Gunwitch

by David Michael

  Rose’s healing, and that of the 102nd, relied on coaxing the body to heal itself. Magic provided the means, but the body itself provided the strength to make the healing happen. Fatigue and exhaustion were the result, a reasonable exchange for a sucking chest wound. In rare instances, the healers would provide some of their own strength, but the toll of fatigue was even greater, borne by the healer, and there was a risk of taking on in their own bodies the injuries they healed in the other’s.

  Ducoed had never had much patience for coaxing, and hated the fatigue that resulted from healing himself. He had discovered that the empathy taught by the healers had another use.

  Through his grip on Mandla’s wrist he took in the warrior’s strength and vitality as if he drank deep of the purest, coldest well water. Mandla’s first attempt to break his grip was the strongest, and failed. After that, Ducoed took what he needed.

  The skin to cover the join of arm and shoulder grew last, the final stage of the union. The different colors of the skin swirled into each other like marble. Ducoed frowned at that. His plan had been to keep the black arm only until he could find an adequate substitute among the survivors–or the corpses–of Fort Russell. He had not expected this arm to so visibly taint him.

  He stood, pulling Mandla with up him. Mandla’s legs wobbled for an instant, then the warrior met his gaze with a flat expression. Ducoed grinned in response, showing his teeth. He could sense the fear that the warrior’s impassive eyes hid.

  “Thank you, Mandla,” he said, still holding the other man’s wrist. He considered using Mandla’s own strength to crush the bones of the wrist. Because he could. But he needed Mandla whole. For now. He let go. “Break camp,” he said. His eyes fell on the izigqila who still laid on the ground, blood still oozing from the gaping wound. “And send that to the izidumbus.”

  He turned, not waiting for Mandla to respond, and looked down at Margaret. He reached forward with his new hand and stroked her cheek, his fingers black against her pale skin. She shuddered and pulled away. He laughed.

  * * *

  Ducoed took his damaged force due west, heading for the Misi-ziibi. He would wait for both Umoya and the reinforcements for Fort Russell there.

  He had accompanied English regulars through bad country during his years in the 101st. The King’s infantry were efficient and well-disciplined. They could set camp for a hundred men in less than an hour, and break it down and line up to march in the same amount of time. They could–and did–march across any terrain on the earth, extending the reach of His Majesty, enforcing the royal decrees and expanding the British Empire.

  Formidable as they were, though, English regulars could be turned aside. They could not maintain a straight line march through a swamp. They could be distracted by the death cries of their fallen. They would not use the still-twitching bodies of those who had been marching in front as a raft-like bridge to cross quicksand. And they needed to sleep.

  Granted, the izidumbus were slow and required direct, explicit orders, and the ithambofis were hard to control once blood had been spilled, and neither could be trusted to properly cook over an open flame, but Ducoed had made his choice. He could pick a new, still-living cook from the survivors of Fort Russell, once he got there. Or maybe from one of the fort’s besiegers. An Italian, for instance. Italians were known for their culinary skills. The will-shattering magic that created the enthralled izigqilas would leave such skills intact.

  Mandla, still hiding the fatigue Ducoed had saddled him with, stood waiting for him. The izidumbus walked around the big man as if he were a tree or a boulder, immovable.

  “The ithambofis came across a farm,” Mandla said as Ducoed came even. He matched Ducoed’s stride and they walked side by side.

  “Was there a woman?” Ducoed asked.

  “Yes. She lives.”

  “Good.” Ducoed clenched his new fist and flexed the muscles of his new arm. The violence of his healing and his dark fantasies about Chal had built up inside him. He felt ready to explode. He needed a release. “Have her ready in my tent when we make camp.”

  * * *

  Umoya arrived at their new camp on the bank of the river as Ducoed finished with the woman. He had two izidumbus carry off the corpse–she would join their ranks before sunrise–and cleaned up while Umoya watched.

