by Glen Cook
“Let’s not sit here talking about it while they just prance up and grab us.” “Good thinking.” We got moving.
Zeck Zack and his people didn’t interfere with us at all, though I’m certain their scouts knew where we were. We hastened eastward as fast as we could hoof it, with me sort of hanging around the rear, staring at backs, wondering which, if any, was the major.
News of Glory Mooncalled’s adventure had reached every cranny of the Cantard. The land was coming to life. Three times we went into hiding while soldiers passed. They were all headed south. The smallest lot were Venageti rangers. No telling what they were up to when they heard and decided to head home. I didn’t care as long as they didn’t want to include me in their game of kings.
Morley and I both watched our companions more closely than we did the rangers. The major, if he was with us, didn’t give himself away. Not that I expected him to, but I wasn’t missing any chances.
We kept on until everyone was stumbling, and kept on still. What Zeck Zack might want to do with us we had no idea, but he had no cause to be friendly. And there were the other perils of the Cantard, which Glory Mooncalled had conjured to life like a shower livens the plants of the desert. It seemed we couldn’t go five miles without some sort of alarm. The nights were more friendly than the days.
We reached the abandoned mill without falling into misfortune. I began to feel optimistic. “We’ll rest here a day or two,” I announced.
Some of my comrades by circumstance wanted to argue. I told them, “Take it up with the grolls. If you can whip them, go do what you want.” I wasn’t feeling a bit democratic.
The only would-be sneak-off was Rose.
I had to give the little witch credit for being stubborn and determined. No matter what, she was going to keep after Denny’s legacy until she got it. She worked on Morley, but he had reached a state where he had nothing on his mind but watercress sandwiches. She worked on Saucerhead, but he had signed on with my squad and the gods themselves couldn’t have moved him until I released him. She worked on Vasco, but he was completely introspective, interested only in going home. She worked on Spiney Prevallet, but he said he’d had his fill of pie in the sky by and by and told her to go to hell.
She decided to take the future by the horns herself.
I caught her with a sharpened piece of firewood trying to decide the best place to stick it into the bundle containing Kayean. I’m afraid I lost my temper. I sprawled her across my lap and applied the stick to her posterior.
Morley said, “You should have left her with her spiritual family.”
She gave him a look to sear steel.
I think his remark hurt her more than the spanking, though a person of her temperament was the sort to turn the thrashing into a grudge worth nursing for years. It sent her off to sit alone and reweave her skein of self-justification. Come the next night, while we were waiting for Dojango to come back with a report on our standing in the city, she decided to go her own way.
Morley reported her defection. “Shall we let her go?”
“I guess not. Chances are she’d get herself enslaved or killed, and I have an obligation to her family. We know she won’t learn from experience, so there’s no point letting her suffer for education’s sake. And if she did get through, she’d just set us up for something unpleasant.”
Tinnie was sitting beside me, her shoulder half an inch from mine. We’d been rehashing those things men and women talk about when they have other things on their minds.
“You really ought to ditch her, Garrett.” Morley sighed.
Tinnie said, “His conscience wouldn’t let him. And neither would yours, Morley Dotes.”
He laughed. “Conscience? What conscience? I’m too sophisticated to have one and Garrett is too simple.”
I said, “Go get her, Morley. And put hobbles on her.”
Once he had gone, Tinnie asked, “Would he really let her . . . ?”
“Pay him no nevermind, Red. We talk that way. But it’s just talk.”
Rose was not fighting when Marsha lugged her back into the circle of light cast by our fire. The fight was out of her. Morley came to report, “She ran into something out there. We scared it off. She won’t say what it was, but you might consider a double watch and maybe a prayer for Dojango.”
“Right.” I took care of it and resumed my seat, considering Rose across the fire, feeling moody.
Tinnie touched my arm and said, “Garrett, when we get home . . . ”
“If we get home is soon enough to talk about when we get home.” It came out more curt than I’d intended. She fell into a silence as sullen as my own.
51
Dojango waited until afternoon to return. His report was exactly what I wanted to hear. Nobody in Full Harbor was the least interested in a band of nosies from TunFaire. Nothing unusual had taken place while we were away. All the talk was about Glory Mooncalled and the epic dust-up taking shape down south. Our things were still at the inn, being preserved by an innkeeper who felt kindly disposed because we had left him the clothing and possessions of those thugs we’d thrown into the streets mother-naked.
“Or so he says,” Dojango editorialized. “Actually.”
“We’ll watch him. Let’s get it packed up. I want to hit that tunnel as soon after dark as we can. Did you make the other arrangements?”
“No trouble. They’ll be delivered to the back door of the inn. They should be waiting when we get there.”
“What about shipping complications?”
“Shouldn’t be any, actually. It’s done all the time. Every ship headed north carries a few for families that can afford it. Strictly routine, actually.”
“Good. Morley. One problem left, and tonight would be the time for it to make itself apparent.” We wandered away from the others slowly, keeping our backs toward them.
“You have any candidate in mind?” he asked.
“Pressed, I’d have to call Vasco’s name. But he’s the only one I know well enough to know he’s not acting normal. And he’s got good enough reasons.”
