Get Her Back (Demontech) (4 page)

      Elsewhere, Asztalos was slammed in the chest and bowled over by a cat before he had his axe ready to strike. The cat ripped at his neck, but Kes, a couple of paces to Asztalos’s side, swiped at it and took off the top of its head. The cat suddenly lost interest in the fight and jumped off its intended kill, to stagger off until it fell flat and died.

      In another place, Tabib the mage found the chest he was looking for and threw its lid open. With a roar that threatened revenge, a shape changing Bogart, in her guise as a black dog bitch that was surely too large to fit into the medium-size chest she bounded out of, looked around and saw its most natural enemy—cats. The Bogart gave a full-throated roar and bounded into the cats, chomping down on their heads and backs with its huge, slavering jaws and crushing teeth.

      The cats, scenting dog, broke from their attacks on the men to face this new and dire threat. Most of them never had a chance to react to the men who took advantage of their distraction to attack them from the rear, chopping them in twain with single blows of their battle axes.

      As soon as his Bogart was among the nearest cats, Tabib drew an “L” shaped object from within his wrap. He gripped it with both hands by the short leg. His hands bucked high at the thunderclap that responded to the mage’s squeeze. There were half a dozen more thunderclaps, and five of the cats fell, dead or severely wounded, before a demon stuck its head out of the bottom of the short leg of the demon spitter and demanded piteously, “Veed mee!”

      In hardly any more time after that, the battle was over, with the cats all dead or dying except for three or four that managed to flee before Tabib’s demon was willing to spit again, or Haft could sight his larger demon spitter on them.

     The Bogart looked around and saw no forest, not even isolated trees or high grass. There was no place for her to run to and disappear, free from the magician in whose service she was. So she  morphed into a shapely woman, who was probably beautiful  underneath the feline blood and gore that was spattered and smeared over her. She glared at the men who were suddenly  looking at her, some appalled at the blood and gore, others with lust at her nakedness.

      “I need water,” she snarled. “
And don’t you look at me!”
Her eyes and a thrusting hand with out-stretched finger swung, including every one of the men in the platoon.

      Haft audibly gulped. He went to a pack horse and removed a large water skin from it. Careful not to look at the Bogart in her human female guise, he carried the skin toward her and set it on the ground.

      “Do you need clothes?” he asked.

      “No. Now back off!”

      Haft did as she demanded. He knew what a black dog could do, he’d seen them in action, and even used one himself in an ambush. He had no desire to be the object of an attack.

      The Bogart waited for Haft to back off to a respectable distance and face away from her, then squatted and began washing, using some of the sparse grass that she ripped from the ground to scrub herself with. When she was satisfied that she’d cleaned herself as well as she could under the circumstances, she morphed back into canine form and padded to Tabib where he was tending to the wounded.

      Near where Tabib worked, two corpses lay covered by blankets. One was Asztalos, who had bled to death from the injuries he’d  suffered before Kes knocked the cat off of him.

      “Two dead,” Haft said quietly to himself. Louder, to Tabib, “How many wounded?”

INTERLUDE

The following is excerpted from the article:

HIGH-LOW, HIGH-LOW, TO DESERT LANDS WE GO

(Part 2, High)

by

Scholar Munch Mu’sk

Which was originally printed in
It’s a Geographical World!

~

This excerpt is printed with permission

from both the author and the publisher

      ... [L]ittle is known about the landscape, life forms, or denizens of the High Desert. There have been few exploratory expeditions mounted, and even fewer have returned to civilized lands to report on what they found. I have endeavored in the following pages to give only the information available about the High Desert that is the most likely to be true. You will find, for example, no reports here of trees that walk and waylay travelers, of two-headed lions, or of men who walk on their heads and talk through their toes, although the literature is replete with such absurd tales.

PROVISIONS FOR LIFE:

      Some travelers have claimed that there is no vegetation whatsoever on the High Desert. This is palpably untrue, as it is known  indubitably that there is both animal and human life living on the High Desert! Animal and, indeed, human life are not possible  without vegetative life present. And there are most extraordinary tales of what such life is like.

~

      It is known from samples that have been returned from the High Desert that there is a small selection of legumes and fruits from ground-hugging succulents, in quantities great enough to sustain a viable population of rodents, which in turn support a population of smallish to mid-size carnivores. It is unknown what animals might sustain themselves on the tough grass that lies in scattered clumps. The vegetation is uniformly ground-hugging because of the  constant wind that all explorers agree blows continually across  the plateau. There are no reliably known large carnivores, despite numerous stories of Brobdingnagian flesh-eaters.

      Alas! Whether vegetate or animate, legume or succulent, rodent or carnivore, the few specimens that have been brought back are spread far and wide among diverse scholars, and are housed in numerous academies on both continents. These scholars have yet to come to agreement on scientific names for any of the species, so they are known only by their many and various common names. Each explorer who returned with samples called the specimens by a different name, and no two of them are in agreement. Therefore is this vine properly called “trippum-up” or “strangler?” Is that muscular mouse-like rodent correctly named “mickey” or is it more properly known as mighty mouse? I am, therefore, constrained from naming any of the flora or fauna of the High Desert. Suffice it to say, as I have, that there is sufficient flora to sustain an ecological  system.

