The Nine

by Molles, DJ

  Perry rose to his feet, and padded after Whimsby, towards the cave entrance.

  “Bipedal,” Whimsby said, his voice just audible over the trickling of the water farther back in the cave, the rush of the river outside. “Humanoid, I believe. Alone.”

  “How far off?” Perry looked over his shoulder as he navigated the jutting rocks at the floor of the cave. Stuber crouched, just a silhouette with his back to the fire.

  “A hundred yards. Perhaps less.”

  “What direction?”

  “Difficult to triangulate from in here.”

  They stopped at the mouth of the cave, Whimsby in front of Perry and holding out a hand to stay him. “Let me venture out and get a better fix on what’s approaching. You stay here.”

  Perry nodded.

  Whimsby lowered himself to the ground in an odd sort of four-legged posture, and sidled out of the cave, hugging the ground like a scuttling crab. He used the cover of a few larger stones, and seemed to be focused to the right of the cave—to the west. He neared the waters edge and then, without a single errant splash, slid his entire body into the water, so that only his wide-brimmed hat and his eyes remained above it.

  Perry stared at the strange mech, wondering how long he could remain submerged? He didn’t need oxygen to survive. Could he swim underwater indefinitely?

  The moon had risen, bright and waxing. The godsmoon. The face of Primus himself, turning away from the earth, and it made Perry wonder again about the song that Whimsby had sung, about the king who had run away.

  The moonlight cast the trees into dark shadows and glinted off the face of the moving waters. Only the black shape of Whimsby’s hat sat on that otherwise undisturbed surface, still and silent and waiting.

  After about thirty seconds, the hat began to move again, back towards the shore. Whimsby climbed out of the water, still low to the ground, and shimmied back the way he’d come. Sodden and dripping, a state that would have left any normal man quaking with cold chills, Whimsby straightened beside Perry.

  “Slight problem,” he said, pointing to the west. “A single paladin is approaching. Seventy-five yards. West, northwest.”

  Perry’s pulse started to slam, causing his vision to darkle. He blinked rapidly, sucking in a quiet breath and stilling himself so that he could remain in The Calm—or Confluence, as it was known.

  “I believe it is the same one from yesterday that pursued us on the skiff.” Whimsby smiled. “She is definitely determined.”

  “She?” Perry gaped.

  Whimsby nodded. “Yes. Definitely a female.”

  Had he ever even seen a female demigod? Well, obviously, he’d seen this one yesterday, but he hadn’t realized it was a female. He tried to think back to the demigods that he’d seen from a distance, hovering on their command modules, overseeing their bloody battles. Had any of them been females? Maybe he’d just never paid attention.

  “Okay,” Perry breathed. “I’ll try to hold her off. You get the others out of the cave and down the river.”

  Whimsby looked at him. “Are you sure splitting up is the wisest choice?”

  Perry nodded. “It’s the only choice, Whimsby. You can’t stay inside my shield, and your revolvers will be useless against her. She’ll destroy you first, and the others will only slow me down. I need to be able to move on my own without trying to keep everyone in my shield.”

  A slight grind of sand on rock.

  Perry spun, finding Stuber over his shoulder.

  “I happen to agree with Whimsby,” Stuber whispered. “You shouldn’t try to stop her by yourself. You’ve been training, but she’s been using these weapons all her life. You’re outclassed, Perry.”

  Perry gritted his teeth. “I can’t fight when I’m worried about protecting you all, and you won’t do any good against her. The rifles won’t be enough firepower to take her shields down.”

  Stuber nodded. “You’re right. I suggest that we run. You included.”

  “She’s fifty yards away now,” Whimsby noted. “She seems to know where we are. We should go now.”

  Perry squared himself to the ex-legionnaire. “Stuber. You have to take them. Keep them alive. We’ll rendezvous down the river somewhere. Stay on the banks and wait for me. If I’m not there in a day, just assume I’m dead.”

  Stuber grimaced and looked out at the moonlit river. “And then what, Shortstack?”

  Perry shrugged. “Then you’ll have to decide for yourselves what you want to do next.”

