Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

Just as Vyrim had hoped, a bright burst of flame followed Calamity Djinn’s attempt to squeeze more valuables out of Muntz, with the pyromancer lashing out with a double-fisted helping of incendiary rage. The put-upon curtains enkindled again, sparks flew in every direction, and many other flammable things began to smolder.

Missiles O’Houlihan, the bandit magician with magical bullets at her fingertips, turned and pelted them at Muntz; the missiles went wild and seemed to hit everything in the car but the young man.

Passengers began to flee the scene, running through the connector to the next car. Brutus attempted to stop them with sheer bulk, but was rudely shoved aside after only half-hearted, high-pitched protests.

Perhaps realizing, sanely, that the best thing to do in the melee was to keep an eye on the only people present who had surrendered their irons, the bony maiden, Skeletonia, approached them with her long bayonet. “Don’t do anything rash now, you hear?” she said.

Crucially, she didn’t notice that Vyrim’s empty sleeve had changed sides.

“Skeletonia!” cried the elf in black, Doc Points, from the front of the car. Torn between keeping the stampeding passengers where they sat and keeping the bag of loot in his hand, he was being jostled left and right, and his whispered spells of pain and binding were misfiring, paining the floorboards and binding the curtain rods. “Help!”

The skeleton looked away for a moment, and that was all the time Vyrim needed. He cast open his long conductor’s coat, holding the coach gun at arm’s length the only way he could. When Skeletonia looked back, she stared right into the muzzle. With an audible sigh, she simply allowed herself to collapse into an inert heap of bones rather than be riddled with birdshot.

“Everybody, GET DOWN!” Vyrim shouted. As the passengers complied, he leveled the gun and pulled the trigger. It kicked like a mule, but the birdshot found its mark: Missiles O’Houlihan yelped in pain and fell the the ground, moaning, with her tattered finery in shreds. It wasn’t a fatal wound, not at this distance and with the shot Valley Union used, but she was out of the fight.

As the remaining passengers tried to flee–Muntz among them, leaving his blazes to fan unattended–Calamity Djinn and her gang took cover in their now-empty seats and began to return fire. Vyrim ducked and rolled behind a seat himself, just like he had in his old infantry days. John scooped up the derringer from the ground, while Bill took back his coach gun. The Valley Union men also pulled the alarm and kicked open their case, spilling out a great load of additional birdshot ready to deliver a stinging rebuke to the bandits.

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Calamity Djinn had clearly heard enough. “Come on out, boys!” she barked. “Let’s show this lot how we do business! Sound off!”

From the far end of the car the doorway burst open and a hulking figure walked in. Orc-sized, it was dressed in a shapeless mass of robes, from which it withdrew a scattergun and a small but clearly enchanted aegis. “Brutus Andronicus!” the figure said, with a surprisingly feminine voice.

The baggage door behind Calamity slipped open again, revealing an elf who would have been intimidatingly dressed in sharp black and silver if there hadn’t been bits of lingerie still clinging to him from the steamer trunk in which he had been loaded, concealed. “Doc Points!” he cried, his ebony walking stick wreathed with menacing magical flames.

“Missiles O’Houlihan!” One of the passengers in the middle of the car stood up. Dressed in incredibly fine but poorly-maintained clothes, she crossed her hands in front of her and tickled a set of ten mean-looking orbs of purple energy into being. One exploded outward, popping noisily against the ceiling in a spray of cinders. Vyrim thought he heard Muntz muttering at this display, but it might have just been his imagination.

The final gang member was also hidden among the passengers, folding a fan and casting back a veil to reveal a fleshless skeleton in a melodramatic wig and corset. She (?) silently produced a long sword bayonet from within her ribcage.

A significant pause followed, but the skeleton did not shout out its name as the others had. “Come on, Skeletonia, announce yourself,” Calamity Djinn said. “If we’re going to do it, we ALL have to do it, or the rest of us look stupid.”

