Demontech: Gulf Run

by David Sherman

  The ground leveled off at the too-close horizon and the road forked. One fork went straight north, and the landscape in that direction rapidly became barren and sere. The other fork wandered east just inside the parkland, but within view of the sere ground to the north. In the distance they could make out the beginning of an escarpment.

  Haft took in a deep breath and forced it out. The landscape resembled another road forking, where one fork led to the arid Low Desert and the other into the lush forest at the root of the Princedon Peninsula. It wasn’t identical, though. Here, the lush forest was to the rear.

  “We go that way,” Haft said, pointing east. “Let’s go back and get our people.” The quartet turned their horses and trotted back, once more at ambush depth from the road for as long as the undergrowth allowed.

  Captain bal Ofursti bore a fury that wouldn’t allow him to head west. He was an officer! Not only an officer, but the third ranking officer of the Earl’s Guards! Those two Frangerians had no right to banish him from the caravan. How was he to eat out here alone? He was no commoner who could be expected to hunt and forage for himself, he was an officer to be served by commoners! He should be in command of the caravan. And the Dartmutter women—the earl’s concubines and their handmaids—rightfully belonged to him and whomever he gave them to, not to those insubordinate enlisted Frangerians!

  He had no idea by what magic those two had drawn the others under the spell that made them commanders. Why, they even had sergeants obeying them! Why, even an officer of the Penston Conquestors obeyed them! That was intolerable. Absolutely intolerable! It had to be magic that gave them command. It was simply not possible for two such lowborns to have command over so many—including an officer, even if the officer was only a Penston lieutenant.

  Bal Ofursti knew nothing of how to use magic, other than to place orders with magicians, and he’d never even done that. But he did know how to defeat magic. One defeated magic by killing those who used it. So the solution to his problem was obvious—he would kill those two insufferable Frangerians! And then assume his rightful place—in command of the refugee caravan. He would reclaim possession of the Dartmutter women, and bel Hrofa-Upp would be his, as she should be. And he’d take that golden woman for himself as well—and any other woman of the caravan he wished!

  But how to kill the Frangerians? Spinner might be difficult, since he rarely left the caravan. A direct confrontation in the caravan wouldn’t meet with success; bal Ofursti knew Spinner’s magic would probably bring soldiers to his aid before he could get close enough to kill the enlisted scum. Haft, though, spent most of the day outside the caravan, leading the scouts in the van or tarrying with the screening force to the rear. It should be easy to get to him before his magic had time to work and bring soldiers to assist him—and no axe man could defeat a good swordsman unless he caught the swordsman by surprise. And then he, bal Ofursti, would take Haft’s crossbow and use it to ambush Spinner before word of Haft’s death got back to him.

  Captain bal Ofursti had no doubt he could make short work of either Frangerian in single combat. He was the best swordsman in the Dartmutter army. And the Dartmutter sword master said he was the best student he’d ever trained.

  Staying carefully out of sight, he followed Haft and waited for his chance.

  Halfway back to the main road, Haft’s mare suddenly shied. Her unexpected movement, lifting her forelegs and twisting to the side, knocked him off balance and he threw his arms around her neck to keep from falling off. She screamed and bucked to the left when something thunked into the right side of her saddle, and this time Haft did fall, spilling over her left side. He rolled and skittered to get away from her scrabbling hooves and hopped to his feet, only to face a strange apparition—a madman charging at him with raised sword.

  The man’s hair and beard were matted tangles, his eyes were darkened with heavy pouches, spittle flew from between his lips, and his clothing was dirty and festooned with bits of leafs and twigs. He looked crazed. Haft had no idea why the poor man attacked—he was probably driven mad by running from the Jokapcul—and wanted to disarm him without killing him.

  Wait! His clothing! Under the dirt and debris, he wore a red cloak and cerulean-blue jerkin and trousers.

  Haft spun away from the man’s overhead sword chop and took another look at him as he drew his axe.

  “Bal Ofursti!” he exclaimed.

  “Your death!” bal Ofursti shrilled, and ran at him again, swinging his sword in a roundhouse blow at his neck.

  Haft half twisted out of the way and half ducked under the blade. He swung his axe up in a backhand arc to catch the sword, but barely tapped the fast-moving blade.

  Bal Ofursti let his momentum carry him all the way around in a pirouette, spinning on his left foot. He stuck his right foot out and slammed it down when he faced front again and thrust, turning his angular momentum into a forward strike.

  Haft twisted to the side and parried, barely avoiding the stab. Bal Ofursti danced to the side and jabbed again and again. Haft backpedaled to stay out of range, swinging his axe back and forth to slap the blade aside, but never making firm contact with it.

  “Get out of the way, Lord Haft,” Kovasch shouted. “I’ll put an arrow in him!”

  Haft sidestepped, but bal Ofursti went with him and bore in once more with a series of thrusts and slices.

  “A touch!” bal Ofursti shrilled as one of his slices cut along Haft’s left shoulder, drawing blood.

