Sitting there in a circle all bleeding from their individual wounds, a bloody congregation of the gory and the damned in the center of which lays their fire and around that a great sum of food, an absurd cornucopia from which they sate their hunger. The storm died down, the sky as clear as any and the stars out. No sign of the riders and light provided by the still embering skeletons of the pilgrims wagons, all lined up there five in a row and putting off a devilish heat. No words spoken as they look into eachothers eyes, each finding something there undoubtedly inhuman.

Morgan with a bullet in his hip bandaged around and clutching at it, Jesse with a fresh wrap around the smoldering wreckage which once made his ear. Noone is unscathed save The Drifter who sits there immaculate and miraculously clean, Sunny shot clean through his right foot and Giles with a ragged cut across his forearm which he wraps with dissonant eyes. Duncan the worst off of all of them, a series of ragged cuts and bullet grazes across his huge and shirtless torso but despite all completely stoic as he stares into the fire and munches down on an entire loaf of sweet bread.

Sunny’s necklace has already grown even only four hours after the ambush, ringed with new and maroon stained teeth some of which look suspiciously as if not fully grown. In his hands a slab of melon, dripping its juice clear and sizzling into the fire. His eyes dart about his fellows and on his face around the fruit a grotesque grin, teeth studded with foodstuff and even blood in there dyeing them. A long moment of silence where the only sound is the wind remnants of the lulling stormfront, blowing and rolling there almost blissfully across the salt plain.

“You think they’ll be back?” Morgan asks, his eyes closed and his face calm. Answered only by silence.

“I said do you think they’ll be back?” He repeats. Duncan looks up to him with the firelight reflecting in his eyes like smoldering coals.

“I reckon so.”

“And how do ye reckon that?” Sunny says, then laughs. The sound is jagged, not nervous but instead recognizably mad.

“Well.” Duncan says, motioning out to the wreckage. Above them carrion are beginning to swarm, a great black flock of vultures and great winged condors, their hunger staved only by the flame.

“We’ll be hung.” Giles says simply. The Drifter tsks.

“Ah, but in that assumption yer wrong. Lest you forget your badges.” Elijah says, flashing briefly in his hands the silver crown-shaped pieces of metal which mark their ticket to murder.

“Well. We deserve to be hung.”

“Who decides who deserves death?” Elijah says.

“I’m in no mood for philosophy.” Duncan says, reaching into their makeshift cornucopia and fetching forth what looks a wedge of some exotic cheese, taking one bite from it and then tossing it off into the darkness.

“But yet it seems to follow us.”

“Follows us. Not you.” Elijah cackles.

“It follows everyone, that great specter. Under the stars here what else is there to do but think?”

“What’s your point, Elijah?” Duncan spits off into the fire sending a flute of flame forth. Jesse runs a hand along his new pistol, feeling its construction there crude but lethal as any, sandalwood grip and unrifled barrel.

“My point is, good knight, that the only judges in this world are the ones we impose. Out here, in the desert, there is no judge.”

“God judges.” Morgan says.

“But yet he turns a blind eye. Look behind us. Do you think a fair judge would allow them to die?” Elijah says, motioning back to the corpses strewn there about the wagons with their sparks rising up on the wind and disapparating off into the gloom.

“Maybe he made a mistake, sending us here.” Duncan says.

“Maybe he watches this realm not at all.”

“Maybe so. Maybe The Devil does.”

“I reckon not. There is no God or Devil out here, in these regions so uncivilized. Back at our home, maybe. But not here.”

“Then we’re the judges.” Sunny says.

“The judges of your own fate, yes.”

“And the judges of the fates of those we find.” Elijah nods then, smiling like a proud schoolteacher.

“And are you fair judges, do you reckon?” Elijah says. A great silence falls.

“I reckon not. But who better than us?” Sunny says, eyes flitting about his band.

“And that’s the unanswerable question, isn’t it?”

“Well, what’s your answer?” Duncan interjects. Elijah looks up to the stars as he rubs a hand along his face, luminous in this waning desert moonlight.

