The Dragon of Despair (77 page)

Blind Seer shook his entire body as if uncertainty was a physical pressure.

“I recall, now,” he said, “that Edlin chaffed Peace for not putting in such gates himself when he was the guardian of the city and Peace defended his action by saying that these tunnels were meant to let the sewage pass and that such gates might provide blockades when the water ran high. Perhaps the gates were removed for that reason.”

Firekeeper nodded. Whichever reason—or another entirely—might be correct, they had found a kind of sense behind the removal of the gate. Turning back from a nothing that might be a reason for fear rather than from something physical and solid seemed to make little sense. So thinking, Firekeeper urged Blind Seer on.

The wolf came more willingly now, his head dipping intermittently to sniff the stone while Firekeeper cast about for sign of a trip wire or other trap. They found none for there was none to find. When trouble came it was far less subtle.

They had stepped from their tunnel into the area where several such tunnels met to form a larger river when, without warning beyond the hissing of ropes running rapidly through well-greased pulleys, a large, weighted net plummeted from the shadows overhead. The net was quite wide, meant to catch them both and entangle them in its mesh, but at the first sound out of the ordinary, Firekeeper leapt back.

Her lantern guttered out and darkness blanketed them, a darkness so complete that she could not tell whether her eyes were open or shut.

“Hold your place,”
Firekeeper called softly to Blind Seer, who, larger though no less alert, had not escaped the trap,
“and I will see if I can free you.”

“You must, for I cannot free myself,”
Blind Seer replied with a whine of frustration.
“I am so wrapped and tangled I fear that if I move I will only draw the strands more tightly.”

Firekeeper patted him.

“This was dropped by human hand,”
she said,
“not by any loose rock or wire we failed to see. The one who loosed it will come to check his catch. Listen for someone coming while I see what I can do here.”

The wolf growled his agreement. For her part, Firekeeper tried to make sense of the tangle of ropes. She didn’t waste time trying to find her lantern and light it. Her nose had adjusted somewhat to the stench of the sewers by now, enough that she could smell spilled lantern oil. Moreover, even if she could manage a light, it would give her away. Better that she see the trappers before they could clearly see her and Blind Seer.

Rapidly, Firekeeper’s fingers examined the net, finding the mesh very heavy, of a type used to catch and hold large prey rather than to snare birds or rabbits. The strands had been coated with something sticky that caused them to cling to her fingers, making it difficult to locate an edge or manipulate the heavy mass of rope.

This alone would have made her reluctant to dull her Fang against its edge; then, too, there was the fear that she might slip and cut Blind Seer. Better to work more slowly until she was certain.

As she struggled with the net, Firekeeper recalled the roadhouse tales of giant spiders that fed on human blood. Hadn’t it been said that Melina kept many of these creatures, that she was gathering slaves with which to feed her pets? The wolf-woman shivered, almost paralyzed with fear. What if one of these spiders and no human was coming upon them? A spider might not need a light. A spider might make no sound but the faintest tapping of chitinous legs on the stone.

The wolf-woman strained to hear, her fingers moving independent of any conscious will on her part. Imagining a hairy leg reaching out to grasp her, Firekeeper fought down a scream of terror as irrational as that which came to her sometimes after the nightmares she could never remember.

Then her fingers touched a knot, and near that knot a heavy lead weight. These proofs of human agency banished the spiders back into imagination. Still breathing hard, Firekeeper felt her way from weight to another knot. Surely this would be near the edge.

“I’ll have you free soon, dear heart,”
she said to Blind Seer.

The wolf growled. Perhaps he, too, had been imagining what might be coming for them. Perhaps he only hated having his freedom restricted.

“Don’t worry for my fur,”
he ordered. “
When you have an edge lift it and I will creep out.”

Firekeeper grunted her agreement, working as rapidly as she could.

“Do you hear anything?”
she asked.

“I think so,”
the wolf said.
“Work faster!”

