Dancing with Bears (2 page)

“You thought that Surplus, being genetically modified into human form and feature and yet still possessed of the genome of the noble dog, would most likely be immune from any disease the courier might have,” Darger amplified. “He and I argued against your reasoning—vigorously, I might add—but we were overruled. You threatened to split open both our heads and, if I recall your exact words, ‘feed their worthless contents to the crabs.’”

“In any case, I went,” Surplus resumed. “A glance within the hut sufficed to establish that the messenger was dead. I retrieved his case as required and presented it to you. And now, here it is.”

The prince smiled sourly. “I thought it odd at the time that the case contained nothing of any serious moment. All the letters were transient and inconsequential, the sorts of things that would be included so long as a courier was already going to Moscow anyway. But there was nothing that in and of itself would prompt so hazardous a journey. I watched you carefully from the ship, and though you did indeed rummage through the bag—”

“I was merely determining that its contents were undamaged.”

“—you had no opportunity to discard a letter. The strand was empty and you were being observed every minute. Many times over the too-eventful weeks since, I have mused on this paradox. Until finally the answer came to me.” The prince reached inside the case. “The bottom, you will note, is reinforced with a second layer of leather. The stitching has come undone along one side. It would be the easiest thing in the world for a scoundrel to slide an envelope beneath, where it would easily escape detection.”

With a flourish, Prince Achmed produced a letter in the distinctive red envelope-and-seal of the Byzantine Secret Service. “Behold! A careful accounting of your perfidy and deceit. Which you tried to conceal from me.”

Surplus raised his snout disdainfully. “I never saw the thing before this moment. It must have been placed where you found it by the messenger, for motives known only to himself.”

The ambassador flung away the case and shook the letter open with his left hand. “To begin: You obtained your current situations as my secretaries by presenting me with forged letters of commendation from the Sultan of Krakow—a personage and indeed a position which, under later investigation, turned out not to exist.”

“Sir, everybody puffs their resume. ’Tis a venial sin, at worst.”

“You said you were personal favorites of the Council of Magi and thus able to secure passage through Persia without bribery. Later, when this turned out not to be true, you claimed there had been a change in leadership and your patrons were out of political favor. The truth, it turns out, is that erenow you had never been east of Byzantium.”

“A little white lie,” Darger said urbanely. “We have business in Moscow and you were heading in that direction. It was the only way we could join your caravan. True, the Council of Magi did require you to pay them handsomely. But they would have done so in any case. So our deceit cost you nothing.”

The ambassador’s right hand whitened on the hilt of his scimitar. His horse, sensing his tension, pawed the ground uneasily. “Further, it says here, you are both notorious confidence-men and swindlers who have defrauded your way through the entirety of Europe.”

“Swindlers is such a harsh word. Say rather that we live by our wits.”

“In any case,” Surplus said, “save for the Neanderthals, we are all the staff you have left. And the Neander-men, strong though they are and loyal though they have no choice but to be, are hardly to be relied upon in an emergency.”

The lead Neanderthal, one Enkidu by name, turned and curled his lip. “Fuck you, Bub.”

“I meant no insult,” Surplus said. “Only that there may be situations where quick wits count for more than strength.”

“Fuck yer mama, too.”

Ignoring him, the ambassador said, “In Paris, you sold a businessman the location of the long-lost remains of the Eiffel Tower. In Stockholm, you dispensed government offices and royal titles to which you had no claim. In Prague, you unleashed a plague of golems upon an unsuspecting city.”

“The golem is a supernatural creature, and thus nonexistent,” Darger stipulated. His mount whickered, as if in agreement. “Those you speak of were either robots or androids—the taxonomy gets a bit muddled, I admit—and in either instance, revenant technology from the Utopian era. We did Prague a favor by discovering their existence before they had the chance to do any real damage.”

“
You burned London to the ground!
”

“We were there when it burned, granted. But it was hardly our fault. Not entirely. Anyway, I understand that large swaths of it survived.”

“All this is ancient history,” Surplus said firmly. “The important thing to keep in mind is your mission. The Pearls Beyond Price which the Caliph himself entrusted you to bestow upon his cousin, the Duke of Muscovy, in token of their mutual, abiding, and brotherly love and with the hope that this might predispose the duke to agree to certain trade arrangements when passage between the nations is normalized. Sir, an ambassador with only two secretaries is the victim of tragic circumstances. An ambassador with none is merely laughable.”

