See the Bernie. She is a small, trembling thing. She is bound to a bloodied saddle, her cloak of leathers hanging off her emaciated body like a half-molted cocoon. Her fingers are white-knuckled on the reins. Her movements are quick, twitchy, nervous—like a rabbit expecting a hawk's shadow at any moment. The men she rides with are dust-cloaked and hollow-eyed and they do not speak to her, save to mock. She is the only woman among them, regarded with amusement, with disdain, the occasional hunger.

  She remembers times before as a distant mirage. The sun and fate are her masters, and her skin blisters beneath both. By night she dreams of past lives, the debris of a history cradled in violence. At once she is a noble girl, locked away, pissing in terror at the sound of her father’s voice. Then a lost traveler, her fine clothes stolen, she is being dragged through the mud. On both fronts she has been cast into a world where war is the only path. She is a thing outside of time itself, caught in the currents of fate, drowning, drowning...

  She wakes with a start and her breath is shallow, heart pounding. The stars burn overhead like watching eyes. The wind howls through the emptiness, whispering things and of people and places she does not comprehend.

  By day the sun hung swollen and merciless over the desert, beating down upon the Glanton gang as they made camp near a dry riverbed. Dust clung to their clothes, their guns, their very bones. The Judge stood apart from the others, his bald head shining like polished ivory, his massive hands cradling a rifle as if it were a sacred relic.

  And beside him, trembling like an abused lapdog, was Bernadetta.

  She was an anomaly within the vast, brutal landscape. Her cloak was drawn tight around her as if it could shield her from the Judge’s presence.

  The men traded her no sympathy, and the Judge least of all.

  "Hold it steady," he said.

  "I—I don’t want to," she whispered.

  The rifle was heavy in her hands, far too big for her slight frame. She had never wanted to touch the awful thing, but the Judge had placed it in her grasp as easily as a father might hand a toy to a child.

  The mule stood some thirty yards away.

  Its dull eyes blinked in the heat. An old beast, its ribs visible beneath patchy fur, it was chewing lazily at what little scrub it could find.

  It could not know what was coming.

  Bernadetta’s stomach twisted. "P-please. I—I really don’t think—"

  The Judge knelt beside her. She could feel his presence like an unbearable weight. He reached out, his enormous hands enveloping hers, adjusting the rifle against her shoulder.

  His voice was low, measured. "You fear the thing itself, but the gun is nothing. The act is everything."

  She squeezed her eyelids shut. She wanted to curl up, to disappear. To be anywhere else.

  "You must open your eyes," the Judge said. "Else you cannot see what must be done."

  She opened her eyes again and the mule was still there, still chewing.

  "Steady now," the judge murmured like the devil in her ear.

  Her hands shook. She could feel the rough wood of the stock, the metal biting into her shoulder. The trigger was cold beneath her finger.

  The mule flicked its ears. It had done nothing to her.

  The silence stretched.

  "You wish to live, do you not?" the Judge asked. "The world is not kind to those who refuse to partake in its truths."

  "I—I don’t—"

  His grip tightened. "Pull the trigger."

  The wind whispered through the dry grass. Bernadetta could hear her own heartbeat, frantic in her chest.

  Somewhere deep inside, a part of her broke.

  She squeezed the trigger. The rifle kicked back, nearly knocking her off her feet as the shot rang out, splitting the calm like a knife.

  The mule lurched, then crumpled, its legs folding beneath it. A wet, awful sound filled the air.

  Bernadetta gasped, stumbling back, the rifle falling from her hands. Her breath hitched, her vision blurred. She had done it. She had—

  A massive hand ruffled her hair.

  "You see," the Judge said. "There was nothing to fear."

  Tears burned at the edges of her vision. She wanted to scream.

  The Judge only smiled.

  The fire was crackling low that night, its shedding embers being sucked into the black void above. The Glanton gang sat around its faded light in a loose circle, their faces carved from shadow as they passed the time whittling and playing cards. They had left blood in the dust behind them, but none among them bore it as a burden. None, save the woman.

