The Warslayer

by Edghill, Rosemary

  Smoke. Burning meat. And in this time and place, not a good smell.

  Investigate? With Belegir hurt, she didn't know how bad, and only her to care for him, and herself hurting? Not one of her brighter notions, even if it were an inevitable scriptwriter's gambit.

  But if she didn't, if she did the sensible Normal Person thing and turned away, she might be leaving a whole pack of monsters at her back to ambush the two of them at leisure. And she didn't know for certain that the monsters couldn't go into the Oracle cave. She only knew that she hadn't seen this one inside.

  She sighed, sniffing smoke. She couldn't afford to ignore it. But the morning had shown her that she wasn't really equipped to fight monsters, either, at least not excellently. So she'd just go see if this was something really close—and by the smell, it wasn't far—and then run off and hide. Quickly. And maybe a miracle would occur and this wouldn't turn out to be some new problem after all. Maybe it was a rescue party.

  Ha.

  She checked the direction of the wind, and backtrailed the smoke as quietly as she could, moving through the forest. The smoke thickened the closer she got, until she was walking through low-roiling clouds of it thick enough to make her stifle a cough, and soon enough she saw why.

  Somebody had left dinner on while they nipped down to the pub and never came back. And now dinner was burning.

  She stopped, hidden behind a tree, and looked carefully over the scene, searching for trouble. Vixen would have charged right in with a battle-yell, but Vixen had a nice sharp sword and no hostages to fortune. And in fact, Glory realized with an unfamiliar pang of insight, Vixen had never played for stakes this high. If Vixen failed, if Vixen lost, there were always others to take her place in the battle against the Darkness. In this time, in this place, there was no one else to take up the fight. There was only Glory, and because that was so, Glory could not afford to take chances. And so she studied the situation before her very carefully.

  It was a camp, one that had the look of long-usage. The fire-pit was well-dug, ringed and lined with large stones. The camp also had the smell of long-usage, the strongly ammoniac stench of something big that liked to mark its territory.

  Two of the Allimir ponies were there, forelegs hobbled, and tied, for good measure, to a large log by nooses of coarsely-braided leather around their necks. They looked concerned, but not distressed enough to be making serious attempts at escape.

  By the look of things, the third Allimir pony was the source of the smoke. A large portion of some good-sized beast had been spitted and left to roast over the fire, and when the fire's owner hadn't come back, the meat had begun to burn.

  Gazing around, she sighted the rest of the butchered pony, wrapped in its hide, hanging in a tree out of the reach of other predators. The pony's head was jammed between two branches, just as Kurfan's had been, and now that she looked for them, she saw that most of the trees in the area were decorated with clean-picked skulls, big and little. The monster had been living here for quite some time. There was nothing much to the camp but the firepit and the horses—no bedding, no other food or drink. Just skulls, meat, and soon-to-be-meat.

  And if she wanted the surviving ponies back she'd better work quickly, and hope the dead monster didn't have mates sharing its camp with it.

  She went over to the spit, and heaved the joint off the fire. It must be twenty pounds of meat, maybe more. The fire was on its way to being a good bed of coals, and she looked around for something to smother it with, then gave up. It would burn itself out safely eventually. There was a large rusty iron blade beside the firepit that the monster must have used to chop firewood and butcher its meat. She picked it up and went over to the ponies.

  "Now I'm going to say soothing things to you," she said to them, "and you're going to repay me by not kicking me to bits or bolting into the next county, right? It's just as well you're none too bright, or seeing your mate served up as the blue plate special here'd be in a fair way to making you pretty nervy. But you're completely oblivious, hey?" She held out her hand, and gently stroked each pony's muzzle in turn. The animals nosed at her hopefully.

  "Well, let's get you out of here." I hope.

  The hobbles were a simple loop-and-toggle arrangement of braided leather, easy enough to undo if you had thumbs. She shook them free, then used the heavy chopper in her hand to cut the braided leather ropes where they looped around the log. Dropping the machete, she grabbed the trailing ends and led the horses away as quickly as she dared.

