Dragonslayer, Inc.
Chapter XXI- Firecane Prelude

We did not slow down for a long time.

We did not slow down until long after the elation of escape had been muted in favor of the tedium of travel.

Those few loyalists were very loyal, and they were also good riders. We would have been able to outride them if it hadn’t been for Ironwall’s palmetto. It was by far the slowest of our three horses, and it dragged down the speed of the other two, as we did not want to abandon Ironwall and his passenger.

As such, we were in close enough range to the loyalists to hear their gunfire. It never hit us, but it was terrifying. The sound of gunfire is the sound of death, and I didn’t want to die. When a bullet passed only a foot to my left, I asked Ironwall, “Who are you carrying? Ditch them, and let’s go.”

“No.”

“They can’t be that important.”

“Incorrect, and I’ll repeat what I said in Segrabi: if you leave me behind, you’ll never see me again, and without my guidance, there’s no way you’re making it to Curam.”

“We got split up in Mulsor, and that worked out fine.”

“Please trust me. It’s not that much to ask.”

“Who are you carrying?”

“You know her.”

“Purpley? She’s dead.”

“I know. It’s not her.” There was a fork in the road. We went one way. Our pursuers went another. The paths converged not far in the distance, but for now, we had time alone. I rode closer to Ironwall.

“Then who?”

“I don’t think you know her name, but you know her.”

A flame kicked up in my heart, and a switch flicked on in my head. It was the aunt-like Slayer. I just then realized I didn’t know her name. Ironwall saw comprehension dawn across my face, and he nodded at me.

“How is she?” I asked.

“Badly hurt. I’m not sure she’ll live. It was hard fighting the brunt of Arge’s forces. I made it out safely. She didn’t. …Coran, do you know how long I’ve known her?”

“No.”

“Ever since I got home from my first journey. I was broken and weary, and there she was, fresh-faced and energetic. We hit it off. She needed a guide, and I needed a lift. I told her about myself, and she was fascinated. My journey had destroyed my self-worth. She made me feel important. I made her feel important too. She was young and insecure. Her parents were nuts, and they kicked her out of the house when she was sixteen. With nowhere to go, she went to Andes. After spending years working odd jobs and trying to go to school, she joined the Slayers. This was while we were on our journey. Needing new members, the Slayers held their biggest try-out in over a century. When she found out about this, she quit her job, took the little money she had saved up, and worked day and night preparing her body and her skills. She found her signature weapon and her calling in life. In the try-outs, she was good enough to outperform many experienced warriors. She was never the best of us physically, but she was always prepared. Of course, it’s impossible to prepare for a trip like this. You think you know what you’re in for, but you don’t. You just don’t.” He didn’t cry, but he closed his eyes, as though he were about to. Maybe he wanted to hide from the world.

“I wouldn’t have thought she had such a hard childhood. She seems so unfazed.”

“That’s what I loved most about her.”

“Were you two ever… involved?” asked Machen.

“Quite a time to bring that up,” he gruffly rebuffed.

“It’s just… I saw you looking at her the way I look at Steph.”

Ironwall looked offended. I scoffed, “Is that what you think you look like?”

“I realize I’ve said some stupid things to her, but I really love her.”

“Then don’t act like a perverted stalker.”

“Is how she sees me?”

“That’s how I’d see you if I were her. Dude, did you not realize you were being creepy? You can’t be that stupid. Nobody’s that stupid.”

“It’s not that. It’s… I don’t know.”

Ironwall reclaimed control of the conversation. “I did love her, a long time ago,” he said, “and she loved me. We dated for a year, then I proposed to her on top of HQ. She said yes, but I could tell her heart wasn’t in it. She knew what I’d learn a couple months later: we didn’t work romantically, not in the long haul. A month before our wedding date, we had a big fight. I don’t remember what it was about, but we didn’t talk to each other for a year, except when we had to. Our engagement was over. When we saved each other’s lives during a mission, we broke our silence and started becoming friends again, and that’s how it’s been ever since… up until today. I was a better person with her, and she was a better person with me. It was a good friendship. We haven’t talked as much these last few years, so I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t know we were close, but let me assure you we were.”

