Demontech: Gulf Run

by David Sherman

  The first time through, Rammer told him he was lying, that the first magician had already confessed they were going to kill the prisoners and then invade the Low Desert. The second magician denied it vociferously. The second time through, Rammer told him the third magician had said that the Low Desert invasion force was due to arrive in two days, and that it carried execution orders for the second magician, who the other two believed was unreliable. That, and a little bit of sharp-bladed encouragement from the Golden Girl, was all it took for him to talk freely.

  “They don’t have enough shipping to carry everything they need up the east coast,” Rammer reported when the questioning was over. “So they’re assembling thousands of people along the north coast of Princedon Gulf to use as porters, to haul supplies up the coast of the Inner Ocean to Handor’s Bay. This force is the first of five or six guard battalions they plan to use to keep the slaves in line. He said he doesn’t know where other prisoner camps are except along this coast, and I believe him.

  “He said something else I found interesting. He said the soldiers who are still guarding the prisoners are upset that their commander took most of their strength, and they’re afraid because he hasn’t come back yet. I asked how he could know that when he was captured soon after the main force left, and he said the soldiers had been talking about deserting if their commander wasn’t back by midday. He claimed the hundred that are left aren’t combat soldiers, they’re laborers who were given quick training in arms for this guard duty. He thinks if they desert, they’ll kill the prisoners before they go. He also said they’re waiting for azren, whatever they are.”

  Doli yelped at the mention of azren, and Zweepee covered her face. Even Alyline grimaced.

  “What are azren?” Rammer asked.

  “Demons that will kill slaves if they try to escape,” Spinner said. “They,” he nodded at the three women, “and Fletcher were guarded by an azren when they were slaves.”

  Rammer grimaced.

  Haft ignored the remarks about the azren and studied Rammer solemnly for a moment when he finished his report. Then he looked at Spinner. “We couldn’t have taken them before, not when all seven troops were there,” he said. “We can certainly take one troop.”

  Spinner nodded. “Azren. Yes. We need a reconnaissance patrol. Silent?” He looked around; the giant was nowhere to be seen.

  Spinner shook his head, then had Captain Phard send a squad of Borderers to recon the Jokapcul camp. When the patrol returned they made plans.

  They didn’t pitch the fancy tents for the command group that night; Spinner forbade the people to erect any tents at all. “We won’t have time to break them down in the morning,” he insisted. Nobody argued strongly. Those who didn’t have wagons to sleep in made due with blankets on the ground or erected rude shelters.

  Maid Marigold found two smallish fan trees that stood with their flat sides a few feet apart and used lengths of vine to lash their upper parts together, to make a sort of foliate tent that was open at both ends. She borrowed an unused blanket to close one of the ends. The shelter was big enough for two people to lie cozily together.

  “I made us a shelter,” she whispered to Haft when they finished making the plans for the morning. She leaned her chest into his shoulder, cradling his arm between her breasts.

  He moved away from her. “I’m just going to wrap myself in my cloak and sleep next to Spinner,” he said gruffly. “I have to go before dawn.” He paused and swallowed. “I don’t want to disturb you when I get up.”

  She reached for him and grasped his arm in both hands. “You won’t disturb me. And it’s all right even if you do.”

  “No. I won’t be able to sleep with you beside me—I mean, I’ll be thinking about what I have to do in the morning.”

  “I’ll help you go to sleep, Haft.”

  “No. It’s better—”

  “Haft, I need you with me tonight.” She sobbed and her voice broke. “After this morning, I really need you with me tonight.”

  He yanked his arm from her grip. “This morning,” he spat. “That’s why I can’t sleep with you tonight.”

  She gasped and the back of her hand shot to her mouth. “Haft, no! What do you mean?”

  “You took off your clothes and went out there where everybody could see you naked and you killed men, that’s what I mean!” He remembered the gore on the desert where the women had slaughtered the Jokapcul just after dawn and shuddered.

  Maid Marigold’s shoulders started shaking. She covered her face with her hands and cried into them. “But that’s why I need you tonight!”

