Immortal at the Edge of the World (23 page)

Then I decided maybe I should just ask.

“I’m something new,” I said, and hoped that would tide him over for the moment. “But tell me, how does your spell work? Or whatever this is?”

“It’s a drug. Makes them very susceptible to suggestion. Enough of it and they are as docile as a pack mule.”

“I’m surprised I didn’t know this already,” I said. “Have you considered expanding into the drug trade? I imagine you would make a killing. They certainly do look very happy.”

“It has to be fresh, or we would be running the world right now. It also fades quickly.”

“And can anybody give them a command?”

“I don’t feel particularly satisfied with your response. What sort of new thing are you?”

“A faery,” I said.

He laughed. “Those aren’t real. Try again. And don’t say vampire; I know those
are
real but you are in daylight. You are too large to be an imp, and you are clearly no demon. You may be a shaved down yeti, but I think that’s unlikely. A dragon, perhaps?”

“Perhaps I am.”

“No. You are also no sprite, nor iffrit, pixie, goblin, or elf. You could be a troll, I’ve never met one of them. Are you a troll?”

“I’m not a troll, no.”

“No, I think you are not large enough. And you are no incubus, for when do they care about anything but women? Hmm. Perhaps you
are
a faery.”

“I could be a banshee.”

“Those are a kind of faery. And you are not a woman.”

“Both true. I confess. I am only a man.”

“A human man?”

“Yes. But one who cannot be poisoned, which is what you tried to do to me.”

“But why? How did it not work?”

“I don’t know. I would ask someone else who is like me why this is true but there is nobody to ask.”

“Ah. Well then, if you are unique, I have no need to worry about coming across another such as you. Your death will solve my problem and I can go on with these negotiations without any further interruptions.”

It almost goes without saying, but nobody else at the table was doing anything while Gorrgon and I spoke. They just sat there looking happy. I was wondering what would happen if I told them to stop that, but it would have to wait.

Gorrgon signaled to the two Talus men in the room. They had not been listening to our conversation, which was probably self-preservation on their part considering the sorts of things that probably got discussed at the table.

“Take this man in back and kill him,” the patriarch said. Nobody looked surprised by the request, so I gathered it wasn’t an unusual one. They flanked me as soon as I stood up.

Having two guards on the portly side wasn’t necessarily a good thing for me because their important blood vessels were under an extra layer of fat, and while the two daggers I’d slipped from the sleeves in the small of Hsu’s back were unquestionably sharp, they weren’t all that large. Mind you, I wasn’t worried about
if
I could dispatch them, I was worried I wouldn’t be able to do it
quickly
. I can kill three men pretty fast when they’re not expecting it, especially if they’re all nearby.

It took about eight seconds. They had armor on but their necks weren’t protected, so when they turned to escort me out I stabbed the one in front of me in the side of the neck, and I was already slicing into the second one with the other knife while the first one fell. I don’t think either even got their hands on their swords.

The idea of hitting them in the throat was pretty basic. Aside from the obvious mortal wound aspect, hitting the right spot meant keeping anybody from shouting loud enough to be heard outside the room.

Gorrgon was not prepared to do anything in eight seconds other than stand, and by the time he did that the second man was dead and I was throwing one of the daggers. That’s about where my luck ran out. Because of the range I took the surest shot, which was through the eyeball. But sometimes people with undamaged throats can manage a cry or two even after their brains have had a blade shoved into them. They don’t usually have anything exciting or coherent to say, but they can still say it loudly.

In this instance, Gorrgon’s dying word was “Heyuhlurggggha!” which I am pretty positive doesn’t mean anything. But he was not at all quiet.

I had no clue how long it would take for someone to respond to this noise he made, but the windows to the room were open and the place was big enough to garrison a battalion, so the worst-case scenario was incredibly grim. All I had going for me was that there was only one entrance to the hall, through double doors that opened in and could be barred with something heavy. What I needed was a bookshelf or a credenza or something, neither of which was in the room. There was the table and a bunch of chairs, a lot of blissed-out people, and three dead bodies, and that was it.

A few minutes later I’d relieved two swords from the dead guards and stacked all three of the Taluses up against the doors. They were not bookshelves, but they would do. Then I stood at the head of the table.

“Hello, everyone,” I said. “I need you to . . .” But I didn’t know what to say. Telling them to
snap out of it
seemed like a plan that was unlikely to succeed inasmuch as they were not likely aware of how out of it they were.
 

I cleared my throat and tried again. “We are all in terrible danger. We have been double-crossed by Gorrgon Talus and now all of us are going to die unless you get up right now and defend yourselves.”

“Did you say we’re going to die?” Abraham said. “That’s terrible.”

“I agree,” Hsu said. “Terrible.”

And then neither of them moved. Nor did anybody else. I was beginning to wonder if my best bet was to climb up to one of the windows and find my own way out of the compound. The windows were up near the ceiling so reaching them would be very difficult, and the drop on the other side was significant as the room was on the second floor, but I thought my odds would still be better. If I lived to the end of the day I’d be short a few friends, but at least I’d survive. I could always find more friends.

There was a loud bang at the door then. I suppose someone on the other side had already tried pushing gently and I simply hadn’t noticed, but now it was obvious one or two people were out there and they were hitting the doors hard. The bodies of Gorrgon and his relatives weren’t going to hold very long.

I needed Hsu. He was the best warrior there that wasn’t me, and he had two or three weapons other than the crummy swords I was working with, and he knew how to use them. I jumped up on the table and walked to him. Pointing the sword at his face I said, “Defend yourself,” and slapped the flat of the blade against his cheek.

“What?” he asked.

“I said defend yourself.” I slapped him again. “Or I will take off your head.”

