Dangerous Games (22 page)

“What?”

“The ground. We can rest there, repair. Think what to do next.”

“Think about what?” she flared. “You think too much. There’s survival and nothing else, you great oaf! What do you expect of me, that I aspire to own a house, servants, a coach-and-four? I’d trade your thinking and plans for a warm beer!”

Sunbright let the baying of dogs answer for him.

Knucklebones sighed; a shudder traveled through her whole body. “Very well,” she conceded. “Try it.”

The barbarian moved off between buildings and knelt. From inside his fire tin he extracted a lock of wiry hair, struck flint and steel, and dropped the hair into the flame to flare and turn to ash.

“Ouch!”

Candlemas slapped the back of his head. A horsefly or bee had stung him—then he realized. Sunbright’s signal: the burning of his hair. A call for help.

“Good thing I follow up on my promises,” muttered the mage. “I might be stodgy and boring, but I can deliver when asked….”

He’d spent the last few hours asking questions and searching, searching, searching. Karsus’s mansions were so huge no one knew them entirely, and there were constant rumors of secret rooms harboring a harem of elven women, a treasure trove including the emperor’s crown, a dragon skeleton complete even to its teeth, and blue platforms that could transport one to other worlds.

Perhaps those things existed, but all Candlemas found were rooms of dusty, old-fashioned furniture, chests of faded clothing, and mouse nests. Nothing to covet, so far, but the rumors said that a large room had an outside door—

He found it. In a room like a boathouse, wide and airy, there hung from the rafters gliders like giant butterflies. They were fashioned from welded tubes of some mystery metal he couldn’t identify. For once, there was little ornate about them, only the mildest curves and filigree imparted to the pipes and joints. Each glider had three sets of wings: one forward of where a person could sit, another high over the seat, and the third in the rear. The seats were baskets of woven cane. Two seats, usually, though one model sported nine seats with the pilot in front. Flitters, people called them, or gliders, or wind-riders. There had been a craze for soaring years ago, he’d been told, and every household had boasted one or two down at the docks. But careless, drunken flying sent too many crashing a mile to the ground, shields and levitation spells notwithstanding. And the thrill crazy Netherese grew bored quickly. The only flying they did now was on gold plated dragons, enchanted discs, and giant birds, to hunt humans to death.

Candlemas scratched the itchy spot on the back of his head. Now what in the name of Selune would power them? A simple flight spell? Could he remember one…. ?

Sunbright whirled, poised at the edge of the roof, and kicked viciously. The guard dog yelped and tumbled backward onto the lower roof, bowling its handler back too.

The barbarian ducked a crossbow bolt and dashed across the low roof to where Knucklebones perched behind a chimney. Sunbright peeked and saw guards’ helmets shining in the morning sun, just below the rampart.

“We’ve got the advantage,” he puffed. “They’re just doing a job for money. We’re fleeing for our lives.”

“Not much farther, we aren’t,” gasped Knucklebones. She studied the next wall, gazed at the roof. “Those are slates up there. Slippery. I’ve got a traction cantra, but you—why did your friend insist we get up high?”

“Don’t know.”

Crouched behind the chimney, Sunbright honed nicks from his sword blade while he waited for the guards to rush. “What are they waiting for?”

“Reinforcements. A dozen slingers and archers will fix their problem, which is us.”

Sunbright nodded gloomily. Fatigue was catching up with him, too. He couldn’t remember when he’d slept properly, what with nonstop threats and apocalyptic dreams. He heard dogs growling and snapping, hot to kill something, then shouts of joy as reinforcements arrived.

He tightened his sweaty grip on Harvester. For only the second time in his life, his sword dragged in his hands. The other time had been in hell, where he might return any moment.

“What’s that?” Knucklebones whispered as she peered at the roof behind him.

“What’s what?”

Sunbright only heard barking.

“That whirring noise….”

Even the guards heard it now. Dogs whined. Sunbright glanced up and saw a giant dragonfly flutter over the roof. Trapped inside it, as if half digested, was a bald, pudgy man.

“Candlemas?”

“Come on!” the thief called.

Energized, Knucklebones scrambled for a handhold, vaulted up to the slate roof, and over. Cursing, but curious, Sunbright bounded after her, slipping and sliding in his worn moosehide boots. He rolled over a section of coping and found himself on a flat, black roof warmed by the morning sun.

