The Many Deaths of the Black Company (Chronicle of the Black Company) (81 page)

I was determined. I had a whole list of people who were going to blaze the way to hell for me.

Now the monster was up again, evidently shaking off the effects of missiles and fireballs and chemicals. She was gathering herself for the charge that would get her in amongst us and render her safe from our most dangerous weapons just when she could start using her jaws and claws.

I do not know what the Voroshk tried to do. I know the fireballs flew again, there was a shudder in the ground like somebody had hit it a few yards away with a ten-thousand-pound hammer, then the forvalaka launched herself my way in a sort of weak, half-hearted leap, one hind paw dragging in the dust. Smoke came off her at a dozen points. The stench of burnt flesh preceded her.

I glimpsed the last Voroshk streaking across the sky behind the monster. He was tumbling.

Bowalk batted at my makeshift pike as she flew toward me. Her effort was weak and slow. The head of One-Eye’s spear entered and passed through the flesh of her right shoulder, which had been injured badly already. I felt it bounce off bone. She screamed. Her weight ripped my weapon out of my hand even though I had the butt of the bamboo pole set firmly against the ground.

Her momentum spun her around. She managed to slap me with a paw and send me ass over appetite before she landed and became preoccupied with the black spear. My armor withstood her claws. I barely knew up from down for a moment but I did keep my head attached to the end of my neck.

I regained possession of my bamboo pole but not of the spear. The forvalaka was writhing around, screaming and snarling and snapping at the spear while my comrades were careful to stay out of her way. The occasional arrow or javelin continued to dart in, when there was no risk of a miss.

The Voroshk remained out of the struggle. One burned on the slope east of us. One rose higher and higher, now yielding streamers of smoke. The last circled cautiously, either looking for an opening or just observing. Each time he started to dart in, a score of bamboo poles pointed his way, offering to welcome him. I suspect most were dead. But he could find out the truth of that only the hard way.

A huge black sword of a design similar to Doj’s Ash Wand came with the Widowmaker costume. I drew it as the forvalaka tried to come at me. I felt almost foolish behind the excitement and fear. It had been decades since I had used a sword anywhere but in practice sessions with Doj. I did not know this one at all. It might be little more than a showpiece. It might snap the first time I struck a blow.

The shapeshifter staggered forward a few steps. Someone hit it a glancing shot with a fireball. Javelins and arrows continued to arrive. It snapped at the wound where One-Eye’s spear stood forth, again. The arrows and javelins all fell out eventually but not that black spear. It was working its way slowly deeper.

I stepped in, struck. The tip of my blade bit several inches into the big cat’s left shoulder. She barely stumbled. The wound bled for seconds only, then closed, healing before my eyes.

I struck again, near the same site. Then again. Not despairing. Her vitality was no surprise. But her wounds were not healing as fast as once they had. And that spear was worming its way deeper. And she seemed to be losing the will to fight.

Shouts!

The healthy Voroshk was boring in on me, coming fast, his protection turning first the fireballs rising to meet him, then the arrows and bolts. I pranced around and braced myself to flail away when he got close enough. He raised one hand as if to throw something. But before he could, my white crow appeared out of nowhere and hit him from behind. In the head. His chin slammed against his chest.

I doubt he suffered any damage but he did forget me for the moment. He flailed at the raven. The ghost bird had secured a perch on his shoulder and was trying to peck his eyes.

Even up close I could see no face. That was hidden by wraps of the same cloth enshrouding everything else.

I swung away but misjudged the Voroshk’s speed. My blade chopped into the post he was riding a foot behind his butt and tore itself from my hands. Then he hit ground. Then, howling, he bounced into the air and streaked away in a lazy curve that tended northward, all the while spinning round and round the axis of his flying post. His robes or cape or whatever billowed all over the sky. Tatters tore loose and fluttered down.

The forvalaka continued to weaken. Cautiously, some men left cover and surrounded the beast. Lady and Doj joined me within striking distance. Each carried one of the debilitating fetishes Tobo had created using the tail and bits of skin Bowalk had left behind when she killed One-Eye. Lady had shown him what to do. The fetishes were particularly effective because Lady and Tobo had had Lisa Daele Bowalk’s true name to work with.