There was another loud thump at the doors, and this time it was joined by the sound of wood splintering. I swung at Hsu’s head again and I was about 50/50 on whether or not to actually take his head off at this point because I was in this mess because of him. But this time he put up an arm to block the sword. This might seem like a dumb thing to do with a sharp thing coming at you but his wrists were sleeved in mail as a defensive measure.

“Li-Yuan. What are you doing?” he asked.

“We are a very short time away from being overrun by soldiers because I just recently killed the patriarch of the Talus family and they are upset about that.”

He gave this a little thought. “Yes. Of course. Can I have a sword?”

I handed him the one I’d been slapping him with and jumped off the table.
 

The Talus blockade of bodies was actually holding quite nicely, but the doors were still nearly broken in two from the force being applied from the hallway.

Hsu took a position behind one of the doors and I took the other. “What was he?” he asked. “A sorcerer?”

“A djinn. The whole family is.”

“I didn’t know they were real.”

“I did, but I didn’t know they were a big deal before now. That reminds me, when you’re fighting, don’t let them touch your skin with their hands.”

“How about their blood?” he asked.

“I have no idea.”

“Well. We will find out.”

The first large hole in the door was followed by the head of one of the soldiers and, self-evidently, another Talus relative. Hsu removed the head before it had a chance to report what it saw. “Evidently the blood is not a problem,” he said. “And this sword is terribly dull.”

Nobody stuck any other body parts in for a few seconds, and the banging on the doors also stopped while someone on the other side tried to figure out what to do next. And now there were four Talus bodies blocking the door.

Hsu looked over at Abraham. “Did you speak to him?” he asked.

“I haven’t had a chance. And he’s not really here right now.”

“None of them are. But perhaps I awoke sooner because I am goblin-born.” He looked me over. “And this magic did not affect you because you do not believe in magic, I suppose.”

“It’s a drug, not magic.”

“So you tell yourself. Man the door alone for a moment, if you would.”

A few minutes later Hsu and I were joined by the other two goblins we had with us. “He doesn’t have it on him,” Hsu said.

“Abraham.”

“Yes. We will need to get him out of this alive so he can take me to it.”

“That is going to get more difficult the longer it takes him to wake up and the more bodies we stack up at this entrance,” I said. “They’re doing a good job of keeping us safe, but this is still the only exit we have, unless we learn to fly.”

The soldiers in the hallway decided to attack again at that point, perhaps out of fear that we
could
learn to fly in the time they were giving us. They hit the door with the largest battering ram they could find that fit in the hall, and several of them stumbled into the room, off-balance and slipping on all the Talus parts lying on the floor. Off-balance is a terrible way to start a fight. Soon we had all the swords we needed.

As more guards charged into the breach, the men seated at the table finally began to stir, possibly because aerosolized blood has that effect on people. Since two of them could be trusted with a weapon, the battle actually started to work out in our favor, at least in the room.

One of the captains stuck his fingers into his mouth and gave two loud staccato whistles. I fought my way to him. “What was that for?” I asked.

“The men outside will take the yard, milord,” he said. “We should drive for the exit now.”

“Do you have a whistle that tells them not to touch anybody?”

“I wouldn’t know how to signal that, no.”

He was right about needing to drive for the exit, though. We formed a wedge around the non-fighters among us—Xuangang, Abraham, and Moshe—and pushed out of the room and into the hall. A few minutes later we’d forced our way outside to the courtyard to what we were hoping was the friendly faces of the ten or so soldiers-of-fortune we had hired to protect us in the event just this sort of thing were to happen.

We did not find this. The problem with open courtyards is that they are not narrow, enclosed spaces that nullify uneven odds. So while we had been holding our own with a handful of men, goblins and me against a superior force inside the building, once we got outside that force was much more effective, and the additional men running to our aid didn’t make all that much of a difference.

*
 
*
 
*

I’ve been in a lot of battles. Maybe not as many as I could have been in, since historically I have found the best way to survive a war is to leave the place where the war is going on until everyone is done having their war and people go back to making decent alcohol and cooked meat and all of the other nice things that come out of peacetime. But sometimes that’s not possible, and I have to pick up a sword, or whatever people are using to kill other people, and defend myself with it.
 

One thing I have learned is that it is impossible to understand—from the middle of a battle—exactly how it is being fought. By that I mean in terms of strategy and counterstrategy and more fundamentally who is winning and who is not winning and why. This is why generals who lead from the vanguard, while very inspiring, don’t tend to do as well as the ones on the hill or on a horse at the back of the battle. Those are the ones who can see how things are going and can adjust their approach on the fly. It’s also why the best accounts of battles rarely come from foot soldiers.

My point is I don’t know what happened in this fight, not really. It was an elbow-to-elbow melee that involved lots of blood and severed things and it was exactly as unpleasant as any fight with large sharp objects is bound to end up being.

Hsu and I were separated very early on. He and his goblins were drawing the most attention from the Talus guardsmen because they were the most dangerous. The least dangerous—Abraham, Moshe, and Xuangang—were not actively attacked, but weren’t allowed to leave either, so I was doing everything I could to clear a path for them to the gates, with some help from the captain with the loud whistle and a few of his men.

This was what I was doing when I saw Hsu fall. My immediate opponent was a particularly annoying human guard whose technique was deeply flawed, but who simply refused to let me kill him. He kept managing to parry my attacks at the last second. In a minute I was going to bull-rush him to knock him over and maybe step on his face a couple of times so I could get on with killing the guy behind him and maybe progressing in a positive direction. This man had just blocked a fourth otherwise lethal attack when I heard my friend cry out. I turned in time to see Hsu spin around and remove the head of the guard who had just buried a knife in his back. And then he fell to his knees.