Hugh studied the head, committing every detail to memory, and hurled the image into the void. The old days were gone. He would fill the bottomless hole with rage or it would drive him insane. Either way it made no difference.
“Do you know why you’re still alive?” Lamar asked. “Every day, every week, there are less of us, but you’re still breathing. If we found you, Nez can, too. I bet he knows exactly where you are.”
“I’m alive because he wants me to be the last,” Hugh said. “He wants me to know.”
Nez wanted him to watch as his necromancers tore apart everything Hugh had built, and when nothing was left, he would come calling to squeeze the last bit of blood out of the stone. Nez wanted him awake and sober. No fun chasing a dog who didn’t run. Fine. He’d be awake.
Lamar smiled.
“What do we have?” Hugh asked.
“Three hundred and two men, including us,” Stoyan said.
“Weapons?”
“Whatever each one of us carries,” Bale said.
“Supplies?”
“None,” Lamar said. “We’re close to starving.”
“Base?”
Felix shook his head.
Hugh’s mind cycled through the possibilities. Rock bottom wasn’t the worst place to start from, and the Dogs who’d managed to stay alive were probably the smartest or strongest. He had three hundred trained killers. A man could do worse.
“We have the barrels,” Stoyan said.
“How many?”
“All of them.”
Life kicked him, then blew him a kiss. “Good.”
Hugh strode to the door and flung it open. Fresh air greeted him. A small, ugly town sat in front of him, little more than a street with a few buildings and a rural road, leading into the distance and disappearing between some fields. A sunset splashed over the horizon, dying slowly, and the three street lamps had come on already, spilling watery electric light onto the stretch of road in front of him. He remembered the oppressive heat, but the air was cooler now.
“Fall or spring?” he asked.
“September,” Lamar told him.
“What is this town?”
“Connerville, Tennessee,” Stoyan said.
The last thing he remembered was Beaufort, South Carolina.
“Where is Nez?”
“In Charlotte,” Lamar told him. “He’s set up a permanent base there.”
Far enough to keep out of Atlanta and the surrounding lands. They belonged to Daniels now. But not so far that Nez couldn’t bring the Legion down if Roland became displeased with his precious daughter.
Stabilize three hundred Iron Dogs, arm them, and find a base to keep them alive. Simple to visualize, complicated to execute. Most of all, he had to convince Nez that attacking them now wasn’t in his best interests. If he kept the Dogs alive through the winter, by spring he would have enough people trained.
The bottle of moonshine called to him. He didn’t have to turn around to know exactly where it was, tempting him to do what severed limbs did - wither and rot. And while he rotted, his people would die one by one.
No. No, he owed Nez a debt. He was Hugh d’Ambray, Preceptor of the Iron Dogs. The Dogs paid their debts.
Magic rolled over the land. Hugh couldn’t see it, but he felt an exhilarating rush that tore through him, washing away the headache that pounded at the base of his skull. The electric lamps winked out, and twisted glass tubes of fey lanterns flared into life with an eerie indigo light.
He raised his hand and let his magic flow out. A pale blue glow bathed his fingers. Felix grunted as his nose knitted back together.
Hugh picked up Rene’s head. They would bury him tonight.
“Find me some clothes. And call Nez. Tell him I want to talk.”
2
Black Fire Stables spread across twenty acres about a two-hour horse ride east of Charlotte. The large, solid house sat in the middle of the lawn, on a rolling hillside, with stables to one side and a covered riding arena to the other. The tech was up, and the inside of the house glowed with warm electric light. Sweet green grass stretched into the distance, to the wall of the forest, shaded here and there by copses of pines, their needles carpeting the soil in a brown blanket. Red and pink roses bloomed at the gate. A rooster perched on the fence. As Hugh rode up, it cocked its head and gave him and the men behind him the evil eye.
He’d brought Stoyan, Lamar, and Bale with him. He needed Lamar’s take on Nez’s strength, and Bale’s axe would help to cut them out if things went sideways. He’d sent Felix to gather what was left of the Iron Dogs, and by all rights, he should’ve sent Stoyan with him too, but that would’ve meant listening to Bale and Lamar bickering the entire way with nobody to shut them up except him. There was only so much he could take.
Hugh halted his horse before the gate. The borrowed mare Stoyan had found somewhere wouldn’t cut it, especially not with Nez. They had to appear strong. He needed a horse, a war stallion. Problem was, he had no money.
Until a few months ago, money had been an abstract concept. He understood prices, he haggled on occasion, but he never worried where it came from. It was something he traded for goods and services, and when he needed more, he simply asked for it, and in a few days, it was there, in the appropriate account or in his hand. Now all of his accounts had been cut off. He didn’t have a dime to his name. He must’ve earned money somehow to keep himself drunk, and he vaguely remembered fighting, but most of the months between his banishment and Rene’s head had vanished into the darkness of an alcoholic haze.
The door of the farmhouse swung open. Matthew Ryan hurried out, stocky, balding, a big smile on his broad face, as if nothing had changed. The past stabbed at Hugh. You were something. Now you’re nothing.
“Come in, come in.” Ryan pulled the gate open. “Maria just got the table set. Come in!”
They rode up to the house, dismounted, and went inside.
The dinner was a blur, superimposed on the composite of his memories. He’d come to this ranch three times before. Each time he’d been treated to dinner and left with a horse. He sat there, watching his people attack mashed potatoes like starving wolves and tried to get a grip on reality. It kept slipping through his fingers.
After dinner, he and Ryan sat on the back porch of the house, beers in hand, watching the Friesians run through the pasture. The Friesians were his breed: jet black, built like light draft horses, but fast, nimble, and lively. He’d gotten his last three stallions from these stables. He’d paid at a premium for them, too. They were his mark - vicious black horses with flowing manes.
On the far right a stallion ran a lazy circle around his pasture, black mane flowing, his coat shiny like polished silk, high-stepping gait… Black fire in motion. Yeah, that one would do.
“I need a horse,” Hugh said.
Ryan nodded.
Here came the part he detested. “I can’t pay you now.” The words tasted foul in his mouth. “But you know I’m good for it.”
“We heard. Terrible business, that,” Ryan said. “Work for the man for years and have nothing to show for it. Shame, that’s what that is. A damn shame.” He let it hang.
Hugh drank his beer. He wouldn’t beg, and Ryan knew better than to push him.
Silence stretched.
“I’ve got no stallions right now. Nothing but the breeding stock. The market’s been slow.”
Bullshit. Ryan bred war horses, big and mean. In the post-Shift world, where tech and magic switched, a good horse was worth more than a car. It always worked. People who came to Ryan for a horse didn’t want a gelding and demand was always good.
Ryan glanced at him and shrank away before he caught himself. A small drop of sweat formed on his temple.
That’s right. Remember who you’re talking to.
“I want to show you something.” Ryan turned and yelled into the house. “Charlie, bring Bucky out. And tell Sam to come here.”
Hugh took another sip of his beer.
Ryan’s oldest son, stocky, with the same blunt features carved out of wet mud with a shovel, trotted over to the barn to the left.
A kid walked out onto the porch. Lean, blond. Young, eighteen or so. There was some of Ryan there, in the broad cast of his shoulders, but not much. Must’ve gone into the mother’s side of the family.