  The ponies followed her willingly enough, apparently on the theory she was going to feed them. Nothing followed them, but by the time the Oracle cave mouth was in sight again, Glory was so filled with unreasoning fear she could barely force herself to move forward. Only sheer luck had gotten her through that little adventure alive. She could not imagine what bold spirit of idiocy had impelled her to go wandering through the forest in search of freelance ogres to slay: if she had managed to find one, she'd be dead now. Tripping over the two surviving horses, and rescuing them, was such a stroke of undeserved good fortune that she knew it would have to be paid for with even more terrible future horrors.

  She was moving by sheer will alone by the time she reached the cave entry. As before, the horses hurried to enter the narrow cut in the rock.

  She dropped their leads, letting them forge on ahead, the blue flash in the dirt reminding her of something she'd managed to forget, as rattled and shell-shocked as she'd been.

  The wolf-man's talisman. It was still there, still straining to get to . . . something.

  She picked it up—carefully—by the end of the cord, and tucked her faux-rowan stake carefully away in its boot-sheath. As the jewel swung from her fingers, it was easy to pretend that it had never exhibited that strange pseudo-life.

  But she still wasn't going to touch it. Or let it touch her.

  She sighed wearily and followed the horses into the cave. In the doorway, she felt a tug. She looked down at her hand. The jewel was hanging straight sideways, as though there was some force keeping it from entering the Oracle cave.

  Glory pulled. There was a weak pop, as though someone had put a lightbulb under a pillow and stepped on it. The gem came through, its light fading away.

  So much for finding anything out about what it is or where it came from, I reckon, she thought sourly.

  Glory shook her head. Some days were like that—just one damned thing after another. Now she supposed the thing was useless from a forensic standpoint.

  The ponies were wandering up the corridor in a leisurely but determined fashion. Glory ran after them and grabbed the trailing lead-ropes—dropping the pendant in the process—and led them firmly back to the cart. After she'd gone to all the trouble of getting them back, she had no intention of losing them again.

  Belegir was conscious again when she got there.

  " 'Lo, Bel," Glory said. "How's tricks?"

  He tried to smile, and winced instead. "Water," he whispered.

  She knotted the two lead-ropes together and hooked her arm through them, then got the waterskin for Belegir and held it for him as he drank. His color was better now.

  "This is one of the lustral cars," he said, in a faint voice.

  "Had to put you in something."

  "And you've brought the horses."

  "Two of them. Monster killed the other." She took back the waterskin and drank thirstily. The water was tepid and tasted faintly of leather. It was delicious.

  "Slayer, forgive me."

  Glory lowered the waterskin suspiciously. "For?"

  "I doubted you. When the Oracle spoke to me—"

  "Well, you don't have to believe everything you read in the newspapers," Glory said hastily. If the Oracle had told Belegir she was going to fail, she really didn't want to hear it. Not when she was starting to believe in the lot of them: the Oracle, the Warmother, maybe even in the Dreamer of Worlds. "We heroes have a way of coming through in the backstretch, y'know. It isn't over till it's over.
Now all we have to do," she said with a sigh, "is get you back to the fountain, and take stock."

  The ponies tugged at the lead again. Probably they were thirsty, and could smell the water. Too bad she couldn't hitch them to the cart. That would solve several problems at once.

  Or maybe she could.

  "Wait here," she told the surprised Allimir mage. "I'll be right back. No worries." She took her sword out of its sheath and laid it in the cart with Belegir. It weighed close to four pounds, and by now she felt every extra ounce.

  "No worries," Belegir echoed, a smile in his voice.

  It took a bit more doing than before to get a leg up over the back of one of the ponies—the beasts felt they'd been ill-done-by, and wanted everyone to know it—but she managed. It took very little urging to get the two of them moving toward the fountain, still linked together by the awkwardly tied braided leather rope. All she had to do was hang on.

  When they got there, the ponies headed straight for the fountain. Glory slid off, and staggered over toward the supplies.