  Bernadetta sat apart from the others, curled into herself, arms wrapped tight around her knees. She had learned quickly to make herself small. The less attention she drew, the safer she was.

  And yet, attention found her all the same.

  The Judge’s voice came smooth and measured, like a river carving its path through stone.

  "Men are born for war," he said, staring into the fire. "It is the truest and oldest law. Those who stand outside it are not spared its wrath but are simply prey to those who do not hesitate."

  Bernadetta flinched. Yet she dared not meet his gaze.

  "The weak may hope for mercy, but the world does not grant it. All things that live must struggle, and those that refuse the struggle are unmade by it."

  He turned then, and though she had not looked at him, she felt his eyes settle upon her like the weight of all mankind’s sins. She forced herself to remain still, to not shrink further.

  "Do you not agree?" the Judge asked.

  Bernadetta swallowed. The firelight painted his face in flickering gold, but it could not make him warm. His smile was that of a thing that had never known kindness.

  "I—I don’t know," she stammered. "I mean, that sounds… bad?"

  A few of the men chuckled, but they stopped as soon as the Judge raised his hand. The night pressed close, expectant.

  "That which you call bad is merely that which frightens you," the Judge said. "But fear is only ignorance. If you would but look upon it truly, you would see there is nothing to fear at all."

  Bernadetta’s fingers dug into her arms. She wanted to run, to disappear into the dunes, but she knew better. Wild beasts of the night would be the lowest of her worries.

  The Judge leaned forward. His pale, massive hand reached down, plucking a small scorpion from the dirt.

  He held it up for the fire to illuminate, its legs flailing, its tail curling in a futile attempt to strike.

  "This creature," he said, "knows only to kill or be killed. You pity it, perhaps, but the scorpion does not seek pity. It simply is. Would you call it wicked?"

  Bernadetta shook her head frantically. "N-no, of course not! It’s just—It’s just doing what it has to do!"

  The Judge smiled. "As do all things."

  And then, with slow deliberation, he crushed the scorpion in his fist. Its body crumpled, its stinger snapping harmlessly against his skin. When he opened his hand again, there was nothing but a smear of dark ichor across his palm.

  Bernadetta felt sick.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  "Nature does not question its ways," the Judge continued, wiping his hand against his trousers. "Only man seeks to unmake the law that binds him. Only man clings to weakness as if it were virtue."

  His eyes locked onto hers.

  "You would not survive alone in this world, girl. You must learn. Else you will be unmade by those who have."

  Bernadetta’s breath came short and shallow. She wanted to protest, to tell him he was wrong, that there was more to life than this awful, endless violence. But she knew he would not listen.

  She had the dreadful feeling that, no matter what she said, he already knew her answer.

  The fire crackled. The night stretched wide and empty.

  And the Judge only smiled.

  They rode out again at dawn, the desert sprawling before them like the floor of some ancient and ruined temple, the sky vast and pitiless overhead. This land was without mercy. The sun rose upon it and scoured it clean, bleached bones of jackrabbits and men alike lying pale in the dust. The company rode single file, their faces drawn, their eyes sunken from lack of sleep and mouths filled with the dry taste of their own breath.

  Bernadetta rode among them, small in her saddle, shrinking into herself as if the vastness of the land might swallow her whole. She had no voice here; the men did not speak to her unless they wished to mock. Even the horses seemed weary of her, sensing her fear as a wolf scents a wounded thing.

  The Judge rode ahead, mounted on a great, pale horse, his head bare to the sky, his scalp gleaming like some monstrous pearl. He alone seemed untouched by the heat, his vast frame erect in the saddle, his eyes roving the horizon with neither haste nor need. He might have been carved from the very land itself, as timeless as the stones and as patient as the hills.

  The company moved without speaking. The land swallowed sound. The hooves of their mounts clopped against the hardpan, the sound brittle as snapped bone. The wind moved across the plain, shifting the sands, whispering through the dry husks of dead mesquite. It was a voice without words, old as the world, ceaseless and unfeeling.

