Lord of Order by Brett Riley (the reading list book TXT) 📕

She was trying to scream again, but she had lost her wind, her voice little louder than a rasp. Over here. Ford’s over here.

The torch glow broke into individual points, the sounds of shod hooves thundering on the ground. Charters kept trying to scream.

Ford took the knife from her loose grip and cut her throat.

He pushed her away. She rolled onto her back, blood misting upward, spilling out of the wound in a torrent, pooling beneath her. Her eyes bugged out, and she sputtered, grasping at her neck. More blood spurted with each heartbeat. Ford stood, but not before it seeped into his pants from the knees down. His hair dripped with it. His shirt was soaked through. Charters spasmed, clawed the ground, gurgled.

Ford knelt beside her and leaned close. Charters looked at him, her throat grinning. When she exhaled, red mist blew from her mouth and nostrils.

Nella, he whispered. Has anybody else turned? Any of my friends?

Her eyes dimmed, fluttered. He shook her a bit, and they opened again. Her lips moved. He leaned in closer, his ear against her mouth, but he could make nothing out. Perhaps she prayed.

He rose and scooted away as if she were a great spider that had clawed its way up from the earth’s red heart. Her head lolled sideways, her cheek resting on the bloody ground. On the street, men and horses, raised voices.

Ford picked up her knife and saddled up and galloped away, through all the grass they could find and down roads and through yards, heading back toward Metairie.

Ford zigzagged on surface streets up toward Claiborne and back down to Rampart. He rode through alleys, past Troublers who paid him no mind, and swung wide of pickets fixed at intersections, keeping his head tucked behind Thess’s neck, hoping the cover and the darkness would prevent any guard from identifying him. He rode more or less parallel to Veterans Memorial Boulevard until he veered off onto West Napoleon in Metairie, several blocks ahead of the posse, which had to hunt for him in every nook and chase every sound of echoing hoofbeats to their source. Never knew I’d be so glad for the noisy streets, Ford thought more than once.

He reined up and dismounted next to a crumbling building on Transcontinental between Zenith Street and West Napoleon. Taking his rifle out of its scabbard, he leaned it against the wall. Then he removed his saddle and dumped it and the scabbard several feet away. Next, Ford stripped off his bloody clothes and tossed them on the pile.

From somewhere back the way he had come, hoofbeats, shouts, someone barking orders.

He found the building’s rear door, opened it, and stepped inside. Citizens seldom ventured into decaying places like this one unless they were part of a demolition crew. You never knew what might fall on your head. Such places worked well for caches.

Against one wall lay a pile of old rags big enough to bury a man. Ford picked his way through the debris on the floor and dug through the rags until he found the pack secreted there. He pulled open the drawstrings and took inventory by feel—a quart jar full of lamp oil, flint and steel, two pistols and ammo. He took out the jar, the flint, the steel. Then he retied the bag and stuffed it back under the rags. If he had to shoot anybody, he was already as good as dead, so why bother?

Outside, he unscrewed the jar and dumped the oil over the saddle, scabbard, and bloody clothes. Then he struck the steel against the flint until his belongings burst into flame with a whumph. The heat scorched his face, likely singed some hair. Ford rubbed his eyes.

Thess nickered. Framed against the darkness, the horse looked tall and proud. Charters’s blood had dried on Thess’s coat in rivulets, savage and unknowable tattoos from a time before language. The hunter rested his forehead on the horse’s, their respirations and heartbeats in rhythm. A single tear on his cheek, Ford kissed Thess’s nose. I’m sorry, my friend. If I had known, I would have walked.

The posse’s hoofbeats came closer. Only a block or two distant, guards cajoled each other to search harder, closer.

He wiped the tear away and stepped back. Then he cut Thess’s throat.

Ford turned and ran out of the alley, away from Thess, who had fallen to his knees on the street. The weight of the night and what he had done under its cover lay heavy on Ford’s conscience. A cry from the guards, the sounds of their horses. As he ran, Ford prayed—for Charters and her family; for old Thessalonians, who deserved so much better; for himself.

He headed toward his two-story brick house on York Street near Lafreniere Park. He avoided the streetlamps, running through yards and vacant lots and alleys, the pavement warm under his bare feet. He saw no one. When he reached home, he leaped the fence into the back yard and removed the lid from his water basin. He cupped his hands and rinsed the blood from his face, his body, his long hair. A baptism as false as his murderous soul. He bathed for a long time. Then he dunked his entire head into the barrel, the water cool on his hot skin.

His hair sopping and pendulous, he grabbed the water barrel and rocked it back and forth, straining hard until it tipped over. Pink water spilled onto his grass and dispersed, sank into the thirsty soil, glittered in the starlight.

Ford went inside. In the bathroom, he lit the lamp by his mirror and examined his exhausted and guilty face. Then he toweled off, leaving faint pink smudges on the white fabric, and turned out the lamp. In his bedroom, he collapsed on his mattress, hoping no one would come knocking, knowing someone would.

He waited and tried not to think of Charters’s face.

They came twenty minutes later. Ford let them knock three times before he threw