Ellen's Arc

Chapter 17 of 45

Ellen carried the ledger back across the salt beds with Cade at her side. They reached the dry well by midday. The six women waited below, hollow-eyed and thin. She counted them the way she counted everything now. No guns. No spears. Nothing but the knife on her belt. Vincent could keep his roof today. Tomorrow a raider band could stroll in and take everything. A wall of stone meant nothing if six tired women could not hold it. Cade climbed down and set his rifle across his knees. "Well won't hold," he said. "One way in. Six of them. No weapons." He did not soften it. Ellen already knew. She looked at the tired faces below and understood that shelter was not the same as safety. That evening a low hum crossed the flats. Ellen climbed out with her knife ready. A shape came down out of the dark sky, red and gold, engines throttling back. It landed hard and folded its arms. She knew the armored man. He had taken Brennan's last gunman off the plain and vanished. Now he stood over her again, faceplate glowing. "You're bleeding people," Stark said. He nodded at the well. "Six of them. No cover. No teeth." He stated it like a fact he was done examining. "I know what we don't have," Ellen said. "Tell me something I can use." Stark turned east. Far off, half-buried in a dune, sat a wagon. Ellen knew it. Vincent's armored wagon, the one they'd fled in. Its iron plates still stood. Two Gatling guns hung from its sides, and a boxy grenade launcher was bolted to its rear rail. "Left it running last time you ran," Stark said. "Barrels are hot. Belts are half full." He looked at her. "Move your people inside iron. Then the guns matter." Ellen looked at the wagon, then at the well. The well was a hole. The wagon was a fort that moved. "We can't drag it here." "You don't drag the fort," Stark said. "You bring the people to it." That was the whole answer. Ellen turned and called down into the well. She and Cade got the women up the rope one at a time. They walked them across the flats in the dark. Cade counted the ground. Stark walked overhead, engines low, watching the horizon for riders. By dawn all six women sat behind iron plate. Cade checked the belts and swung a Gatling barrel to test the mount. It turned free. The grenade gun still held rounds. For the first time, Ellen had walls that could shoot back. Stark lifted off without a word and shrank into the east. Ellen stood at the wagon's rail and looked at the women behind steel. They could hold this now. But the wagon was Vincent's, and Vincent did not lend iron for free. She had traded one landlord's roof for another man's guns, and both would come to collect.