“You have a move in mind? A test?”
“Right after we come out of the tunnel. I want Dojango, Marsha, and Saucerhead to go through first. You and me and Doris will bring up the rear. If we load the rest down with what has to be carried, they’ll be surrounded and have their hands full when it happens.”
“You could go to work for the kingpin, scheming like that.”
“I’ve got to bring it off before it’s any good. This isn’t some stupid kid we can pluck like some ripe pear. He’s going to have moves and plans of his own.”
“We wouldn’t have it any other way, would we?”
We ventured back. During the afternoon’s course we passed the word on the night’s festivities. Though some were not pleased with my dispositions, they were all realistic enough to understand that I would put people I trusted most where they would do the most good.
That was the disposition we assumed when we broke camp, except for having the grolls take turns pulling the wagon. I told Saucerhead he could ride until we neared the wall, but he insisted that he had healed enough to hike. Vasco and the wounded soldier also hoofed it, saying they wanted to keep loose. Morley and I trudged along eating everybody’s dust.
A time or two I moved up to make sure Kayean’s wrappings were holding. After the second check I dropped back and said, “I’ve noticed you haven’t done anything to keep your prize from starving.”
Kayean threw up almost everything I gave her. When I unwrapped her, I had to make certain her hands and feet were bound. I had clipped her claws first chance after we had come out of the nest. She still had her teeth and the hunger was upon her, though when she was rational she was game enough in battling the disease.
“You also notice he’s gone into the long sleep that gets them when they’re starving. He’ll last till we make TunFaire. And that’s all I need.”
Much as I disliked the deed itself, I now suspected
that Morley had done the best thing by killing Clement. Clement’s death had freed Kayean.
Without a word having been exchanged I somehow understood that she had marched through the doorway to hell only because that was the pathway her husband had taken and she was a wither-thou-goest kind of lady. For his part, I think Clement made his move sixty percent out of conscience and remorse, forty percent out of spite. Kayean wasn’t wearing white because she was his bride. One of the masters had taken her from him.
I hoped she hadn’t been forced to bear one of their soulless brats. I didn’t believe any woman could recover from that.
It all went perfectly, with rescuees carrying our prizes into the tunnel. It was spacious enough for the wagon, but I didn’t want to be found roaming the streets with army property I couldn’t explain having. We could hire something on the other side.
Morley and I were fifty feet from the tunnel’s end, with Doris behind us, when it happened.
Up ahead Marsha started booming his lungs out.
“Damn it!” Morley swore. He translated, “Ambush. Nine men, one woman. Striped-sail bunch. They must have made Dojango while he was in town.”
“I wanted to hold on to this forever,” I said, dipping into a boot. “Grab on to me. Tell Doris, too.”
Beyond the tunnel’s end Rose started yelling. “Garrett! Help! Morley!”
Morley muttered, “Shut up, you stupid bitch.”
“Stupid? She figures she just solved her whole problem for nothing.”
Rose’s yelling stopped with a smack so loud we heard it back in the tunnel.
“Against the wall,” I said. They held onto me. I ripped the paper spell open. Two seconds later four guys with swords galloped into the tunnel, ready for anything. They looked around and didn’t find it.
One yelled, “Ain’t nothing in here.”
I didn’t hear the reply. They withdrew.
“What now?” Morley breathed.
“As long as we move slowly and don’t make any noise or any sudden moves, they won’t see us or know where we are. We’ll slide out and see what’s going on.”
What was going on was that the two thugs I knew from the striped-sail ship, with a woman who appeared to be in charge, and seven other men, had my folks lined up against a wall in the storage basement where the tunnel began. Marsha they kept contained with a ballista almost as heavy as a field piece.
In half a minute their questions made it obvious they were after a specific person, but didn’t mind trampling a few others along the way. My folks just looked at them, baffled, except Rose, who put on a great crying act. I gathered that Tinnie’s was the hand that had reddened her cheek.
“Well?” Morley whispered. “We can take them if Doris gets that ballista.”
“We don’t need any blood in it. We’ll bluff. You go over there and yell for everybody to freeze when Doris busts up the ballista. I’ll put a knife to the lady’s throat. Take these.” I gave him a couple of throwing stars from my collection of un-Garrett-like weapons.
He needed no further explanation. He told Doris what to do. We parted. I drifted toward the lady commander, no doubt the woman about whom Master Arbanos had been so dubious. Dojango had begun yammering at her, explaining that everyone else in the several parties that had gone out of the city had been killed by unicorns or vampires.
“What the hell was that?” asked one of the men at the ballista, whirling around. “Skipper, is this place haunted?”
A ballista went up in the air and shattered against the joists supporting the floor above.
Morley yelled, “Everybody freeze!”
I laid the edge of my knife on the woman’s throat and whispered, “This is your friendly spook. Don’t even breathe fast. Good. Now, I suggest you have your boys put down their tools.”
Doris pounded three or four men out of sheer youthful exuberance. Morley tripped and head-kicked Ugly One when he took a notion to turn on me.