“Oh yes,” the skeleton rumbled in a feminine trill. “You look stupid because I didn’t shout out my own name like this was a vaudeville stage. Yes, that’s certainly it.”

Vyrim made use of his only hand, laying it across his face.

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“Kid,” Vyrim said. “You keep that up, and you’re gonna shoot someone you don’t mean to.”

The young man looked up. He had a hard look about him, a determined look, one Vyrim usually saw only on much older men. “I’m not a kid,” he said. “The name’s Cobb Tyler, and I gotta practice for the real thing.”

“No, you don’t,” Vyrim said. “Not here, anyway. Once you step off the train, you’re no longer the concern of me or the shareholders of the Eastern & Wilds Railroad. Now, that can be at the station in Smokewood…or it can be right here, right now, if you keep waving a loaded shooter around in my passenger car.” The conductor held out his only hand.

Reddening, the young man scooped up his live .44 rounds and dumped them into the elf’s outstretched hand, whence they were dumped into a pocket. “Damn greedy elves,” he muttered. “Always looking out for that bottom line. How much you gonna get for those bullets when you sell them out from under me?”

Vyrim had been half turned away when he heard this. Curtly reaching out, he snapped open the window, reached into his pocket, and threw the bullets out the window. There was the faintest ghost of an echo as they hit the ground, and then nothing but rushing wind until the window was secured. “Not much,” he said. “I let them go for far too little, I think.”

That did nothing to staunch the young man’s anger: “I paid five dollars for those bullets!”

“And if you keep playing with them like that, the next money you waste will be putting a bullet in something you didn’t intend,” said Vyrim. “Do I make myself clear?”

Young Mr. Tyler grumbled but put his shooters away. Vyrim nodded curtly, and then went through his normal rounds of punching tickets.

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“Well, there is a fellow at the front of the car who has already lit the drapes on fire three times,” said Bill. “It’s not really a matter for Valley Western or her shareholders per se, but I do imagine they would be mightily inconvenienced if they had to pay out insurance on burned-out cargo.”

“You’d know a good deal about that, wouldn’t you, John?” said Vyrim.

“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about,” John said.

“Of course not,” Vyrim sighed. He strode purposefully to the front of the carriage, to confront what he judged to be graver of the two threats.

Expecting to see the man in the floppy pink hat behind the curtain burning, Vyrim was surprised to see a shabbily dressed twentysomething man who was playing catch with sparks dancing forth from his fingers.

“Excuse me, sir, we don’t cast sparks, flames, or other types of conflagrations while the train is in motion,” Vyrim said.

“Well, lucky for you, these are embers,” the man said. “And therefore, not being sparks, flames, or any other type of fire you mentioned, I am well within my rights to cast them as I see fit.” To reinforce his point, the man lazily conjured a handful of red-hot embers and flung them at the already scorched window dressing. It burst into flame with a greedy snap, though before Vyrim could run for the bucket the nascent blaze was doused by a miniature tsunami of salty water.

This time, it actually was Mr. Pink Hat, seated two rows back. He was waving helpfully, and shouted “Happy to be of assistance my friend!” Everyone between him and the erstwhile pyromancer, Vyrim included, was wholly or partly drenched.

The elf gave him possibly the coldest smile in the storied history of smiles and turned back to the malefactor. “I will have you know, sir, that deliberately flouting the orders of the conductor and summoning a conflagration is cause for immediate ejection from this train.”

“I’m afraid I don’t know what that big fancy word means, conflagration,” the man grinned. “Maybe if you made it bite sized for me.”

“Start another fire, and I will hurl you off this train faster than you can say your own goddamned name,” Vyrim hissed.

“Well, sir, seeing as my name is Lucius Quintillius Cinncinnatus Muntz, Junior, I don’t see that happening,” the man said with a grin.

Vyrim cocked his head. “Son of General L.Q.C. Muntz?”

“The very same,” the man smiled. “Maybe you’ve heard of him.”