  “Don’t do that!”

  “What?” she wailed.

  “Stop crying. I can’t stand watching a woman cry.”

  “I—We—We had to do that. If we didn’t we’d probably all be dead now!”

  “You killed men! Women aren’t supposed to kill. Men fight and kill, not women!”

  “But we had to!” She wailed again and half turned away from him.

  “Please don’t cry.” Her sobbing wrenched at his heart, but he still saw those butchered Jokapcul in his mind’s eye.

  “Why not? You don’t care about me! I had to do something horrible to save us, and you don’t want me anymore because of that. All you can think of is the horrible thing I had to do!”

  “That’s not true. It’s just—it’s just—”

  “You don’t care, you’d rather be dead than let me save you.”

  “But— Please, Maid Marigold, don’t cry, please stop crying.” He reached a hand to her, and she turned farther away from him.

  “You don’t care!”

  “I care, I do care!” He stepped to her and folded his arms around her. She stiffened, but he drew her in closer. “I care. I care very much,” he murmured into her hair. He rubbed her shoulders and caressed her head. “There there,” he murmured. “There there.”

  They stood like that for another moment or so, then she relaxed and sagged into him.

  “Where’s the shelter you made for us?” he whispered.

  “Over there,” she said softly.

  “Let’s go.”

  She didn’t let him take his arms from around her as she led the way to the shelter. He held her tenderly as they lay together in the snug confines of the makeshift tent and gently kissed her tears away. Eventually she stopped sobbing. But he didn’t close his eyes until he was certain she was asleep. Just that morning she’d participated in a very vicious slaughter—she was a killer, he thought. How could he trust her now?

  “You can’t go,” Rammer had said. “You’re the commanders, you can’t go.”

  That’s right, Sergeant Rammer, Haft thought, we are the commanders! We decide who goes and who doesn’t, not you! You don’t tell us we can’t go! Go ahead, let Spinner stay back if he wants to. This was my idea, I’m going! His problem with Maid Marigold from the previous night was driven completely from his mind by the job at hand.

  Haft fingered a pellet out of his belt pouch and lifted it up to the Lalla Mkouma on his shoulder. She tittered into his ear as she daintily took it from his fingers. From the sound, it seemed she popped the pellet into her mouth and swallowed it whole. He was glad he didn’t see that—the pellet was thicker than her throat. She burped delicately, made an “excuse me” noise, then licked his fingers clean; her tongue tickled. He lowered his hand and shook his fingers. Fingertips were supposed to do the tickling, not be tickled.

  There was no point in looking to his sides to see if Balta, Farkas, and Acel were in position. Even if he could have made out silhouettes in the predawn dark, they carried Lalla Mkouma on their shoulders. The voluptuous little she-demons were spinning their gowns, rendering themselves and the men they rode invisible. He would rather have had three of the Skraglander Borderers—or even three of the Zobran Border Warders—with him on the mission, because they were better at stealthy movement, and better bowmen. But the Bloody Axes who claimed him as their leader had been furious at the idea that h
e’d go off and leave them behind, so he relented and brought them instead of three of the stealthy border soldiers.

  He hoped they were in position there and hadn’t gotten separated because of the invisibility. But they needed the invisibility. Though it was still full night when they left the encampment at the foot of the escarpment, the sun had just risen and the coastal forest wasn’t dense enough to prevent them from being seen as they closed on their objectives.

  He hoped they were as good with bows as they claimed. They were to silently take out the two observation posts the Borderers had found beyond the perimeter of the Jokapcul camp before the Jokapcul could give an alarm. There were four men in each post, hence four men on this mission.

  To his left, the Jokapcul guards were barking harsh orders at their prisoners. Someone screamed. Perhaps a prisoner was being punished for some infraction.

  There! He heard low voices arguing on the other side of a thin screen of stunted trees to the right front. “Shift left,” he whispered uncertainly to his sides.

  “Zhem wizz uzz,” his Lalla Mkouma tinkled into his ear, reassuring him that the trio of Bloody Axes was with him.