  Stuber frowned, then reached out and touched Perry’s wounded shoulder. He instinctively winced against it—and then realized that it didn’t hurt. “What about your shoulder?”

  Perry looked at it briefly. He couldn’t see the flesh under his rent shirt, but he rotated his shoulder and flexed his arm. “It’s feeling much better. I don’t think the wound was bad to begin with.”

  A twig snapped somewhere out in the darkness. They all heard it.

  Perry shoved Stuber. “No more time. I’m going.”

  Stuber didn’t answer, and Perry didn’t give him time. He slid out of the cave, rounding the rock wall as his feet stepped down in to sand and then into water. He felt his clasp in his pocket, felt the flowing red, and forced himself to stay in it. Stay calm.

  Shadows greeted him. Dappled moonlight. The trunks of trees, and the smooth surfaces of water-honed rocks, half in silvery light, and half in pitch black.

  Behind him, he heard the quiet shuffling and murmured whispers of his friends, rapidly gathering for an escape.

  He needed to put more distance between himself and the cave. Give them a chance to slip out unseen.

  He strode forward into the night, his eyes straining through the darkness to see something—anything—through the confusion of shapes that all seemed to melt into nothingness in his vision.

  He activated his shield. The air around him crackled and glowed, very faintly. A dim, golden light.

  He stopped, perhaps twenty yards from the cave, still unable to see anything. The slight glow from his shield and the way it lit up the otherwise-invisible dust motes in the air caused a visual obscurity that made it even harder to see in the dark.

  She must be close.

  He listened, stilling his breath in his chest, so that the only sound was his heart, and the rushing of the river.

  Beyond that, silence. Not even a nightbird to call out, or an insect to chirp.

  “Percival McGown,” came a voice, close by.

  Perry jerked, honing in on the direction of the voice, but still seeing nothing. The blade of his longstaff shimmered green, enough to illuminate the ground at his feet, but not much else.

  “Or is it Perry?” the voice asked, soft. Feminine. Not the grating growl that he’d come to expect from a demigod. “I’ve heard both used, interchangeably. Which is it?”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Perry said, his voice strong and clear, as he pointed his longstaff in the direction that he’d heard the demigod. “Both. Neither. Take your pick.”

  “Do you go by McGown?” the voice wondered. “You know that you’re not Cato’s son. Surely you’ve discovered that much.”

  “Why the small talk?” Perry asked, hostility creeping into his tone. “You just fucking with me? Or trying to distract me?”

  “Is it working?”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. We won’t know until we try to kill each other.” He lowered his longstaff a hair, trying to see beyond the interfering glow of the energized blade. “What about you, paladin? What do I call you?”

  “Mala,” the voice answered. Casual. A cat playing with a mouse. “Strange to think about, Perry, but you’re just as much a member of House Batu as you are of McGown. By marriage, at least. In fact, I suppose that would make me your step-mother, in a way.”

  Perry frowned, piecing it together. “You’re Selos’s wife, then? That’s why you’re after me.”

  “There are a great many reasons why I’m after you, Perry. A sordid, arranged marriage to Selos hardly
makes the list.”

  Behind him, Perry registered a scuff of stone, and he almost whirled on it, but then realized that Mala’s voice was still dead ahead. The scuffing stone must’ve been one of his friends, sliding out of the cave.

  “Is that your compatriots? Fleeing the scene?”

  “Don’t worry about them,” Perry shot back. “Worry about me.”

  “I’m hardly worried, dear boy.” A flash of light came from directly ahead of Perry and he cringed, expecting the blow of an energy blast, but it didn’t come. A shape stepped out from behind a thick tree, the shimmering dome of energy encompassing it, the blade of the longstaff glowing—much brighter than Perry’s—and casting the shape of the figure in stark relief.

  She was tall. As tall as Stuber, but slimmer. She wore the same armor that he’d always seen demigods wear, and but for the graceful line of hips and breasts, he wouldn’t have been able to tell her gender. Until, of course, his eyes ranged to her face.

  Mala wore no helm. Dark hair sat braided over her shoulder, a few wisps hanging free and highlighted by the glow of her longstaff. She was beautiful, Perry noted, with a sort of bitter, clinical detachment. A beautiful demigod, come down from the heavens, to strike this peon dead.

