Book Of Tongues (Hexslinger 1)

Those green eyes narrowed, as one hand sought out his most convenient gun-butt, caressing it the way most men might a pretty girl’s dropped handkerchief. “Meaning, Lincoln may aim to free the slaves, Rev, but it was Colonel Colt really made all men equal — my size, your size. And everything else, to boot.”

That night, Rook gave a homily from Jeremiah, 7-26 to 7-34, as martial a passage as any he could think of. The Lieut sat there nodding, his transplanted Bushwhacker hair groomed like Custer’s, while the other men mainly got about their business, not ignoring Rook, exactly, but not exactly cheering him on, either.

All but Chess, that was, who watched him with a quirked gold brow and an odd little smile playing about his mouth — those deft hands of his cleaning and reassembling his guns by rote, without any need of close attention, while his gaze travelled the length and breadth of Rook’s long body . . . complimentary and predatory, at once.

The next two weeks brought three separate engagements, fast and hard as anything Megiddo’s plains might eventually deal out. Almost every day, the Lieut received fresh intelligence by bird, inevitably coded — and since only he had the cipher, they were forced to take his word for each subsequent target. Their primary duty, he often told them, was self-sacrifice. To rush any given breach, paving the way for more potentially damage-inflicting crews like Captain Coulson’s, who moved far more slowly, on account of the cannon they still dragged along behind them.

The cost was dear, both in men and morale. Rook buried three in shallow graves that fourteen-day span alone, and one sewn in a sack, far too crushed for any sort of memorializing. The Lieut told Rook to cheer them up, or at least on, and he did what little he could — thumbed the Bible for inspiration, looking out on a narrowing clutch of faces whose eyes slid from his, increasingly emptied of anything but fear and doubt.

And there in the background, Chess, always whistling at his work, untouched by any of the above. Chess, for whom war seemed a form of recreation — something he revelled in excelling at, with no hint of regret that such victory always came at someone else’s loss.

They were fighting hard over some sand-bar, one day, with mortar-fire felling trees in the distance. Rook found himself trapped by the coattail behind an overturned stagecoach that Kees Hosteen had set flame to, in order to create a brake and cover their retreat. As the older man tugged at his sleeve, a pair of Northerners managed to spill overtop and came down thrashing, blind, out to do whatever damage they could. One spitted himself on Hosteen’s buck knife, knocking him to the ground, where they scrabbled around in gruesome play — Hosteen carving out loops of gut, as the man tried hopelessly to stuff them back in.

Meanwhile, Rook wrestled with Bluebelly Number Two, the both of them too entangled to do each other much damage, yet unable to quite break free. As Rook laid the man up against the stage’s undercarriage, he saw him glance up, and followed the eye-line to see a new gun barrel pointing downwards, right at his head, wielded by yet another suicidal Abolitionist.

“Die, you secesh fucker!” this one spat out, then slumped face-forward, his eye a red mess of ruin. Rook’s dance partner eked a garbled name, but fell silent when Rook cross-punched him in the throat, freeing himself up to look back — and catch Chess Pargeter maybe forty paces behind, gun still a-smoke, smiling at the damage he’d done.

“Best keep alert, Rev,” he called. “Odds are, there’s more where that one come from.” A thin, hungry grin: “Sure hope so, anyhow.”

And turned away once more, with a rakish tip of his blood-spattered hat-brim and both guns up, already discharging fatally in two entirely new directions.

At his feet, Rook could hear Hosteen breathing ragged, almost like he was sobbing. “C’mon,” he said, scooping him up, kicking the disembowelled soldier aside, “your boy’s right, and so were you. Better fall on back.”

Hosteen nodded, shoulders heaving. “Oh, Jesus,” he said. “Why’n the hell did I ever come here — why’d I even join up? To kill them, or get myself killed?”

“Little of both, I expect,” Rook replied, dragging him along.

Much later, when the fire and drunken joshing had both died down, Rook heard whispers, and opened his eyes to see Chess deep in negotiations with the old Hollander. They muttered together a while about the varying utility of knives and such, from what little Rook could make out, ’til Chess finally said: “Okay, fine, that’s settled — now take them down, and be done with it. I ain’t got all night.”

Hosteen cleared his throat, and looked down. “That . . . ain’t what I want, this time.”

“Oh no?” Chess’s voice hardened. “Well, best be careful, old man — sure hope you ain’t forgot so soon about Chilicothe and his pals, for your own sake.”

“Chew coal and shit-fire, Chess, don’t take on — we all of us remember Chilicothe, the Lieut included. God damn, but you can be a mean little bastard!”

“Got that right.” A pause. “What do you want, then?”

Hosteen bent to Chess’s ear, voice dipping too low to follow. Chess listened, then snorted — half a hiss, half a snicker. “You’re an ill old buzzard,” was all he said.

Hosteen’s face fell, comically swift. “Just ’cause some of us got human feelin’s. . . .”

“Yeah, yeah. Cry me a river, grampaw. I want that knife first thing tomorrow, handed over in front of God and everybody, the Lieut included — like we bet for it at whist, all legal.”

“It’s yours.”

Chess huffed, lips twisting. “Oh, men really are fools, like my Ma always says,” he announced, to no one in particular. “Dogs, too. Do any damn thing they take a mind to, long as they think they’ll get what leaves them feelin’ happiest, after.”

Here he pushed Hosteen backwards, without warning, ’til he had no option but to let Chess sit down on him — one hard shove, far too quick for Rook to quite take it in. And straddling Hosteen’s lap just a shade primly, almost side-saddle, he admitted, with a further smirk, “And as for me . . . I’m certainly no exception.”

Then he twined his fingers in Hosteen’s shaggy grey hair, letting the man draw him close enough to kiss and met him open-mouthed, without restraint, tongue-first.

Oh, Rook thought, numbly. So that was it.

He didn’t stay to watch much longer, merely turned away, as quietly as possible. It seemed more than a bit uncouth — almost impolite — to treat their revelry as a sideshow. Particularly since it struck him as not so much revelry as maybe . . . necessity, on Hosteen’s part. Maybe even kindness, on Chess’s.

It did startle Rook a bit, however — as a Christian — to realize that he hadn’t previously thought Chess might have any real kindness in him.

Later, in his journal — just notes scribbled down in an aidememoire, leather binding sewn ’round a tablet of block-paper — Rook wrote: