Free Merkabah Rider: The Mensch With No Name by Edward M. Erdelac

like a thunderclap.
    The
blast flung her slight form right out of her boots and a full eight feet back,
splattering the Colonel and Purdee with yellow slime. Baines had loaded that
one, then. She slammed hard against the wall of a stone hut and her upper body
broke apart in black and brown fragments.
    Kaftzefoni
howled and kicked his horse. He charged between the buildings, intending to run
the Colonel and Purdee both down. He looped his bullwhip around his saddle horn
and dragged Wilkes behind as he came. It was horrible to see the man’s body
jump and careen off the corners of the shacks.
    Gersh
ran out into the alleyway, right into the path of the snorting animal. He dug
in his feet and thrust his big shoulder at its forelegs. The animal shrieked
and crashed into him full speed, but proved the lesser force and flipped
entirely over in the air, sending Kaftzefoni tumbling end over end from the
saddle.
    He
landed face first behind Gersh, and his big black horse crashed down on his
back with a squeal.
    In
the time it took for the horse to roll off of him, Gersh retrieved the broken
barrel of salt, swinging it up like it was a sack of flour. He turned and
hefted it high over his head.
    Kaftzefoni
pushed himself to his hands and knees, shaking his head, and Gersh brought the
heavy barrel down on him. The force drove the bullwhip man flat on his belly
again and broke the barrel to hoops and splinters.
    The halite inside burst out, burying him in big white heap of
crystalline gravel. There was a muffled scream. The crystals grayed
swiftly. Only the man’s big bare arms protruded from the rock salt mound, and they
clawed at the earth, stiffened, and shriveled to bubbling yellow brown husks
that melted away before Gersh’s eyes.
     
    * * * *
     
    The Rider reached the crest of the hogback about the same time the girl
shed discovered Sheardown’s broken body. He dropped from the back of the fiery
ether-horse and let it return to nothingness. Then he made his way through the
boulders on foot.
    There,
on the black ridge above the green plain, crouched like a boar beneath the red
sky sat Ketev Meriri, the demon cannon. In the Yenne Velt it was no bronze cast
Napoleon, but a weird amalgam of demon and machine. Its body was covered with
tarnished gold scales, but whether this were some kind
of unearthly barding or its real hide, the Rider couldn’t tell. Between the
scales poked long, quivering black bristles, so the Rider thought perhaps it
was the latter. Its bulk at first appearance was round and ponderous, but it
seemed to rest or, to be chained upon a great black iron ball, which it clung
to with four spindly clawed legs like a ferret’s.
    It
looked to be able to propel itself by scrabbling at the great ball, turning it
beneath like a balancing acrobat. The iron was covered in a myriad of
crisscrossing scratches, which showed the lighter metal beneath. It had no real
face, just a flared, gaping tube of gold much like a cannon mouth that
protruded from the place where had it been a dog, its snout and eyes should
have been. It had a kind of mouth, as a long row of wicked, blood encrusted
upper teeth hung down like stalactites from a drooping black lip beneath the
golden barrel. A long tail hung down its back, a tail of shining, exposed
rat-like flesh and bone threaded or fused with links of thick chain.
    Mazzamauriello
held the end of the chain like a lanyard. He was unaware of the Rider’s
presence. He stood poised to order another round of death, squinting his blank white eyes down at Varruga Tanks. Why had he stopped firing in the
first place? The Rider didn’t know. The other shedim he had spied through the
Colonel’s glasses were not here on the ridge. Why had they gone below? He crept
closer. There wasn’t much time.
    This
was Ketev Meriri, the infernal cannon. A creation of Lucifer, such as it was.
Could Lucifer truly create anything though, or could he but splice together some
hapless corrupted angel, or some