The Anvil of the World (5 page)

"Oh, this is bad," he groaned.

"Could be worse," said Mrs. Smith, putting on the teakettle. "Could be you lying there with your liver torn out."

"Is its liver torn out?" Smith averted his eyes.

"Liver and heart, from the look of it. Doesn't seem to have got any of us, though. I didn't hear a thing, did you?" said Mrs. Smith quietly. Smith shook his head.

"But what is it? Is that a demon?"

"Well, there aren't any tribes of cat-headed men listed in the regional guidebooks," Mrs. Smith replied. "The principal thing with which we ought to concern ourselves just now is getting the bloody body out of sight before the guests see it, wouldn't you agree?"

"Right," said Smith, and limped away to the carts to get rope.

He made a halter, and together they dragged the body away from the camp, out onto the plain. There wasn't much there to hide it. They returned, and Smith found a shovel, and was going back to dig a grave when he saw the body convulse where it lay. He halted, ready to run for his life, game leg notwithstanding. The body flared green, bursting into unclean flame. It became too bright to bear looking at, throwing out a shower of green sparks, then something brilliant rose screaming from the fire and shot upward, streaking west as though it were a comet seeking to hide itself in the last rags and shadows of the night.

The flames died away and left nothing but black ashes blowing across the plain in the dawn wind.

"That was definitely a demon," Mrs. Smith informed him when he returned, leaning on his shovel. "Going off like a Duke's Day squib that way. They do that, you see." She handed him a tin cup of tea.

"But what was it doing here?" Smith accepted the cup and warmed his hands.

"I'm damned if I know. One doesn't usually see them this far out on the plain," said Mrs. Smith, spooning flatcake batter onto a griddle. "One can assume it came here to rend and ravage some or all of our company. One can only wonder at why it didn't succeed."

"Or who killed it," Smith added dazedly. "Or how."

"Indeed."

"Well well well, what a lovely almost-morning," said Lord Ermenwyr, emerging from his pavilion and pacing rapidly toward them. He looked slightly paler than usual and was puffing out enough smoke to obscure his features. "Really ought to rise at this hour more often. What's for breakfast?"

"Rice-and-almond-flour flatcakes with rose-apricot syrup," Mrs. Smith informed him.

"Really," he said, staring around at the circle of tents. "How delightful. I, er, don't suppose you're serving any meat as well?"

"I could fry up sausages, my lord," said Mrs. Smith.

"Sausages?... Yes, I'd like that. Lots of them? Blood rare?"

"Sausages only come one way, my lord."

"Oh. They do? But what about blood sausage?"

"Even blood sausages come well-done," Mrs. Smith explained. "Not much juice in a sausage."

"Oh." For a moment Lord Ermenwyr looked for all the world as though he were going to cry. "Well--have you got any blood sausage anyway?"

"I've got some imported duck blood sausage," said Mrs. Smith.

"Duck blood?" Lord Ermenwyr seemed horrified. "All right, then--I'll have all the duck blood sausage you've got. And one of those flatcakes with lots and lots of syrup, please. And tea."

Mrs. Smith gave him a sidelong look, but murmured, "Right away, my lord."

"You didn't notice anything unusual in the night, did you, my lord?" asked Smith, who had been watching him as he sipped his tea. Lord Ermenwyr turned sharply.

"Who? Me? What? No! Slept like a baby," he cried. "Why? Did something unusual happen?"

"There was a bit of unpleasantness," said Smith. "Something came lurking around."

"Horrors, what an idea! I suppose there's no way of increasing our speed so we'll be off this plain any quicker?"

"Not with one of our keymen down, I'm afraid," Smith replied.

"We'll just have to be on our guard, then, won't we?" said Lord Ermenwyr.

"You know, my lord," said Mrs. Smith as she laid out sausages on the griddle, "you needn't stand and wait for your breakfast. You can send out your nurse to fetch it for you when it's ready."

"Oh, I feel like getting my own breakfast this morning, thank you." Lord Ermenwyr flinched and bared his teeth as the Smiths' baby began the morning lamentation.

"I see," said Mrs. Smith. Smith looked at her.

He watched as, one by one, the keymen and the guests emerged from their tents alive and whole. Parradan Smith sniffed the air suspiciously, then shrugged and went off to wash himself. Burnbright crawled out of her bedroll, yawned, and came over to the kitchen pavilion, where she attempted to drink rose-apricot syrup from the bottle until Mrs. Smith hit her across the knuckles with a wooden spoon. The Smith children straggled forth and went straight to the mess of green slime and strips of fur where the demon's body had been and proceeded to poke their little fingers in it.

Ronrishim Flowering Reed stepped from his tent, saw the mess, and looked disgusted. He picked his way across the circle to the kitchen pavilion.

"Is it possible to get a cup of clean water?" he inquired. "And have you any rose extract?"

"Burnbright, fetch the nice man his water," said Mrs. Smith. "Haven't any rose extract, sir, but we do have rose-apricot syrup." Burnbright held it up helpfully.

Flowering Reed's lip curled.

"No, thank you," he said. "Plain rose extract was all I required. We are a people of simple tastes. We do not find it necessary to cloy our appetites with adulterated and excessive sensation."

"But it's so much fun," Lord Ermenwyr told him. Flowering Reed looked at him with loathing, took his cup of water, and stalked away in silence.

Lord Ermenwyr took his breakfast order, when it was ready, straight off to his palanquin and crawled inside with it. He did not emerge thereafter until it was time to break camp, when he came out himself and took down his pavilion.

"Is Madam Balnshik all right?" Smith inquired, coming to lend a hand, for the lordling was wheezing in an alarming manner.

"Just fine," Lord Ermenwyr assured him, his eyes bulging. "Be a good fellow and hold the other end of this, will you? Thanks ever so. Nursie's just got a, er, headache. The change in air pressure as we approach the highlands, no doubt. She'll be right as rain, later. You'll see."

In fact she did not emerge until they made camp that evening, though when she did she looked serene and gorgeous as ever. Mrs. Smith watched her as she dined heartily on that night's entree, which was baked boar ham with brandied lemon-and-raisin sauce. Lord Ermenwyr, by contrast, took but a cup of consomme in his pavilion.

"That's two murder attempts," said Mrs. Smith, as the fire was going down to embers and all the guests had retired.

"You don't think it's been robbery either, then," said Smith. She exhaled a plume of smoke and shook her head.

"Not when a demon's sent," she said. "And that was a sending, depend upon it."

"I didn't think there were any sorcerers in Troon," said Smith.

"What makes you think the sending came out of Troon?" Mrs. Smith inquired, looking dubious. He told her about Burnbright's recognizing the dead glider. She just nodded.

"You don't think the two attacks are unrelated, do you?" asked Smith. "Do you think the demon might have been sent by--" He gestured out into the darkness, toward the black mountain. Mrs. Smith was silent a moment.

"Not generally his style," she said at last. "But I suppose anything's possible. That would certainly complicate matters."

"I like trouble to be simple," said Smith. "Let's say it's somebody in Troon. It's my guess they're either after Parradan Smith or the little lord. Couldn't get them in town without it being an obvious murder, so they waited until we were far enough out on the plain that we couldn't send for help. Eh?"

"Seems reasonable."

"But the first attack didn't come off, thanks to there being a lot more people able to fight back here than they bargained for," Smith theorized. "Now we're getting farther out of range and they're getting desperate, so they hired somebody to send a demon. That costs a lot. I'm betting they've run out of resources. I'm betting we'll be left in peace from here on."

And for the next two days it seemed as though he might be right, though the journey was not without incident. The Smith children began to grow gray fur on their hands, and nothing--not shaving, not plucking, not depilatory cream--could remove it. Moreover it began to spread, to their parents' consternation, and by nightfall of the second day they sat like a trio of miserable kittens while their mother had hysterics and pleaded with Smith to do something about it.

Such commotion she made that Lord Ermenwyr ventured from his bed, glaring and demanding silence; though when he saw the children he howled with immoderate laughter, and Balnshik had to come drag him back inside, scolding him severely. She came out later and offered a salve that looked like terra-cotta clay, which proved effective in removing the fur, though the children wept and whined that it stung.

Still, by the next morning the fur had not grown back.

