Demontech: Gulf Run

by David Sherman

  The beings collectively known as “demons” are, in fact, not supernatural but rather natural creatures of uncertain origin, though granted not native to any known land in the world. (This scholar is currently engaged in intense study with other eminent scholars to determine just where in the cosmos, known or unknown, the “demons” are actually from.)

  Indeed, many of the so-called demons are quite helpful, not in any way “demonic.” The troll noted in the above description is such a case. While trolls are strong enough to tear a body to parts, they are mostly used for chores that require strength, stamina, and utter lack of imagination. The troll-generated lights that luminate certain palaces, mansions, and some of the better inns are an example. Imps make marvelous fence wardens and never—well, almost never—skitter about individually far from their houses, which are commonly mounted on fence posts for the purpose of warding the fences.

  Which is not to say that all demons are beneficial. The sangmun in the apocryphal scenario that began this paper has no known function other than to kill trespassers, which it does through the expedient of inflicting on them a disease so severe that no medicinal demon this scholar is aware of can cure it. The mauth dhoog doesn’t lie in wait, but rather scampers about looking not at all dangerous, but rather like a friendly, albeit scruffy - in - need - of - a - bath - and - combing cocker spaniel. When the unwary traveler comes upon a mauth dhoog as it guards its road or path at night and attempts to befriend it, the mauth dhoog attacks with fang and claw, with invariably disastrous results for the traveler. The mauth dhoog’s cousin, the Black Dog, is in no way friendly looking, and one’s first sight of this demon is commonly one’s last sight of anything—the Black Dog does indeed run about chomping and rending flesh and bone.

  In most places warded by such guardian demons, one finds warning signs placed for the benefit of friends of those who use those guardians, otherwise the guardians would kill friend and foe alike quite wantonly.

  The most obvious warning signs are the well-known imp houses, domicile of imps warding fences. The imp house is prominently mounted on a fence post and wires trail from it to the primary strands of the fence, which in turn normally have lesser strands connecting one to another to expedite movement of the imps from one strand to another. Commonly, signs are hung to warn of the presence of guardian demons. Such signs may have painted on them a pictogram identifying the guardian demon in local residence. Illiterate persons who come upon a written sign lacking in pictograms should nonetheless take heed and assume that the sign is evidence of a nearby guardian demon. Passing such a sign is unwise. In warfare, which is where guardian demons are most likely to be used, the signs are often more subtle than painted signs. They can be a rock cairn, runelike markings on a stone, blazes on a tree, or other seemingly random, easily misunderstood signals. On occasion, parallel signs demark a safe passage through the warded area.

  Some, or even many, demons are quite amenable to control by ordinary persons, but that is not true of most guardian demons. Guardian demons, as a class, are in their own way more dangerous than the demons that inhabit weapons. The weapons demons, in the normal course of events, only attack on a specific order given by the person wielding the weapon and only injure or damage that to which they are directed. Guardian demons, to the contrary, once set in place, make their own determinations as to what or whom to attack, and will generally cease only when the magician who emplaced them recalls them. There are exceptions to that rule, of course. There are documented instances in which a guardian demon simply disappeared from the area it warded. No one knows why that happens, but any demon may, upon occasion and without any obvious reason, depart from whomever it has been in service to. There are also reports of demons attacking the very magicians who emplaced them in their warding positions, but those reports currently lack confirmation from proper investigatory authorities.

  There are certainly other guardian demons, including such exotica as the Green Woman and gytrash; watchers such as banshees, dryads, elves, and various sprites are not, in the sense used herein, guardians, since they do not attack, but rather merely give notice to their magicians or others. For a more exhaustive survey of guardian demons one might peruse the relevant chapters in the six volumes of Scholar M. V. H’one’s masterful An Encyclopaedic Overview of Well-Known Demon Types.

