Ellen's Arc

Chapter 38 of 45

The road stayed open, and Ellen made it her weapon. She had piled stones along the bare dirt to mark the range. Her six women held the high windows. But she had no explosives left to close the chokepoint. A determined charge would cross the open ground and reach her door. She stood in the doorway at dawn and watched the horizon for dust. The dust came from two sides at once. Brennan's eight riders swung in from the flat, spread wide this time, no bunched target for her guns. And from the road itself walked a single man in gray armor. Din Djarin. The bounty hunter who wanted her for credits. He had trailed her here before. Now he came on foot, rifle low, using the very openness she thought protected her. Ellen fired at Brennan's line. Her women fired from above. One rider dropped, then another. But the wide spread worked. The men closed the distance, and Din walked steady through her fire as if the bullets meant nothing to his plating. She had no way to stop both. The road she called a killing ground was killing her plan instead. Then a wagon came fast down the open road behind Din. Vincent Marconi. He rode standing, coat flat in the wind, and Ellen had never been so glad to see the man who owned her debts. "You lost my ledger," Vincent called, flat as ever. "You still owe me a house full of women." He did not slow for niceties. He threw her something heavy from the wagon bed. A case. Ellen caught it and knew the weight. Charges. Timed sticks with a fuse cord, enough to crater the road again. "Wire it," Vincent said. "Close your own gate. I don't run a business on open doors." Ellen ran the case to the crater's edge under Din's advance. She jammed the sticks into the loose dirt and lit the cord. Din saw it and stopped. He was not a man to walk into a blast for one puck. He backed off the road. Brennan's riders saw the smoke and pulled up short, three men down already and no clear path to the door. The charge blew. Dirt and stone tore up in a wall across the road. The crater doubled. When the smoke cleared, the chokepoint was a pit no horse could cross at speed. Brennan reined his survivors back. Din stood beyond the pit, out of reach. Brennan looked at the closed road, then at Ellen. "Next time," he said. Just that. He turned his horses and rode off. Din watched a moment longer, then melted back the way he came. Ellen stood by the smoking pit, breathing hard. The gate was closed again. But Vincent climbed down from his wagon and folded his arms. "That case wasn't free," he said. She had her wall back. She owed him deeper than ever.