I wouldn’t have guessed any of that. When you spend enough time with someone, you think you know them. It’s human nature, and it’s sensible, and it’s often correct, but as often, there’s a whole different dimension to them you didn’t know existed. I had never thought about Ironwall’s romantic life. I had never thought about Ironwall in a lot of respects.

Unrolling before me, as if for the first time, was the reality that Ironwall had lived for over four decades and had more experiences than I would ever know about. I knew about his life as a Dragonslayer, but that was it.

Actually, I didn’t know that much about his life as a Dragonslayer. I was one of his biggest fans as a kid, but I only knew what the media knew, and there was a lot they didn’t know. They didn’t know how he felt when he was slaying. They didn’t know how he chose his weapons or why. They didn’t know how he strategized.

They didn’t even know about a lot of his battles. With one notable exception, they knew about his major showdowns, the ones that took place in cities, but they didn’t know about a lot of his lesser, lower-stakes scraps.

His life is a puzzle I can’t put together. I have enough pieces to put together a clear picture, but I can’t help but feel like I’m missing a cluster of background pieces somewhere. Perhaps he took a year off from slaying and baked bread. Perhaps he had a fling with a movie star. Perhaps he almost died in a plane crash. If I am missing pieces, there’s little chance I’ll replace them, so there’s no pragmatic point to wondering, but I’ve never been that pragmatic anyway. There was so much to that man. Most people’s tales could be summed up in a book or two, but that man demands an entire encyclopedia.

As we approached the juncture where the two paths merged, he acknowledged that he was slowing the group down. Machen and I stayed silent, but Steph offered to take the aunt-like Slayer on her horse. Ironwall deliberated before reluctantly accepting her offer, saying, “We need to go as fast as possible.”

Thanks to our detour, our pursuers had gotten ahead of us. Snatching a chance that was too good to pass up, we snuck up on them, freaking them out. Before they could shoot at us, we were in striking range, and we struck hard. Blood splattered the ground as we rode past. We didn’t kill a single loyalist, but we vehemently dissuaded them from pursuing us.

This was not enough however. We had underestimated how loyal these people were. Though they resembled skeletal zombies, they didn’t stop riding. We had slowed down, and it was our turn to be caught surprised.

I could hear the gunfire again, but it wasn’t as intimidating this time. Staring them down, I yelled, “You wanna kill us, you punks? Then chase us down.” I kicked my stallion into a gallop, then slowed it to a canter to stay in pace with Ironwall’s palmetto, which to my relief was moving faster than before. It remained the slowest of the three horses, but it was fast enough to help finally put some meaningful distance between us and the loyalists.

The gunfire got fainter. Switching the aunt-like Slayer to Steph’s horse had worked. The more badly hurt loyalists collapsed off their horses or faded away, unable to ride fast enough. Their brethren left them behind. They didn’t care about each other. They only cared about us. I nearly felt honored.

Thirty minutes later, only one loyalist was in sight of us. He had been riding as hard as he could. There was rancor in his eyes from the time he began chasing us, but it was now joined with hopelessness. We weren’t slowing down, and there was no way he could catch us. Desperate, he took his gun in his shaky hands and fired. His shots missed wildly.

He kept firing. What else could he do? He kicked his horse furiously, trying to squeeze a last breath of speed out of it, but it didn’t run faster. It ran slower. He began fading out of sight. At its best, his horse was mediocre, possessing neither speed nor stamina, and he had been running it ragged. With a last gasp, it fell to the ground, dead.

Our threat had been abolished. The loyalist glared at us as he lay broken and filthy, vainly stretching forward. I smiled at him as he faded out of sight. His eyes, beady and swollen, were the last of him I saw.

“No more gunfire,” said Machen. He brushed his hands as if to remove caked filth.