  Haft bounded backward, then brought his axe down in an overhead arc that caught the blade and drove its point into the ground. “By the gods, we should have hung you when we had the chance,” he snarled, then punched bal Ofursti’s straining shoulder with a knuckled fist and jerked his axe away from the trapped sword. He bent his arm back and thrust forward with the upper point of the head of his axe, but bal Ofursti fell backward when his sword was released and the strike went above him.

  An arrow thunked into the dirt where the Dartmutter officer landed, but he’d already rolled away.

  “He’s mine!” Haft roared, filled with realization that this was his man to kill, not some poor soul driven mad by the invasion.

  Now it was bal Ofursti who had to go on the defensive as Haft swung his axe in diagonal arcs, each followed by a backhand with the spike that backed the half-moon blade.

  Suddenly it was the captain who was backpedaling and attempting to parry blows—but Haft’s axe was heavier than his sword, and harder to parry even when he got good metal on it. Back and back and back, through the bushes and between trees, stepping high to avoid tripping over roots or trailing vines. And always Haft came on relentlessly. Until it happened. A parry went awry and the axehead slammed the edge of bal Ofursti’s blade into his own thigh. He screamed from the pain and instinctively bent forward to clutch at his injury, putting his head directly in the path of the following backhanded spike. The axe’s momentum yanked him completely off his feet.

  Haft reached the end of his axe’s swing and pivoted his wrist. The dead man’s head slid off the spike and he crumpled to the ground, where Haft stared at him for a long moment before reaching down for the red cloak to wipe the blood off his axe. The three scouts with him gathered around, looking down at bal Ofursti’s husk.

  “Now why do you suppose he did that?” Haft asked as he dropped the cloak on the corpse.

  None of them had any idea why Captain bal Ofursti had attacked Haft. Neither did they understand how a man could get so dirty and tangled in such a short time in the forest.

  It was dusk when they got back to where the road north split off from the other road and they found the caravan waiting for them.

  During the day’s march, the caravan had grown by some 250 people, nearly half of whom were soldiers. They now had about eight hundred soldiers, former soldiers, and partly trained men under arms. An equal number of able-bodied men had neither military experience nor weapons training.

  “I have a mixed squad of Borderers and Border Wa
rdens watching along the edge of the forest,” Spinner told Haft after hearing what the reconnaissance patrol had found. “The rest of the soldiers and fighting men who came with us from Eikby are in a picket line east of us."

  Haft nodded. He understood the reasoning. The men who came with them from Eikby had all fought and beaten the Jokapcul at least once, and could presumably be relied on not to desert during the night. But still . . .

  “If the Jokapcul are still moving in the numbers I saw earlier, if they turn this way they’ll overwhelm our people.”

  It was Spinner’s turn to nod, he was painfully aware of that. “But they can slow them down enough to give some of the others a chance to escape.”

  Haft harrumphed. “I think there should have been a couple of ’maybes’ and ’ifs’ in what you just said.” He shook himself, but couldn’t think of anything different Spinner could have done. “Who’s watching the other sides?”

  Spinner looked at Haft quizzically; it wasn’t that long ago Haft wouldn’t have thought to ask that question without prompting. “Corporal Armana has a squad of the Earl’s Guards to the south and Upper Sergeant Han has his men on the west side.” He gave a wry grin. “And I was relying on you to the north.”

  Haft slowly let out a deep breath. “We need to get moving. What I saw east of here has me pretty nervous.”

  Spinner smiled. That was more like the Haft he’d served with for so long. “We can’t go at night. Wagons will lose the road and people will wander off and get lost. A night movement with people who don’t know how to make one will be too much of a mess. We have to wait until daybreak.”

  Haft made a face. As much as he didn’t like it, Spinner was right—again. “Then let’s get an early start. I don’t like being here.”

  “We’ll move out as early as possible. I climbed a lookout tree too—I don’t like sitting here any more than you do.”

  What with one thing and another, they didn’t get moving at the break of dawn. When you have more than six thousand people, some with wagons or carts, most without, some healthy and strong and able to cover distance quickly, others not so fit, and from many different cities, regions, and even countries, speaking a multitude of languages and dialects, then add in a distribution of food still so chaotic nobody could know whether anybody has to begin the day’s march hungry—well, it takes time to get them organized and moving. They began preparations an hour before sunrise but the sun had been up for a good two hours or more before the point—a squad of Zobran Lancers guided by the Border Warder called Hunter—cantered off along the north road. Impatient to be off, Haft had already gone ahead with half a squad of mounted Bloody Axes to scout the way beyond where he’d gone the day before. The caravan didn’t stop at midday, and the day wasn’t hot enough to make anyone suffer, so the entire caravan was on the eastbound road along the border between the forest and the desert by the time Spinner called a halt for the night. Even though he thought they were still far too close to where he’d seen the Jokapcul marching along the Gulf coast, Haft didn’t object—other than some mild grumbling that he wasn’t serious about.

  They reached the escarpment on the second day of eastern travel. They didn’t camp on the road or next to it that night. The escarpment rose above the scrub half a mile north of the road. Flankers investigated the escarpment and reported back that it was largely unscalable and had many shallow caves at its base. So Spinner, with Haft, Alyline, Fletcher, and Zweepee concurring, had the caravan move to the foot of the escarpment for the night.

