My ravens worked
hard. Within the same hour I learned that Sleepy had broken out
into our homeworld and that the forvalaka had left the Voroshk and
was rushing our way. I began issuing orders immediately. Bowalk
could not possibly arrive for hours but I wanted to make sure that
each of my companions was exactly positioned and that all of my
resources could be brought to bear almost instantly. Willow Swan
followed me around reminding me that most of the fussing I was
doing was exactly the sort of half-ass officiousness I resented
from Sleepy.
“You want to make your future home in Khatovar,
Swan?”
“Hey, don’t kill the messenger.”
I grunted unhappily, went and collected my sweetheart.
“It’s time we got dressed up. Get ready for the
show.”
“Ooh!” she said. “I’ve always had a
weakness for men in black with birds on their shoulders.”
Our preparations were complete. Our dozen surviving fireball
projectors were positioned, I felt, to perfection to bring the
forvalaka under saturating fire as she attacked me. If that did not
destroy her itself it would drive her to me, directly onto
One-Eye’s black spear. I looked forward to our confrontation.
That was unusual for me. I am not one of those men who enjoys the
killing side of this business.
The ravens had the monster just an hour away. People were having
a last meal so we could get the fires all put out before it
arrived. There was a pig that Doj had killed. It went fast. Not
many vegetarians in my crew.
Murgen joined Lady and me where we were playing paper, rock,
knife with Willow Swan. “Goblin’s here. He just came
over the rim of the plain. There’s two guys with him.
That’s a good look for you.” He had not yet seen the
new Widowmaker armor in action.
“Bless the Captain and her infinite wisdom,” I
grumbled. “That was quick. Let’s keep an eye on the
little shit.” Like that needed repeating. I asked Lady,
“Should I put him to work?”
“Absolutely. Right out front. One-Eye was his best friend,
wasn’t he?”
“Murgen, when he gets down here, after we talk to him, I
want him positioned down there where I put the pair of two-inchers.
We don’t know if either of those has anything left in them.
Then have those guys fall back to cover the approach to the
shadowgate. You and Thai Dei stay with Goblin.”
Murgen offered me a carefully blank look.
“If you have to, stick him. Or bop him over the head. If
he gives you a reason.”
“Which might be?”
“I don’t know. You’re an intelligent adult.
Don’t you think you can tell if he needs smacking
around?”
“Don’t you think that that’s what those guys
with him are there for?”
I had not thought of that. It did seem probable. “Are they
men we know well enough to trust completely?”
“I couldn’t make out who they were yet when I came
over here.”
“Then the instruction stands.”
I studied Goblin intently. I had not seen him since before I had
gone underground. He had aged a lot. “Last I knew of you,
you’d deserted.”
“I’m sure One-Eye explained all that.” The
voice was the same but there was an indefinable difference in the
man that, probably, had more to do with time and the betrayals of
memory than it did with any evil new within him, but I have never
gone far wrong by being suspicious.
Goblin’s stature approached the extreme low altitude end
of normal humanity. And he was wide, despite not having eaten well
in recent years. And he had almost no hair at all anymore. Nor did
he smile readily. He seemed infinitely tired, as though he labored
under a weight of weariness that stretched all the way back into
antiquity.
My long nap in the cave of the ancients had not been all that
restful, either.
“One-Eye was a notorious liar. The way I heard it—fifteen
years after the fact—was that it was all your idea and he just got
dragged along.”
“The Captain was satisfied.” He did not argue and he
did not make light. And that was the last clue I needed. There was
no humor left in this Goblin. That was the big change.
“Good for her. You’ve arrived just in time. The
forvalaka is only minutes away. We’re going to kill it this
time. You didn’t lose any of your skills while you were
trapped, did you?”
Something stirred in the deeps of his eyes. It seemed cold and
angry but might have been just his irritation because so many pairs
of eyes peered at him so intently, so suddenly.
“Captain?”
That had to be one of the real old hands. Everyone else was out
of the habit, though many still called Lady
“Lieutenant” because Sleepy never filled that position
officially. Sahra did much of the work despite her official status
as an outsider.
Why did we set such store by these tiny distinctions?
“What?”
“There’s movement out there. Probably the Black
Hounds coursing the forvalaka. Which means the monster is getting
close.”
“Full alert. Murgen, show Goblin his post.” I
clattered and clanked. The armor was mainly costume but it was real
and it was heavy.
“Captain!” From farther away. “Down
there!” A man stood out of his concealment, pointing.