  Unnatural Skeptic is proud to welcome the eminent Scholar Munch Mu’sk to its stable of doubting Thomases. Scholar Mu’sk is the author of literally hundreds of scholarly papers in addition to articles on less arcane subjects. He is past chair of the Department of Far Western Studies at the University of the Great Rift.

  V

  THE COAST

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY

  Silent met them outside the entrance to the bowl.

  “Where were you?” Haft snapped at him. “We could have used you this morning.” He had bathed and put on a clean shirt. He was riding with the point squad, scouting a route for the train to follow that didn’t take them too close to the road and the remaining Jokapcul on its other side. Borderers were scouting the flank to give warning in case the Jokapcul moved away from the shore—or if more showed up.

  Silent grinned. “Nah, I was watching, you didn’t need me. Where’s Spinner?” He turned his massive horse—he called it a pony—to walk alongside Haft’s.

  “He wants to know where you were too,” Haft retorted, hardly mollified.

  “He most likely does. But I’ve got something to show you and him.”

  “So I’m here. Show me.”

  “No,” Silent said with a shake of his shaggy head. “I want to show you both at the same time. You’re going to love it.”

  “A surprise,” Haft said sourly. “Just what I need, another surprise.” He leaned over his horse’s shoulder and spat. “I’ve had enough surprises in the last day, thank you very much!”

  “But you’ll love this surprise.”

  Haft shifted on his saddle to look around. “Where’s that wolf?”

  Silent grinned. “He’s guarding the surprise.”

  It was near dusk by the time the end wagon was a mile from the entrance to the bowl. Even though they hadn’t cleared the plateau by mid-afternoon, the Desert Men had merely watched from a distance and made no move toward the laggardly caravan. Spinner called a halt for the day. Again they circled the wagons for the night, though this time the wagon circles were strung out along the line of march rather than in a circle of circles. Haft, Spinner, and Rammer saw to the posting of sentries. They watched north as well as the other directions; Haft had half a dozen Border Warders scale the face of the escarpment to keep an eye on the plateau. The evening meal was the first chance Spinner and Haft had to get together. Silent was almost bouncing with excitement over the surprise he had, but held his secret while the others made their reports.

  “None of them died today,” Nightbird said of the severely wounded she and the other healers hadn’t wanted to move. “But three are so weak they may not last this night.”

  “The others?”

  She shook her head. “None of them are safe yet, they need days of rest. Even then, they might not all make it.”

  “But we’re too near the Jokapcul on the shore to stay here,” Spinner said plaintively.

  Nightbird spread her hands in helpless resignation. The most severely wounded needed rest or they might die, but she understood that if they stopped, there was too great a chance that more people in the caravan would be killed or severely wounded.

  Captain Phard said his Borderers scouting the right flank reported that the Jokapcul guarding the prisoners along the shore seemed agitated but didn’t appear to be preparing to move. They hadn’t been reinforced yet either.

  Rammer reported that nearly half of Company D wanted out. Interestingly, most of the wounded understood why they had suffered as they did, and as a result, as soon as they were well enough, they wanted to stop and complete their training. He had begun recruiting more men into the training company,
but there was greater reluctance among the untrained men after the debacle caused by Company D’s pursuit of the Desert Men before dawn.

  Other than that, food and water were in good supply and morale was improving now that most of the people thought they were out of any immediate danger.

  “We aren’t out of danger,” Spinner said to that. “Not by a long way.”

  “I know,” Zweepee replied. “I’m only reporting what the people in the caravan are saying.”

  “What are we going to do about the bandits?” Haft asked.

  “The unwounded women have been scattered through the train and people are keeping an eye on them,” Fletcher said. He looked at Nightbird for a report on the wounded bandit, but Alyline spoke first.

  “That doesn’t mean they aren’t dangerous,” she snapped.

  “You showed that clearly enough this morning,” Fletcher said with a sickly smile. “Women can be more dangerous than men. That’s why these women are being watched very closely.

  The Golden Girl nodded curtly.