  The screen of trees may have been thin, but the observation post behind it was strong. A two-foot-tall wall of horizontal posts strong enough to stop arrows lay to the front and sides of a hip-deep, twenty-foot-long trench. Embrasures left in the wall allowed the soldiers in the observation post to look through the tree-screen—and to shoot arrows or demon spitters if necessary. The only direction from which to safely approach the post was the rear, the direction of the Jokapcul camp. But the post was three hundred yards from the camp, barely shoreward of the road, and they didn’t need to circle nearly so far behind it.

  Haft placed his feet carefully so he wouldn’t step on any of the dry, fallen branches from the trees, and softly, so they wouldn’t slip or crunch on the loose, sandy soil. His fingers lay alongside the firing lever of his crossbow, not on it—an accidental discharge would be catastrophic to the plan—but he still moved it as his head swiveled, kept it pointing where he looked. The bulk of the long demon spitter tube slung across his back was comforting.

  When he had rounded the corner and was facing the back of the observation post, he clacked his tongue in imitation of the wingless harbird, then raised the crossbow to his shoulder.

  “Zhem wizz uzz,” his Lalla Mkouma chimed cheerfully.

  As the Borderers had reported, there were four Jokapcul in the post—unless more were lying out of sight in the trench. None of them were looking through the embrasures. They were close together in heated, though muted, conversation.

  Haft couldn’t understand a single syllable of their growling speech, but he’d been a Marine long enough to know how soldiers talked and what they talked about. From their body language alone, he was pretty sure that two of them were arguing that they should simply take off—desert—“right now,” and the other two were insisting that they wait a little longer to see if the rest of their unit returned from above the escarpment.

  He took a deep breath to steady himself and aimed his crossbow. This was the tricky part. They’d only practiced it twice, and he wasn’t fully confident of their ability to get it right.

  “Now,” he said softly.

  Each man in the line he couldn’t see had his assigned target. Balta shot an arrow from his short bow; arrows from the bows of Farkas and Acel followed before the first arrow was halfway to its target. Haft fired his crossbow. Farkas’s target, the second man from the right, staggered when the arrow hit him in the neck. His mates only had an instant to look dumbly at him before the arrows shot by Farkas and Acel struck the men on either side. Haft’s bolt punched into the helmet of the man on the left at almost the same instant.

  The first falling man hadn’t even made it to his knees when the last man to be hit sagged and began dropping.

  Haft and the Bloody Axes were running as soon as Haft fired, lowering their bows and reaching for their knives as they went.

  “Get visible,” Haft ordered as they ran. Careful not to stab or poke their tiny woman-demons, they rubbed the thighs of the Lalla Mkouma, who stopped spinning their gowns and made them visible again.

  They reached the trench and dropped in. Knives flashed as they made sure the sentries were dead.

  Haft heaved in a deep breath and let it out in a whoosh. It had worked; no alarm was raised.

  “Hide me, Lalla Mkouma,” he said. She began spinning her robe again and he vanished.

  An instant later the Bloody Axes also disappeared. There was a brief scrabbling noise as they scrambled out of the trench and headed west. Thirty yards away they stopped and listened. Nothing, just the usual sounds of the coastal plain, punctuated by normal camp noises from the Jokapcul along the shore. They continued west, toward the other observation post, half a mile distant.

  The post was just visible through breaks in the fan trees when Haft’s Lalla Mkouma flattened herself against his neck and hugged him tightly. He froze and braced himself for Farkas to bump him from behind, but Farkas had stopped as well, as had the other Bloody Axes at the Lalla Mkoumas’ warnings.

  On their left, a trail dotted with the hoof marks of deer and the tick marks of smaller animals angled toward them from the direction of the gravelly beach. Heavy footfalls and a throaty rumble came from the game trail. Haft cautiously backed up, probing behind himself with one hand. He felt Farkas, who also backed up. Five yards from the game trail, perhaps still within sight of a sharp-eyed watcher in the observation post, he stopped and squatted with his crossbow ready.