“I reckon the righteous governs the righteous, and the barbaric governs the barbaric. All things default to justice, as all things correct themselves. So, if these folk are judged by killers, do they not deserve to be killed?”

“No, they don't.” Morgan says.

“But they were anyways. Perhaps that is their justice. Perhaps the scales needed tipping, the balance restored. Perhaps there was too much order in them, and not enough wickedness.”

“And what does killing half a hundred pilgrims got anything to do with that?” Duncan asks.

“I know not. I simply pose questions. It is you, my studies, who answer.” The vultures now swooping down and beginning to dine on the pilgrims, a child's eye plucked out and down the gullet of one of the buzzards, it’s small shape visible as it travels down it’s throat. The buzzard looks into Jesse’s eyes and Jesse looks it back and he sees himself there and a shiver goes down his spine.

“You’ve been around a long time, haven’t you?” Jesse says, locking eyes with The Drifter. The Drifter grins, his eyes shaded beneath his stolen hat but almost glowing nonetheless in their viridescence.

“Longer than most, shorter than few. A long time to think, most certainly.” Elijah says.

The next morning with bags of food strewn over their shoulders in huge bags and guns and knives slung from their waists like grotesque landbearen pirates The Knights walk across the salt, seeing still not a sign of the riders but their presence looming like a watchful eye. They walk all in a congo line like robber barons, Morgan on crutches but Sunny limping along without a hint of pain, the rest gritting their teeth through their wounds. Despite all the food and all the water on the wagon train no morphine, no pale respite from their individual agonies earned in their war toil.

The autumnal sun beating down hot and arterial in color, crimson flaring across the mineral and reflecting up its bloody tracers. Far in the distance still that wagon train burning, seeming to almost refuse to burn out even as the vultures come down and the corpses are rendered there into bone immortal. Not a word spoken even as the day grows long, none there at camp, and none the next day as they continue their trek filthy and still nursing their war trophies.

When the sun of the second day is beginning to set and the sky grow dim, Jesse sees his brother beginning to stumble ahead of him. His steps turn to lurches, at first barely perceivable but soon him walking like some sort of shuffling marionette, dragging his right foot across the salt and making long lines there.

“Morgan.” Jesse says. Morgan casts one look back, his gray eyes webbed with bloodshot. He turns forward, takes two more steps, sways, and then collapses all at once onto the salt. Jesse drops his bag and falls to his side.

“Morgan.” He says. Morgan moans, sticking a hand to the bullet wound on his hip, there on the intersection between hipbone and stomach. The bandages there looking discolored, pustule in unsettling shades of maroon and yellow.

“Oh, Christ.” Jesse says. Morgan grits his teeth, in his eyes something wild. The rest of The Band now gathered around, looking down at Morgan in a circle.

“I don’t know if I can go on like this.” Morgan says. Sunny laughs, and Jesse looks up to him, sees him there grinning as he kneels down to Morgans side.

“Oh, ye big pussy. Take this.” Sunny says. He reaches down the back of his boot and pulls up there a small bag, perhaps the size of a closed fist, and brings it forward. He takes from the rear of his trousers his knife, long and curved in butchers fashion, and empties out a thin line from the bag onto the knifes edge. The powder white, a color even purer than their surrounds, cocaine unadulterated. Morgan shakes his head.

“You got no choice really. We ain’t leaving you here.” Sunny says, still smiling. Morgan grimaces, takes the knife, and snuffs the powder all in one go. He reaches a hand up to his nose and whistles, blinks hard.

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“Christ.” Morgan says. Sunny looks up to the rest of the knights sheepishly.

“Figured I’d keep some just in case. I had three of these when we left.” He says, scratching at his head. The five look among each other a long moment in uneasy silence and then they are up and marching again, Morgan limping along supported by Duncan's huge form and with his bag slung over Jesse’s shoulder. Soon enough the bag is passed up and down the line and all take a line save Elijah, seemingly indefatigable, and they stop not as the night grows long.