“Yeah,” Vyrim said. “I lost an arm to him. I see one more spark out of your fingers, and you’re gone.”

Seemingly disappointed that dropping the name of a famous rebel general didn’t help his cause, Muntz muttered something and put his hands in his pockets.

“Thank you,” Vyrim said. “The Eastern & Wilds Railroad appreciates you not turning its cars into flaming coffins for your own amusement.”

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The next person was one of the smaller folk, hefting a steamer trunk that was easily her size. “Ticket?” said Vyrim.

“Yes, yes, of course,” said the woman. Vyrim was unable to decide if she was a dwarf or a halfling, but was a rather scrawny specimen of either, with a forest of reddish curls barely contained in a bonnet. “May I see my trunk to the baggage car? It’s so very full of feminine things, and I’d like to see that it’s secured personally.”
“I’m afraid passengers are strictly prohibited from entering the baggage compartment, ma’am,” said Vyrim. “I’m sure you understand. We can’t have anyone unsupervised in a baggage compartment full of who knows what.”

“Oh, but I simply must see it to its berth in the baggage car,” the woman said, laying a melodramatic hand across her forehead. “I’m heading to a new life in Smokewood, and if any of my personal effects were to be damaged, why, it would simply be the most beastly omen.”

“Do you know be an even more beastly omen?” Vyrim said. “Missing the train because you were arguing with the conductor was already had a very long day.”

The woman’s earnest face fell a notch, and she assumed a much more practical affect. “Look, mister,” she said. “Can I at least take my trunk with me into the compartment? I really don’t want anyone poking around in there but me.” She held out a couple of silver coins, clicking them together as if she weren’t the 50th person to try that today. “I’ll make it worth your while.”

“I’m not sure what is about one armed elf clutching a derringer that makes him seem unusually susceptible to bribery, but the train is about to leave and I am at my wits’ end.” Vyrim placed his derringer in his coat pocket and jerked a now free thumb in the direction of the passenger cabin. “If you can drag that thing into the passenger cabin, I don’t care what you do with it.”

Suddenly, the woman’s excited, naïve act was back on, like a thick coat of pancake makeup. “Oh thank you, thank you ever so much my good elf,” she bubbled, “for a man of your persuasion you’re not nearly as disagreeable as one might have thought!”

“Gee, thanks,” Vyrim muttered as the young woman laboriously dragged her case up the stairs and around the corner into the compartment proper.

A moment later, the locomotive blasted its steam whistle and the train’s wheels began to squeal into motion. A few desperate, ticketless, treasure hunters jogged alongside for a while, giving up only when they ran out of platform. Vyrim waved jauntily at them as they shouted after the train. “This train runs every other day,” he shouted with a laugh. “I’m sorry you had to defer you ridiculous dreams for a day, but the treasure will be just as much a fool’s errand when we get back as it is today!”

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“All aboard for Smokewood!” cried Vyrim Q. Flamestar, conductor for the Eastern & Wilds railroad. “Only ticketed passengers, please!” He then drew and cocked a derringer to show that he was deadly serious about any more gold-hungry bottom feeders trying to muscle their way onto his train.

People surged forward anyway, holding satchels bulging with treasure hunting materials, everything from maps to mattocks. It was worse than the human wave attacks Vyrim had seen in the war, and the empty sleeve pinned to his side was proof enough that he didn’t make that comparison lightly.

“I’ve got a ticket, it’s in here somewhere, I swear!”

“A gold coin for you in lieu of a ticket, my fine elf-friend! That’s the language your persuasion speaks, is it not?”

“You don’t understand, this gold is the last thing between my family and starvation! You’d see my little ones waste away like it was nothing?”

A sea of greedy faces, grasping hands, and eyes flushed green with gold fever. It was all that anyone in Brighthollow had seen for well over a month, and it wasn’t getting any better.

“Damn that greedy old drake,” Vyrim muttered to one of his fellows. “Why couldn’t his blasted hoard stay hidden? If this is what the mere rumor of it does, these people will be eating each other at the first flake of real gold.