  A troll appeared, lumbering along the game trail in a manner befitting a far larger creature. The throaty rumbling came from the troll’s mouth—it looked for all the world like it was softly singing to itself. A step or two beyond where Haft had stopped, the troll abruptly stopped humming and moving. It peered around at the ground, raised its head and sniffed the air. It backed up and looked down where Haft had frozen, bent far over and snuffled at the ground. Then it lifted its head and looked directly at him.

  “Hoo zheer?” the troll rumbled, peering suspiciously. “Wazzu whanns?”

  Haft didn’t answer, didn’t even dare breathe.

  The troll took a lumbering step toward him. It somehow seemed more curious than threatening. “Hoo zheer? Wazzu whanns?” it asked again.

  Haft swallowed and aimed his crossbow—not that he thought a bolt would do any good against a troll. He’d heard they had skin as tough as the hardest armor.

  His Lalla Mkouma suddenly let go of his neck and bounded off his shoulder, landing on his crossbow, bearing it down. She flipped off it and scampered to the troll, squealing, “Vrend! Vrend!” She leaped onto the troll and hauled herself to its face. She grabbed its ears and held her face to its eyes. “Zhem vrendz!” she insisted to it. “Komm’ee, zee oozeph! Vrendz!”

  “Vrendz?” the troll rumbled, crossing its eyes to focus on the Lalla Mkouma’s face.

  “Vrendz!” she insisted again. “Gud’ghiez.” She let go of the troll’s ears and back-flipped to the ground. “Komm’ee, zee oozeph.” She gripped the troll’s hand in both of hers and hauled. The troll followed, bent low to accommodate her slight height. She tugged the troll to Haft’s right side and slapped the palm of a tiny hand against the blade of his axe.

  The troll looked at the half-moon blade, then slowly lifted a finger that seemed to have too many joints and traced the rampant eagle engraved into the face of the blade.

  While it was doing that, the Lalla Mkouma clambered onto its back and piped at Haft, “Givvum han!” He hesitantly extended his hand to her. She took it and placed it on top of the troll’s head. “Skritz!” she commanded.

  Wide-eyed with wonder, Haft scratched behind the troll’s ear. The troll’s skin was so raspy it wore at his fingertips. But the troll purred when he began scratching, so he kept it up. But if he had to do it again, he thought, he’d try to wear a chain-mail glove.

  The troll removed its han
d from the axe blade and reached up to take Haft’s wrist. He pulled it from behind his ear and shifted his grip from wrist to hand. “Vrend!” it rumbled at him. “Oo gud’ghie! Wazzu whanns?”

  The Lalla Mkouma chittered at the troll faster than Haft could follow. It twisted its head around to look at her while she talked. When she finished, it seemed to lose itself in thought for a moment.

  “Tha’ dru?” it finally asked.

  “Dru!” she piped.

  The troll looked up at Haft, down at his axe, back up to his face. “Mee gittum eep,” it finally rumbled. It reached around to lift the Lalla Mkouma from its back and placed her on Haft’s shoulder. It ran off with far more grace than the ponderous lumbering Haft had first seen.

  “What … ?” Haft asked around the sore fingertips he was sucking. He didn’t understand what had just happened.

  “Way’um,” the Lalla Mkouma said. “Oo zee zoon.”

  Haft looked back and was surprised to find the Bloody Axes still invisible. “Don’t ask me,” he said softly. “All I know is we wait for developments. Look alert.” He faced front again.

  A few minutes later he saw two dark shapes barreling through the fan and bumber trees toward the observation post. He was pretty sure one of them was the troll. The other, in the quick glimpse he had, looked like a large, black dog. There were yips, a yell, and a scream from the observation post, all cut off almost before they could register on the ear. A moment later a huge black form leaped from the post and bounded toward them—it was the troll mounted on the back of a very large dog so black it was almost invisible even in the daylight.

  “Dun!” the troll announced when the dog stopped a few feet short of Haft.