I gawked.
“Shit!” Lady exploded. “Why the hell
didn’t your crows tell us about that?” She dove for
cover.
Three flying things were headed toward us from the west, in a V
formation. My man had spotted them so far away that, despite their
speed, we had time to observe their approach. Eagle-eye there was a
guy who deserved a bonus.
The flyers had made the mistake of approaching at an altitude
calculated to avoid the notice of the Unknown Shadows. That left
them completely vulnerable to detection by the naked eye because it
silhouetted them against the clear blue sky on the one day the
weather chose to be neither overcast nor rainy.
Lady snapped. “You concentrate on the shape changer,
darling. This is a diversion. I’ll deal with it.” She
shouted orders. I boomed a few of my own.
She was wrong, of course. The forvalaka was the diversion for
those flying Voroshk—though Bowalk would be convinced that the
reverse was true. Once they moved closer the airborne sorcerers
appeared to be rippling lumps clinging to long fenceposts. They
were wrapped in and trailed acres of something resembling black
silk cloth.
They must have had some reason to believe that we would not be
able to see them. They made no effort not to be noticed.
When they slowed their approach I suspected immediately they
wanted to coordinate timing with the forvalaka—and I was
right.
A burst of screams and dark fury erupted a scant hundred yards
from our most forward post. Unknown Shadows were all over the
forvalaka. Exactly as they were supposed to be, suddenly and
briefly, at that point.
The moment Bowalk stopped charging to rip at the spooks they
faded away.
For that moment she made a wonderful target.
The fireball projectors opened up.
Unfortunately, most that worked sped their blazing,
unpredictable missiles toward the Khatovaran sorcerers. Only two
light bamboo pieces remained trained on the monster. And one of
those gave up the ghost after projecting just one bilous green ball
that flew in erractic skips and jerks but did graze the beast along
the flank scars she had gained during our previous encounter. She
took a solid hit in the shoulder from the other projector.
She could scream.
I did not look away. Lady kept talking, keeping me informed. She
told me the flyers had been surprised completely. That made me
suspect that there had been little honesty between Lisa Daele
Bowalk and the Voroshk sorcerers.
They should have known. All of them.
The Voroshk were not entirely unprepared for trouble. They had
surrounded themselves with protective spells which did shunt the
lightest fireballs aside—usually from the path of the leader into
those of the trailing two. But those spells could not turn
everything and they weakened quickly.
I was bracing to receive the charge of the forvalaka when one of
the flyers streaked across in front of me, behind Bowalk, tumbling,
all that silk aflame. A scream ended abruptly as the sorcerer
impacted somewhere to my right.
My strategy was to channel the forvalaka toward me and
One-Eye’s spear, hurting it as much as possible as it
approached. I had mounted the black spear in the end of a twelve
foot bamboo pole to give myself a little added reach. Once Bowalk
was pinned, the people with the fireballs could finish her off.
Assuming One-Eye’s spear had not lost its potency with his
death.
And assuming the people with the fireballs were not busy with
the distraction overhead. I risked a glance. The lead flyer was
circling back. Whatever he had intended to do he had not, because
he had been forced to concentrate on his defenses instead. The
remaining Voroshk had come to a halt several hundred yards east of
us, smoldering, drifting on the breeze, evidently still alive but
just barely. Before I shifted my attention back to the forvalaka I
noted that that flyer was gaining altitude very slowly.
A swarm of javelins and arrows buzzed around the werepanther.
The darts were all poisoned. Just in case a few did penetrate her
skin.
Wonder of wonders! A lot of arrows were sticking. A sort of
black haze seemed to cover the monster, making the boundary between
her and the rest of the universe appear poorly defined.
Lady was yelling. A lot. Fire discipline was critical. We would
be able to create no new fireball-spitting bamboo poles until we
were safely back in our own world. Half of those we started this
fight with were out of action already. The guys had not been in a
real fight for years but they did remember what was what. The
fireballs stopped going up even before my wife started yelling
again. Several men did take the opportunity to put fireballs into
the forvalaka, though. Poor Lisa had no friends.
She was not as invulnerable as I had expected. She began to
stagger drunkenly well before I had hoped she would respond to the
poisons. The endurance and stamina of her kind were legendary and
in our experience were exceeded only by the ferocious vitality of
the sorcerers who had belonged to the circle that had been known as
the Ten Who Were Taken. Of whom Soulcatcher and the Howler were the
last. Of whom there would be no survivors much longer.
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.
