Ariel (39 page)

Walt ran into the room. He saw Ariel and stopped abruptly, looking from her to me and then to the necromancer's body. The bowman by the wall shifted his aim and let fly as Hank and Tom appeared through the door. The arrow struck Walt in the stomach. He clutched at it and doubled over. He hit face-forward on the floor, and his weight pushed the arrow in all the way.

Hank had apparently picked up another bow from one of the bodies outside. He retraced the arrow's path, lifted his bow, drew, and released. The arrow struck the bowman in the right eye.

The rest of the enemy converged. Hank had only one arrow remaining in his thigh quiver. He fitted it swiftly and fired. Another man fell. He threw the bow at someone and drew his sword.

From outside the building came Shai-tan's screech. The rider was returning.

Tom swung his broadsword in wide, powerful arcs. I took out one man before he had a chance to attack. At the side of the room I saw Ariel limp forward. She worked her way to the door, batted two men aside with her bloody horn, and hobbled out the door. I yelled after her as I fought, but she seemed not to hear.

I stabbed one of Tom's opponents in the back and ran toward the door. One man saw me and intercepted my path, a delighted grin on his face. I stopped in front of him, twitched my blade toward his head, and cut him through the midsection as he went for the fake. He was still falling as I went around him and into the corridor after Ariel.

She wasn't there. Only bodies and blood.

I ran down the corridor yelling her name, leaving Tom and Hank battling in the room behind me.

I couldn't find her on the floor. I poked my head recklessly into open doorways but there was no sign of her. Why had she run?

"Ariel!" I shouted, not caring that I was broadcasting my presence to all who might want to come after me.

Perhaps she needed to be free of this building as quickly as she could because her imprisonment was killing her. I headed for the stairwell.

"Hello, there," he said mildly, rounding the corner and stopping between me and the stairwell door. "I was hoping I'd run into you." He swung his ornate broadsword casually, then brought it down so that the point rested against the floor. He leaned against it, resting the handle on his right buttock. He rubbed at the ruin of his left eye with an index finger.

Pausing to play his game might lose it for me. I rushed forward, swinging, not at him, but at the broadsword propping him up. If I knocked it away he wouldn't have a chance.

He kicked his right foot against the flat of the blade, knocking the point up, and jumped backward as it rose. I checked my low slash immediately; I'd have been an easy target on the follow-through. "Malachi Lee always did know I was better," he said, taunting me with his blade. "No wonder he killed himself." He began circling to my left, his body deceptively casual, relaxed. He feinted a jab toward my chest. I started to block, stopped before my blade moved more than an inch. He smiled. "If I wanted to I could say three words, and your sword would go limp as a banana peel."

"But you won't."

His smile broadened. "No, I won't. There's a certain eloquence to a blade." He jabbed and I dodged. "And I like the feeling you get," he said, "when you beat a man at his own game."

I struck. He blocked it easily, retreating a step as he did. I struck again, and again, crosscutting, jabbing, feinting, using every trick I could. He blocked it all with equal ease, countering only when my desperate attacks left me wide open. Each time he blocked, he retreated a step, and we fought our way down the length of the hall.

He was playing with me. He wasn't breathing hard, wasn't even sweating. The amused look stayed on his face the whole time, changing only when he counterattacked. Then his upper lip would slide up, baring his teeth, and a greedy look flashed into his eyes.

His eye  .  .  .  . He had a huge blind spot on his left. If I swung broadly, it might not even register with him. It would also open my front up to attack as my blade swung way out to the side.

I tried it. He took two rapid steps backward but didn't block. My sword cut air across the level of his neck.

Had that been intentional? Or did he freeze up when something ran in on his blind side?

I tried it again to find out, and this time he was waiting for it. He met the swing solidly, twisted his arms to bat it aside, and came in over the top. I leaned back. The point grazed my chin, the barest razor's cut. Blood dripped onto my forearm. I had a flash of memory, picturing myself staring at the point of his sword when we'd been captured, mesmerized by it as it poised before my eyes.

I sprang forward and renewed my efforts, pounding at him with one technique after another, backing him up as he blocked each one. And still I felt that he hadn't even begun to exert himself.

I pressed on, letting rage direct my blade. You killed Russ. You tried to take Ariel, you motherfucker; you gloated while Malachi Lee committed suicide in front of you  .  .  .  . It built and built until raw sounds tore from my throat with every strike. I'll back you up, all right, you bastard. I'll back you until you're against a wall and can't back up any more, and then we'll see where you go when you have to block.

He backed into an open doorway and I forced him inside. He retreated well out of range and lowered his blade, waiting for me. I recognized the room, as he no doubt wanted me to. Behind him I saw half of the round wooden table with the pentagram, the picture window looking out on the East River at the far end of the room. I'd been played along.

Then let it end here, I thought, heart pounding, head throbbing. Let it all come together here, as it had before.

I aimed Fred at his throat and rushed in. As I came through the doorway a foot shot up from the right side, hitting me just below the right wrist. Fred flew from my grip, and as I turned toward my hidden assailant I was struck from behind and wrestled to the floor.

The rider just shook his head contemptuously as I struggled beneath the two men holding me down. He set his broadsword on the desk top and leaned against the edge. "You know," he said conversationally, "you really aren't very smart."

The two men let me stand up, but still held my arms pinned behind me. It was only the two of them and the griffin rider, but they'd been enough. I'd fallen for it, hook, line, and sinker. "'I like the feeling you get,'" I said bitterly, "&lsquowhen you beat a man at his own game.'"

He laughed. "But I wasn't playing your game. You were playing mine. And in my game there aren't any rules. Except to use whatever counts." He reached behind him and picked up the broadsword. "Shai-tan hasn't had fresh meat in quite some time," he said.