We slowed our horses to a walk. My forehead was sweaty, and I could hear my every heartbeat. I took a gulp of air and leaned far enough forward that my stomach was resting on the horse’s mane. It was embarrassing to realize I was tired when we had so recently stopped, but I was exhausted. My thoughts scrambled and flew away from me. Pains sprouted up on my legs and hands and knees and shoulders and chest. It must have been there before, but I didn’t notice it.

“Let’s call it a night,” said Ironwall.

“Really?” I said with a surprised eagerness. It was nice to know I wasn’t alone. I didn’t want to drag my team down. Out here in the middle of nowhere, thousands of miles from home, I didn’t want to be resented.

I was never less of a loner than I was as this journey went on.

When I got down from my cremello stallion, the sun was setting. The sky changed colors, and so did the clouds. In an instant, the valley came to life. The soft light rolled out into the banks, and the road beneath our feet was lit amber-gold.

I reached down and picked up a handful of dirt. Rolling it around with my fingers, it felt coarse and rough, but when I opened my hand, it shone. It was like I was holding solid fire in my hands, and like should be typically done when you have fire in your hands, I threw it as far from me as I could. I throw it into the horizon, into the west, into the setting sun.

While watching it fly through the air like stardust, I watched the road too. I watched it to see if anyone else would come, anyone chasing after us, or maybe an old friend come from the dead. I expected a marvelous, unforeseen circumstance to unfold in this valley before my eyes, and I invested myself in this expectation. I have no clue why, but I was sure it would become reality.

Maybe it was the feel of the moment. When you’re enraptured in awe, you’re spellbound. Logic and reason are thrown out the window. You believe anything can happen, and you believe it with gusto.

Nothing did unfold, save for the sunset blossoming and capturing further my soul. In its colors, I could see every dream I had ever dreamt and every thought I had ever thought, at least for a single instant, when it felt like my mind was open to the contents of the entire universe.

The sun dipped below the valley floor, and within a few minutes, a new wonder had taken its place in my heart. The sky was a ghostly blue, like the noon had died and this was what was left. It was haunting, like the dark songs I sung as a kid without knowing what the words meant. Mina and Deka were lined up, the former right above the latter. They were in the same phrase too- first quarter- an event that occurs only twice a year on average.

Combined, these two moons looked like a ladder, a ladder made of light, a ladder leading up to the stars. I wanted to climb it. I wanted to see what it was like at the top, then I wanted to go past the top and explode into a different galaxy.

Combined, these two moons felt like a gate, a broad gate, a wide gate, a gate that would only be open for a limited amount of time, a gate I felt a terrible urge to leap through. It was as though the universe was winking at me.

When the moons diverged, I sank a few levels. When they were covered by clouds, I sank a few more. When my thoughts returned and I started to feel like me instead of a part of the glorious spectacle I had been witnessing, my indescribable passion fizzled out.

I was left the same exhausted person I was before the sunset. I took one last glance at the road, to make sure there was no one lurking in the shadows. There wasn’t. Of course there wasn’t. I closed my eyes and listened, absorbing and celebrating the silence.

There were no gunshots ringing out. There were no horse hooves hitting the dirt. There were no cries of pain or cries of anger or cries of misery. There were no cries at all. I could hear three sounds and three sounds only, and they were slight sounds, sounds you only hear if you listen real close. There was my breathing, which was soft and slight. There was my heartbeat, which had returned to a normal cadence. And there was the wind, which was cold but not cutting, like a cruel king who for once decided to take mercy on his battered subjects.

A fourth sound emerged. Behind me, Ironwall had lit a crackling fire. Unlike the other three sounds, it gave me comfort. I later sat by it, next to my fellow Slayers, and we listened to its throaty melody until sleep took us.

These people were my colleagues, my allies, and most importantly, my friends. I could have spilled my guts out to them around that fire. I didn’t, but I could have. That notion comforted me. These people comforted me.

There was no way I was gonna let them die.