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

said.
    “Rider do for that gun?” Purdee asked, wiping sweat and grit
from his shining forehead.
    “He
must’ve,” said the Colonel smiling. “It’s off the carriage up there. Don’t know
how he did it, but it’s lyin’ busted.”
    He
lowered his glasses and sighed.
    “I’ll
tell you what. I never seen nothin’ like what you did today, son,” The Colonel
said to Gersh in awe.
    Gersh
smiled as a cool shadow passed across his face and made him glance up. He had
done amazing things this day. He had always been capable of great strength, but
he had never felt tested before, even with all the tricks old Hash had got him
to do. Something had been born in him this day. Knowing there were things such
as these men he had fought, and knowing he had the power to face them, it gave
him a sense of worth he had never had before. He felt he had a purpose. And
that purpose was with Rider.
    Rider
could teach him. He could learn from Rider who he was, who his people were, and
what he must do with the power God had given him.
    His
heart felt warm as he thought these things.
    When
the dwarf leapt at him off the roof of the stone hut, when he landed like a
squirrel on his shoulder, and sunk his little needle teeth into the side of his
neck, Gersh hardly felt it at all.
    He
did hear the little man’s voice speak rapidly in his ear.
    He
did feel the hunk of his own flesh splat wetly against his cheek as the black
dwarf spit it out and jumped back down.
    The
blood coursed down over his shoulder and was dripping from the ends of his
fingers by the time he fell forward and Purdee caught him in his arms.
    “Easy,
kid,” the black man whispered close in his ear, straining to ease him down.
    He
heard shooting, and he felt a flaring fire in his neck, and then he felt
nothing.
     
    * * *
*
     
    The
Rider stood in the circle, leaning for a moment against the ruined wall. There
was dried blood on his hand and leg, but the correspondent wounds were already
closed and wouldn’t scar. He shook his head like a man trying to let water out
of his ears, and he waved feeling back into his prickling arms and lurched
unsteadily into the sunlight, fumbling for his pistol, as the first sound that
had met his ears upon returning to his body had been gunfire. Gershom was not
here.
    He
nearly fell when he got outside, but something solid and warm stopped him. He
blinked his bleary eyes and saw it was the last friend he’d expected to greet
him.
    The
onager’s hide was blackened with soot and ash, and the tips
of one of its ears was shorn off, but it seemed otherwise remarkably
healthy.
    He
couldn’t keep the smile from his face.
    “How
in God’s name did you survive?” he exclaimed, forgetting to be reverent in the
unmitigated joy of the moment.
    The
animal nipped at him, but it was without its earlier malice this time.
    “Oh
alright, alright, I’m sorry.”
    He
pressed his forehead against the side of the onager’s head.
    “Alright,
help me.”
    He
drew his pistol and leaned heavily against the animal. It seemed as they went
that the pale onager relied equally on him. Its gait was slow and stumbling,
and the Rider noticed streaks of dried blood leading from both ears. When the
artillery had hit the animals, it must have deafened him. But how had it not
killed him? He had heard the screaming horses, seen the state of the bull that
had been caught in the explosion. Perhaps it had somehow shielded the animal.
The onager had a habit of keeping to the far edge of the pen away from other
animals after all.
    “Mazzamauriello!”
the Rider called drunkenly, shaking his head again. The psychic pains Sheardown
had inflicted on him in the Yenne Velt had left him groggy upon his return.
He’d never experienced anything like being shot with his own implements. The
dwarf would kill him if they met now. He wondered where Gershom and the others
were, if they were alive.
    “The
little man’s gone!” Purdee yelled.
    The
Rider and the onager went around the