  Umoya stood taller than even Mandla, and looked more dangerous though he bore no visible weapons. He wore leather trousers and moccasins, but no shirt, in the manner of a native, with a robe made from the pelts of a creature Ducoed did not recognize. He recognized the skeletal hand of a child, though, used as a clasp for the robe. The exposed skin of Umoya’s chest and arms was no single color, like that of Mandla, as if Umoya’s parents, one native Amerigon and one escaped slave, had taken turns daubing their child with blacks and reds and browns. Much like the seam of Ducoed’s new right arm and shoulder, he thought. Both of Umoya’s eyes, though, were black, shiny holes in the mask of his face, as black as the long, thick hair held back by a leather cord.

  “There is only one of the Gray Hair’s daughters here,” Umoya said. “Duke Blackwood,” he added, stressing the title.

  Ducoed used the remains of the woman’s skirt to clean the blood off his face, then tossed the rag into a corner. Umoya had no knowledge of English titles or nobility, but he had seen through Ducoed’s assumed title immediately. Ducoed did not care. He had taken the name as a shield, preserving his true name from his new partners. Ducoed knew that Umoya was a sorcerer or shaman among the Ubasis, but he was not an Ubasi. Ducoed only paid respect to the people in charge, not flunkies. “I was going to tell you that,” he said. “But I guess you already spotted it. Did you meet her? Little Margaret? I’m sure you terrorized the hell out of the poor girl.”

  Umoya ignored him. “Where is the other daughter?”

  Ducoed shrugged. “I’m sure I don’t know,” he said. “It’s a big swamp out there, and she is with two people who know this area much better than I ever plan to.”

  He was not sure how it could happen, but Umoya’s black eyes became even darker, and the danger the man radiated ratcheted up with nearly audible clicks. “You do not seem concerned that you are falling short on your bargain,” Umoya said. “You offered my masters–”

  “Do not presume to remind me of what I am already aware of, Umoya.” Ducoed paused to rein in his temper, to regain control of his emotions and purge the thoughts of pulling his pistol on Umoya and disposing of the man in lightning and fire.

  The Ubasi had plumbed Ducoed thoroughly in the weeks of his capture, before he had convinced them that he could serve them better alive than as a–. He did not know the word for the once-human things that were welded into the soulgrunzers. The Ubasi had power like nothing Ducoed had witnessed, and he had managed to convince them to share some of that power with him. Because he knew Colonel Laxton and had access to the English army command structure. Because he could walk into any English fort on the frontier. That the Ubasi had sent Umoya with the reinforcements meant that they did not yet fully trust him, and that they thought the big man at least an adequate match for Ducoed. More than a match at the moment. Ducoed could sense Umoya was prepared, magically coiled and waiting for Ducoed to attack.

  Ducoed turned his back on Umoya and walked to the tent’s only chair. He moved the chair so it faced Umoya, then sat. He forced a smile. “I said I don’t know where she is in the swamp,” he went on. “But you and I both know where she is going.”

  “The fort,” Umoya said.

  “Brilliant,” Ducoed said, making his smile bigger. Because he knew Umoya hated to be patronized. “And at the fort, I will be able to offer up both the good Colonel Laxton–Gray Hair–and his two lovely daughters.”

  “You do not know that the other daughter will go the fort.”

  “Of course she will go to the fort. That is where her father is. And Rose will take her there for us. She has no more reason than myself to love Colonel Laxton, but Fort Russell is where the soldi
ers are. And the fort is closer than New Venezia.”

  “Your debts come due, and must be paid, whether you can deliver what you promised or no. You risk much.”

  Ducoed smiled again. “I’m risking nothing at all.”

  “I did not see your soulgrunzers,” Umoya said.

  The smile vanished, but Ducoed did not look away from Umoya. “We encountered something–someone–we did not expect.”

  “Some one?”

  “There were two of them,” Ducoed said. “But only one of them was unexpected.”

  Umoya’s eyes shifted to Ducoed’s right hand, then back to his face. “And still you say you are risking nothing?”

  “You take care of Rose,” Ducoed said. “And I’ll take care of the unexpected Chal. She’s mine.”

