Gilded Latten Bones

100

So there I was. My witchy girlfriend was gone. My sidekick was sound asleep. My trusty ratgirl assistant was far away. And something I was not going to like was about to happen.

A solid boom came from up front. Somebody my size and about as bright had just charged into the door at full gallop.

I went to take a look.

Dean yelled, "Garrett!" as I bent to the peephole. His holler preceded an inhuman shriek so violent the house shuddered on its foundations. Something crashed in Singe's office.

I finished my peek, sprinted for the kitchen.

Stuff had fallen in there, too, but I didn't take inventory. Dean and Dollar Dan were staring out the back window, into the barren space that had been an herb garden back when Dean was young enough to wrangle one.

"You have got to be shitting me," I said, in deadpan awe, without inflexion.

The world's biggest and probably only land-going kraken was out there thrashing megatentacles and making hideous messes while casting a mad yellow eye at the snacks behind the glass.

Several tentacles had been truncated recently. They oozed ichor, or whatever you call implausible monster blood. The beast's body quivered like an epileptic dog suffering a grand seizure. "The salt. It works. Dean. Salt. Get ready. Use it if that thing gets any part of itself inside."

I had seen that old man stressed a hundred times. I had seen him hopping mad and slow-burn, sullenly angry. I had seen him everything but outright panicky. I did not see him panic now. Nor did Dollar Dan, though ratfolk are notoriously flighty when straits get tight.

Dean retrieved the remaining pickling salt. He collected two small pots and started sharing it out.

I asked, "What did Singe do with the family arsenal when you started having youngsters underfoot?" There was a closet upstairs that once boasted an enviable collection of illegal weaponry. At latest check it contained two backup head knockers, a rusty throwing knife, two worn-out brooms, and several saps that were actually memorabilia. They had been used on me before I took them away.

"Singe didn't. I did. Penny is fascinated by things that are sharp and pointy. The dangerous stuff is in the black wooden case under my bed."

He wanted to say more but time was tight. There had been three more huge blows against the front door, of a magnitude that promised to break through eventually.

Then would come the fire.

Getting the case out from under Dean's bed required maneuvering. It was six feet long. It was two and a half feet wide. It was eight inches tall. It was freaking heavy. I grumbled, "What the hell is this, old man? You been holding out on me?"

He had, indeed. All my illegal weaponry was in the box but that was a minority of the tools of death stashed there. Where in the hell had Dean gotten light infantry pilea? There were four of those. There were three classical javelins, two halberd heads, a variety of swords (some of them mine), two finely crafted longbows with bundled arrows beside and strings presumably handy. There were spearheads and lots of knives.

I wanted to stand there marveling and wondering whence it all had come but they hadn't given up on the door and I didn't hear any tin whistles.

There were three crossbows to choose from. I assembled a standard Marine Corps heavy piece in seconds. I hadn't lost the knack. I grabbed a twelve-pack magazine of iron-tipped bolts, added a selection of other deadly tools, then got my beautiful young behind to my bedroom window-just in time to greet a slow-moving thread man who had climbed up with the intention of chucking firebombs inside. Somebody down below tossed one up, not quite high enough. The villain missed it. Down it went. I heard it break, then heard a whoosh! as the fuel ignited.

A roil of fire and smoke headed skyward.

I used an old time pileum to evict the thread man from my roof. He staggered into the arms of demon gravity while trying to pull the business end of the spear out of his cold chest.

I stopped watching. I was looking down the length of my crossbow at the woman who had been created to glamorize black leather. Tonight she wore a pink wig in what they call a pageboy cut. Her eyes were enormous. Gods, she looked good!

But I was in the soldier zone. It didn't matter how good she looked. I squeezed the trigger just the way they taught me. The bolt flew true but the woman moved in that exact instant when it became too late to shift my aim.

The bolt missed her heart. It went in where her left arm joined her shoulder. The impact spun her. She grabbed at that bit of bolt still protruding. Her feet tangled. She fell, making an inarticulate yelp of surprise.

People do not get shot in the TunFaire shaped by today's Civil Guard. Especially not villains.

By the time she managed to look up at me, from her knees, while still falling, I had the crossbow spanned and another bolt laid in. I might be out of practice on the mental stuff but operating one of these things had become a part of me. I'd still be able to span, load, and shoot on my deathbed.

The woman was trying to get up when my second bolt arrived. It ripped into the left cheek of what had to be the sweetest female behind ever minted.

She squealed like the proverbial stuck pig. She tried to run. Her left leg didn't want to engage in that enterprise. She shrieked something high-pitched, incoherent, and desperate.