The giant insect had released Candlemas, Sunbright saw. Vomited him out as too fat, perhaps. The mage was waving them on, calling out, “Hurry up!”

To Sunbright’s wonder, Knucklebones hopped into a wicker seat in the beast’s belly. Candlemas began shoving the barbarian, who asked, “What are you doing?”

“Get in!” Candlemas ordered, “I’ll see you off!”

“Off what? In what?”

“Shades of Shar, it’s a flying machine! Like those golden winged things the Huntsmen use. Get in!”

“What?” the barbarian asked incredulously. “Where are we going?” Sunbright had planted his feet like a mule, and Candlemas couldn’t budge him.

“You’re going to fly to the surface. It’s what you—”

“Fly?”

Candlemas grunted as he shoved. In her seat, Knucklebones fiddled with two sticks that tilted the wings in two directions.

“It’s what you wanted!”

“But… I thought…” Sunbright was speechless. “I thought you’d just… wiggle your fingers and shift us! Like you did back at Castle Delia.”

“Have you got bugs in your brain? The whole enclave is warded against casual magic. You think they’d let people just shift in and shift out when everyone’s terrified of assassination? You’d have to go through a transgate, and that’s not possible! So, get—in!”

With the mage pushing and the thief pulling, somehow they got tall Sunbright folded into the seat. Candlemas began to shove the machine off the roof. Slowly it picked up speed, sliding on thin metal runners.

“I changed my mind!” Sunbright wailed.

“Too late! Good luck! Just steer the … whatever-they’recalled and you’ll spiral down like a maple seed!”

The barbarian tried to climb out, but Knucklebones clung to his vest.

“I’ll take my chances with the dogs!” Sunbright screamed.

“What dogs?” Candlemas asked, then, “Aiieee!”

A pack of slavering guard dogs had bounded another way and been loosed onto the flat roof. Howling, barking, growling, they dived for the two refugees in the glider. Candlemas had fallen on his face, and it was just as well, for a dozen dogs trampled over his back in a frenzy.

Sunbright reared back, crashed on his bottom in the wicker seat, knocking the flying machine so it tilted, then fell off the roof.

Everyone screamed at once, including a dog that had leaped into Sunbright’s face. Knucklebones hauled back frantically on both sticks while Sunbright grappled the savage biting, kicking dog. With a tangled kick, he booted the animal straight up into the air.

A rattling glassy tingle sounded as the upper middle set of wings crumpled. The dog tumbled free to crash in the bushes of a garden below. The glider kept falling, soaring outward, skimming treetops, scraping a rocky slope.

Then it sailed off the edge of the floating mountain that was the Karsus enclave and soared into the free, naked, untrammeled air.

Sunbright screamed all the way down.

The barbarian couldn’t see, but he could feel them dropping like a shot duck. He’d tumbled backward onto his rump into the woven seat, so his huge boots stuck out of the side of the tiny vehicle, almost as high as the crumpled wings. He was screaming that he didn’t want to fly.

Knucklebones was shouting too. “Turn around, you idiot! Lean out there and grab that wing!”

“Lean out?”

Sunbright could barely hear her for the rush of air. The flitter hummed like a bowstring in the punishing wind. But it wobbled, too, and waffled and sideslipped and spun and shuddered. They were falling, as Candlemas had said, in a spiral, like a maple seed, but the tubes and struts and flimsy wings vibrated so badly

Sunbright’s teeth clattered. Or perhaps that was fear.

“The damned wings got crumpled!” the thief shrilled. “Grab them before they break off and we fall!”

“We are falling!”

Sunbright scrambled to drag his boots in and get his rump in the seat rather than his shoulders. But the wild bucking made the task as difficult as mounting a running horse.

“I mean fall like a rock, you fool! We’re almost gliding now!”

“What do you know about flying?”

She didn’t look at him, but peered all around with her one good eye. Her hands were never still on the twin sticks that banked and tilted the wings.

“I know enough to waggle these sticks, and see where those wings are bent and not straight! Grab ‘em or we’re dead!”

She punched his shoulder for emphasis, the brass knuckles stinging.

What the hell, the fighter thought. They were going to die anyway. And it wouldn’t hurt much when they struck—no more than a cow felt the axe in its brain. Grabbing metal tubes not thicker than his fingers, he hauled himself upright—

—and almost started screaming again.