~

      The High Desert Nomads have several types of domestic  animals. First among them is a riding beast, which all of the few  explorers who have returned from the High Desert claim never eats or drinks. However, its description as having a huge, hairy mass on its back, a mass which is sometimes larger and sometimes smaller, causes me to suspect that the mass is a food and drink storage mechanism, much the same as adipose fat on the buttocks and thighs is in human populations that have lived for generations in lands that are prone to frequent famine.

~

      The final domestic animal for which reports have reached me is something that resembles nothing so much as a rather large, feral farmhouse cat. It is believed that the function of this “cat” is the same as that of a civilized farmhouse cat. To whit, to keep down the vermin population in the camps of the High Desert Nomads. This may well be exactly the case, as there are no reports of vermin  running rampant in the camps.

THE NOMADS OF THE HIGH DESERT

      The people, for that is what they call themselves, “The People,” of the High Desert are fearsome nomads, reputed to be even more fierce and warlike than the nomads of the Low Desert. According to some of the adventurers and explorers who have encountered the nomads and lived to tell of the experience, they are so much more aggressively fierce that the only reason they haven’t descended to the Low Desert and conquered those fearsome nomads is the simple fact that the nomads of the Low Desert far too greatly outnumber them! I make the assertion ‘lived to tell of the experience’ advisedly. Several of the few who reported visiting the nomads’ camps told of seeing bound skeletons, some of which bore the remnants of clothing and armor of various civilized nations, which strongly suggested that they were the remains of other adventurers or explorers.

      The language of the High Desert Nomads is either unrelated to any other known language in all the lands of humanity, or is otherwise related to that of the Jokapcul. That is an unlikely relationship, as the Jokapcul Islands and the High Desert are separated by the entire breadth of the continent of Nunimar! In any event, the High Desert Nomads language is highly guttural, with many nomina that sound more like canid barks and growls than the more pellucid nomina of civilized tongues.

~

      The housing of the High Desert Nomads is rudimentary, consisting of skins stretched over a framework of sticks curved and bound into a dome shape. The peak of the dome is not high enough for a grown man to stand under without hunching over. It is  unknown from whence the sticks come, as there are no trees on the High Desert that grow tall enough to provide them.

      I would say more about the High Desert Nomads and their environs, but there is too little that is known with any degree of positivity, and I am reluctant to speculate on them, or to repeat any of the outrageous tales that travelers have brought back from that  mysterious land.

___________________________________

Scholar Munch Mu’sk is, of course, the renowned Professor of Far Western Studies at the University of the Great Rift. The author of hundreds of scholarly papers and numerous articles in the popular press, he is the past chair of the Department of Far Western Studies at the University of the Great Rift.

II

THE NOMADS

CHAPTER SIX

      When Alyline and her platoon of Zobran Royal Lancers had mounted the plateau of the High Desert three days before Haft and the Skraglander Bloody Axes fought the cats, they headed slightly south of west. Alyline didn’t know for certain the direction from which the man who’d heard the sothar player had come from, or how long his trek had been. But piecing together what little she’d heard him say, she thought he’d joined the caravan less than a day before she’d overheard him, and that he had wandered in a more or less straight line for at least three days before finding the train. So, west and a little south sounded like the right direction. She thought that meant that the Desert Nomads camp could be anywhere from two to five days ride away. If they hadn’t moved. But even if they’d moved since the man had escaped, she and the Royal Lancers could surely find the signs of their camp, and detect the direction they’d gone.

      So she directed Lieutenant Guma to lead his platoon a little south of west. On his own initiative, Guma put riders far out to the front and flanks. That was partly to expand the area that the platoon could search for the nomads’ camp, but mostly to give them the  earliest possible warning if the Desert Nomads approached.

      Unlike Alyline, who seemed to feel that they would have no  difficulties with the Desert Nomads, Guma believed the fearsome reputation they had. He thought it more likely that they would be met with arms than with open arms. He felt an unease, and tried to shove away the feeling that he’d made a mistake when, shortly after joining the refugee train, he had committed himself and his men to watching over the Golden Girl and keeping her safe.

      “Sir!” Lyft, one of the outriders reported as he galloped up to Guma two hours into the second day’s ride. “I spotted riders at the edge of sight, that way.” He pointed almost due west.

      “How many and did they see you?” Guma asked.

      Lyft shook his head. “They were too far for me to tell exactly,” he answered, “but there looked to be at least three, possibly more. They gave no sign of having spotted us. The sun was behind me, and I only saw them because something metallic reflected a flash of  sunlight.”

      “Which way were they going?”

      Lyft pointed a tick or two north of west. “They seemed to be headed that way.”

