Sweet Silver Blues

by Glen Cook

  “Old Man Tate is going to pee blue vinegar over the expenses. Why poison? It won’t do you any good.” I dragged bolts, glue, feathers, and thread together and started in.

  “Because not everybody we meet is going to be immune.”

  True. The bloodslaves would fight ferociously to defend their chances of someday joining the order of masters.

  “You know anything about the nests in the Cantard, Garrett?”

  “Who knows anything about any of them anywhere?”

  “True. They wouldn’t survive. But?”

  “There are rumors. Because of the military situation, they don’t have to be as circumspect in the Cantard. Plenty of easy prey, too. Nobody misses a soldier here or there. The nests are supposed to be bigger than usual because of that. When I was stationed down here, there were supposed to be six nests. That got reduced when some Karentine agents snatched a Venageti warlord’s daughter and let it out that she had been carried off to a nest. The warlord forgot everything else, went off to the rescue, found the nest and cleansed it, and got himself killed for his trouble. While his army was busy hunting night people, one of ours was sneaking up behind them. And that’s all I know. Except to guess that they’re happy to see so much silver leaving this part of the world.”

  “They would know everything about silver, wouldn’t they?”

  “They would know everything about what everyone was doing, that’s for sure. Which explains how Kayean was able to make Denny rich.”

  Silver is as poisonous to the night people as cobra venom is to humans. It kills them fast and makes it stick. Not much else does. Other metals bother them to a lesser degree.

  “Speaking of sneaks,” Morley said.

  Dojango appeared, burdened with poles and bow-staves and whatnot. He was tipsy. He said, “It’s set for tomorrow night.”

  “How much did you have?” Morley demanded.

  “Don’t worry, cousin. I came here clean. Actually. They’ll have the horses and gear waiting at an abandoned mill they said is three miles up something called North Creek. They said they’d only wait one night. They said they would take the animals and stuff out tomorrow morning and bring them back the next day if we don’t show. They seemed a little nervous about being out in the countryside, actually.”

  “Guess we’ll have to resurrect our centaur. Sit down and start turning those dowels into arrows. Garrett. You know this North Creek?”

  “Yes.” I was tempted to ask who he thought was in charge, but kept my mouth shut. Morley had taken care of things that needed doing.

  Dojango started making arrows. “Some interesting news started going around just before I came back up. About the time we were taking a peek into that tomb last night, Glory Mooncalled, unsupported, actually, attacked Indigo Springs.”

  “Indigo Springs?” I asked. “That’s a hundred miles farther south than the army’s ever gone. And he tried it without wizards?”

  Dojango smirked. “He not only tried it, he pulled it off, actually. Caught them sleeping. Killed Warlord Shomatzo-Zha and his whole staff in the first assault, then wiped out half their army. The rest ran off into the desert barefoot, wearing nothing but their nightshirts.”

  “Good hunting for the night people,” Morley grumbled.

  “And unicorns, centaur slavers, wild dogs, hippogriffs, and any other kind of critter that wants a piece of them,” Dojango added. “This is going to mean problems, Morley. If we have to spend much time out there.”

  “How come?”

  “If it’s true, it’s an unprecedented disaster for Venageti arms. When Glory Mooncalled changed sides, he swore vengeance on five warlords. For years he’s been waltzing them around the Cantard, making fools of them. Now he’s struck deep into traditionally safe territory and stomped one of the five the way I’d stomp a bug.”

  “So?”

  “So the Venageti are going to start flailing around like a boxer with blood in his eyes, hoping they hit something. Karentine forces will begin to move, trying to take advantage. Every nonhuman tribe in the Cantard will be out trying to profit from the confusion. In a week it’ll be so hairy it’ll be worth your life to squat to poop if you don’t have somebody to stand guard.”

  “Then we’d better move fast, hadn’t we?” Morley asked.

  A sentiment with which I agreed wholeheartedly. But my sneak to the bloodslave guarding the things in Zeck Zack’s ballroom had paid no dividends yet and I doubted that my revelation would come for days—if at all.