Firekeeper didn’t bother to tell Blind Seer that she was working as fast as she could. The mesh was not only strong, but it had been made so that it would bind to itself as well as to its target, and she was frequently forced to stop and relocate her edge.

“Light!”
the wolf cried a moment later, his excitement making an echoing bay of the announcement.
“It reflects off the tunnel walls, coming, I think from the same that Peace led us to before. Am I free?”

“Not yet,”
Firekeeper admitted.
“This is hard to do in the darkness.”

She could feel the wolf straining against the mesh.

“Take care,”
she warned.
“If you rise while tangled, you may pitch yourself into the waters and drown.”

The wolf subsided, but she could feel his nervous panting, and the wash of heat coming off him as his tension grew.

There was a thud and clang, then the faintest glow of light broke the absolute darkness. Without looking up from her work, Firekeeper knew that those who had trapped them were coming closer. She could not tell how many sets of feet trod the stone, only that there were more than one.

She pulled and was rewarded by feeling a large section of the net come loose, freeing the wolf’s hindquarters, though she suspected at the cost of a great deal of fur.

She had time to do no more. There was a thump as the bridge joining their walkway to the next was lowered. The light grew brighter and shone from a higher point so she knew that someone had lit one of the many lanterns hung for the convenience of those who worked here. In but a breath or two she would have lost whatever advantage she might have.

Standing, Firekeeper tossed the edge of the net forward, hoping to throw it entirely off the wolf. Without waiting to see if she had succeeded, she leapt over Blind Seer’s recumbent bulk and drew her Fang. In the improved light, she could see at least four coming over the narrow bridge. Men, she thought, enormous, bulky figures.

Even in the lantern light, they were hardly more than shapes. She, however, was only a shadow, a darker form against the dark.

The man in the lead barely suspected her coming. Then she was against him, pitching him into the stinking waters before he could raise an alarm.

The man behind him was not so easily taken. He waved the short sword he carried and moved forward, clearing the way for his fellows to exit the bridge, shouting back at them in some incomprehensible garble.

Firekeeper was kept busy dodging the man’s blade. He was skilled with it, but not so skilled that he thought to vary the pattern of his attack and defense. When she had learned his movements, she brought her Fang up and cut his throat as neatly as if he had been a rabbit.

He sprayed blood enough to soak her and the stone on which they both stood before sliding into the river.

Spitting his gore from her mouth, Firekeeper readied herself for the next attack. She could hear Blind Seer’s claws scraping against the stone, accompanied by his furious and frustrated whines, and guessed that the wolf was still pawing himself free from the net. That he had not called for her assistance assured Firekeeper that he thought he could manage.

All she had to do was win them both enough time.

The remaining two men were more cautious than their fellows had been, for the first had thought to find netted captives and the second, frightened by the suddenness with which his leader had vanished, had not thought at all.

These moved forward with care, neither side by side nor one after the other. Rather one came forth hugging close to the wall while his companion moved a pace behind, but over slightly so that he gave his fellow room. The man on the outer edge moved his hand in a slow looping motion that Firekeeper found vaguely familiar. Only after the man made his cast did she recognize it.

She jumped into the air, but could not completely avoid the weighted rope that lashed out to snare her. The man had been trying to pin her arms to her sides and had succeeded only in snaring her about the waist and hips. Even so it was enough to throw her off balance.

He yelled his triumph and shouted something in a language Firekeeper did not understand as he hauled back on the rope, drawing it more tightly around her and dragging her closer. His fellow gave an answering cheer and moved in, intent on either killing or disarming Firekeeper.

Regaining her balance was nearly impossible with blood-wet stone beneath her feet and the rope jerking around her waist, so Firekeeper did not dare lower her guard long enough to try to slash her Fang through the restraint—and she feared that it would take more than one attempt to cut the supple coil that wrapped her round.