Marching still under the stars, surreal overhead in great sweeping brushstrokes of cosmic artistry, astral rainbow of violet, viridian, vampiric reds with constellations glowing like electric kites there. It is there in the witching hour that they come to the edge of that dead sea, to where the sands rise again, desolation shifting from pale and perfect white to red sands the color of blood. Jesse stops there at the edge where the beach rises and waits, looking down there to the sands and listening to the cavalry drum heartbeat in his chest. Looking up to the rising cliffs like great Jerichoan walls painted in ancient friezes of indigo and ebony pigment, scrawled there strange hieroglyphs of armageddon, omens of the end times, skeletal figures of the doomed and damned dancing there under skies of comet and lightning. Rendered there upon a great and smooth cliff an inscription of The Dark Tower, great and its pigment a perfect midnight black, almost impossibly stark. At the top, Jesse wonders, what lies there?

And then they walk more, marching along a quintet and one through the shadows of those valleys of painted death ancient and foreboding, reminisces of times to old as to be almost impossible. Layers upon layers of civilization along The Road, tells of walls of sandstone and adobe, roofs of pottery shingles red as a color to match the desert. Strange creatures swooping and peering from great green eyes, desert owls and wrens atop cacti standing in prickled green man-shapes, sagebrush in which collared lizards of sea-like colors flicker their pink tongues.

When the sun is just beginning to peak over the horizon, rising a drained and dusky gold and tinting the desert in its metallic colors, The Band comes upon The Wayfort. It stands there sequestered amongst the great red walls, tucked away between two jagged half overhangs of stalactited stone, a triangular fortress of three tall and circular towers connected by tall walls looking decidedly impenetrable, at its front the tower there wider and at its base a gate of worn and ornate ironwood. Standing there atop the gatehouse four men wearing broad brimmed vaqueros hats and slinging long rifles, their pale eyes fixed upon The Knights and their guns as well.

The Knights look amongst each other and before they can decide what to do The Drifter takes the lead, walking forth and lighting himself a cigarette which glows strongly in the cool autumn dawn. He walks up the curved path to the gate, the knights close behind and with hands on their pistols. As he gets close one of the men leans over the edge of the bartizan and clicks down the hammer of his rifle, the sound emphatic there in the stillness.

“Stop right there.” The Man says. White hair falls ragged out of his hat around his mustache, the hair of a frontiersman. The Drifter does as asked, coming steadily to a halt with his boots clicking on the faded stones. Between the merlons three more rifles peak, the clicks of their hammers lowering a gunbound orchestra.

“Or what.” Elijah says, a trail of smoke rising from his cigarette. The Man shifts on his feet.

“Or we’ll kill ye.”

“And we’d kill ye too, if you tried.” A long silence.

“We’ve heard about ye. From down the road.” Jesse now steps to the side of The Drifter, tracked by several rifles their gunbarrels glinting in the light.

“From who?” Jesse says. Elijah passes him the cigarette and he takes a drag.

“It don’t matter. All we know is that yer no good. Leave now and there’ll be no fighting.”

“We don’t want no trouble.” A wiry young black says from The Foreman’s side.

“And us neither.”

“But you’ve been causing it, haven’t ye? I can tell just by looking at you.” Jesse looks down at himself and sees there the dried blood and dust of the desert, all mixed by sweat and altogether an unsettling sort of ruddy umber. The five have the appearance of butcherous barbarians, all coated in the colors of the desert like painted men reflective of the frescoes which ring these canyon walls.

“Maybe we have, but we won’t bring it here. If you don’t make us.” Jesse says. He passes The Drifter back his cigarette.

“And I don’t believe ye for a second.”

“You with the rebels?” The Man laughs a hoarse laugh.

“Hell no we ain’t. This here is a crown waystation.”

“Then yer obligated to shelter us knights, aren’t ye? We’re wounded bad, all of us, and we need a place to lay for a couple days. That’s all.”