  In one smooth twitch of movement, Perry dropped his shield and let out a blast from his longstaff. The second it left the muzzle of his weapon, he activated his shield again. All in the blink of an eye.

  But even faster, Mala did something that Perry had not expected at all. She dropped her own shield, responding to his attack as smoothly as if she’d read it in his mind. She angled her energized blade and caught the bolt, deflecting it.

  The bolt rammed off into the woods, shattering a thin pine to splinters in a gout of fire and smoke.

  Shit. I didn’t even know the blade could do that.

  When Perry’s eyes came back to her, Mala had her shield up again. She’d defeated his attack, and it hadn’t cost her anything from her shield.

  Outclassed, Stuber’s voice rang through Perry’s head. He swallowed hard, realizing that Stuber may have been right, and now it was too late to heed that advice.

  Mala might have moved casually, but her gaze was anything but. In the green glow of her longstaff, her eyes were wide open and focused on him. Not fearful. Only watchful. Ready.

  She began to step sideways. Circling him like a fighter in a ring.

  Perry followed her with his longstaff, but his feet remained rooted to the same spot.

  “Is this what you want, Perry?” she asked him, her eyes focused not on keeping eye-contact, but instead seeming to be centered on his chest.

  Smart, Perry thought, feeling his stomach tighten even more. Eyes on the chest let you see the attack coming quicker. Watching your opponent’s eyes could let them trick you. But Perry was a fast learner—perhaps his only, small advantage. He chose to mimic her, keeping his eyes down on her chest, his focus broad, waiting for her movements.

  “What I want?” Perry said, making sure that the words didn’t distract him from any sudden movements. “I want to be left alone.”

  “Left alone?” she echoed, changing directions as smoothly as a big cat, now circling the other direction. “So that you and your friends can go to the East Ruins? So that you can try to dismantle the big, bad demigods, those tyrants that keep you poor peasants down?”

  “Well. Yes,” Perry said, getting his feet moving now. “Seemed like a solid idea until you said it like that.”

  “I see your focus has shifted. You’re able to talk and watch me at once. That’s good. But what I meant was, do you really want to fight me, Perry? I can guarantee you that it won’t end well for you.”

  “Yeah, well, it doesn’t seem like I have much of a choice now, huh?”

  Quick as a snake striking, Mala jolted to the right, and then as Perry jerked to follow her movement, she spun to the left. Her shield reformed itself in the blink of an eye, now a solid wall rather than a dome. She pointed the muzzle of her longstaff just around the side of that wall and sent a blast that Perry had no hope of deflecting in the micro-second before it struck his shield.

  Perry winced, his shield weakening. It was still difficult to get a sense for exactly how much it had been damaged, but he knew he couldn’t continue to take shots from her. Two more? Three more? After that, he’d be defenseless.

  By the time the bolt of energy had crackled across his shield and he was able to see past the rippling effects, Mala was fully encased in her shield again.

  “Selos wasn’t as good as you,” Perry said, a little breathless.

  “Selos was an idiot and a boor,” she commented. “Always a hammer when a pin-prick would have sufficed. And he never estimated his opponents correctly. Which turned out to be his downfall.”

  “But you don’t underestimate me,” Perry scoffed, though he felt like she was well within her rights to do so, given the fact that he was far out of his depth.

  “You’ve gotten this far, which means you’re smart, resourceful, and brave. But you do lack technique.”

  “I’ve been practicing.”

  “Not nearly enough.” Mala stopped, putting her hand on her hip, her longstaff hanging low and unthreatening. She extinguished her shield. “You want to duel, halfbreed? Let’s do it properly. No shields. No trading shots. Blade to blade.”

  Perry left his shield up. “Yeah, no thanks.” He felt his anger rising, which was good in one aspect—it kept the fear from pulling him out of The Calm. But it also made him reactive. And he knew he needed to be better than that if he wanted a chance.

  Mala chuffed softly. “Suit yourself, little halfbreed.”