“Yes…yes. It is all that keeps you alive,” Prince Achmed growled. Then, mastering his anger, “This conversation grows tedious. Your loyalty is dubious at best, and I shall have to give your ultimate fate long and serious thought when we reach Moscow. However, at the moment I am, as you point out, short of servitors and you still serve some functions, though not many. Navigation for one. I trust you will find this… Gogorodski… soon?”

“Gorodishko,” Darger said. He got out the map and pointed. “It is just a little further down the road.”

“You
do
know how to read a map, I hope?” the prince said sneeringly. Without waiting for a reply, he rode off. The riderless horse he took with him, to tether to the rear caravan so it might walk off its sweat.

Darger took out the map again and glowered down at it. “I did until today.”

But though day turned to dusk and the air grew chill, Gorodishko failed to appear.

Darger had resigned himself to admitting failure and was casting about for a likely spot to pitch camp when he saw, far ahead, a spark of light by the ruins of an ancient church. As they approached, the light grew and resolved into a campfire built on a patch of bare earth between church and road. A hooded figure sat hunched by the fire. He did not stand at the caravan’s approach.

“Ho! Friend!” Darger cried. When the man did not respond, Darger galloped ahead of the rest of the party. At the fire, he dismounted and approached with his arms held up and away from his sides, to show his peaceful intent. “We are looking for a place called Gorodishko. Perhaps you can help us?”

The man’s head bobbed, as if he were chewing away at something with all his might. Still, he did not speak.

“Good sir,” Darger said, enunciating his words clearly and slowly in the hope that this fellow, doubtless a foreigner, had some fluency in English. “We are in need of a tavern of the better sort or, failing that, a—”

The man shook himself furiously and his cloak flew open to reveal ropes binding his arms to his sides and both legs together. All this Darger saw in a flash. In that same instant he saw too that the man had been tied to a post to keep him sitting upright, and that stakes had been pounded into the earth to anchor further ropes holding him immobile.

He had been staked out like a goat in a tiger hunt.

Spitting out the remnants of a shredded gag, the man cried, “
Kybervolk!
”

Something gray and furry and with metal teeth flashed from the shadows of the church. It leapt straight at Darger’s chest. In astonished panic, Darger tried to turn and run, but managed only to trip over his own feet. He fell flat on his back.

Which was the saving of him.

The wolfish form passed harmlessly over Darger’s body. Simultaneously, he heard three hard flat cracks as Surplus fired his klashny. Gouts of dark fluid spurted from the thing’s body. It should have died then and there. Yet it landed solidly on all four paws and immediately ran, snarling, at Surplus’s horse, which had panicked and which he was trying to bring under control again.

By now Prince Achmed—who, whatever his faults, did not lack courage—had drawn his scimitar and driven his horse forward, shielding Surplus from his attacker.

The monster leapt.

Bodies tangled, wolf and ambassador fell from the rearing stallion.

Then a huge hand reached into the snarl of flesh and effortlessly pulled the wolf free. It whipped its head around, jaws snapping furiously and sparks flying from its mouth. But Enkidu, the largest and brawniest of the Neanderthals, was undaunted. He grasped the wolf by throat and head. Then he hoisted the ravening creature into the air and with a sudden twisting motion, broke its neck.

Enkidu flung the body to the ground. Its head lolled lifelessly. Nevertheless, its feet still scrabbled at the earth, seeking purchase. Weakly, it managed to stand. But then the second and third Neanderthals, Goliath and Herakles, arrived and stomped down hard on its spine with their boots. Five, six, seven times their feet came down, and at last it went motionless.

In death, the creature was revealed as some ungodly amalgam of wolf and machine. Its teeth and claws were sharpened steel. Where a patch of its fur had been torn away, tiny lights faded and died.

“Quick wits, eh?” Enkidu said scornfully. “Asshole.” He and his comrades turned as one and lumbered away, back to the caravans, where the bulk of their brothers stood guard over the priceless treasures within.

The entire battle, from start to finish, had taken less than a minute.

Surplus dismounted and saw to Prince Achmed, while Darger untied the stranger. The ropes fell away, and the man woozily rose to his feet. His clothes were Russian, and his face could belong to no other people. “Are you all right, sir?” Darger asked.