  “As you say, Duke Blackwood.”

  * * *

  The scouts and runners preceding the reinforcements for Fort Russell, coming upriver from New Venezia, encountered Ducoed’s force the next morning. None of the men survived to return to the main body of the troops.

  Umoya had arrived with a new squad of soulgrunzers, and more ithambofis and izidumbus and other creatures that Ducoed had not seen before, including some men that had been encased in armor and leaked hissing bursts of steam when they walked. These were not as large as the soulgrunzers, and they were hardly faster than izidumbus, but they looked solid. Ducoed made these his personal bodyguard, creating a ring of hot iron around himself. He sent Umoya with a contingent of ithambofis and a couple of the new soulgrunzers inland and downriver to take the English troops from behind. Then he arranged his undead forces for ambush. He kept Mandla near to hand, within the steaming, hissing circle of the bodyguards, and waited.

  Ducoed took out his frustrations on the front lines of the infantrymen that marched up the road beside the river. He unleashed lightnings and fires, firing his pistol and reloading as he pressed forward.

  The English regulars fell back and regrouped and established a firing line. The bullets slowed the mass of izidumbus and rang off the metal shells of Ducoed’s bodyguards, but mere drops of metal could not stop their advance. The English fell back still further, a few of them panicking now and beginning to run despite the shouted orders and flashing sabers of their officers. The line of red coats stabilized and remained steady, bayonets set for charge.

  Then blackness roiled up behind the English. Lightning and steel and claws struck from the blackness as Umoya joined the battle.

  Ducoed let the barrel of his pistol cool as he watched Umoya’s power roll out and wrap around English soldiers and crush them or wither them or throw them away. He had seen nothing like it before on the battlefields of Europe. Gunlocks and gunwitches served much the same purpose in European armies as artillery. Cannon of flesh and blood, and often deployed with the bombards and mortars.

  Ducoed had been given command of this army of dead and undead and whatever else it was that had come with Umoya. He had field experience, but never with troops like these. Umoya, though, showed that he knew exactly what the various troops were capable of, and he deployed them around himself as if they could read his thoughts. And maybe they could. The blackness that frustrated the English was the natural element of the izidumbus and ithambofis. The creatures did not need light to see, so Umoya’s black aura provided them with concealment. Ducoed learned–the gall of the lesson tasting like bile in his mouth–and sent in black clouds of his own.

  The nature of the fighting changed as the regulars found themselves forced into hand-to-hand combat. The red coat lines wavered, then held again as His Majesty’s infantrymen learned that the horrors they faced could be killed. Or if not killed, at least reduced to twitching body parts.

  Ducoed sent in his soulgrunzers from the fore as Umoya released his from the rear. The grunzers used their huge axes to push aside their allies, unconcerned with undead flesh but using the flats of their blades. They waded into the battle and became a blur of black iron and edged steel and splashing blood and body parts.

  Umoya pulled back his line of advance and opened an avenue of retreat for the English. As the red coats began to break discipline and take advantage of the way out, the way to safety, Ducoed started to shout obscenities at the sorcerer for pulling back to early. Then the smoke and chaos of the battle blocked his view.

  The fighting was over in less than an hour.

  “I thought we agreed there would be no survivors,” Ducoed said as his and Umoya’s contingents rejoined after the battle. “No one would be allowed to escape.”

  “There will be no survivors,” Umoya said.

  Around them, wounded men screamed as they were found and dispatched. The izidumbus stomped throats or strangled with their hands, ganging up as needed on those men who could still resist. Those men’s screams were truncated. The screams of those the ithambofis located and converted to one of their own dragged out and on. Except for the lack of gunfire, the battlefield was louder now than before.

  “Your line collapsed,” Ducoed said. “I saw men escaping.”

  Umoya’s flat face showed no emotion, but Ducoed could sense the man’s satisfaction, his sense of superiority. They did not hate each other. They disdained each other, each man seeing the other as beneath him, not worthy of hate. They were partners, unequals, equal only under orders from the masters they both served.

