The Warslayer

by Edghill, Rosemary

  The Lucite stakes were dissolving along with the body, leaving only melted stubs and ends behind. Seeing that, Glory tore the cloth panniers loose from her costume and scrubbed her hands furiously with them, tearing the shredded flesh further, until there was nothing left on her skin but her own blood.

  It began to rain. Thick, fat, cold drops of honest water, hitting her on the back of the head, on her raw back and her bare sunburned shoulders, trickling down into the lining of her leather corset. Glory had never been so grateful to be cold and wet in her entire life.

  ::You'll live to regret this, Vixen the Slayer!:: came a faint disembodied whisper, fading even as the words were uttered.

  "Yeah, yeah, yeah," Glory muttered, not paying very much attention. I guess bad villain-dialogue is the same everywhere.

  She was jittery and exhausted at the same time, giddy with relief, watching as the creature dissolved. I won? How could I have won? It can't be that easy. . . .

  "Slayer!" came an irritable shout.

  Ivradan.

  Irritable?

  Wearily, Glory got to her feet and walked carefully over to the altar rock. It was raining in good earnest now, and the smooth granite mountaintop was as slippery as polished marble. Puddles were gathering in places where the surface wasn't quite as even. Soon it would be completely dark.

  But the Warmother was dead.

  They'd won.

  Ivradan was struggling against his shackles. "Get me out of here!" he demanded.

  "Um . . . sure, mate," Glory said, surprised. Look here, she wanted to say, I've just put paid to your chief villain for you, and all you can think to do is yell at me? How about the thanks of a grateful nation, and all that, hey? "Any ideas?"

  She wanted to sleep. Right here, right now. In the rain. On the rock. Her hands hurt. She leaned against the slab, wincing. She thought she'd done something not very nice to her shoulder in that last fall. Not that anybody around here seemed to care. Her eyes prickled hotly. In another moment she was going to start bawling out of sheer self-pity.

  "Use the sword. Or what's left of it."

  Ivradan sounded downright pettish. She supposed he might have a right, since he'd been the one about to be the dragon's lunch and all, but it didn't really seem fair, somehow. . . .

  And suddenly the penny dropped.

  Belegir: "A terrible power has been unleashed in the land of Erchanen. Long was it prisoned upon the peaks of Grey Arlinn. . . ."

  Charane: "No warrior born of woman, no weapon forged in the world can unmake my form."

  Long was it prisoned . . .

  No weapon can unmake . . .

  Not "kill." Unmake.

  "Uh-oh," she whispered guiltily. Cinnas might have been called the Warkiller, but he hadn't killed the Warmother. You couldn't kill War. Cinnas had bound her into corporeal form, removing the threat of war from Erchanen by removing War Herself. And then he'd chained her up.

  And what had Glory done?

  Only a hero can chain her once more, Belegir had said, but that wasn't what Glory had done. Glory had unmade Cinnas' binding, forcing the Warmother to return to her original form from eons before, the form out of which she'd been summoned by the Mage Cinnas so that she could be chained.

  "Well, bugger all," Glory said inadequately. And began to laugh.

  "What are you laughing at?" Ivradan demanded.

  "I've violated the bloody Prime Directive! Hoo!" Glory told him gleefully, giggling harder. James T. Kirk, where are you when we really need you? The giggles turned to guffaws, then great roaring whoops of laughter that made her sides ache. She'd solved one problem, and set up a thousand new ones. The peaceful pastoral Allimir were now the old warlike Allimir again. She'd been out to do a good deed, and it looked like all she'd done was re-introduce the concept of not-very-original-sin into a world that had managed to get rid of it.

  Of course, alternatively, they could all be dead.

  She found the notion insanely funny. It was raining, they were stuck on top of a mountain, Ivradan was shouting at her in a red-faced fury—thanks to her—and every time she looked at him it set her off again, until Glory was lying helplessly on the ground at his feet, clutching Gordon to her and whimpering helplessly because her ribs hurt from laughing so hard.

  "Don't you see, Ivro?" she finally managed to get out. "War's back. She's back in all of you, just like before."

