Ellen's Arc

Chapter 21 of 45

The pale man came down another step. Cade did not sit. Ellen stood between them with the rifle still raised, but the man never looked at the barrel. Six women huddled behind her in the dark lobby. She needed the upper floors to defend the road. She needed to know if this stranger meant to kill her people or only Cade. "You want him," Ellen said. "Not us. Say it." The man's red eyes moved to her for the first time. "The women are nothing to me. I have waited eleven years for one man. Only him." Cade spoke low. "He took my daughter, he thinks. He's here for a reckoning. Let him talk. Get the women up top." Ellen weighed it fast. If she trusted the pale man's word, she could clear the stairs and set her shooters at the high windows before Brennan charged again. If she was wrong, she handed the women to a killer. But the man had held the upper floors for days and touched none of them. He had waited for Cade alone. She believed him. "Take the women up," she told Cade's back. "You stay down here with him. Finish your talk on the ground floor where I can watch." The pale man tilted his head. Then he stepped aside from the stairs. "Send them up. I will not follow." Ellen moved the six women past him one by one. He stood flat against the wall and let them pass. Not one flinched at his reach. She led them to the third floor and broke the shutters open. Below, the road ran straight to the door. She set two women at each window with rifles and showed them how to work the bolts. Then boots sounded on the road. Brennan's riders massed at the far end, and behind them a low mechanical whine grew. A vehicle rolled up with a boxy gun bolted to its bed, a long belt of fat rounds feeding the breech. Ellen knew that shape. She had killed a scorpion with one like it. "Grenade gun," she called down to Cade. "Brennan's got a grenade gun on a truck." Cade appeared at the base of the stairs, the pale man behind him. For one breath the two hunters stood side by side, both looking out at the same enemy. Then a streak of red fire dropped from the sky and split the truck open. Stark landed in the road, armor scorched, one hand still smoking. "Grenade gun's done," Stark said. He did not look up. "Brennan pulled back. He'll circle. You've got maybe an hour." Ellen gripped the third-floor sill and breathed. She held the upper floors now. She had shooters at the windows and the road covered. But the pale man still stood inside her walls, his talk with Cade unfinished, and Brennan was already riding wide to come at them from another side.