My ravens worked
hard. Within the same hour I learned that Sleepy had broken out
into our homeworld and that the forvalaka had left the Voroshk and
was rushing our way. I began issuing orders immediately. Bowalk
could not possibly arrive for hours but I wanted to make sure that
each of my companions was exactly positioned and that all of my
resources could be brought to bear almost instantly. Willow Swan
followed me around reminding me that most of the fussing I was
doing was exactly the sort of half-ass officiousness I resented
from Sleepy.
“You want to make your future home in Khatovar,
Swan?”
“Hey, don’t kill the messenger.”
I grunted unhappily, went and collected my sweetheart.
“It’s time we got dressed up. Get ready for the
show.”
“Ooh!” she said. “I’ve always had a
weakness for men in black with birds on their shoulders.”
Our preparations were complete. Our dozen surviving fireball
projectors were positioned, I felt, to perfection to bring the
forvalaka under saturating fire as she attacked me. If that did not
destroy her itself it would drive her to me, directly onto
One-Eye’s black spear. I looked forward to our confrontation.
That was unusual for me. I am not one of those men who enjoys the
killing side of this business.
The ravens had the monster just an hour away. People were having
a last meal so we could get the fires all put out before it
arrived. There was a pig that Doj had killed. It went fast. Not
many vegetarians in my crew.
Murgen joined Lady and me where we were playing paper, rock,
knife with Willow Swan. “Goblin’s here. He just came
over the rim of the plain. There’s two guys with him.
That’s a good look for you.” He had not yet seen the
new Widowmaker armor in action.
“Bless the Captain and her infinite wisdom,” I
grumbled. “That was quick. Let’s keep an eye on the
little shit.” Like that needed repeating. I asked Lady,
“Should I put him to work?”
“Absolutely. Right out front. One-Eye was his best friend,
wasn’t he?”
“Murgen, when he gets down here, after we talk to him, I
want him positioned down there where I put the pair of two-inchers.
We don’t know if either of those has anything left in them.
Then have those guys fall back to cover the approach to the
shadowgate. You and Thai Dei stay with Goblin.”
Murgen offered me a carefully blank look.
“If you have to, stick him. Or bop him over the head. If
he gives you a reason.”
“Which might be?”
“I don’t know. You’re an intelligent adult.
Don’t you think you can tell if he needs smacking
around?”
“Don’t you think that that’s what those guys
with him are there for?”
I had not thought of that. It did seem probable. “Are they
men we know well enough to trust completely?”
“I couldn’t make out who they were yet when I came
over here.”
“Then the instruction stands.”
I studied Goblin intently. I had not seen him since before I had
gone underground. He had aged a lot. “Last I knew of you,
you’d deserted.”
“I’m sure One-Eye explained all that.” The
voice was the same but there was an indefinable difference in the
man that, probably, had more to do with time and the betrayals of
memory than it did with any evil new within him, but I have never
gone far wrong by being suspicious.
Goblin’s stature approached the extreme low altitude end
of normal humanity. And he was wide, despite not having eaten well
in recent years. And he had almost no hair at all anymore. Nor did
he smile readily. He seemed infinitely tired, as though he labored
under a weight of weariness that stretched all the way back into
antiquity.
My long nap in the cave of the ancients had not been all that
restful, either.
“One-Eye was a notorious liar. The way I heard it—fifteen
years after the fact—was that it was all your idea and he just got
dragged along.”
“The Captain was satisfied.” He did not argue and he
did not make light. And that was the last clue I needed. There was
no humor left in this Goblin. That was the big change.
“Good for her. You’ve arrived just in time. The
forvalaka is only minutes away. We’re going to kill it this
time. You didn’t lose any of your skills while you were
trapped, did you?”
Something stirred in the deeps of his eyes. It seemed cold and
angry but might have been just his irritation because so many pairs
of eyes peered at him so intently, so suddenly.
“Captain?”
That had to be one of the real old hands. Everyone else was out
of the habit, though many still called Lady
“Lieutenant” because Sleepy never filled that position
officially. Sahra did much of the work despite her official status
as an outsider.
Why did we set such store by these tiny distinctions?
“What?”
“There’s movement out there. Probably the Black
Hounds coursing the forvalaka. Which means the monster is getting
close.”
“Full alert. Murgen, show Goblin his post.” I
clattered and clanked. The armor was mainly costume but it was real
and it was heavy.
“Captain!” From farther away. “Down
there!” A man stood out of his concealment, pointing.