  When Alyline didn’t say any more, Nightbird said, “Only three of the bandits survived the fight with the Earl’s Guards. They aren’t among the most seriously wounded, but their injuries are bad enough that they won’t be able to cause mischief for some time. The wounded women are cowed. They seem eager to join with the rest of us and forget about their pasts.”

  Spinner snorted. “Can gray taburs change their stripes?”

  Silent had slipped away during the reports. He came back as Spinner asked his question and interrupted. “Is it my turn yet?” he asked, bouncing on the balls of his feet.

  “Yes,” Haft said impatiently; he’d had enough of gray taburs. “It’s your turn. Now what’s your big surprise that had to wait?”

  “Look what I found!” Silent said, raising his hand. It held the end of a rope that trailed into the shadows behind him. He gave the rope a very sharp yank. Three men tied to it tumbled into the fireglow.

  They were Jokapcul magicians, bound and gagged. Wolf came with them and stood guard.

  There was a moment of stunned silence as all gaped at the captured magicians. Then cacophony.

  Silent grinned for a few moments before he held up his hands to stop them.

  “Wolf and I ranged pretty far looking for Jokapcul following the caravan. All we saw was more refugees headed along the road, or trying to find routes into the Low Desert, or even headed for the Eastern Waste. When we got to where you stopped, I just had to wonder why. Then you turned off the road and I really wondered. So we took a look and found the Desert Men. I didn’t think those two bands of them were enough to send you onto the Low Desert, so I looked farther.” He shook his head. “Those Jokaps sure do treat their prisoners nasty. Their camp along the shore looked even worse than the camp they had in Eikby, so I figured you weren’t sure of the Desert Men, and the Jokaps decided you.

  “Something told me the Desert Men wouldn’t let us cross their desert, not this many of us—especially when I saw the ones watching the road move after you. So you’d have to come back down after the fight. But we still had to be concerned about the Jokaps. I’ll tell you true, I was concerned when I saw most of the Jokaps head for the Low Desert during the night. But then I thought the Desert Men were just as likely to fight them as fight you, so I put that concern out of my mind and took a closer look at what they’d left behind.

  “What I found was a hundred bully boys who looked like they’d beat on anybody weaker than them but wouldn’t stand and fight. And I saw these three arguing among themselves.” He smiled benignly at the captured magicians at his feet and clucked his tongue at Wolf, who curled a lip to expose a rending fang.

  The magicians shuddered; they were watching Wolf, not the people.

  “I—” Wolf growled at him, and he nodded. “Sorry, Wolf. We watched for a time.” Wolf nodded and returned his attention to the captive magicians. “We didn’t see or smell any sign of demons.” He shook his head and lightly nudged one of the prisoners with his toe. Silent was so big that the light nudge rolled the magician over. “These three were dumb enough to be outside the camp perimeter, with no soldiers nearby to protect them.

  “So we walked in and took them into custody. Then I went to—”

  “Wait!” Rammer, who didn’t know the giant as well as the others, interrupted. “How could you just walk in without them raising an alarm? Why didn’t they turn demon weapons on you?”

  “Well, we didn’t exactly just walk in. We sort of snuck up behind them. They were arguing so much they couldn’t hear us.” Wolf shot him a look and he quickly added, “Not that they would have heard Wolf anyway.” Satisfied, Wolf went back to guard. “Anyway, Wolf jumped on one and held him down with his jaws on the Jokap’s throat while I grabbed the other two and banged their heads together. While they were dizzy from that, I tied them up and gagged them. I gagged the other one before Wolf let him go, then I tied him too. They’re just little bitty people, it wasn’t any problem for me to carry them to where my horse was.

  “Wolf stood guard over them while I went to see what was happening above the cliffs. I couldn’t figure out why you were fighting the Desert Men in the open up there to the north.” He held up a hand to stop their hurried explanations. “I know now. Haft told me this noontime.”