“We’re obligated to, but we sure as hell ain’t.” One of the gunmen says, spitting out of tobacco stained mouth. Jesse nods.

“Alright then. Have it yer way.” He says, and walks back with Elijah following soon after. The Band walks along the canyon walls until they are out of sight and then they stop there, Jesse watching the sun rise far off.

“We ambush them. At dusk.” He says. Elijah grins.

“Perhaps you really are a killer.” Jesse looks to Morgan, his eyes there dark ringed and a strange sort of palsy creeping into his face.

“He’ll die if we won’t. Maybe we all will. We have food and water, but without medicine.” Jesse trails off.

“We’ve got no choice.” Giles says, running a hand through his hair.

“No, I reckon we don’t.” Duncan says. Jesse’s eyes trailing about the canyon walls as his mind whirs. He sees no footpath.

“We’ll have to blow the gate I reckon. How much powder we got?”

“Enough.” Sunny says. Jesse nods, sighs.

“Alright. We can sleep the day away, and when the stars come out we’ll get down to it.”

“We gonna kill anyone?” Sunny asks. His dilated pupils strangely excited.

“Most likely.” Jesse says.

The day spent secluded in a small cave, the light overhead growing gray and unlikely stormclouds creeping steadily towards them visible through the V shaped entrance. Faint tricklings of spring water from which Jesse drinks, watching his fellows sleep as he finds himself unable to, drifting in and out of semi consciousness in faintly agonizing manner. Sunny there in the back of the cave working at a makeshift bomb, fuses made of bootstring doused in whiskey and satchel tied together from his shirt, in it as much powder as they can muster-enough to leave their guns dry and their only weapons their pillaged knives. The Drifter the whole while never sleeping or feigning such, only looking out to the stormfront where electric purple lightning begins to crackle and booms of thunder start to roll.

Finally, dusk comes, the sun creeping down an ominous color like steel and the clouds now directly overhead and threatening to split. They eat there in the cave a small and tense meal, their stores pillaged from the pilgrims still overflowing and the food tasting of coppery adrenaline as they eye each other nervously. On the cave walls ancient paintings of black pigment depicting the hunting of a boar cast under the shade of an ebony sun. The lines and pigments there faintly ominous, seeming almost to absorb the light of the day, steal it as it stands, the faces of the neolithic hunters of societies long extinct anguished in appearance. Just as the sky splits and the rain begins to come down in torrents The Band moves.

Creeping there in a line pelted by rain so fierce it runs almost sideways, lit by purple flashlights of lightning the frescoes of these cave walls rendered melted and nightmarish by the storm, the water rust colored as it floods steadily the canyon walls and drenches The Wayfort before them.

They find there no guards, an eerie vacancy there where a gunman would stand. Sunny runs up to the gate cradling his bomb and shielding it like a mother would a baby, drops it there under the overhang and against that ornate wooden door. He pulls from his pocket a match and strikes it once, twice, three times, fails to light it. He pulls another and repeats, casts a glance and a jittery shrug towards his fellows. He breathes deeply and then pulls a third, this time succeeding with the small flame flickering and billowing amidst the wind as he drops it to the fuse, after a moment catching and he runs back to shelter behind a boulder with his fellows.

A nightmare silence wherein the storm itself seems to hold its breath then the explosion, as powerful as ten lightning strikes and sending overhead a blowing of wet sediment boiling even as it flies, a wave of smoldered gunpowder scent mixed with desert petrichor to make an alchemical stench vile and warlike. They peak their heads out and see one half of the door there flapping limply on its hinges, thick wood blown clean through and the second half nothing but splinters.