      Guma leaned forward in his saddle, and peered into the distance where Lyft had seen the riders. He couldn’t see them, not even when he curled his fingers into tubes in front of his eyes, the trick that Spinner and Haft had taught them to help focus at a distance. He wasn’t as sure as his man that he hadn’t been seen. This was the Desert Nomads’ land, surely they were more in tune with what they might see on their plain. And, he had to admit, the light blue of the Royal Lancers’ tabards probably showed up well on this brown and green-speckled plain.

      “Return to your position,” he said after a moment’s thought. “Alert the other outriders about what you saw. Let me know immediately if you see anything more.”

      “Yes, sir.” Lyft started off, intending to travel in a wide arc to reach his position, so he could tell other outriders about the distant  people.

      “Come back here!” a female voice cracked sharply.

      Lyft yanked on his horse’s reins and looked back, to see Alyline cantering toward Guma. He returned to the side of his platoon  commander.

      “You saw something,” the Golden Girl snapped at Lyft. “Tell me.”

      “Yes, Lady,” Lyft said, with a bob of his head. He repeated what he’d already told Guma—and repeated Guma’s orders to him.

      Alyline jerked her head toward Guma. “Why keep going in the same direction we’ve been going?” she demanded. “We should go where Lyft saw the people.”

      “Yes, Lady,” Guma said.” But the riders Lyft saw probably aren’t on their way
to
the camp, but rather they’re coming
from
it.”

      “They could just as well be on their way to a
new
camp,” Alyline said, and added firmly, “Lyft, lead the way to where you saw them.”

      Lyft looked uncertainly at Guma; he was supposed to obey his commanding officer’s commands, and Guma had told him to keep the same course.

      Guma repressed a shrug. He was beginning to think that perhaps he should rethink his allegiance to the Golden Girl. He was a soldier, a professional. An officer, a leader of men. When you got to the nub of it, Alyline, the Golden Girl, whatever her other attributes, which did not include military expertise, was just a temple dancer. They were in his arena now, what he said should be law. But...

      He and the Zobran Royal Lancers were sworn to care for  and guard the Golden Girl. The Royal Lancers were so designated because they took care of royalty and, after all, in so many ways,  Alyline was the closest they had to a royal personage.

      “Do as the Lady says,” Guma ordered. “I’ll send someone else to tell the other outriders to follow you.”
And to draw close
, he added to himself. He was certain that they would soon come face to face with the fierce nomads, and he didn’t want any of his men to be in isolated positions.

     Guma was right about the light blue of the Royal Lancers’  surcoats being easily visible on this plain. They’d only gone a mile and a half when suddenly, as though sprouting from the ground, four-score riders appeared on all sides. Each of them had a wicked recurve bow near to hand, and carried a lance in loops that angled under his thigh that was longer and thicker than the lances carried by the Royal Lancers. They all had a long knife or sword on their belts. They wore furry cloaks that gave off faint whiffs of improperly cured skins. All had shaggy beards, and unkempt hair stuck out from under the stiff leather helmets that protected their heads, many adorned with eagle feathers or the horns of grazing animals. They weren’t riding horses, but rather were mounted on beasts that resembled the comites of the Low Desert: bulky of body, with a large hump that rode their spines. These animals were more heavily furred than the comites, and their humps rose higher. They also looked like they had a tendency to bite, or at least spit at, people who came too close to the heads on the ends of their long necks.

      One man, obviously the leader, heeled his mount forward a  couple of steps. He was accompanied by a very large man armed with a lance so big it was more properly called a spear, and a standard bearer. The standard was an eight-foot-long pole festooned with skulls; a human skull was uppermost on the pole. He barked out what were obviously words, but not in any language Guma or the others had ever heard.

      Guma bowed, and began speaking in Frangerian, the common trade language on the two continents. “Lord,” he began, “we are peaceful travelers—.”

      “Do you have a sothar player?” Alyline broke in. “I heard there was a sothar player in a nomad camp. Mine is missing. If you have him, I—”

      The Nomad chief slashed a fist across his front, a
silence!
command. He looked so fearsome that Alyline’s mouth involuntarily snapped shut. He spoke one word loudly in his own language, and a fourth man broke from the surrounding circle to ride to his side. The chief barked and growled without removing his eyes from Alyline and Guma. The newcomer listened attentively, then spoke when the chief was through. His words were Frangerian, but his voice was one more accustomed to the barks and growls of the language used by the chief.

      “You are interlopers in our land,” he said. “We do not welcome interlopers. If you turn around now and leave, we will grant you safe passage. If you do not, the consequences will be severe.”

      In his peripheral vision, Guma had seen the nomads closing in on his men. The Zobrans were outnumbered more than three to one and, if the nomads were any good with the weapons they were  carrying, seriously out-armed as well. He opened his mouth to order his men to begin withdrawing, but Alyline beat him to it.

      “I must see the sothar player,” she said. “We are not leaving until I do.”

      The chief made a gesture and the nomads fell upon the Zobrans.