The Greenlands rose before them, now, in range upon range of wooded hills. Beyond towered the black mountain, so vast it seemed like another world, perhaps one orbiting dangerously close. Its separate topography, its dark forests and valleys, its cliffs brightened here and there by the fall of glittering rivers and rainbowed mists, became more distinct with every hour and seemed less real.

Though the road skirted the hills in most places, the ground did climb, and the keymen grunted with effort as they pedaled. Smith worked so hard, his wound opened again and Keyman Crucible had to help him, winding with his good arm. The air was moist, smelling of green things, and when they made camp their first evening in a tree-circled glade there was not the least taste of the dust of Troon left in anyone's mouth.

Two days into the Greenlands, they were attacked again.

They had scaled a hill with sweating effort, and cresting saw a long straight slope before them, stretching down to a gentle shaded run through oaks beginning to go golden and red. Burnbright whooped with relief, and sprinted down the road before the caravan as it came rattling after. The Smith children raised a shrill cheer as the carts picked up speed, and bright leaves whirled in the breeze as they came down.

But near the bottom of the incline, there were suddenly a great many leaves, and acorns too, and then there was an entire tree across the road. A very large and fairly ugly man stepped out and stood before them, grinning.

He was doing it for effect, of course. He had the sashes, the golden earring, the daggers that went with a bandit, and he had, moreover, the tusks and thundercloud skin color that went with a demon hybrid. There was no need for him to shout, "Halt! This is an armed robbery!" and with his tusks he might have found it a little difficult to enunciate anyway. His job was to terrify and demoralize the caravan, and he was well suited for it.

However, it is not a good idea to terrify a little girl whose legs can run fifty miles in a day without resting. Burnbright screamed but, unable to stop given her momentum, did what had been drummed into her at the Mount Flame Mother House for Runners: She leaped into the air and came on heels first, straight into the bandit's face. He went over with a crash, and she went with him, landing on her feet. She proceeded to dance frenziedly on his head, as behind her the carts derailed and before her other bandits came howling from the forest.

Nor is it a good idea to lose the element of surprise. Smith and the others had enough warning, in the time they were hurtling toward the tree, to prepare themselves, and when the moment of impact came they were poised to leap clear. Smith landed hard on his hip but got off a pair of bolts into the bandit who was rushing him, which bought him enough time to scramble to his feet and draw his machete. The key-men had produced dented-looking bucklers and machetes from nowhere, and charged in formation, a pot-headed wall of slightly rusty steel.

One of the bolts had got Smith's opponent in the throat, so he was able to cut him down in a moment. As he swung to meet another shrieking assailant he had a glimpse of the tumbled caravan. The Smiths were desperately attempting to get their children into the shelter of an overturned cart, and a bandit who was advancing on them found his head abruptly caved in by a heavy skillet wielded by Mrs. Smith. Giant violet eggs were rolling everywhere, spilling free of their cargo netting, and Balnshik was kicking them aside as she leaped forward, a stiletto blade in either hand. She slashed at a bandit who backed rapidly from her, though whether he was intimidated more by the wicked little knives or the gleam of her white teeth, bared in a snarl of bloodthirsty joy, it would have been difficult to say.

Lord Ermenwyr, astonishingly, was up and on his feet, and had just taken off an assailant's head with a saber. Parradan Smith had emptied his pistolbows, mowing down at least five attackers, and was locked in a hand-to-hand struggle with the sixth. That was all Smith was able to see clearly before he became far too preoccupied with his own survival to look longer.

His opponent was not, as the tusked bandit had been, hideous. He was lithe, slender, beautiful; but for the ram's horns that curved back from his temples and the fact that his skin was the color of lightning, he might have graced any boy prostitute's couch in the most elegant of cities. This did not impress Smith, but the youth fought like a demon too, and that painfully impressed him.

Blade blocked blade--
whipp,
a dagger was in the youth's free hand, and he'd laid open Smith's coat just over his heart. Smith's hand moved too fast to be seen and would have taken off the boy's head, but he was suddenly, magically, four paces back from where he ought to be. He smiled into Smith's eyes and lunged again, and Smith, jumping back, was unable to free his boot knife before they locked blades once more. The boy had all the advantage of inhuman speed and strength, and Smith began to get the cold certain feeling in his gut that he was going down this time.