I gawked.
“Shit!” Lady exploded. “Why the hell
didn’t your crows tell us about that?” She dove for
cover.
Three flying things were headed toward us from the west, in a V
formation. My man had spotted them so far away that, despite their
speed, we had time to observe their approach. Eagle-eye there was a
guy who deserved a bonus.
The flyers had made the mistake of approaching at an altitude
calculated to avoid the notice of the Unknown Shadows. That left
them completely vulnerable to detection by the naked eye because it
silhouetted them against the clear blue sky on the one day the
weather chose to be neither overcast nor rainy.
Lady snapped. “You concentrate on the shape changer,
darling. This is a diversion. I’ll deal with it.” She
shouted orders. I boomed a few of my own.
She was wrong, of course. The forvalaka was the diversion for
those flying Voroshk—though Bowalk would be convinced that the
reverse was true. Once they moved closer the airborne sorcerers
appeared to be rippling lumps clinging to long fenceposts. They
were wrapped in and trailed acres of something resembling black
silk cloth.
They must have had some reason to believe that we would not be
able to see them. They made no effort not to be noticed.
When they slowed their approach I suspected immediately they
wanted to coordinate timing with the forvalaka—and I was
right.
A burst of screams and dark fury erupted a scant hundred yards
from our most forward post. Unknown Shadows were all over the
forvalaka. Exactly as they were supposed to be, suddenly and
briefly, at that point.
The moment Bowalk stopped charging to rip at the spooks they
faded away.
For that moment she made a wonderful target.
The fireball projectors opened up.
Unfortunately, most that worked sped their blazing,
unpredictable missiles toward the Khatovaran sorcerers. Only two
light bamboo pieces remained trained on the monster. And one of
those gave up the ghost after projecting just one bilous green ball
that flew in erractic skips and jerks but did graze the beast along
the flank scars she had gained during our previous encounter. She
took a solid hit in the shoulder from the other projector.
She could scream.
I did not look away. Lady kept talking, keeping me informed. She
told me the flyers had been surprised completely. That made me
suspect that there had been little honesty between Lisa Daele
Bowalk and the Voroshk sorcerers.
They should have known. All of them.
The Voroshk were not entirely unprepared for trouble. They had
surrounded themselves with protective spells which did shunt the
lightest fireballs aside—usually from the path of the leader into
those of the trailing two. But those spells could not turn
everything and they weakened quickly.
I was bracing to receive the charge of the forvalaka when one of
the flyers streaked across in front of me, behind Bowalk, tumbling,
all that silk aflame. A scream ended abruptly as the sorcerer
impacted somewhere to my right.
My strategy was to channel the forvalaka toward me and
One-Eye’s spear, hurting it as much as possible as it
approached. I had mounted the black spear in the end of a twelve
foot bamboo pole to give myself a little added reach. Once Bowalk
was pinned, the people with the fireballs could finish her off.
Assuming One-Eye’s spear had not lost its potency with his
death.
And assuming the people with the fireballs were not busy with
the distraction overhead. I risked a glance. The lead flyer was
circling back. Whatever he had intended to do he had not, because
he had been forced to concentrate on his defenses instead. The
remaining Voroshk had come to a halt several hundred yards east of
us, smoldering, drifting on the breeze, evidently still alive but
just barely. Before I shifted my attention back to the forvalaka I
noted that that flyer was gaining altitude very slowly.
A swarm of javelins and arrows buzzed around the werepanther.
The darts were all poisoned. Just in case a few did penetrate her
skin.
Wonder of wonders! A lot of arrows were sticking. A sort of
black haze seemed to cover the monster, making the boundary between
her and the rest of the universe appear poorly defined.
Lady was yelling. A lot. Fire discipline was critical. We would
be able to create no new fireball-spitting bamboo poles until we
were safely back in our own world. Half of those we started this
fight with were out of action already. The guys had not been in a
real fight for years but they did remember what was what. The
fireballs stopped going up even before my wife started yelling
again. Several men did take the opportunity to put fireballs into
the forvalaka, though. Poor Lisa had no friends.
She was not as invulnerable as I had expected. She began to
stagger drunkenly well before I had hoped she would respond to the
poisons. The endurance and stamina of her kind were legendary and
in our experience were exceeded only by the ferocious vitality of
the sorcerers who had belonged to the circle that had been known as
the Ten Who Were Taken. Of whom Soulcatcher and the Howler were the
last. Of whom there would be no survivors much longer.
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.