  40

  Zeck Zack was as cooperative as a centaur could be after his sojourn with the dead. He didn’t balk until having led us from the city via an underwall smugglers tunnel, he discovered that he had been enlisted in our enterprise for the duration.

  Morley was in a puckish mood.

  “But sir, surely you see all your caterwauling is without foundation. If you will reflect seriously you cannot help but confess the rectitude of our position. If we were to release you, as you so unreasonably insist, you would dash back through the tunnel and instantly set about wreaking evil upon us, imagining us to be the authors of your ill fortune rather than assuming that onus yourself, as is the fact.”

  I had arrayed my army in squad diamond, with a groll out front, another behind, Dojango on the right and Morley on the left. Night-blind, I marched at the heart of the formation, ready to rush to any quarter suddenly threatened. Zeck Zack stumbled along between Morley and me.

  It wasn’t long before the centaur surrendered to the inevitable. He betrayed a hitherto sequestered facet of character and began arguing with Morley in the same florid language and overblown, overly polite formulations.

  The men who had brought our horses and gear were thrilled to see us. Our advent meant they couldn’t just take everything back and sell it again. Nor, they decided after eyeballing the grolls, could they murder us and do the same.

  We parted ways immediately upon delivery. They were of the school that maintains wandering around at night could get you killed. We kept moving on the hypothesis that the wise man puts ground between himself and people who want to kill him.

  Not a lot of ground. Those horses had heard of me and just to make trouble they insisted that the sensible thing to do was stay put.

  Nobody was out to killthem. Nobody behind them, anyway.

  Their attitude didn’t improve when the sun rose and they found themselves headed into the Cantard.

  Morley accused me of anthropomorphizing and exaggerating the natural reluctance of dumb beasts to go into unfamiliar territory.

  It just goes to show they had him fooled. They’re crafty in their malice, unicorns under the skin.

  Having had no revelation, I set a course due west. Thither lay the most barren territory in the Karentine end of the Cantard, the desert of colorful buttes and mesas people in TunFaire picture when they think of the Cantard. I decided to head there because it seemed a logical place for the night people to have established a nest. It was so inhospitable as to be repugnant to most races. There were no discovered resources to bring exploiters with their guardians. Ample prey existed close by—especially when there were Zeck Zacks to do the rounding up.

  Our second day out Morley began to suspect that I was not sure of my course. He went to work on the centaur.

  “There’s no point to it, Morley,” I said. “They wouldn’t be stupid enough to trust him.”

  Doris grumbled something from behind us. I could now tell the grolls apart. I had made them wear different hats.

  “What?” I asked.

  “He says there’s a dog following us.”

  “Uh-oh.”

  “Trouble?”

  “Probably. We’ll have to ambush it to find out. Watch for a place where the wind is toward us.”

  Three possibilities suggested themselves. The dog could be a domestic stray seeking human company. Damned unlikely. It could be an outcast from a wild pack. That meant rabies. Or, most unpleasant and most likely, it could be an outrunner scoutin
g for game.

  Marsha found a likely bunch of boulders on the lower slope of the butte we were rounding. He headed up a steep, twisting alley between, into shadows and clicky echoes. Morley, Dojango, and I dismounted and followed, rehearsing the balky animals in the vulgates of several languages.

  “What did I tell you about horses, Morley?”

  Doris hunkered between rocks and started blending in.

  “Keep going, Morley. They’re sight as well as scent hunters. It’ll need to see movement.”

  Morley grumbled. Marsha grumbled back, surly, but continued climbing. A bit later there was one brief squeal of doggie outrage from below, canceled by a meaty smack.

  The horses were not reluctant going downhill. Lazy monsters.

  Doris had squashed the mongrel good. He stood over it grinning as though he had conquered an entire army troop.

  “Yech!” I said “Looks like a rat run over by a wagon. Lucky he missed its head.” I squatted, examined ears. “Well, damn!”

  “What?” Morley asked.