The ground, the entire world, was much closer than it had looked from the inverted bear cave behind Knucklebones’s stronghold. Yellow-green fields below gave way to dark forests on the slopes of the purpled mountains that loomed here and there. He wasn’t sure of any direction because the whole scene swung in wide, wobbly circles. Below his outthrust boot was nothing but air. It was insanity to fly, he thought again. This was worse than clinging to a dragon’s ear.

Another thump rapped his shoulder blades.

“Graaaaab!” Knucklebones shrieked.

Clumsily holding on with white knuckles, Sunbright craned overhead. The wings were fashioned of some clear material like glass, only pliable. Laced throughout them were thin wires like the veins in a dragonfly’s wing. When the guard dog had crashed into the wings, they’d bent and fractured. Spidery cracks ran through them, and two ends were curled up. Swearing and praying—which was the sky god?—Sunbright unglued one of his hands, reached, and tugged at the wings overhead. They thrummed in his hand, like the flanks of a horse, and the barbarian reflected that the designers really had mimicked a dragonfly when they’d built these. He had to pull hard to drag the wings into position. More of the glassy film crazed, and wires broke. The craft shuddered worse than before, and the barbarian felt terror that they might crumble in his hands.

But as he held on, amazingly, the craft stabilized. The worst of the jostling died away. Only a faint moan and hum was left. Knucklebones hissed as she tugged on the control sticks, but even Sunbright could tell the craft had leveled out, no longer diving, but properly gliding. The ground was so close he saw crows flap out of the tops of elm trees at their approach. Maybe they’d live. The barbarian sighed with relief,

“Thank the gods!” he said, and let go of the wings.

“Don’t let go!” screamed Knucklebones.

Twin snaps sounded like whipcracks and immediately they plummeted again.

“Whooooaaa!” Sunbright screamed as he grabbed wildly for the wings, but the fractured parts snapped off and blew away. As they disappeared, long strips were torn off, then the topmost pair split down their length. He snatched for the edges to hold them in place, but they crumbled into splinters.

Knucklebones was screaming hysterically, something about, “—going to hit—”

Trees reared up and clawed at them like monsters with giant, leafy hands. Branches snapped and ripped and slashed. The flitter disintegrated around them. Sunbright made a wild snatch for Knucklebones, to see if he could pull her against his chest, but she was gone. Tubes and wires studded with leaves crashed into his face, smothering him, striking his skull.

Daylight dappled by leaves fluttered before Sunbright’s heavy eyelids. His head throbbed abominably, so badly it jarred him awake. He reached to rub his temples and found his arm pinned. It burned too, as if scorched by fire, and ached in a few spots. In fact, all of him ached. But he didn’t worry about that—pain never killed anyone, his teachers had loved to note—but being pinned did.

No matter their situation, they had to get clear of this wreck quickly.

Struggling, kicking, grasping, all silently, he fought to open his eyes and clamber free of whatever mess he was tangled in.

Rotating his head, he slowly pieced together the scene, learning among other things that he hung upside down. The flitter had crashed in the branches of an elm tree and still hung there, perhaps thirty feet above the ground. It was in shreds, much of the framework wrapped around his body, with steel fittings and iron leaf edges cutting cruelly. Blood welled in several places, so he’d been unconscious for only a few minutes. Nothing seemed broken, but he ached so much it was hard to be sure.

He cast about for Knucklebones, found her under his right hand, also wrapped in split wicker and tubing. He wondered vaguely if some protection spell didn’t linger in the framework, some ward that wrapped the flyers and shielded them in a crash. It wouldn’t surprise him. Nothing did when it came to the Netherese and magic.

The warrior gave an experimental rock to see if the flitter dropped any farther, but it hung firm. It had fallen as far as possible and fetched up tight. Carefully prying with strong blood-smeared fingers, he twisted the framework away until he could sit up. Breathing fully again, with his head no longer throbbing, he ripped and tore to free Knucklebones, after first leaning by her cheek to make sure she was still alive, breathing. Her eye patch had ridden up on her forehead. The bad eye was exposed, milky white, with no pupil, and vaguely familiar, though Sunbright couldn’t place the vision. Grimacing, he slid the dark leather tenderly in place before tugging her free of the wreckage.