“It’s disgusting,” agreed Bill, a dwarf with Valley Western. By special arrangement, he and his partner were the only ones allowed to have coach guns aboard to protect the safeboxes that routinely brought precious valuables in from Smokewood and payroll in gold coin in from Brighthollow.

“Disgusting,” echoed his fellow John, a bony beanpole of an orc. “That’s what it is. If it looks like they’re about to rush the rails like they did last Tuesday, Mr. Flamestar, you just say the word and we’ll dismiss them with a snootful of birdshot.”

“Birdshot?” Vyrim said, alarmed. “I told you to load your pieces with rock salt!”

“See, I told you he said rock salt!” Bill said, craning his neck to shout up at John.

“I never said he didn’t! I just said you muttered it so much that it sounded like birdshot and you should make sure!” John said, stooping to properly get in his fellow’s face.

“Pop the chambers and give me the shells,” Vyrim said. “We’re going to rely on the menacing appearance of your irons for the time being.”

“Aww,” whined the Valley Union guards, surrendering their brass-crimped double-aught birdshot shells. “How come you get a shooter and we have to wave our sticks around like a hedge wizard?”

“Because, like your average hedge wizard, I’m shooting blanks,” Vyrim said. He had never missed the use of his right arm more than he did at this moment, for a derringer in one palm meant no fingers to massage his temples.

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It had been Cobb’s original plan to stay awake through the night, but the long hard days of walking and fighting had utterly exhausted him, and he found himself nodding off long before the first light tickled the horizon.

After what seemed like an eternity of restless dreams, most of them involving Sheriff Tyler’s long-dead body at a formal dinner party, a sharp sound awoke Cobb from his slumber. He saw a dark figure silhouetted against the rising sun and, instinctively, he let loose with a double blast of his sixguns. The figure fell to the ground, gasping and gurgling, but when Peyton jumped up from the opposite side of the fire, Cobb realized he’d made a terrible mistake.

Peyton darted over to the fallen intruder, kneeling over him. Cobb followed a moment later, numb, but still staying out of the range encompassed by the orc’s massive fists. The visitor was clearly breathing her last, a bloody foam upon her lips. Cobb had never seen anyone who looked quite like her; the sharp ears argued for an elf, but her olive skin and impressive build seemed far more orcish. Her clothing was scandalously scanty by the standards of Smokewood, and a mix of linen breeches with far more rustic leather fittings. She was extremely striking, and watching her final moments and the pain that was writ across those features made Cobb sick to his stomach.

After a few moments, the stranger let out a final rattle and was still. Peyton, moving slowly so as not to alarm Cobb, crossed her arms over her chest and took up a loose end of her cloak to lay over her face.

“I…I didn’t…I thought…”

“I know what you thought,” Peyton said. “You saw something green and you thought it was old Peyton Grosh come to make your sleep permanent. And now you’ve gone and snatched the life out of someone who might have just wanted to help us.”

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Cobb rode into the way station on a dying horse, and when it settled into the ramshackle barn there, he had a feeling that it would never move again under its own power.

The station was little more than a crossroads, a barn and a hitching post and a house where the road from Smokewood met the road to the Old Mission in the foothills of the wilds. A tattered sign offered stables for the night, a meal, and a roof over one’s head for the right price. Cobb, his eyes hard and the mess of brambly curls that served him as hair all tussled, was after something else entirely.

“I’m looking for an orc,” he said, sauntering into the main house. “Big guy. Tattoo of a royal flush on one arm, and green as a field in springtime.”

The proprietor, slouched in a hammock and limp against the late-season heat of the wilds, cocked his slouch cap up. “We don’t sell orcs here, tattoos or not,” he said. “We sell cold food, cold beds, and cold stables.”