  There was, as she'd hoped, more grain with the supplies, and several more of the compressed fruit cakes. She took some of each to use as lures while the ponies occupied themselves at the fountain, wolfed a fruit cake down herself, and turned her attention to the packsaddle. It was a simple device: a thick sheepskin pad, two cinches, a light framework of curved ash spokes to hold a pack in place. She didn't have a horse collar, and the cart didn't have any kind of hitching tree, but if she could get one of the ponies strapped into this, she bet she could use pony-power to pull the cart back here.

  She went over to the fountain and pulled the horses away from the water—she didn't know how much water was too much, but they'd get another crack at it soon—and began the ticklish process of getting one of the ponies buckled into the packsaddle. She didn't even know if Marchiel was one of the two survivors, or if this animal had ever done anything like this before—but she managed. She did know that however tight she thought the cinches were now, she'd have to tighten them again later. She tossed the two saddle-pads up onto its back and added the coiled leather reins that the Allimir favored, and the basket filled with equine bribes. She wasn't going to bother to try to ride the other horse back, but all that leather should come in handy. Then she led the animals back down the corridor one more time.

  Her feet hurt. Her back hurt. Her head hurt, and the gash on her shoulder was hot and swollen now to the touch. Sleep had rarely seemed so desirable. But short term temporary conditional victory was nearly within her grasp.

  She used one of the saddle-pads to make a chest-pad for her designated carthorse, and ran a length of the rope over that as well. Then, if nothing broke, if the pony didn't kick the whole arrangement to flinders, she'd just re-invented the horse-drawn cart. She untied the two ropes, and lashed its mate to the back of the cart, hoping the beasts were still as docile and gregarious as they'd seemed the day before. Belegir was asleep again, which was probably the best possible thing, all things considered.

  "Come on," she said, taking a handful of mane in one hand and holding out a palmful of grain in the other.

  The pony started, and stopped when it felt the unfamiliar pull of the cart and heard the noise behind it. Started again at Glory's urging, trying to turn to look behind it. After a few minutes of that, she got the inspiration of bringing the second animal up and tying it to the packsaddle instead of the cart. Finally, after an eternity of coaxing, both ponies moved forward, and the cart followed. And she wasn't the one dragging it.

  Though short, it was not a journey she would care to repeat.

  There were probably a dozen useful things she ought to have done, once she finally got the cart to the fountain, but she didn't do any of them. She got the makeshift harness off the ponies and watered them again, then tied them up to the cart once more so they didn't either wander off or go rummaging through the supplies, giving them a bit of grain to sweeten the deal.

  Belegir was asleep again, or at least unconscious. His breathing sounded steady, but his skin was hot. She wasn't sure whether it was a fever, or if it was normal with the Allimir—it wasn't like she'd spent a lot of time feeling up the little people before the balloon went up. Either way, there wasn't much she could do, and right now she was so tired she was stupid.

  She filled all the waterskins, and had a big mug of water with a splash of ale in it, then she squirmed out of her costume again, sopped her T-shirt in the fountain, and used it to give herself a nonce-bath all over, scrubbing until her skin (fishbelly here, sunburned and starting to peel there, bruised and bloody elsewhere) felt a little cleaner. It wasn't enough of a bath to scrub away the smells and memories of the morning, or the feel of the monster's fur on her hands, or the way it had looked at her, but it was all she could do. Then she laid her T-shirt over the side of the fountain to dry, pulled on her (by now rather grubby) jeans and sweatshirt, got Gordon out of her bag, and curled up with her back to the fountain and her stuffed elephant in her arms, trying to summon up the strength to go up those stairs one more damn time and look for something useful. Clothes, or supplies. Something to keep them alive.

  She should have brought the butchered horse with them. Meat was meat. She ought to go back for it now. In a little. When it was safe to leave Belegir. She would. In a little . . .

  She woke from a confused dream of a surreal courtroom and a stern justice in wig and robes thundering down sentence upon her—or Vixen, she wasn't sure—and was unable, for a moment, to remember where she was. Then it came swirling back to her with dizzying force. The Allimir. The Oracle temple. The Warmother, and her furry little friends.