A thunderous thud marked another attempt to break my front door. Obviously, I had been smart to get the work done on that, back when.

The incredible vision in black had not come just with thread men and a monster. Her shrieking summoned a goat cart. I thought she had lost that at Fire and Ice. Only later did it occur to me that the baddies could have more than one.

The goats trotted up. I loosed my worst shot yet. It missed the women entirely, grazed one of the critters. Both animals said something foul in goat and took off.

Leather, ever so tasty woman lunged, snagged the back of the cart, hung on and let herself be dragged out of the kill zone.

The thread men and thing out back were on their own.

Wishful thinking had me hearing whistles that weren't really there.

I backed off the window, grabbed up instruments of mayhem, scuttled back to Dean's room. I broke the crossbow down, put everything back in the case and pushed the case back under Dean's bed. Then I headed downstairs.

The monster had broken in through the back window. Dollar Dan had two tentacles nailed to the windowsill with kitchen knives. Dean was delivering salt to any other part that came in range.

I said, "Excellent. You've got it under control. Just don't go out there after it. I'm going to see what they've done to the door." I grabbed a long, two-tine fork Dean used when turning a roast. At the same time I saw something I had not noticed before.

Our kraken had no suckers on its tentacles. One side looked just like the other. I don't think I ever saw a squid or octopus that didn't have suckers. Some had suckers with teeth.

I found the front door frame almost free of its anchor bolts. Despite its massive design the door itself showed cracks. Splinters littered the hallway.

The peephole still worked.

I saw bits of fire burning. I saw two thread men, one down and the other ambling in a small circle, constantly turning left. Easing my head to the right I spied one more just standing in one place.

I tried the bolts and locks. Every one worked, though the one Singe had complained about before had to be forced. The bottom of the door hit the floor when it was halfway open. It would go no farther. But that was room enough for me to get out, heavily armed with a custom club and a cook's fork.

I didn't want to be seen with anything more useful at a time when some of my betters would appreciate excuses to lock me up.

I saw nine thread men: three down, four standing still, one smoldering, and one circling to his left. Then a tenth fell out of the sky, firebomb in hand. Fire oozed out from under him.

I was about to go galloping back inside when I spotted the goat cart just standing in the street up near the Cardonlos place. A dark lump lay ten yards closer to me. It moved.

Oh, yes! Time for that sweet thing and me to get friendly. I ducked back into Singe's office and conscripted a small lantern to share patrol duty.

The door would not shut all the way again.

The woman had trouble making headway with her left arm and left leg damaged but she was stubborn. She almost caught up with her cart before I caught her.

I found the pink wig about two thirds of the way there.

"You dropped something, precious. Here. Let me give you a hand." Odd. She no longer made that outfit look as good as she had just minutes ago.

She turned to see who was talking.

"Goo!" That face was a good forty hard years old. "This a magic wig?" I tossed the wig into the back of the cart.

A big uproar broke out behind my house. A cloud of brown dust rolled up, illuminated by the burning thread man.

Several thread men got motivated and started our way.

A big scream came from behind my house. It was a lost soul kind of yowl.

The woman gasped, "This can't be happening!"

She was determined to get up without help. Her now drooping posterior betrayed her. Down she went, leading with her chin.

The thread men did the same.

The woman now looked a hard rode fifty.

"The more you move around the more the barbs on those bolts will chew you up inside."

"Can't let go now." She started to get up again.

I tucked my tools into my belt, set my lantern down, stepped over to the cart, yanked the canvas cover off. That released a pocket of stench so pungent it almost laid me out. Even so, I hoisted the woman up there and stretched her out on her right side. "Hang in there. Neither bolt cut a big vein. I'll get them out before they do lethal damage." Where the hell were the tin whistles? I got busy eliminating evidence that might suggest the use of illegal weapons in a civil confrontation. "Grit those teeth, girl. This will hurt like hell."

I started with the bolt in back. Its head was peeking out already. I could just push it through. "Thanks for coming by. You helped me figure it all out."

Shouting erupted down the street. A ratman wanted my attention. Other ratmen were with him, making sure the thread men would not get up again. The work apparently required the use of hatchets.

The ratman screamed at me. It couldn't make out what he said.

I slipped the bloody bolt inside my shirt. "One down. Now for the one that's really going to hurt." She had been a trooper during the first removal. She had an old truce with pain.

Several ratmen were yelling now. Two were headed my way. I turned to see what their big-ass problem was.

Something hit me with all the enthusiasm of a haymaker delivered by a truly pissed-off war god.