Cobb reached into his haversack, an old ex-army rag, and produced a coin, which he slapped on the countertop in front of the man. “For all of the above,” he said. Removing another one–his last–he laid it alongside. “Just in case this helps spark some emerald-colored memories.”

This, at least, was a language that the way stationmaster spoke. He was on his feet alarmingly fast, pressing the coins between callouses and passing them up for a nibble in his few remaining blackened teeth. “Coin’s good,” he said. “You can stay the night, get whatever tuck you need from the pantry. As for your friend-”

“He ain’t my friend,” Cobb said sharply. “I mean to see him hanged by the neck until dead.”

“As for your enemy, ask the stablemucker. Everyone what comes through here looks the same to me.”

“Coin purses on legs?” Cobb said. “Sponges to squeeze?”

“Fools,” the man said flatly. “There’s nothing out there but starvation and edor-breedin’ elves and orcs that’d kill you as soon as look at you.”

“Thanks for the encouragement,” Cobb said. “I’ll take it under advisement, as I told your sherriff.”

The stationmaster grumbled and pulled down his cap. “When there’s buzzards picking at your bones and a wild miscegenated edor wearing your britches, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

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The next day, when Llewelyn stumbled his way up the back stairs and unlocked his room, he found an engraved invitation slipped under his door. “You are invited,” he read, “to the inaugural meeting of the Undead Society of Smokewood. All members must attend. Reception to follow.”

He balled up the invite and threw it away. “Oh please, you old stick-in-the-mud.”

Trotting down the stairs, with half a mind to steal another swig of the good stuff off of Elijah, Llewelyn was surprised to see that Silas had set out a feast. Candied spinal cord, chilled brains, and every last bottle of various bodily fluids that Silas had held in his private reserve hidden in the crypt. What’s more, Smathers the zombie was present, as was every other undead that Silas could rustle up: the ghoul sisters from Smokewood hills, the vampire rancher from the
Double O ranch, a feral zombie tied up with a rag in its mouth, and the stone-dead corpse of Zachariah’s granddad Eli, rented for the occasion for a fifty-cent discount on a Pining Away model casket.

“Please, join us, Llewelyn,” said Silas hoisting a goblet. “I’ve taken your advice and made the Undead Society far more egalitarian. All whose hearts no longer beat are now welcome, provided they are able to behave themselves.”

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Dinner was served promptly every other day in the kitchen, and consisted of delicately prepared castoffs from the funeral parlor’s customers, prepared in a deliciously noxious fashion by Silas himself. Llewelyn took to his plate of reeking brains with gusto, clawing into it with both hands while resting his elbows on the table as Silas looked on uncomfortably.

“So, Mr. Ebonwright…tell me of your business,” Silas said. “What do the Ebonwright owe their fortune to? Banking, as is the case with so many of your lithe-eared brethren?”

“Oh, we have…land,” Llewelyn said, brain matter dribbling down his chin. “Lots of it. Not sure where, really.”

“Why be bothered by such trivialities in one’s income?” Silas said. “We Moores have long been in the body-trade, even back east.”

“Even when that old zombie was still alive,” laughed Elijah.

“Eons ago by the look of it, then, even to my long-lived folks,” Llewellyn laughed.

Silas, stung, was silent for a moment before continuing. “We have long recognized that there will always be a need for people to attend the newly bred, the newly wed, and the newly dead. And as we haven’t the feminine proclivities to be midwives or the dextrous needles to sew wedding finery, we chose the latter.”

“I don’t know, Silas, I feel like you’d be a pretty good midwife,” said Llewellyn as he slurped noisily at a goblet full of lymph. “You’ve got the sissy aspect down, certainly.”

“Sissy?” Silas said. “I would call it more…refined. I am a gentleman about town, and the leading figure in our first Undead Society.”

“Is that where the lace on your sleeves comes from? Being a refined gentleman? Or is there a bylaw in the Undead Society that only the biggest fop may lead?” Llewelyn roared with laughter at this, spraying the party with fluids and chunks of cerebrum.

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