  She thrust the muzzle of her longstaff out and spewed green fire at him—a rapid, triple-blast, one on the tail of the other. Perry could only hunker down as they slammed into his shield, his reactions not fast enough to try to deflect them with his blade.

  The life of his shield dwindled low, guttering like a candle running out of wax.

  The crackles of energy swarmed over his protective dome, leaching the strength from it.

  Beyond it, Mala shot into the air, her shield around her in a perfect sphere, making an odd thumping sound. She rocketed over his head, slamming down on the rock face above and behind Perry.

  Perry sprinted for cover—a large tree that likely wouldn’t take more than one blast, but it was all Perry had. He skidded in behind the tree, his mind racing, his breath coming fast. He couldn’t keep doing this. One more shot would kill his shield. And the shot after that would kill him.

  Unless he could learn to deflect like she did. A big ask, in a small amount of time.

  Stall.

  “Why do you want to kill me so bad?” Perry shouted.

  No answer came.

  A horrified thought crashed through Perry’s head. Had she simply left him behind, going after Stuber and Teran and Sagum? Perry fought to maintain his Confluence, but couldn’t resist peering out from behind the tree.

  He had just enough time to see her there, standing atop the rocks, before she let loose another blast.

  Perry hit the dirt. The tree above his head shattered into toothpicks, and he heard the awful groan of the top section of the tree coming down, thrashing through the branches high over their heads.

  Perry rolled right, not knowing which direction the tree was about to smash down in, but he had to pick a direction. The world spun in his vision, his shield following him perfectly, and then sparking into gouts of flame as he rolled into the side of a pine. The bark spattered and caught flame immediately.

  The falling tree hit the ground with a rumble that Perry felt in his chest as he hugged dirt, big limbs slashing into the top of his protective dome and sheering off in explosions of wood.

  He thrust himself to his feet, the vestiges of his energy shield carving a path through the branches that crowded him. He searched for Mala, and saw her coming in a blaze of light, roaring towards him like a massive ball shot out of a cannon, her shield oblite
rating everything in her path.

  She slammed into him. The impact of one shield on the other made a sound like a thunderclap, and Perry went flying backwards. He was cognizant of only one thing as he flew through the air: his shield was gone.

  A tree halted his flight with a bone-jarring crunch, and he felt his spinal column crackle threateningly, a sharp pain lancing through his ribs.

  He collapsed to the ground, face-first, the wind knocked out of his lungs. He couldn’t breathe—his attempts coming out in a long, wheezing groan—but he had to stand. It was stand and fight, or die right there. So he planted the butt of his longstaff into the dirt and pulled himself to his feet again. Standing erect made the pain in his side even worse.

  Mala streaked towards him. Her shield disengaged. Her feet traversed the ground, leaping from shattered stump to felled tree, zig-zagging expertly as though this were an obstacle course she’d run countless times.

  Perry leveled his longstaff and fired a bolt of energy at her, but she deflected it in midair, then landed on her feet one pace from Perry. He tried to summon another energy bolt—to fire them rapidly like she had—but before he could sense the buildup, Mala had spun around, her braided hair twirling around her, and she scooped his feet out from under him with the butt of her longstaff.

  He hit the ground again, this time on his back, which seemed to have the opposite affect as slamming into the tree—it knocked the wind back into him.

  He gasped, tried to bring his longstaff around to defend himself.

  Mala struck out with her boot, the toe catching right on Perry’s hand, crunching his knuckles and causing the longstaff to fly out of his grip. It went dark the second it left his flesh, and then tumbled down somewhere in the leaves.

  Perry watched the arc of its flight, trying to get a fix on where it had landed, and roll towards it, but a boot slammed into his chest, pinning him to the ground. When he jerked his eyes back to Mala, he found the glimmering blade of her longstaff sizzling in the air, an inch from his chin.

  His chest heaving, his last breaths ripping in and out of his lungs, Perry instinctively raised his hands. He did not want to surrender. He wanted to try and wrestle the longstaff out of Mala’s grip. But his hands acted almost on their own, his brain searching for answers, wondering if a way out might become clear to him if he just stayed alive a few more seconds.