  Groaning, she got to her feet and stretched, feeling the kinks and knots go off like a string of firecrackers along her back and limbs. Stiff and sore, and the side of her face ached like a broken tooth.

  Belegir was awake, and trying to get out of bed.

  "What do you think you're doing?" Glory snapped, hurrying over to him. She put an arm around his back and helped him sit up. That brought on another spate of coughing, and more fresh blood. She wiped his face with the edge of the blanket.

  The monster had hit him in the face to knock him down, and ripped open his robes, leaving deep gashes in his chest, but what it had mainly been doing, from the look of things, was strangling him, fortunately for Belegir.

  "I need . . . to get up," Belegir gasped, blushing.

  "Oh. Oh." This might be Middle Earth, but the human body was no respecter of crises. Glory thought quickly. "No you don't. You wait right here. And if you move while I'm gone, I'm going to come back and make you wish you hadn't. You got that?" she said fiercely.

  "Yes," Belegir said faintly, holding on to the edge of the cart.

  When she was sure that he could stay where he was put, Glory left him, moving faster than she really wanted to. Back up the steps of the temple, back to the cart room to where the little golden buckets were.

  "Here," she said when she got back. "Use this."

  Belegir looked at her, horrified.

  "Look. I don't know where the latrines are in this place, but I do know you can't walk there. Erchane will cut you a break. We'll throw it out afterward, okay? And I won't look."

  Belegir managed a weak smile. "Cinnas warned us about heroes," he said, reaching for the golden bucket.

  When he was finished she took the bucket and set it down beneath the cart. "Can you stand, do you reckon?" she asked. "You ought to get those tatters off. There's some robes and things up there. Thought I'd do a bit of scrounging, for new clothes and bandages and suchlike. You could do with a new outfit."

  "My mage-robes," Belegir whispered sadly. "Yes, Slayer, you are right. And . . . I think I can stand." Carefully she lowered him to his feet and peeled him out of the filthy and tattered mage-robes and his tall felt boots, discovering in passing that Allimir mages were pink and hairless all over. She didn't like the angry look of the gashes on his chest—God knew what that monster'd had under its fingern
ails—and tried not to think about her own wound. Afterward, she rearranged the mattresses to keep him elevated—better than lying flat if there were something wrong with his lungs—and helped Belegir back into the cart, covering him up warmly with the blankets.

  "Belegir, what do your folk do when someone gets hurt?" she asked, hoping her question sounded idle.

  "We call for the healers, of course—or, if it is not a great injury, for the herb-doctors," Belegir said slowly. He looked at her shoulder—blood had seeped through the grey sweatshirt fabric—and sighed. "I am not a healer."

  "You need a healer. I was wondering . . . do you reckon . . . do you think the Oracle's water would help? If we poured it on you?" Glory asked.

  "By Erchane's Will," Belegir said listlessly. Even the short conversation had tired him, though he managed to rally a bit. "But Slayer, please . . . use a different bucket."

  She grinned. "No worries. You just get some rest."

  She put one of the full waterskins in the cart with easy reach, and tucked Gordon up beside him—she didn't know why, it just made her feel better. When she was sure he was asleep, she eased the bucket out from under the cart and looked inside. As she'd feared, there were dark threads of blood mixed in with the urine.

  This is not good. This is so not good.

  But there was nothing she could do about it.

  She took the bucket to the far end of the cavern and dumped it on the floor, then sluiced down the spot with clear water from one of the waterskins—piss-poor hygiene (to coin a phrase), but the best she could manage. Then she emptied out her gym-bag and her purse, and took a quick inventory.

  Logo flashlight (reasonably useless). Cigarette lighter (wonder of wonder and miracle of miracles—hot tea later!) Gordon. A copy of the script for the MTV special (useless unless you wanted kindling). Her sneakers (she stopped to put them on). Her purse: wallet, with her passport, Melbourne drivers license, Access card, and a lot of funny-looking American currency. Tissues. Comb. Lashings of makeup. Hair-pins and a couple of ribbons.