I said, “Swan, take a squad to check out the one that’s burning over there. Be careful. Murgen, keep an eye on the other two.” The Voroshk who had streaked off rolling was under control again and headed our way at a crawl, gaining altitude, moving toward the Voroshk who remained airborne and still rising slowly. That one had begun drifting with the breeze and showing some evidence of actual flames.

I asked my darling, “Darling, is there any chance you’re keeping an eye on Goblin?” Our mysteriously resurrected brother had remained extremely quiet during the exchange of greetings between the Voroshk family and the Black Company. Unless I had missed something while I was preoccupied.

“There are two guaranteed-good bamboo poles aimed at him right now.”

“Excellent. You are going to be able to make more of those things once we get back home, aren’t you? They’re the best weapons we’ve ever had.”

“I’ll make some. If there’s time. Once my sister knows we’re back we’re going to get extremely busy.”

Egg-yolk light suddenly drenched the world. It faded before I looked up and saw a thousand-armed starfish of a cloud blossoming where the smoldering Voroshk sorcerer had been drifting.

The other Voroshk was headed north again, this time end over end. And someone was falling directly toward us, vast expanses of black cloth fluttering behind, smoke boiling off that. There was no sign of the log the Voroshk had been riding. Its fall seemed terribly slow.

Meantime, undistracted from his task, Willow Swan was bellowing across the slope. He wanted a stretcher.

Lady observed, “That one is still alive.”

“We have a hostage. Somebody poke that thing with a pike. It’s probably playing possum.” The forvalaka had stopped struggling. It lay on its back, tilted slightly to one side, both hands grasping the shaft of One-Eye’s spear.

“Hands,” Murgen said as Thai Dei prodded the monster with one of the longer fireball projectors.

“Hands,” I said, too. The change was coming over her. The change she had longed for ever since we had murdered her lover-master Shapeshifter, way back during our first assault on Dejagore.

Lady said, “She’s dying.” She sounded both puzzled and a little disappointed.

30

Khatovar: Then Start the Fire

A rising shriek rushed us from above. The falling, flailing Voroshk smashed through the leaf roof of a shelter. The shrieking stopped. Bits of roof flew upward. I said, “Murgen, go check that out.”

When I looked back to the forvalaka, I discovered that Goblin had joined us. He pushed through the crowd and stood over the monster, staring down. She was about halfway changed, her arms and legs having become a badly scarred, naked woman. She was aware enough to recognize Goblin.

The frog-faced little man said, “We tried to help you and you wouldn’t let us. We could’ve saved you but you turned on us. So now you pay. You mess with the Company, you pay.” He started to reach for One-Eye’s spear.

Men jumped every which way. Half a dozen bamboo poles swung toward Goblin. Crossbows came off shoulders.

The little wizard’s mouth opened and closed several times. Then his hand slowly withdrew.

I guess news of One-Eye’s dying words had gotten around.

Goblin squeaked, “Maybe you shouldn’t have rescued me.”

Lady told him, “We didn’t,” but did not expand upon her remark. She drew me away. “He has something to do with Bowalk dying so easily.”

I glanced over there. “She isn’t dead yet.”

“She should have been much tougher.”

“Even considering the fetishes and One-Eye’s spear?”

She thought about that. “Maybe. When she’s done dying you’d better make sure that thing is hard to reach. I don’t like the look in Goblin’s eye when he stares at it.”

That look was there now, though the little wizard showed no inclination to do anything certain to inspire a swift and violent response.

Swan and his gang were approaching, four of the men at the corners of a makeshift litter. Trotting ahead, Swan puffed, “Wait’ll you get a look at this, Croaker. You ain’t going to believe it.”

At the same moment Murgen called for another stretcher. So the other Voroshk had survived, too.

Swan was on the mark. The girl on the stretcher was impossible to believe. Maybe sixteen, blonde, as gorgeous as every boy’s fantasy. I asked my wife, “Darling, is this for real?” And to Swan, “Good job, Willow.” He had bound and gagged the girl so as to disarm most of a sorcerer’s simpler tricks.