  Bernadetta’s throat burned. She had long since emptied her canteen, though she clutched it still, as if the weight of it might convince her otherwise. The thirst clawed at her insides. The sun blistered the backs of her hands where she gripped the reins. She had drawn her hood low to shield her face, but the heat seeped through her clothes, through her skin, into the marrow of her bones. The others might’ve thought her praying or near to sleep. But her lips moved soundlessly with words she could not place, syllables with no meaning in this world—fragments of an old tongue, girlhood spells and half-remembered names. Somewhere behind her eyes was a garden in spring, a bell ringing high above a cloistered yard, a voice calling roll, and lifting her hand before she even knew why.

  She did not know how much longer she could endure.

  At midday, they came upon the remains of a caravan. The wagons lay overturned, their wood cracked and splintered, their wheels half-buried in the shifting sands. The bodies of the mules lay bloated and blackened in the sun, their bellies torn open, their innards dried to leather. There were human corpses as well, though they were scarcely recognizable as such. Stripped, gutted, picked apart by buzzards.

  The men dismounted. They moved through the wreckage like carrion birds themselves, turning over bodies, rifling through the remains. There was little left. A few scattered coins, a scrap of cloth, a broken rifle with no shot.

  Bernadetta did not dismount. She could not bring herself to. She sat atop her horse, eyes fixed on the ground, trying not to look at the bodies. But even with her gaze lowered, she saw. A pair of withered hands reaching out from beneath an upturned wagon, as if the dead still sought something just beyond their grasp.

  The Judge stood among the ruins, surveying the scene with something like admiration, his pale figure a blot of bone-white against the wreckage, unmoved.

  He knelt beside one of the dead, lifting the ruined face by its hair to peer into what remained of its features.

  “They died poorly,” he said.

  Glanton spat in the dust nearby. “They died quick. That's better than most.”

  The Judge glanced over at Bernadetta without turning his head. “And the girl? What does she see?”

  Bernadetta flinched. She didn’t answer. Her fingers were tight around the reins again, her shoulders hunched as if to shield herself from the weight of his voice.

  He rose, brushing the dirt from his knees. “Speak, girl. What is it you fear here?”

  She hesitated. Her mouth was dry as the dust around her. She thought of lies. But what lie could you offer the Judge that he hadn’t already heard in a dozen tongues and ten thousand screams?

  “I... I don’t want to end up like them,” she said.

  He nodded, as if pleased. “Then see well, for that is the shape of refusal. They did not yield to the law of the world. And so they are unmade.”

  Glanton turned away, already losing interest. The other men picked over what scraps they could find, dispassionate. One of them tugged a child’s doll from the sand and tossed it aside. It landed at Bernadetta’s feet, its eyes wide and staring up at her, its fabric face half-rotted by sun and wind.

  She couldn’t look at it. She couldn’t look away.

  The Judge mounted again, his voice carried by the wind. “It is not cruelty that undoes men. It is the lie that there is any path but forward. This is the fate of all things, all who travel the earth do so at risk of being consumed by it.

  “Do you understand?”

  She wanted to scream, to shout that she didn’t, that she never would. But she knew that wasn’t an answer.

  Instead, she whispered, “I think I do.”

  He smiled again.

  Bernadetta said nothing.

  They left the dead where they lay.

  And they rode on.

  By evening, the sun sank toward the horizon, blood-red and swollen. The desert stretched on, endless, without mark or mercy. The Judge led them forward, ever forward, his form dark against the dying light.

  They made camp in a hollow of stone, the sun dropping fast behind the ridges. The horses drank greedily at a shallow pool, and the men sat in silence, gnawing on jerky or spitting into the fire. Bernadetta sat apart, her cloak pulled tight around her, rifle across her lap. She wasn’t looking at anything.

  One of the riders—Lasky, maybe, or another with teeth like dice—glanced her way. Just for a moment. Then he looked down at his hands and said, too low for anyone to call it a kindness:

  “Girl like that… ought to be in a parlor somewhere. With ribbon in her hair.”

  He said nothing else. No one replied.

  The fire cracked.

  The Judge turned the pages of his ledger without looking up.

