Gunlaw

Gunlaw 6

"I know." The dogman brushed past her and hoisted Kyle onto his shoulder. "We'll take him to the pillar."

And they went, Hemar carrying Kyle, panting all the way and cursing his head. Two miles seemed like twenty under the hammer of the sun. Jenna trailed behind the dogman, her skin burning through the rips in her old shift, only the black sheath of her hair to keep her from sunstroke.

They passed the Church of Three out on the pillar road. Hemar paused, looking to Jenna. She shook her head. The dark stone arch did not invite. Kyle had gone in once. Said it was full of old folks smelling like death. He told her the Three wait at the back, stone lumps with only the most vague hints at form so they might be any kind. Two smaller ones flanking a larger that stood way back in the shadows, spreading its arms.

"You ever go in, Hemar?"

"I looked once. The pack elders teach the Three are The One of the Domen, the One of the Hunska and the One of the Taur. If that's right there's no place in there for men." He shifted Kyle on his shoulder and walked on.

Jenna knew some of the old folk had it the statues were Father, Son, and Ghost. When she came to Ansos the book of Hex told her Brother, Sister, Stranger. Maybe they were all right. Or all wrong.

The Five-oh-Seven pillar looked vast from the town. As they drew closer, picking their way through the Hunska bone-pits and the yards where the taur set the skulls of their dead, the pillar seemed to fill the whole world.

"There's hundreds of them, you know?" Hemar said, pausing from his complaints. "A thousand."

"A thousand and sixty-three," Jenna said.

"Why's that?" Hemar shifted Kyle on his shoulder.

Jenna shrugged. "It's a magic number."

"How'd you know all that stuff?" Hemar growled.

"I listen."

They stopped a hundred yards short of the pillar. Jenna knew most corpsers couldn't get within a quarter mile of the stonework, but this close it seemed that even humans felt the pressure to leave. Hemar felt it too. She could see it in the hang of his tail.

"Must be three hundred yards wide." Hemar looked up. "How tall d'you reckon?"

"Very."

Jenna tried not to be impressed by what the Old Ones had left behind them. The pillars and the gun-law both hung over every part of her life. Both made men into children in somebody else's playground.

Hemar dug the grave. Jenna tried to help, but the rocky ground tore back her nails.

They put Kyle in the shallow scrape and Hemar set to covering him.

"Should we say something?" Jenna asked. She wondered what she could say, what words might come if she opened her mouth. Her brother lay limp and dead in a dirt hole, his limbs at the wrong angles, a blind stare in his eyes daring you to doubt his death. Despite the heat, Jenna's skin goosebumped. A tight knot sat below her heart, hurt and rage in equal measure, ready to explode. She remembered him at six when she was three and he had been her world. "Shouldn't we?"

"If you want." Hemar hung his head. "He ain't there, though."

Jenna looked up at the dogman. His eyes glittered behind a veil of dirty hair. She'd seen dogmen dead. They left them scattered for the ravens. If it weren't for the corpsers they wouldn't even drag them to the pillar.

"Cover him up."

The sun had started to fall by the time they left. They walked side by side.

"Thank you, Hemar." Without the dogman, corpsers would have taken what they wanted. Organs for their potions, skin to wear, blood and bone to make night-dust to sell to junkies.