  “It was an outrunner. A trained outrunner. See the holes through the ears? Punched there by unicorn teeth. There’s a hunting party somewhere within a few miles of us. They’ll track the dog when he doesn’t turn up. That means we have to leave enough nasty surprises to discourage them, because we aren’t going to outrun them if they take our scent.”

  “How many?”

  “One adult male and all the females of his harem that aren’t too pregnant or cluttered up with young. Maybe some adolescent females that haven’t run away yet. Anywhere from six to a dozen. If they do catch up, concentrate on the dominant female. The male won’t get involved. He leaves the hunting and heavy stuff to the womenfolk. He saves himself for giving orders, mounting females, killing his male offspring if they stray from their mothers, and trying to kidnap the most attractive females from other harems.”

  “Sounds like a sensible arrangement.”

  “Somehow, I figured you’d feel that way.”

  “Wouldn’t killing the boss break up the harem?”

  “The way I hear, if that happened they’d just keep coming till they were dead or we all were.”

  “That is true,” Zeck Zack said. “A most despicable beast, the unicorn. Nature’s most bankrupt experiment. But one day my folk will complete their extermination . . . ” He shut up, having recalled that the rest of us held a different view of the identity of nature’s most bankrupt experiment.

  We hurried on. After a while Zeck Zack resumed talking so he could explain some of the nastier devices his folk used to booby-trap their backtrails. Some were quite gruesomely ingenious.

  He had contributed nothing but carping before. His sudden helpfulness suggested the proximity of unicorns scared the tailfeathers off him.

  41

  After pausing at a brackish stream to water and gather firewood, we scrambled up several hundred feet of scree around the knees of a monster monolith of a butte and made camp in a pocket that couldn’t be approached in silence by a mouse. The view was excellent. None of us, with our varied eyes, or even with the spyglass, could see anything moving in the twilight.

  We settled down to a small, sheltered fire. Being in the mood myself, we broached one of the baby kegs and passed it around. It held only enough for a good draft each for me, Zeck Zack, Dojango, and sips for the grolls. “Yech!” was my assessment. “Drinking that was the second mistake I’ve made in this life.”

  “I won’t be so forward as to ask what the other might have been,” Morley said, “suspecting it might have been being born.” He smirked. “I presume beer jostled on the back of a pack animal in the hot sun loses something.”

  “You might say. What possessed you, Dojango?”

  “A slick-talking salesman.”

  We sat around the fire after eating, mostly watching it die down, occasionally assaying a story or a joke, but largely tossing out notions about how we might deal with the unicorns if it came to that. I didn’t contribute much. I’d begun to fret about my revelation.

  Something must have gone wrong. There had been time for them to reach the nest, I felt. Had the bloodslave betrayed himself? Had he been found out?

  Without him prospects were poor. We could wander the Cantard looking until we were old men.

  At some point I would have to admit defeat and head north with my false affidavit. I supposed we’d give up when our stores were depleted to just enough for the overland journey to Taelreef, the friendly port nearest us after Full Harbor. Going back into the shadow of the major’s claw seemed plain foolhardy from there in the desert.

  One of the grolls was telling Morley a story. Morley kept snickering. I ignored them and began drowsing.

  “Hey. Garrett. You got to hear this story Doris just told me. It’ll tear you up.”

  I scowled and opened my eyes. The fire had died to sullen red coals casting little useful light. Even so, I could see that Morley’s words didn’t fit his expression. “Another one of those long-winded shaggy-dog fables about how the fox tricked the bear out of berries, then ate them and got the runs and diarrheaed himself to death?” That had been the most accessible of the grollish stories so far, and even it had lacked a clear point or moral.

  “No. You’ll get this one right away. And even if you don’t, laugh a lot so you don’t hurt his feelings.”

  “If we must, we must.”

  “We must.” He moved over beside me. In a low voice, he said, “It starts out like this. We’re being watched by two of the night people. Laugh.”

  I managed, without looking around. Sometimes I do all right.