  Come the next day Bernadetta thought she could go no further. Her fingers were numb upon the reins, her legs weak in the stirrups. The thirst was unbearable now. Her vision swam as the sun was sinking again. She swayed in the saddle, eyes fluttering closed. She did not know if she would wake again if she allowed herself to sleep.

  And then—at last—a glow on the horizon.

  The lights of a town were flickering in the growing dark, distant yet undeniable. A place of men, of drink, of walls that might shut out the wind.

  She had never known such relief.

  The men rode on, drawn like ghosts to the promise of whiskey and warmth, laughter and sin.

  The Judge was smiling. But Bernadetta was wary, not knowing if she had been saved—or merely led to another kind of doom.

  In her thirst she dared stray from the group and foray into a saloon which stank of sweat and liquor and old, rotting wood. A yellow light swung from a single chain overhead, casting the place in a sickly glow. The men inside were loud, mean, their laughter sharp as broken glass under bare feet.

  Sitting hunched at the bar, Bernadetta asked for something to drink. She was handed a tiny glass, burning her nose even before she brought it to her lips.

  Whatever it might be, she was loath to try it.

  But what she had wanted, more than anything, was to forget.

  The mule’s blood was still in her mind, thick and wet, pooling into the dust. She had seen death before, but never caused by her own hand.

  She shuddered. The glass shook, splashing out some of its contents onto her fingers.

  "I just want to go home," she whispered to herself.

  Shutting her eyes, she lifted the glass—

  And then it was gone.

  A rough hand snatched it from her grasp; and before she could react, a bearded, leering bandito tipped back his head and downed it in one swig.

  It dribbled through his patchy mustache, and he let out a barking laugh.

  "Ahh, smooth! You weren’t gonna drink that anyhow, ni?a."

  Bernadetta barely let out a gasp before he grabbed her by the collar and yanked her forward, the stink of alcohol and sweat filling her nostrils. Then his lips crashed against hers, wet and foul.

  She shrieked, twisting, pushing, but his grip was iron.

  The saloon roared with laughter.

  "She’s a feisty one!" someone called.

  The bandito grinned, his yellow teeth bared. His fingers clawed at the front of her dress, fumbling at the fabric.

  Terror surged up her throat like bile.

  "N-no! Get off!"

  She thrashed, slamming her fists against his shoulders.

  He chuckled, barely budging—until she kicked him square in the shin.

  "Agh! You little—!"

  His grip loosened just enough. Bernadetta ripped free, staggering backward. Her breath came in ragged gasps. The room spun. Laughter still filled the air, but there was something else now—excitement, anticipation.

  They wanted a show.

  The bandito snarled and lunged for her again.

  Without thinking, she grabbed the nearest thing—an old barstool—and swung it with all her might. It cracked against his jaw.

  The man stumbled, cursing, blood spitting from his mouth.

  Bernadetta bolted for the door, shoving past the drunken patrons, nearly tripping over her own boots before bursting into the night, her breath wild in her chest.

  Her heart pounded, her hands clammy with sweat. The desert air at night was cold, biting.

  And then she saw him.

  Judge Holden stood in the street, illuminated by the pale glow of the moon.

  Still. Waiting.

  The bandito staggered out after her, clutching his bleeding face, his rage twisting into something primal.

  "You little bitch," he spat. "I’ll teach you—"

  A single rifle shot split the night.

  The top of the man’s head blew apart in a red mist and he crumpled, his body folding into the dirt like a puppet with its strings cut.

  Bernadetta’s breath caught in her throat. She turned, trembling, and met the Judge’s eyes.

  He lowered his rifle with slow, deliberate care.

  "You handled yourself well," he said. "But all things must have an end."

  The saloon doors creaked open behind her. Laughter still spilled from inside, as if nothing had happened. As if the world did not care at all.

  Bernadetta felt sick. The Judge smiled.

  "If that is all, shall we continue?"

  Bernadetta could go no farther, yet she rode still, as if borne not by her own will but by the vast and hungry will of the world itself—a thing small and silent, carried forward into darkness by the long, unbreaking law of blood.