  There was a moment of silence.

  "Back? But you killed her, Slayer. I saw it." He sounded halfway between impatient and worried.

  Wearily, Glory pushed herself to her feet again. She realized she was stiff with cold and soaking wet and if they didn't get down off this mountaintop, there'd be nobody to bring the good news about this day's work to the home folks.

  "You can't kill War," Glory said, figuring it out as she spoke. "Cinnas reasoned that out back in the day. He bound her into corporeal form. She got loose of her chains, but she was still in one piece and one place, as it were. What the sword was supposed to do was chain her up again." She thought she'd leave out the part about Ivradan getting killed in the process. Belegir could have the whole story. Let him decide how much the rest of the Allimir needed to know about what their great hero had really been like, and what he'd done to gain them their thousand years of peace.

  "But you didn't do that," Ivradan said.

  "Nope. I reckon I unmade her, back the way she was before old Cinnas did all his spells to make you lot into pacifists. So I guess you've got a lot to re-learn."

  And fast, if any of Charane's imported frighteners were still wandering around loose.

  "I . . . see," said Ivradan, who obviously didn't. "Now will you unchain me? I'm cold."

  "Cut. Print. Save it for the day, kiddies, we'll go again tomorrow," Glory said to nobody in particular. She looked around for the sword—or what (as Ivradan had so kindly reminded her) was left of it. It was still glowing, making it easy to spot. She could wrap her hands up in the pannier-cloth so she wouldn't have to actually touch it. She walked over to the glowing sword hilt, wrapping the cloth around her hands.

  It wasn't glowing as brightly now—and was it her imagination, or did it look just the least bit pissed off?

  "Sorry, mate," she said to it. "But where I come from, we don't do things like what you did. Heroes don't, any how."

  Captain Kirk would have made a fine speech about how cultures needed to change and grow and overcome their warlike natures naturally the way Earthlings had, but Glory was tired and she didn't have a scriptwriter handy anyway. She bent over—stiffly, everything hurt—and picked up the sword by what was left of the blade. Her hands hurt, and every finger-twitch seemed to start fresh bleeding.

  What if this didn't work? What if the sword wouldn't open the shackles? Neither she nor Ivradan would survive a night spent here on top of this mountain. She wasn't even sure they could get down it in the dark.

  But they had to give it a try.

  She carried the sword back to the slab, moving with a slow shuffle an arthritic tortoise could have bettered. The gems in the hilt glowed faintly, as if they were slowly going out.

  Hurry up, damn you! she told herself.

  She reached the slab, and as she did, her foot skidded in a puddle of wet. She fell forward, catching herself automatically on her hands, slamming the sword-hilt into the stone and falling full-length against Ivradan. He grunted as the breath whooshed out of him.

  There was a sort of a crackling sound, as though someone were crumpling cellophane next to her ear.

  "Get off me," Ivradan said, pushing her away.

  Pushing her away.

  "Hey," Glory said, pleased, surprised, and irritated all at once. She rolled away, looking and then feeling for the sword-hilt. "I liked you the other way better," she muttered under her breath.

  It was gone. Metal hilt, jewels, everything. Gone. "Returned to Erchane's embrace," I reckon, just like the one in the staff. And good riddance, if you ask me. Where the iron shackles had been, th
ere was nothing more than rusty stubs set into the rock.

  Ivradan slid down the rock and stood, hugging himself against the chill and the wet. "Now what do we—"

  "Why ask me?" Glory snapped. "Seems to me you're the bossy-boots with all the ideas around here! 'Slayer, get me off this rock!' 'Slayer, you broke the magic sword!' 'Slayer, go find the rest of the magic sword and undo my shackles!' 'Slayer, I'm wet,' 'Slayer, I'm cold,' Well, I'm the one who just slew the damned dragon, and does anybody think about how I'm feeling? Oh, no, it's all Me—Me—Me. Well, you can just—"

  Ivradan put a hand on her arm.

  "Slayer, I'm sorry. I was afraid," he said humbly.

  Glory smiled, feeling chagrined at her burst of temper. "Fine pair of heroes we make."