  He peered at Alyline. “At the time, I sure wished I was closer, so I could see just what it was you and those women did to that troop sent out to intercept you.” He grinned. “Now that I know what you were doing, I really wish I’d been close enough to see clearly.” He ignored the glare she gave him and looked appreciatively at Doli and Maid Marigold, causing both of them to blush deeply.

  The men gaped at him, aghast, and Silent looked back at them with mock surprise. “I didn’t see the bodies afterward, so I don’t know what they did to the Jokaps.” He turned very serious for a moment. “I will tell you something, though. Among the peoples of the Northern Steppes, there is one thing warriors are afraid of—and that is being taken alive and given to the women.” He grinned. “That’s partly the reason we’re such fearless warriors—we’d rather die in battle than be captured and given to the women.” He looked at Spinner, Haft, Fletcher, and Xundoe in turn before continuing. “Surely you remember what these three,” he indicated Alyline, Zweepee, and Doli, “did to that Jokap we captured in our first battle together.”

  Nobody replied to that. The four men to whom Silent made his last remark looked uncomfortable; the three women stared stone-faced into the distance.

  “We could have used you up there,” Haft said, to change the subject.

  “You did fine without me. Thanks to the Golden Girl and her brave women.” He gave her a short bow. She nodded, but still looked disapproving. “Now, what do you want to do with your present?”

  “That,” said Spinner, looking sternly at the bound and gagged prisoners, “is a very good question. I wonder what languages they speak.” They’d been making do with Zobran, with an occasional word or phrase in Skraglandish or Frangerian thrown in. None of the magicians had shown any sign they’d understood a word.

  “Sit them up and ungag them,” Spinner ordered. He gave the trio a moment to work their jaws, then asked in Frangerian, the universal trading language, “What are your names?”

  They looked at him uncomprehendingly.

  Haft asked the same in Ewsarkan, his native tongue, with the same result.

  Zweepee asked in Bostian. Nothing. Spinner tried Apianghian, his native tongue. The response was blank looks and incomprehensible guttural jabbering in Jokapcul.

  Rammer asked in Matigule, the language of the Kingdom of Matilda, the homeland of the Dark Prince who led the Jokapcul on their campaign of world conquest.

  Understanding flared in the eyes of one and he opened his mouth as though to speak, but one of the others barked sharply and he kept still.

  “Now we know what language they speak besides Jokapcul dog-talk,” Rammer said calmly. “Do any of you speak Matig
ule?” he asked the others. None did. He took a deep breath and blew it out. “This is going to be a long night. By your leave?” He nodded to Spinner and Haft. “Let’s separate them, I’ll have to question them individually. Who’s good at interrogation?”

  Spinner, Haft, Fletcher, Silent, Doli, Zweepee, and Xundoe automatically glanced at Alyline, then away, and did their best to look like they were pondering the question, some with greater success than others.

  “Looks like it’s you then, Alyline,” Rammer said.

  “Give the prisoners to the women,” Silent murmured softly.

  Alyline nodded slowly. “As you wish. May I suggest we go someplace private?”

  Rammer stood. He crooked a finger at the magician who had stopped the one who showed recognition of Matigule and said in that language, “You, come with me.” Then to Spinner in Frangerian, “Keep the other two apart, I don’t want them to agree to a story they’ll both tell.”

  It wasn’t as long a night as Rammer had thought it might be. It made him queasy, but he let Alyline tease the magicians with her golden dagger—and he stopped her before she did any real damage.

  They interrogated the first magician, then the one who’d almost spoken, then the third, and the second one again. The first and third maintained the pretense of not understanding Matigule. So well did they deny it even when Alyline played on them with her dagger that Rammer came to think that maybe they didn’t know the language. The other magician broke fairly quickly the first time he was questioned and admitted he spoke Matigule but denied knowledge of anything else, saying only that they had been sent to help watch over the caged prisoners on the shore. He also said he had no idea why there were more fighters guarding the prisoners than there were prisoners.