  Doris called something to Marsha, who responded with hearty grollish laughter. It sounded like they had bet on my response and Marsha had won.

  “Doris and Marsha are going to jump them. Maybe they can handle them, maybe they can’t. Don’t look around. When I’m done telling the story, we’re going to get up and walk toward Doris. Chuckle and nod.”

  “I think I can manage without the stage directions.” I chuckled and nodded.

  “When Doris moves, you follow him and do whatever needs doing. I’ll go with Marsha.”

  “Dojango?” I slapped my knee and guffawed.

  “He watches the centaur.”

  Zeck Zack had backed himself into a tight place where nothing could come at him from behind. His legs were folded under him; his chin rested upon his folded arms; he appeared to be sound asleep.

  “Ready?” Morley asked.

  I put on my hero face that said I was a fearless old vampire killer from way back. “Lead on, my man. I’m right behind you.”

  “Big laugh.”

  I hee-hawed like it was the one about the bride who didn’t know the bird had to be cleaned before it went into the roaster. Morley pasted a grin on and rose. I did so too, and tried shaking some of the stiffness out of my legs. We walked toward Doris.

  Doris and Marsha moved with astonishing swiftness. I had run only two steps when I glimpsed a dark flutter among the rocks. Doris hit it. A great thrashing and flailing started. Another broke out behind me. I didn’t look back.

  When I got there, Doris had the vampire in a fierce bear hug, facing away from him. Sinews popped and crackled. Strong as he was, the groll was having trouble keeping the hold. Blood leaked from talon slashes on his hide. The blood smell maddened the vampire further. His fangs ripped the air an inch from the groll’s arm.

  Let that devil sink one and Doris was done for. It would inject a soporific venom capable of felling a mastodon.

  I stood with a knife in one hand and silver half mark in the other, wondering what to do. Whenever a foot flailed out at me, I tried to cut the tendon above the heel.

  Suddenly there was a flicker of light. Dojango was feeding the fire.

  Doris pushed the vampire’s ankles between his knees. I flung forward, trying to drive my blade into one of the devil’s knees, to hobble it. It twisted half an inch. My point hit bone and cut downward through flesh harder than s
ummer sausage.

  A wound to the bone, a foot long, and when I was done about three drops of liquid leaked out. The vampire loosed one flat, shrill keen of pain and rage. Its eyes burned down at me, trying to catch mine with their deadly hypnotic gaze.

  I slammed the half mark into the wound before it could start healing.

  It was done so quickly, deftly, and instinctively that even now it amazes me.

  The vampire froze for many seconds. Then dead lips peeled back and loosed a howl that terrified the stones and must have been audible twenty miles away; immortality betrayed. I clamped both hands on the wound to keep the coin in place. The night beast bent back like a man in the last throes of tetanus, hissed, gurgled, shook so violently we barely held on.

  The flesh beneath my hands began to soften. Around the coin it turned to jelly. It oozed between my fingers.

  Doris threw the thing down. The fire painted his great green face in light and shadow patches of hatred. The vampire lay among the rocks, still hissing, clawing at its leg. It was a very strong one. The poison should have finished it sooner. But they’re all strong, or they couldn’t be what they are.

  Doris snagged a boulder twice as long as me and smashed the thing’s head.

  For several seconds I watched flesh turn to jelly and slide off bones. Then, as though the vampire’s end was a signal, my revelation came.

  I knew a direction.

  When daylight came . . .

  If daylight came. Morley and Marsha were embattled still. Doris was on his way to help. He collected his ten-foot club as he went. I shook all over and went to help myself.

  Somehow, as we approached, the second vampire broke loose. It hit the ground, then hurled itself through the air in one of those hundred-foot bounds that have led the ignorant to believe they can fly.

  The leap brought it straight toward me.

  I don’t think it was intentional. I think it jumped blind, with the fire in its eyes. But he saw me as he came. His mouth opened, his fangs gleamed, his eyes flared, his claws reached . . .

  “He” or “it”? It had been male when it was alive. It could still sire its own kind. But did it deserve . . . ?