pitches dangerously sideways.

  “What are you doing? Get up here!”

  But Melchior is not helping himself to leap up behind her. He tears the fire-shooter free, whipping it down from the saddle like a bat to club a riser across the ear as it springs for him.

  “Melchior, no! He will—”

  Melchior holds down a trigger, yanks a lever back on the barrel, and a jet of flame explodes a dozen feet out from the chunky device in a stream so hot, Ivy feels as if her own skin is being burned. The pack is struck in the horizontal fountain of fire with such force several are thrown backward, hair, clothes, and skin instantly alight.

  Ivy has no time to see more or make another attempt to help Melchior up. Chucklehead, who has always loathed the very smell of the device, tears away from the spot as if shot from a cannon. Ivy hangs on with knees and fists, still dragging back on his mouth, though she might as well be pulling with a thread.

  Grip rides closer, covering them and already down to his pocket revolver, as Chucklehead flashes past El Cohete. Ahead, Sam and Rosalía fight with the three pack horses and their own mounts to keep them there. Corra has come to a stop some distance behind them, waiting for her herd.

  How is Grip supposed to cover himself and Melchior and get the latter onto his saddle all at once with one hand and struggling with his own horse? Why couldn’t he just have jumped up behind her? Yet ... if he had, how would they ever have lost the pack in this open, treeless valley? Their horses would be dead of exhaustion before that tireless bunch was left behind.

  Ivy lets her left rein slip away for slack, bunches the right in both fists, then drags the galloping stallion’s head around as if hauling herself up a rope. He breaks stride, body following his nose as he turns in a wide arc, still going at a fast canter. She gives him the right back and he keeps on, running for Melchior.

  Melchior hurries backward from blazing risers, some still heading for him, others preoccupied by the state of their burning bodies. They hold their own faces or reach out to touch others, soaking up the fire.

  Grip’s shots drop those almost upon Melchior as he stumbles, turns, and runs in earnest.

  Seeing the now inactive fire-shooter bearing down on him, Chucklehead slams down his heels and slides. He lunges onto his hind legs so violently, Ivy fears he will go over backward. Holding on with hands and knees, yelling at Melchior to drop the device, she allows the leather to rip through her fingers, kicks Chucklehead, then reaches around to catch Melchior’s arm as the horse lands on all fours.

  Fire-shooter slung over his shoulder, Melchior c
atches Ivy’s duster with one hand, the cantle with the other, and leaps up behind. Chucklehead is off again while Melchior pulls himself up.

  Grip rides at their flank, El Cohete’s black and tan legs a blur. Sam and Rosalía are ahead, having no difficulty getting the pack animals to flee. Beyond them, Corra now flies like a shadow before the sun, reins flapping.

  Ivy casts a glance back to see burning risers milling about the corral and feed shed. A few try to run after. Others, including new arrivals, are too distracted by fire to pay them any attention.

  They travel to the edge of the valley before encouraging the horses to slow. Ivy switches mounts and they proceed at a jog to cool the animals. Finally, climbing western hills toward the border of Arizona Territory, they slow to a walk.

  Ivy looks through her sungoggles to a trickle of black smoke. Motion, as if from ants, is hardly visible.

  Melchior reins in Chucklehead beside her to look around.

  Not one ant follows.

  “Thanks,” Ivy says.

  Melchior nods. “You too.”

  “Anytime. I might just ... keep my own horse next time, if you don’t mind.”

  “Reckon that’d be all right.”

  They reload various weapons. Rosalía hands Ivy back her telescope. The five riders and eight horses go on in silence.

  Even later, no one says much about Sol Valle. Melchior explains that the riser from the shed leapt through the small window on top of him, throwing both through the doorway with its force. And no one seems as interested as Ivy feels they should in knowing this was the first sign of intelligence she has spotted in western risers. They are adapting, planning, lying in wait inside buildings where a rider cannot see them until it is too late. They are not only surviving. They are thriving.

  The next day, as they ride through eastern Arizona Territory, they spot a ranch cabin and outbuildings some way off to the south. They draw up, look, then all ride on west without a word.