They rush forth with knives raised, running now with hearts filled with a murderous sort of courage, the courage not of the hero but rather that of the deranged and doomed. Running through the gates Jesse sees at the far end of the castles courtyard the bunkhouse with candlelight flickering, sees the door flap open and from it peak four rifles. They fire their volley and, miraculously, every shot goes askew and seems almost to vanish into thin air-all save one, which knocks a hole through the flapping coat of The Drifter. As the men reload The Knights come forth with their wicked knives and push them through the doorway, sounds of violence echoing around the space as the door swings shut pushed by a gust of wind. A screaming like a childs as Jesse slits the throat of one of the tradehands, moves on to the elderly foreman and circles him there as he raises a fire chopping axe. All five of the knights around him like hunting dogs around prey, dripping in fresh blood and the water of their grim desert baptism.

“You bastards. You monsters, the lot of you.” The Foreman says. On his tanned face a grimace and faint lines of tears.

“Yer just no good.” He says, stepping forward and bringing the axe around and down towards Morgan, knocking the knife out of his hand there. Before he can bring it back around he is pushed onto the floor and all five of the knights come down unto him with their knives, stabbing over and over into his back until it resembles something closer to ground beef than man flesh and blood is spilling across the adobe floor. In the eyes of those knights not the look of heroic young men but the look of seasoned murderers, wild and frantic and almost impossibly bloodthirsty.

Just that night, still soaked in blood and with the storm pounding down at biblical strength, floodwaters rushing against the Wayfort walls and rendering them absurd desert Noah’s and this fortress their Ark, the knights find the fortresses liquor stash. Within the storeroom there a desolate scene, flies buzzing about and spiders spinning their seamstresses webs up in the eves, overall prevailing a stench of dust archaic and mildewed and no food to be seen. Powder, however, aplenty, along with a half dozen antique but lethal looking rifles and enough ammunition to supply a small militia. There buried underneath the guns several crates of gin, absinthe, whiskey, even foreign imported sakes and more exotic spirits of strange and wicked colors. There Sunny pulls the first bottle of whiskey and drains a long gulp of it, grinning the whole while and still holding his bloodsoaked knife in his hand. He pulls also from his satchel one of his bags of cocaine and lays it out there onto the blood, the white powder rendered red, and snorts it.

“Enough liquor here to last us months.” Sunny says. Elijah nowhere to be seen.

“We won’t be alive for months.” Duncan says, draining a flask of gin there all in one go and flashing his white teeth in a grimace. Sunny laughs and leans into his arms, the whole lot of them soon rendered drunk as they drain bottle after bottle within the storeroom.

After they grow bored of the dusty storeroom The Knights scatter amongst the courtyard and passages of the fortress, wandering drunkenly amongst the rain and the walls of sandstone and soon rendered almost clean by the storm. Jesse sees with a bottle of absinthe and a crystal glass cradled in his hand like a fine baron Sunny there in the courtyard, bottle of whiskey in one hand and vodka in the other and both filling over with rain. He is looking up to the storm clouds and turning his face up to them, cursing and screaming at God himself. Jesse believes at some point he asks to be smited where he stands but he is not answered and he is left to his wretched state there, crying in the mud as the rain comes down and with the bottle of whiskey tipped down his throat.

More strange scenes. Through the remnants of old traderfolk, fine antiques and oil paintings, frescoes and dioramas and stills of fine lives of foreign lands, beasts he has only seen in the textbooks which lined the halls of Dullwater’s castle. A painting there of a white horse being pursued and hunted by five black dogs, all with frothing mouth and something devilish in their eyes. At the back a hellbound knight riding atop a horse of color to match their fur, on his face a grin. Jesse pulls his pistol and shoots a hole directly through the painting, the sound echoing amongst the halls.

Morgan and Duncan there in the infirmary ward, Duncan patching Morgan up while they simultaneously pass back and forth a bottle of absinthe which they drink from tea cups. They see Jesse come in Morgan all wrapped in woolen blankets and Duncan sitting there massive in his tiny chair and they laugh, raising their teacups to him.

“Strange lot you are.” Jesse slurs, grinning, and then is out back into the rain. He wanders amongst the stable and finds there a line of a dozen burros, jackass eyes black and unjudging. With his breath reeking of liquor he puts his head into the fur of one of the beasts and begins to cry and it does not seem to mind.