  “No one escaped,” Umoya said. “There was no … collapse. I drew back from the river’s edge.”

  “Why would you do that?”

  “To give them hope,” Umoya said. “None who chased that hope lived to realize it.”

  “You risked–”

  “I risked nothing,” Umoya said. He did not raise his voice, but he cut off Ducoed as surely as if he had shouted. “A man surrounded, with no hope of retreat, fights to the death. A man outnumbered, but with a way of retreat open to him, still hopes. And dies easier.”

  Ducoed covered his flash of anger, the hatred mushrooming inside him–at being interrupted, at being lectured, at seeing that Umoya was right again–with a tight smile, baring his teeth. “I see,” he said. He turned his back on Umoya, then said over his shoulder, “Send out patrols of ithambofis, anyway. Make sure that there were no survivors. We don’t want word getting back to New Venezia.”

  “As you say, Duke Blackwood.”

  Ducoed nodded and walked away. Umoya was useful. For now.

  Chapter 12

  Rose

  Henkel Farmstead

  1742 A.D.

  Rose and Chal stood at the edge of the clearing and looked at the remains of the house, the broken pier, the trampled vegetable garden. The farm did not look attacked. It looked … ground under foot. There was no smoke. Fire had not been used here. If there had been a stove lit in the house, it had been put out by whatever had smashed through the roof.

  Major Haley stepped up on Rose’s left, opposite Chal. “Just like the others,” he said.

  Rose nodded.

  In her past, marching with the armies of England, she had seen burned-out farms and razed villages. That had happened here. Old World or New World, armies in enemy territory plundered and consumed as they moved.

  But a fresh catch of fish lay dead on the ground near the splintered remains of the pier, mouths gaping, flat eyes staring. Beside the fish, a bloody rifle. The garden had been stomped into green and yellow mush, not harvested. The carcasses of chickens and a pig could be seen, pushed into the dirt and mud. Farm implements and tools had been dropped and left where they lay.

  Only the people who lived here had been taken. Except for the blood on the rifle, there was no sign of any living human. Or what had once been a living human.

  The trail of the attackers was plain. Rose and Chal and Major Haley and Janett had been following the trail since encountering it, because the trail pointed due west, a straight line toward Fort Russell. The forest, like the farm, had been trampled nearly flat. At least five grunzers and several hundred feet, bare and shod, walking in a mass, unconce
rned with stealth. Sweeping up the farms and homes in its path, leaving in its wake everything any other army–any human army–would have called valuable. Sometimes also leaving shredded flesh in coagulating pools of blood, but never bones, and never a corpse.

  She did not want to follow the trail, but it was the fastest way to Fort Russell. And this small army of … whoever or whatever it was … had not left anyone to watch its back. Neither she nor Chal had detected any watchers or scouts, nor any messengers sent back. This army was only interested in where it was going. And it seemed to be marching to the same place Rose was taking Janett and the major. The force was at least half a day ahead of them.

  After Chal’s wave, the four of them had run up the east side of the lake, then continued north for miles until they had crossed this path. Their going had been slow, because Chal had been too weak to assist, and Rose had refused to stop. She had wanted as much distance between them and Ducoed’s unnatural army as possible. At least the major and Janett had been up to it. Major Haley had helped Chal walk when Rose got too tired. Janett, surprisingly, had said very little after realizing that Rose had come back without Margaret, only cried and clung to the major for a while. Since then Janett had walked on her own, keeping up in silence.

  They had stumbled into this path with no warning. As she had stared west, Rose had found herself as scared as she had been in the midst of Ducoed’s camp, seized by a cold-fleshed little girl dressed in Margaret’s clothes, unable to pry the viselike grip of the girl’s fingers free. Because this was the trail of a new force, just as unnatural and even larger than Ducoed’s.

  That had been yesterday afternoon. They had marched in the sunlight along the southern edge of the path, and camped inside the line of trees when the last gray of twilight had disappeared from the sky.