The second man was closing, cautious in his awareness of both the chancy footing and the knife that had so easily opened his companion’s throat. Firekeeper spat at him, darting her Fang in little motions that made clear what would happen if he came much closer. The swordsman was no fool, but he was also aware of how much of her mobility had been sacrificed.

All he had to do was take care while his comrade reeled her in. Firekeeper knew this and wondered if somehow she might turn the rope to her own advantage. She pulled back against the rope, seeking now not only to maintain her distance, but to force the other man to pull even harder. Her strength was tremendous, but she was far smaller than her opponent and weight was against her. Moreover, her feet slid on the blood of the man whose throat she had cut while the man on the rope’s other end had comparatively solid footing.

Still, Firekeeper did not hope to drag him forward, rather to force him to pull as hard as he might. When she judged this moment had been reached, Firekeeper leapt forward, dodging wide around the man with the sword so that the rope caught him across his lower body. He fell, dropping his sword, his weight dragging at the rope and making Firekeeper lurch and drop her Fang.

The man holding the other end of the rope staggered back, unbalanced by pulling against a force that was suddenly no longer there. He reeled back several paces, then fell over into the sewer.

Now Firekeeper became aware of a flaw in her hastily devised plan. In the faint light she had not seen that the man had the other end of the rope fastened onto his body. When he fell, she was jerked forward into the disarmed swordsman. He, unaware of this complication or uncaring now that he was the lone survivor of what had been four strong men, beat at her with his fists, screaming what must have been curses or insults.

Firekeeper warded off the blows as best she could, but she was more concerned about getting free from the dragging rope. Without her Fang, she could not cut it. The rope man had been caught by the strong current formed by the flooding together of these several streams, and whether living or dead was providing an anchor pulling her inexorably after him.

She howled her fear and frustration, hammering at her adversary. The world narrowed to the weight that dragged her toward the edge of the walkway and the man who struck at her. In frustration rather than with fore-thought, Firekeeper shoved her attacker, pushing him away from her.

He tripped on the taut rope, stumbled, and, grabbing at the rope as if to stay his fall, went toppling over the edge. Firekeeper, unbalanced by the momentum of her own attack, felt herself going down after him. She dove over the edge, her head and shoulders sliding into the stinking waters, and knew that she would die choking on human filth.

At that moment, a searing heat on her left calf divided Firekeeper’s world into twin pains: the quiet one of suffocation paired with a loud screaming from muscles and bone clamped onto by strong jaws, jaws that pulled back and upward, dragging her out of the water.

The rope about her waist still hauled her down. Though Firekeeper could hardly think through the sharp pain to her calf, she knew that if Blind Seer was to succeed in drawing her up she must release herself from this competing grasp. Laboriously, she plucked at the rope, untwined the weighted end from where it held the coils close to her, and at last felt it slide free.

With a final jolt of pain, Firekeeper felt herself dragged level across stone that reeked now of her own blood mingled with that of the man she had slain. Never before had she longed for anything as she did now for unconsciousness and the release from pain it would bring, but she knew that if she slept now she would never waken.

“Get me,” she managed, speaking as much with a toss of her head as with words, “closer to that one. His clothes may make bindings for my wounds.”

In reply the great grey wolf instead went and dragged the dead man over to her.

“No need,” he said, snuffling at her injured calf and licking the blood away, “to move you when he is so far beyond protest.”

Firekeeper didn’t waste energy agreeing. The lanterns hanging high on the walls gave enough light that she could examine the dead man. He did not carry a first-aid kit, but his shirt was good cloth, easily torn into bandages with scraps left over for her to use as towels to mop away the worst of the filth that still dripped over neck and shoulders.

Doc had given Firekeeper some training in medicine and she knew that this stuff was as great or greater a danger to her healing as were the wounds themselves. Therefore she did not protest when Blind Seer, having licked her wounds clean, took it upon himself to begin to wash her.

“Foul stuff,” he commented, panting, his breath like heated sludge, “but better gone from you.”