Turning back to the bar, Gabriel scanned the bottles arranged neatly on shelves.
He could do with a shot of something hard, but what he really wanted was about twelve gallons of water.
“Water,” Gabriel’s voice was harsh and ragged from his extremely parched throat.
“Clean water.”
Raising a hand, Gabriel snapped his fingers in front of the bartender’s blank stare.
“Hello? Did you hear me?”
“I ain’t seen the color of your chits, Lawman,” the bartender said in a voice that sounded like it belonged to a man a quarter his size.
Reaching into his pocket, Gabriel pulled out one of the triangular chits that passed for money, slapping it down on the bar flat under his palm. He would have given all of his money for a bucket of water right about then.
Nodding at the gleaming gold as Gabriel removed his hand, the bartender filled a pint-sized mug from a barrel under the bar. Eyeing it for a moment before picking it up, savoring the sight of it, Gabriel raised the mug to his lips, downing it quickly without pausing for breath. Though warm, and tasting vaguely of wood, it was the sweetest water he’d ever had.
Setting the mug down on the bar, he looked at the bartender and nodded to it.
“Another, and spread that coin around to drinks for all so long as it lasts.”
The bartender complied and this time Gabriel drank much more slowly. When he
was finished he set the mug down upside down.
“So what brings you out this way, Lawman,” Gabriel asked himself. “Oh,
nothing much. Just looking for someone. Oh, really, who might that be? An NVM girl that some bastards named the Children of the Chosen kidnapped with the intention of raping to death. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you?”
He looked up at the bartender with the question.
Abruptly he was seized from behind by several big, strong hands and lifted from the ground. Struggling was futile against so many. Before he knew it, he was thrown through the bat wing doors into the dusty street outside.
Groaning, Gabriel staggered to his feet, feeling stiff, tired, and bruised, not to mention hungry. Dusting his clothes off with his hands he retrieved his hat and picked up Mister Mittens again. As the cat climbed his arm and lay across his shoulders, the music resumed inside accompanied by a great deal of laughter.
“If that’s the way they want to play,” Gabriel jerked his pistols from their holsters with a growl, “let’s do it the hard way.”
Kicking the doors hard enough to break one off its hinges, Gabriel stormed back inside and leveled his pistols at the first two people he saw reaching for weapons.
“Let’s try that again. I’m going to ask nicely where my friend is, and you’re going to tell me before I start shooting.”
Bringing a pistol around toward movement in the corner of his eye, he smiled.
“Are you volunteering to die first?”
Scanning the faces of the men glaring at him with hate filled eyes in a silent, almost eternal moment, Gabriel felt a bead of sweat run down his spine.
“You’re a Lawman. You’ve got them rules to follow. The Code or whatever you
boys call it. You can’t just start shootin’ without cause like that.”
“Oh really,” Gabriel raised an eyebrow. “I guess it’s a good thing I’m not a
Lawman. Last chance. Where are the Children of the Chosen, and where is my friend?”
“You idiot! We’re all Children. And your friend is in the Haven.”
“The Haven,” Gabriel asked. “You mean she’s here?”
“Not that Haven, dumbass,” a weasel faced man with a horrid skin condition that almost made him appear to have scales replied, pointing downward meaningfully. He caressed three grenades on his belt like he would a woman’s breasts with the other hand.
If he used those Gabriel was going to be dead meat . . . again. “The Haven.”
“Take me to her.”
“Well,” the scaled man scratched at a bleeding sore on the side of his bald scalp.
“You see, that’s the thing. Now we know you ain’t no Lawman, killing you won’t get us in trouble with the Empire.”
“I was afraid you’d say something like that,” Gabriel sighed deeply. “All I want is my friend back, no one has to die, so how about you just hand her over before I start shooting?”
“That young whore is ours now,” the bartender said. “Consider her a tax for
crossing our land.”
“Have it your way. Wingless.”
Thankfully the Sa’Dhi in his hand activated, flooding his mind with knowledge
and skills that were not his own. Turning to the bartender, he put a bullet through his hairless skull.
Standing for a second, the enormous man seemed unable to comprehend what had
just happened. A thin trickle of blood ran from the hole in his head down his nose before his eyes rolled back and he fell sideways, crashing loudly onto the wooden floor.
Everyone stood frozen, as if they couldn’t believe that Gabriel had actually killed one of them. Abruptly, everyone was jumping to their feet and drawing knives or swords, and grabbing for spears, throwing themselves at him. Dancing backward, Gabriel fired his guns into them without bothering to aim. With so many of them at such close range, stopping to aim would be suicide, and was completely unnecessary beside.
Several men dropped, spraying blood and tripping others up, giving Gabriel a
chance to turn and hop over the bar for some cover. Setting his pistols on the bar, he freed the shotgun. The buckshot scatter might take out multiple targets per shot.
While blowing away men that threw themselves at him like religious zealots after the blood of an infidel, Gabriel found his mind wandered to a court case he’d passed on to another lawyer where the accused murderer was obviously guilty. The details of the murder had been almost too grisly to repeat. The murderer sat while the prosecution brought witness after witness, and showed the jury picture after picture of a little girl’s dismembered corpse without a single flicker of remorse or humanity. Until now, Gabriel had never been able to understand how someone could take the life of another human being without showing a single sign of sorrow for what he’d done. Now, he understood perfectly. It was easy, really. All you had to do was think of them as something less than human.
Firing the shotgun into the men rushing the bar until it was empty, he shoved it back into its holster before picking up his pistols again. Blood and bits of flesh flew through the air in a manner that Quentin Tarantino would envy. Tables were turned over and the survivors of the barrage dove behind them for cover.
A throwing knife hit him in the chest, bouncing off a rib with enough force to break it. He felt it snap, and the excruciating pain that followed, but he ignored it, holding his pistols at ready, scanning the saloon for anyone willing to show himself. The smell of blood was so powerful that he wanted to gag, but he knew that if he allowed himself to vomit he might not live long enough to regret it.
“Gabriel,” Mister Mittens called from below. “Look here. There’s a trapdoor.”
Glancing downward, Gabriel saw a metal ring attached to part of the floor near some hinges. He remembered the man with the scales pointing downward when he spoke of the Haven. It must be some sort of underground facility.
“Can you open it,” Gabriel asked, firing a couple of shots to encourage everyone to keep their heads down. More than a few candles had been knocked over and several small fires were starting to burn throughout the saloon.