“Where did it go wrong. Why did you do this to me, God?” Jesse asks. The Beast does not answer perhaps unprivy to the communications of higher powers much like him. It brays and he pats it atop its head and names it Smelly Bastard and then he is out again, stumbling through the halls there ringing in his mind ghosts which no amount of liquor can drain out. Through the barbican and the bartizan and the bastion and he really doesn't care anymore, walking along and wailing like a banshee and with his bandages unwound and dripping like some soggy rained out mummy, up into the tallest point of the fortresses tallest tower and he collapses there, finding it a fine study with the fire still lit and a red cat which eyes him out of curious gray eyes. He looks to the cat as he drinks and takes the fire poker and inspects it in his hands, twisting the black metal over and over and heating it.

He holds its smoldering point there and grins, takes a sip of his whiskey, and drives it into his right leg. He screams but noone seems to notice and he pulls it back, finds he enjoyed the pain which is perhaps more disturbing than the act itself. The Cat comes to his side and licks at him and he wails again, pulling the creature close and smelling its sandscented fur and asking it what its name is, it never does answer. He feels he knows it in some fashion from a past life or a past time but most likely it is the liquor talking so he drinks more.

As he lays there he finds a strange calmness grow over him, with the rain ringing melodic against the glass porthole window and the cat there purring against him, with the fire hot and comforting and all curled up there much like the cat itself on the carpet. He smiles, laughs, and pulls from his belt his pistol freshly loaded. He looks it over in his hands and brings it to his jaw letting its metal rest there against the skin, bringing it over and tracing his burns with the instrument those wounds still tender. Tears falling from his eyes as he brings the gun there between his lips and up to the roof of his mouth, drops the hammer.

He closes his eyes, feels the tears dripping down his swaying face. He hears the rain pouring, thrumming, dropping against the fortress, forming waterfalls and oceans and rivulets against the window there. He thinks briefly of his father and then his mother and then his sister and then his brother and then he pulls the trigger.

Click, misfire. He sobs, wails, pulls the trigger again. Another misfire. He pulls again and it rings dry again and he pulls the gun out of his mouth and tosses it there onto the carpet, spooking The Cat off with those spooky gray eyes looking him up and down. He brings his hands to his eyes and finds he has no tears left, only sits there moaning and rocking back and forth and gagging on his own tongue and wishing he were dead, feeling the need to be dead almost like a thirst for the water which rains outside.

Just then a clicking of the door opening and Jesse spins around startled, eyes red and bloodshot. Standing there Giles LeClerc with his black hair wetted against his face lit by a flash of lightning, in his hands a half empty quart of whiskey. He looks Jesse up and down and looks deep into his eyes and drops the whiskey where it shatters there against the floor, amber liquid seeping into the carpet. He stumbles to Jesses side and sits down there, staring into the fire as Jesse leans into him and sobs. He wraps an arm around Jesse and they put their heads together, Jesse discovering he too is crying and savoring the petrichorous scent of his clothes and the sweetness of his hair.

“We’re doomed, Jesse.” Giles says.

“We’ve been doomed.”

“Oh, God. I miss it, Jesse. All of it. The City, my mama.” Giles makes a guttural sound of anguish, its echo sending a chill down Jesse’s spine.

“Oh, my mama. Do you miss yer family sometimes, Jesse?”

“All the time. All except my pa.” Giles laughs bitterly.

“I can see why.”

“Me too.” Jesse slurs, leaning up and kissing Giles there, the gesture clumsy in their drunkenness. The two are on top of eachother then, Jesse running a hand through Giles hair as the rain pours outside. The two lock arms and there under the wrath of the storm and within this turret they embrace. Soon they have pushed a chair up against the door and move there senseless, in eachothers arms and speaking not a word, Jesse looking into Giles eyes and seeing there a trace of Florence and feeling a sorrow unlike any other. Eventually sleep, drunken and sweet, winding down as Jesse smells Giles hair there and kisses against his lips, his forehead, his neck. Dreams cometh not.