The Russian, a burly man with a great black beard, embraced him fervently. “
Spasibo! Ty spas moyu zhizn’. Eto chudovische moglo ubit’ menya.
” He kissed Darger on both cheeks.

“Well, he certainly seems grateful enough,” Darger commented wryly.

Surplus looked up from the prone body. “Darger, the ambassador is not well.”

A quick examination of the fallen man revealed no broken bones, nor any serious injuries, save four long scratches that the claws of one of the machine-wolf’s paws had opened across his face. Yet he was not only unconscious but pale to the point of morbidity. “What’s that smell?” Surplus leaned over the ambassador’s face and inhaled deeply. Then he went to the fallen wolf and sniffed at its claws. “Poison!”

“Are you certain?”

“There can be no doubt.” Surplus wrinkled his nose with distaste. “Just as there can be no doubt that this wolf was already dead when it attacked us, and had been for some time. Its body has begun to rot.”

Darger considered himself a man of science. Nevertheless, a thrill of superstitious dread ran up his spine. “How can that be?”

“I do not know.” Surplus held up the wolf ’s paw—strangely articulated metal scythes extended from its toe-pads—and then let it drop. “Let us see to our employer.”

Under Surplus’s supervision, two of the Neanderthals produced a litter from the mound of luggage lashed to a caravan roof and laid the prince’s unconscious body gently down on it. They carefully donned silk gloves, then, and carried the litter to the rear car. Surplus knocked deferentially. A peephole slid open in the door. “We need your medical expertise.” Surplus gestured. “The prince…I fear he is poisoned.” The peephole snapped shut. Then, after Surplus had withdrawn, the door swung open, and the Neanderthals slid the body into the darkness within. They backed down the steps and bowed again.

The door slammed shut.

The Neanderthals ungloved themselves and resumed their positions in the traces. Enkidu grunted a command and, with a jerk, the caravans started forward again.

“Do you think he will live?” Darger anxiously asked Surplus.

Herakles glanced sideways. “He will if he don’t die.” Then, as a harness-mate punched him appreciatively in the shoulder: “Haw!” He shoved the Neanderthal in front of him to get his attention. “Did ya hear that? He asked if Prince Ache-me was gonna live and I said—”

The Russian they had rescued, meanwhile, had found his horse and untied it from the rear of the last caravan. He had been listening to all that was said, though with no obvious comprehension. Now he spoke again. “
Ty ne mozhesh’ ponyat’, chto ya skazal?
”

Darger spread his hands helplessly. “I’m afraid I don’t speak your language.”

“
Poshla!
” the Russian said, and the horse knelt before him. He rummaged within a saddlebag and emerged with a hand-tooled silver flask. “
Vypei eto, I ty poimesh’!
” He held up the flask and mimed drinking from it. Then handed it to Darger.

Darger stared down at the flask.

Impatiently, the Russian snatched it back, unscrewed the top, and took a long pull. Then, with genuine force, he thrust the flask forward again.

To have done anything but to drink would have been rude. So Darger drank.

The taste was familiar, dark and nutty with bitter, yeasty undertones. It was some variety of tutorial ale, such as was commonly used in all sufficiently advanced nations to convey epic poetry and various manual skills from generation to generation.

For a long moment, Darger felt nothing. He was about to say as much when he experienced a sharp twinge and an inward shudder, such as invariably accompanied a host of nanoprogrammers slipping through the blood-brain barrier. In less time than it took to register the fact, he felt the Russian language assemble itself within his mind. He swayed and almost fell.

Darger moved his jaw and lips, letting the language slush around in his mouth, as if he were tasting a new and surprising food. Russian felt different from any other language he’d ever ingested, slippery with
sha
’s and
shcha
’s and guttural
kha
’s, and liquid with palatalized consonants of all sorts. It affected the way he thought as well. Its grammatical structure was very much concerned with how one went somewhere, exactly where one was going when one went, and whether or not one expected to come back. It specified whether one was going by foot or by conveyance, and there were verb prefixes to stipulate whether one was going up to something or through it or by it or around it. It distinguished between acts done habitually (going to the pub of an evening, say) or just the once (going to that same pub for a particular purpose). Which clarity might well prove useful to a man in Darger’s line of business, when making plans. At the same time, the language viewed many situations impersonally—it is necessary, it is possible, it is impossible, it is forbidden. Which might also prove useful to a man in his line of business, particularly when dealing with matters of conscience.