  There was one split in the cliff wall, though, that the scouts dismissed as shallow without actually entering.

  Seife the Merchant, from far off Bostia, had lost his wagons and goods and barely managed to hang onto his wife and three of their four children during their flight across the continent. Now, he wasn’t happy about leaving the road for the foot of the escarpment. Had he thought the cliffs were sound, he would have been content to tramp the extra half mile to their base for whatever protection they would afford from the elements. But the sedimentary rock, with its unevenly eroded layers, reminded him far too much of improperly stocked shelves whose contents would come tumbling down the instant the wrong item was dislodged.

  He found the crack in the rock face a few paces from where his family was settling in for the night particularly bothersome. The people camped directly in front of it had gone in thinking it was a narrow entrance to a shallow cave, only to come out and announce it didn’t widen out enough for them to spread their bedding, and didn’t seem to offer much in the way of protection from the elements. Besides, the wind whistled through it too much.

  Seife the Merchant brooded over that crack in the wall for a time. He pictured it as a shelving aisle. Sometimes, if the goods improperly stacked in a shelving aisle collapsed toward each other, they eased the dangerous imbalance from adjoining shelves, and he wondered about the condition of the walls inside the split.

  After they’d eaten their spartan dinner, when his son and younger daughter had fallen asleep, and his wife and older daughter whispered with their heads together the way women do when they don’t want men to know what they’re talking about, he decided to investigate. Lighting a brand in their small cookfire, he said, “I need to take care of something, I’ll be back soon. Don’t wait up.”

  His elder daughter flashed him a quick smile and his wife cocked her head at him; she’d caught the contradiction in “I’ll be back soon, don’t wait up” but decided that in the wilderness it meant nothing, and the two resumed their heads-together whispering.

  Seife had no problem entering the crack—he was able to walk straight into it with his shoulders barely brushing its sides. Before he became a refugee, he wouldn’t have been able to squeeze through it at all, but with the unaccustomed exertion and lean meals of their flight, he’d lost a great deal of bulk. His wife now looked at him in ways she hadn’t looked at him in many years, and their lovemaking, when they had the energy for it, was much more vigorous and satisfying than it had been in just as many years. A smile flickered across his face. Beneath the dirt and wear of the long trek, his wife had also lost a great deal of bulk and looked much better than she had in years, which greatly contributed to the increased vigor and satisfaction of their lovemaking as well.

  The walls of the crack leaned toward each other as they rose. Seife didn’t notice during the day whether they met, and the small torch he carried didn’t cast its light high enough for him to tell. He entered the crack and looked from one wall to the other. The dancing shadows deceived his eyes so he couldn’t tell if the walls were smooth or as tumbled as the outer face of the cliffs. He held the brand high and ahead of him with one hand while brushing the palm of the other hand up and down the walls. He silently chided himself for not having felt the outside walls; he couldn’t tell by touch if these surfaces were as uneven as the outside wall, more uneven, or smoother.

  He went in five feet, then ten, then twenty, and the split remained roughly as wide as at its entrance. He thought the smoothness of the shifting sand on the floor of the split meant the walls were sound, that they never tumbled. If he’d been able to read the signs, he would have known that large masses of water sometimes shussed through the split and washed out the gravel and boulders that tumbled from the walls. But he was a town merchant, not any kind of outdoorsman, so he didn’t even realize there were signs, much less know how to read them. He kept going until he could no longer guess how far he’d gone. The whistling of the wind through the crack annoyed his ears almost as much as the grit that peck-pecked at his face, made his eyes water, and threatened to fill his ears.

  Then, suddenly, his torch no longer made shadows dance on the walls and his brushing hand met air rather than layers of stone. He stopped abruptly and spun about, swinging the torch before him. He breathed a sigh of relief when he saw a stone face with a crack in it. On the ground he saw his own footprints leading directly into the crack. He thrust the torch up, but it blinded his night vision so
he couldn’t see whether there was a roof above his head or stars in the night sky. Slowly, he turned in a circle, holding the torch out at arm’s length. The space he was in was so large his light didn’t reach its sides except by the crack he’d emerged from.

  He took two steps forward, lowered the torch and closed his eyes to listen. He knew what an empty warehouse sounded like. Perhaps a large cave would sound the same and he could estimate its size. But, no, all he got was quiet, though not the quiet of an empty space. Maybe if he made a noise and saw how long it took the echo to come back . . .

  “Hello?” There, an echo!

  Wait a minute, that wasn’t an echo, not quite. It was more like a footstep.

  “Hel-Hello? Is someone there?” He heard something from over there this time, it sounded like slow breathing. No! The breathing came from over there! No, it came from... In half a panic, imagining bandits or ravening beasts closing on him, he opened his eyes and spun about to flee.

  And ran smack into something very hard—the chest of a very large, very strong man.

  CHAPTER

  TWELVE

  “Lord Spinner, Lord Haft,” said Wudu, one of the Prince’s Swords guarding the commanders’ tent, as he ducked his head under the closed door flap. “Mr. Fletcher and Sergeant Mearh are here with someone who wants to see you.”