Lady said, “You men get back.” There was not much left of what the girl had been wearing. And more than a few of the guys were the sort who would count her fair game for having tried to attack us. Some were the sort who would dish out the same treatment to a male captive. They might be my brethren but that did not make them less cruel men.

Lady told Swan, “Take Doj back over there and collect anything you can find that belonged to her. Her clothing and that thing she was riding in particular.” And to me she said, “Yes, dear, she’s the real thing. Except for just a touch of makeup. I hate her already. Goblin! You come over here and stand where I can see you.”

I stared down at the Voroshk girl, not focusing on the lushness and freshness of her but on the blondness and whiteness. I have read all the Annals, all the way back to the first volume—albeit, admittedly, a several-generations-removed-from-original copy—that had been begun before our forebrethren ever left Khatovar. Those men had not been tall and white and blond. Could the Voroshk be another out-world scourge like the Shadowmasters of my own world and Hsien?

At that moment Lady removed her helmet, the better to menace me for staring. And I realized she was quite white herself, even if not blonde.

Why expect the peoples of Khatovar to be any more homogeneous than the peoples of my own world?

Murgen and his crew came jogging up, carrying another body on another crude litter. The first had escaped most of the effects of impact and fire. This one had been less fortunate.

“Another girl,” I observed. That fact was hard to ignore. She was more obvious than the first.

“Younger than the other one.”

“But just as well put together.”

“Better, from where I’m standing.”

“They’re sisters,” Lady growled. “You have an idea what this means?”

“Probably that the Voroshk had so little respect for us that they sent out some kids so they could get in some practice. But after what’s happened, Daddy and Grandpa will take a closer interest.” I beckoned. “Gather round, gentlemen.” Once everyone not doing something closed in, I said, “In a short time we’re probably going to have a sky full of unfriendly company. I want you to start pulling up stakes and getting the animals and equipment back through the gate. Right now.”

Lady asked, “You think that third one will make it back to the Voroshk army?”

“No way will I bet against it. My mother’s optimistic children have all been dead for fifty years.” I glanced at the forvalaka. It was almost entirely Lisa Bowalk now. Except for the head. “Looks like some mythological beast, don’t she?”

She was not dead yet. Her eyes were open. They were no longer cat’s eyes. They begged. She did not want to die.

I told Lady, “She doesn’t look any older than the last time I saw her.” She was still a young and attractive woman—for one whose formative years had been spent surviving the worst slum of a truly ugly city. “Hey, Cratch. Grab Slobo. I want you guys to bring all the firewood over here and pile it on this thing.”

Goblin said, “I’ll help.”

“I’ll tell you what, runt. You want a job, you can build me a couple of good litters so we can take our new girlfriends with us.”

Lady asked, “Are they fit to travel?”

“The older one could probably get up and limp along on her own if she was conscious. I’ll need a closer look here before I can tell how bad this one’s hurt, though.”

“You watch what you’re poking and squeezing, old man.”

“You’d think that, at your age, you’d have developed a little better sense of humor, old woman. Don’t you understand that every profession has its perks? A surgeon gets to poke and squeeze.”

“So does a wife.”

“I knew I forgot something when we did that ceremony thing. Shoulda brung a lawyer. Cratch! Nobody touches that spear till we start the fire. And I’ll do any touching that gets done. Where are my birds? I’ve got to get the Black Hounds called in.” We could not leave them here. They were going to be critical weapons in the war with Soulcatcher. Sleepy was, probably, missing them desperately already.

Swan and three others approached, straining to carry the post the older girl had ridden. Swan puffed. “This goddamned thing weighs a ton!” The four of them started to drop it.

“No!” Lady barked. “Gently! You recall what happened to the other one? Up there?” She pointed. Smoke or dust or whatever still smeared the sky. There was still an occasional crackle of toy lightning inside the cloud, too. “That’s better. Goblin! Doj! Come and take a look at this thing.”

“Check this cloth,” Swan said, offering me a bit of black rag.

It felt like silk and seemed almost weightless. It stretched when I pulled it without tearing or getting any thinner. Or so it seemed.

“Now watch this.” Swan stabbed the cloth with his knife. The knife did not penetrate. It did not cut when he slashed, either.