  It was too dark to see, but she thought he smiled back. "We are heroes, aren't we?"

  "Damn right," Glory grumbled, obscurely mollified. "Think we can make it down off this rock in the dark?"

  "We can try," Ivradan answered.

  CHAPTER SEVEN:

  Truth or Dare

  There were two good things about descending Elboroth-Haden in the dark during a rainstorm. One of them was that they couldn't see how far they had to fall if they slipped. The other was that at least moving kept them warmer than standing still.

  It still wasn't fun.

  Ivradan led, being in marginally better shape than Glory was. She kept close behind, one hand on his shoulder, the other pressed against the cliff wall, Gordon tucked tightly under her arm. He was a wet and soggy bag of elephant, but he'd made it this far, and she wasn't going to abandon him now.

  She told herself that her work was done, that it really didn't matter whether or not they got down alive: the Warmother would stop coming after the Allimir—from outside at least. She told herself that the trail had been wide enough going up for the ponies, so it had to be wide enough going down for two people on foot.

  She wished it would stop raining.

  She hadn't thought it could be possible to sleep while walking, but she must have, because she didn't remember very much about the descent at all until the part where Ivradan stopped and shook her gently to rouse her.

  "Listen!"

  Glory blinked and looked around.

  It had stopped raining at some point. The night was clear, and the moon—moons—were out. The two of them were standing on the flat, and the sky gave just barely enough light for her to make out their surroundings. Ahead lay the ruined gates to the mountain path.

  They were down.

  She rubbed her bare upper arms with her wrapped hands—she'd lost the bandage somewhere along the way—trying to clear her head. After a moment, she heard what Ivradan had heard.

  Singing.

  She nodded to Ivradan and crept forward as quietly as she could. Her leather creaked, and the empty scabbard on her back jingled faintly. Might as well get rid of it now. Nothing to put in it.

  She reached back to unhook it, and a lancing pain in her shoulder stopped her. She winced, shaking her head in disgust. She'd definitely done something to that shoulder up on the mountain. The scabbard would have to stay.

  "Can't you be quieter?" Ivradan whispered.

  "Only if I go naked, mate," she whispered back. She started forward again, and reached the edge of the gate. From there she could see the city, and beyond.

  Serenthodial was pale in the moons-light, stretching off into the distance. Nearer to hand stood the black ruin of Great Drathil.

  And here and there, among the ruins, fires. Camp fires. She could smell the smoke, too, now that she was sniffing for it. Her stomach rumbled, reminding her of the long gap between meals. Sometime soon there'd come a day when she got breakfast, lunch, and dinner all within the same 24 hours, and wouldn't that be a minor miracle?

  Just now she had other things on her mind.

  It would have been too much to ask that all of the Warmother's good works vanish with her, Glory thought irritably. The mercenary band of nightmares that had chased them up the mountain in the first place was still there, and somehow she didn't reckon that striding into the camp and announcing that she'd killed their boss was likely to improve anybody's temper. She thought about the slaughter back in the castle of Arlinn when the Warmother had simply left, and shuddered. No.

  "What do we do?" Ivradan whispered.

  "Let me think," Glory answered.

  She knew they had to get back to the Oracle where Belegir and the other Allimir were waiting. It was barely possible that they could use the ring-road to sneak around the edge of the mercenary camp and reach the trail through the forest. There was no way to get into the forest any sooner. The ring-road was cut down into sheer rock, and neither of them was in any shape to try to scale the ridge any place short of where the forest road cut into it.

  She worked her right shoulder, trying to decide how bad the damage was, as she listened. From the singing, it was clear everyone wasn't asleep down there. How many guards did they have out and how alert were they? How far was the camp spread out? Had anyone made it out of Charane's palace alive this afternoon and brought news of what was going on?

  And did any of these people care?

  One good thing—or bad, depending on how you looked at it—was that the Warmother's magic wouldn't be working any more. But if they noticed that, they might notice that She wasn't around to keep an eye on them anymore . . .

  "We don't know where they are, and we can't tell from here. Let's see if we can sneak back to the Oracle trail and get back to your mates without putting the wind up anybody, hey?"