The lady gave the order. And added, “You’re interfering with royal business. I’ll have your—”
“Not at all. I have a damned good idea what you’re looking for and I’ll be happy to help you find it. I just don’t want my people getting chewed up while you’re getting your man. Do you have some way to pick him out of a crowd?”
“Pick who out?” Oh, she wanted to play coy.
“Are you the only person ever born with a brain? This is your stalking horse talking. I figured your crowd out a month ago,” I lied. I backed her up a careful five steps and in plain voice vented the moment’s inspiration. “I also figured out that Big One there is on the other side. He tried to kill me in Leifmold, which would have just ruined your whole scheme.”
Big One started moving toward the nearest weapon.
Two throwing stars hit him, followed in an instant by a grollish fist.
The woman said, “That explains one hell of a lot. I thought we were snakebit. All right. What do you want, Garrett?”
“For me and mine to be left the hell alone. Take your man if you can pick him out. I’m all for that because I don’t like what he’s got planned for me. Hell. I’ll narrow it down for you. I’ve been working on it. I know who he’s not. If he’s anybody. He could have been killed out there. A lot of men were.”
I gave orders. The women, Saucerhead, Dojango, and Marsha, the latter three lugging Kayean and Valentine, moved to one side. I said, “Do your shopping among what’s left.”
“Will you let me go?”
“Why not? You don’t seem to be a suicidal lady.”
“You’re going to find out if you call me lady one more time.”
Morley snickered. “You’ve made a friend for life, Garrett.”
What she had to say to him does not bear repetition. She asked me, “What’s in those bundles?”
“What I came after.” I turned her loose.
Morley was flickering around the edges because of too many hasty movements. So was Doris. I had stayed slow, though, so I figured I was still good. I tiptoed after the woman who was not a lady.
She examined the crop, dipped a hand into a pocket, brought out an amulet built around a piece of amber with an insect embedded.
Spiney Prevallet went from somnolent indifference to explosive fury so suddenly I would have been astounded if I’d had time. He knocked the amulet away with one hand and seized the woman’s throat with the other.
I pricked the wrist of that hand with my knife, sliced his cheek, then got back out of the way because that—pardon the expression—lady was going to work.
I found a part of me glad the villain had not been Vasco.
Spiney ran for it. The woman snagged her amulet and raced after him. Her minions—those still upright—did nothing because they weren’t sure what we would let them do.
“Fade,” Morley suggested.
“Yes.”
Dojango was many things, some of them things I didn’t like, but he was not stupid. The moment he saw some folks preoccupied, he started getting other people out of there.
Spiney tried for the exit himself and ran head-on into a grollish fist. The woman jumped him immediately, forced the amulet into his mouth while he was still groggy.
He began to change.
I have heard that a shapeshifter has no true shape of its own. That it does not even have a sex as we know it, but just splits into unequal masses when it comes time to reproduce. I don’t know.
Spiney changed into the major, then into a character who looked vaguely piratical, then into a woman vaguely familiar, apparently regressing through identities assumed in the past.
Everyone else was out. I wasn’t curious enough to stay and see the ultimate form the Venageti agent assumed. I had no reason to presume any excess of good will on the part of the striped-sail people.
52
It was a dawn-threatening hour when we reached the inn. I had let the soldiers go their ways, betting they would be so happy to get back alive that they’d cause no immediate grief. Morley a
nd I had an argument. He thought we should have fed them to the striped-sail gang, who would have kept them busy answering questions while we got out of town.
A brief interview with the innkeeper confirmed my suspicions in that direction. He had kept our quarters open and had maintained our gear intact at the behest of the striped-sail crowd, who had hoped we would come back so they could catch our trail again. Which they had done with Dojango’s visit.
I slept like the dead for five hours, then went out looking for transportation home. My luck was limited. I went back and announced, “First ship with room enough for all of us doesn’t leave till day after tomorrow. The Glory Mooncalled situation has the fainter-hearted civilians heading north. The scow I did find is a garbage pail, but the next best chance means waiting more than a week.” I did not mention that even this sleaziest of transports had stretched my remaining expense money to its limit. We’d all get hungry if it was a very long passage home.
I sat beside Morley. “I’ll never take another job that takes me out of TunFaire, even if there’s a hundred thousand in it for me.”
“Speaking of money, when are we going to get paid? It’s not critical to me because I didn’t sign on for the pay. But the triplets did and they’re starting to wonder.”
“It’ll have to wait till I can corner Tate and gouge him again. I committed what I had left to getting us home.”
“They’re trusting you, Garrett. Don’t disappoint them.”
“You know me better. I’ll get my money out of Tate, one way or another, and you guys will get yours. Dojango! Where are those boxes?” He’d just come in. “You didn’t drink up that money I gave you, did you?”
“Actually, I just came to tell you they’re here, on a wagon out back. The landlord is having a fit that they might upset his customers if we bring them inside.”
Morley grumbled, “I’ll go have a fit of dancing on his head.”
We put our prizes into their caskets that night. They were the standard, cheap shipper coffins folks from up north bought to bring their sons home from the war. Dojango admitted that he had gotten some drinking done. He had gotten a buy on the coffins because the long quiet spell in the Cantard had caused a depression in the Full Harbor casket industry.