I stopped struggling. He drew the edge of his sword across one finger and raised it to his right eye to examine the blood.

Struggling harder would do no good. The one holding my arms was at least six-two and all muscle. The other one stood to my left, spear readied.

The rider walked to me with his broadsword aimed at my stomach. He wiped his finger across my cheek. I tried to work up spit but my mouth was dry. "Your master's dead," I said. "Ariel killed him."

He snorted and turned away. Walking behind the desk, he gestured expansively at the room, taking in the arcane talismans, the incongruous office trappings. "You think I care? He wasn't my master; I worked for him. You think I want all this? A group of loners who don't take orders very well, a useless building, an office?" He stepped behind the desk. I tried to keep my eyes on his face. "Take him to the observation deck," he ordered. "Get some help if you need it." He pulled the swivel chair back from the desk, smiling. "Shai-tan's waiting."

I returned his smile. "'Whatever counts,'" I said as he sat down in the well-padded swivel chair—

—and kept going.

* * *

"What did you do?" I asked Malachi Lee.

"I made a nasty. Come look  .  .  .  ."

Take a piece of pipe. Cut it at a sharp angle. It now has a point: a funnel knife.

A swivel chair turns on a three-inch-wide pipe. Remove the hard bottom of the seat, but leave the stuffing in, so that the chair rests on the pipe, waiting  .  .  .  .

* * *

He took a long, wheezing breath as his own weight pushed the pointed length of metal pipe into his bowels, spearing organs as it slid deep inside him. His mouth stretched open grotesquely. His eyes bulged.

A screech from outside filled the air as he died. I turned my head aside as the griffin burst in through the huge picture window. Glass fragments exploded inward. Something stung the back of my neck and left shoulder. My arms were freed as the man holding me pressed his hands to his bleeding face. The other writhed on the floor, a shard of glass in his chest and blood streaming from one ear.

The griffin screamed. It hurled the desk aside with a sweep of its huge talon. It struck the wall and splintered. Shai-tan looked at the body of its master, impaled as it reclined horribly in the office chair. It turned to me with those glowing gold eyes, and the hot brass of its screech warmed the room. I backed up as it lashed out at me and it struck the man hunched on the floor with his hands over his face, blood dripping from between his fingers. He slammed into the wall and fell to the floor broken and dead.

I picked up my fallen blade as the enraged beast advanced on me, hissing from far back in its throat.

I turned and ran from the room. The griffin's screams dwindled as I fled.

Twenty-Three

So we'll go no more a-roving, So late into the night, Though the heart be still as loving, And the moon be still as bright.   For the sword outwears its sheath, And the soul wears out the breast, And the heart must pause to breathe, And love itself must rest.   Though the night was made for loving, And the day returns too soon, Yet we'll go no more a-roving By the light of the moon.

—Lord Byron, "So We'll Go No More A-Roving"

A long time later I felt somebody tapping me gingerly on the shoulder. I looked up to see Shaughnessy, Tom Pert standing beside her, and I realized that there were other people from the Washington group hurrying about, barely glancing at me where I sat leaning against a wall in the corridor. She was talking to me. I stared blankly. Night had begun to fall and the corridor was dim. Tom gently moved her aside, leaned down, and asked me things, but I only stared. They pulled the glass slivers from my shoulder and checked me all over to be sure I wasn't seriously injured. I felt none of it. There was only the burning of exhaustion, the refusal of muscles to coordinate themselves.

I heard Ariel's name mentioned and looked at Shaughnessy as if just realizing she was there. "What? What did you say?"

Concern softened her eyes. Her hair, I noted abstractly, is matted. It's blood. "I said, a lot of people saw Ariel heading down. They said she was trying to hurry down the stairs, but one of her legs looked broken. Some of them tried to touch her, but they couldn't—"

"No," I interrupted. "They couldn't."

She finished dressing my shoulder. "They just stood aside and watched her pass. Most of them tried to stop her, though, Pete. They know about you and—"

I shrugged her off and stood. I mumbled something and picked up my sword.

"Pete, you can't go, not now. You're too weak to—"

"Let him go." Tom's voice. Firm.

She turned to him angrily. "Look at him—he's exhausted. He's in no shape to—"

"Let him go," he repeated, voice milder than before.

I sheathed my sword and looked at him. He nodded. I turned without a word and walked down the body-strewn corridor to the stairwell. Shaughnessy followed.

It grew darker as we descended, footsteps echoing. I ignored her all the way down.

We came out on the ground floor. It was worse than the top had been. More bodies, ours and theirs. I picked my way around them and walked out onto Fifth Avenue. Shaughnessy stayed behind me, not daring to speak.

I searched up and down the streets of the dark, empty city, stopping only when I dropped in my tracks from sheer exhaustion. I slept on the sidewalk until daybreak. Shaughnessy was beside me when I woke up. I got up and began walking again. She heard me and hurried after me.

I looked all that day and didn't find her. How could I tell which way she'd gone? A unicorn leaves no trail, no tracks, no hint of its passing, except for the impression it makes on those few who see it pass.

Shaughnessy trailed after me as I walked the streets calling Ariel's name. In the afternoon I heard the sound of Shai-tan's shrill screeching. I tightened my face and thrust an extended middle finger in the direction it had come from. With the rider dead, the griffin would die, also, over a matter of days.

Toward evening I found a man on the street who said he'd seen her. My belligerence got me nowhere, so Shaughnessy questioned him while I waited impatiently. He glanced at me nervously as she explained that the unicorn was my Familiar and that I only wanted to know where she was.

"All I can tell you is she went that way." He pointed north.

I turned and walked in the direction he pointed.