  "What if that doesn't work?" Ivradan said dubiously.

  "Then we try something else," Glory said, with far more confidence than she felt.

  "Before we go . . . " Ivradan said, hesitantly.

  "Yes?"

  "Give me the magic doll. You can't hold onto him and fight at the same time," Ivradan said.

  "Oh."

  Reluctantly, Glory extricated Gordon from beneath her arm. She wrung him out carefully before handing him over to Ivradan. Ivradan tucked him just as carefully into the front of his tunic (lucky Ivradan, to be wearing proper clothes, and layers at that, even if they were wet) and cinched his belt tight. "There."

  Glory smiled. "'Come, camrado,'" she said, consciously quoting. And hoped Evil was taking the rest of the night off.

  This time she led, trying to remember what the road had looked like during the day. It would have been too easy if the ponies Charane had magicked down off the top of the mountain were waiting here for them. Maybe they weren't dead, wherever they were. That had been the Warmother's style, hadn't it, really? Not to kill outright when she could make things miserable instead? Maybe she'd sent the ponies back to the Allimir just to make Belegir's lot unhappy, bad cess to her.

  As they got closer to the raiders, Glory began to wonder if anyone in the mercenaries' camp was asleep. There seemed to be entirely too much drinking and carousing going on for anybody to get his head down in the middle of it. And what could they possibly be drinking? From what she'd seen of them earlier, they hadn't been carrying much with them.

  Unless Great Drathil'd had vast untapped wine-cellars that had escaped the original fire . . . ?

  She looked around. The ring-road had dipped. They were out of sight of the fires, and from the sound of things, the mercenaries were still some distance away. "Ivradan?" she whispered, stopping him. "When this place burned, did anybody ever come back here?"

  "What?" He stared at her as if she'd lost her wits.

  "Did any of the Allimir come back? To salvage anything?"

  "Of course not," he whispered back. "It is a cursed place."

  And everything above ground had been burned by the Warmother. But from what she'd seen when she'd been mucking about in the ruins today, there'd been a lot built in stone, and the ground itself hadn't been too badly damaged, just . . . sterilized, like. The city had burnt from the top down, not the bottom up.

  "Were there cellars? Deep c
ellars?" she asked.

  "Are you feeling all right?" Ivradan demanded incredulously.

  She gritted her teeth and held on to her temper with an effort. "Cellars? Wine cellars?"

  Finally he saw what she was getting at. "Yes. Of course. Wine—beer—mead—the vineyards of Great Drathil stretched for miles, and its vintages were famous. Why?"

  She patted him on the shoulder with relief.

  "Because every soldier I ever heard tell of went looking for the pub first. And from the sound of things, I'd say this lot found it."

  It took a moment for Ivradan to work that through. "The— They— You mean they're drunk?"

  "I hope they're drunk. They sound drunk, anyhow. What time is it—how long until dawn?"

  Ivradan looked up at the sky, judging the time from the position of the stars and moons. "Nearly midnight."

  It had been around noon when the mercenaries had arrived at Great Drathil. Say four or five hours to find the cellars and get at least some of the stock out, and by now the party should be well underway. If she were lucky, at least half of them were legless with drink by now.

  "Come on."

  Moving faster now, they continued along the road. The Oracle was north of the city, and the entrance to the forest road was on a ridge overlooking one of the main city gates. Anybody who cared to look would be able to see them at that point, and there was no cover, but with only a little luck they were too drunk to notice.

  Glory and Ivradan were walking close beside the ditch-moat—she had a vague back-up plan that involved jumping in and hiding if they spotted anyone—when up ahead, she heard the unmistakable sound of someone retching.

  Glory froze. Then, to her own astonishment, she began to move forward quickly, giving Ivradan a hard shove in the chest so he'd stay put.

  Something that was puking like that had to be human-shaped, didn't they? And with so many different kinds of imported talent around here, who was to say she looked out of place?

  She hoped.

  She could see the sufferer silhouetted against the road. It was one man, alone, sicking his guts up, leaning on a spear for support. He didn't even notice her approach. And he reeked of vomit and wine.