by Lionel Fenn
There was only Pholler, and there was no one home.
"I wanna carry the duck!"
To the northwest, the Scarred Mountains blazed a deep orange in the setting sun's light.
Red began to move more slowly, his claws digging divots in the road, his eyes shading to black. Every few paces he would mutter a low growl. His tail began to switch, and he moved with his head down, his great spiraled horns ready for attack.
The bat was in Gideon's hand by the time they reached the first of the houses, two-storied, wood-and-marble structures, and he noticed that the usual array of family pennants was missing from the lintels and window frames.
"Please let me carry the duck?"
In the village square, a long and low building settled beneath a stand of trees, and when Gideon walked around to the front and tried the double doors, they were locked. He knocked. No one answered. He knocked again, stepped back, and shivered when a breeze kicked dust off the roof into his face.
A look to his right then, to a small building that had once housed Whale's armory shop. He noted it had been rebuilt, and the batwing doors had been replaced with one that had a heavy bar laid across it. He smiled. That was where he'd first met Ivy, and had thought she was going to do him in with a dagger. That was where Whale had made the bat he now held.
A sigh, and Gideon turned around, facing east up the road that ran through the village. Dusk was fast settling across the Sallamin, and it was difficult to see clearly. He had to squint to make out the last of the houses, and squinted harder to make out the line of the horizon. He stopped searching for movement when he started getting a headache; he stopped praying for a miracle when Chute and his company had joined him, and were silent.
"So this is it, huh?" Tuesday said, flapping to the ground and leaning against his leg.
"Yep."
"I think we're too late."
"Yep."
"I was supposed to keep watch," Vondel said morosely. "But Morj said I was wanted at headquarters. The message was a little old. When I got there, it was too late."
A sweep of Gideon's arm indicated the whole village. "You were attacked?"
"You could say that. It was kind of more like an unstoppable wave of horror than an attack, but that's close enough."
Gideon was proud of himself for not asking for details. "And the people?"
"Oh, they got away. You can run pretty fast when there's a wave of unstoppable, not to mention unspeakable, horror behind you."
Morj called to his brother.
"Excuse me," Vondel said. "I think he wants something."
"Wait a minute." Gideon gestured vaguely. "If they ran away, which way did they go?"
Vondel pointed. "There's another village a few days away, on the other side of the Rush. I was there until Ivy found out what had happened. That's when she sent me on my next mission."
"To look for signs."
"Of unstoppable horror, right."
Gideon said nothing more, and the man marched off, so engrossed in his brother's gestures that he didn't notice one of his laces snake off into the grass.
The houses' shadows soon buried the road, brought out the stars, chilled a breeze that hummed mournfully over the rooftops.
"Unstoppable horror," Gideon said at last. "Wonderful."
"He has nice hair, though," she said.
A clash of blade against blade barely disturbed them, only made their heads turn; Chute and Morj were dueling under the trees.
"They want me," she said proudly.
"Yep," he said.
She nudged him sharply with her beak. "Giddy, for heaven's sake, two men, two fine men, are trying to kill each other over your sister! Doesn't that just make your bones quiver?"
He walked up the road out of the square, and stopped when she grabbed a beakful of jeans. Then he looked down and wiped a hand over his face. "What I care about, Sis, is that Ivy's not here. That nobody's here."
Morj cried out in pain; Chute laughed.
"We were supposed to help them," he said. "We were supposed to be here to help them."
Tuesday waddled around until she faced him, stabbed his right knee until he hunkered down to her level.
"Now see here, Gideon Sunday," she said sternly, "you are not Superman, and you're not Batman, and you're not the goddamn Shadow out to purge evil from the hearts of men. You couldn't have gotten here any faster than you did, and you don't even know how long they've been gone. You can't see the future, and you can't change the past, and if you're going to feel sorry for yourself, you might as well go home."
"I don't feel sorry for myself," he said angrily. "I just don't like feeling that I can't do anything to help because I'm always one step behind the rest of this idiot place."
"You really want to catch up to unstoppable horror?"
He conceded the point with a nod, but sighed loudly to tell her he still wasn't happy.
She cocked her head to one side, then the other. "It's not all that bad, you know. You've still got me and that goat, and the boys, right?"
He glanced over his shoulder; Morj was sucking a wound on his wrist, and Chute was trying to prevent his belt from getting away. "They can't even keep their clothes on."
Tuesday gazed at her love, and sighed. "Yeah, I know."
Gideon glared, and she fluffed her feathers.
Chute sheathed his dagger and started to walk toward them.
"Listen, Giddy, you can bitch all you want, but there isn't anything we can do tonight anyway, so why don't we—"
One of Chute's men shouted a warning.
Red's panther-like bellow echoed off the walls.
Gideon straightened instantly, bat at the ready, and raced toward the square as he saw the company backing toward the longhouse wall, sabers and staffs slashing at large shapes plunging out of the trees in a cleverly staged ambush. The things were too small to be the demonic deshes that generally hunted among the peaks, and too large to be the carnivorous ekklers that seldom left the smooth-pine forests; when one of the men shouted something about aiming for a head, Gideon's vision cleared and he realized that they were being attacked by a scruffy patrol of Moglar, fierce giant dwarves who were the personal guards of Lu Wamchu.
One of the leather-armored creatures saw him as he entered the square, and spun a mace over its head. Gideon swerved and flung the bat at its legs, raced after it, and reached his weapon just as it made contact and brought the Moglar down, and the mace down on its head.
Tuesday honked.
He whirled and faced two more, their black hair greasy on their shoulders, their mottled faces contorted with a rage that was matched only by the distaste in Chute's expression as he plunged his dagger into the left one's back. Gideon dispatched the second by caving in its chest, then turned to swing at another, who deftly leapt into the air, spun around twice, and landed on Gideon's other side.
Gideon turned and swung again.
The Moglar, laughing hoarsely, flipped the two swords it held from hand to hand and tried to pink Gideon's thighs with expert lunges and brilliant backward sidesteps; but Gideon refused to fall for the tactic and waited instead, circling, eyeing the giant dwarf warily until it launched another series of lunges. Then he chopped at a blade and snapped it, carried through and broke the other wrist. The Moglar turned to run; Red rose on his hind legs and clawed off its hair.
The initial shouts and screams settled into a muffled series of grunts and grunted warnings. The Moglar outnumbered them by several to one, but they were hampered by their own eagerness, and by the skills of Vondel's men—the staffs rotated into blurs that pureed fore and aft, the sabers filled the evening air with blue sparks when they connected with steel and bone, and the daggers seemed to fly from their owners' grips, sink into their targets, and fly back without a sound save the puncture of flesh and the thud of hilt meeting hand.
Gideon fought with Red at his side, more often than not deferring to the lorra's horns when a single Moglar was stupid enough to challenge
them on its own. And when there was more than one, he used his innocuous-looking weapon to its best advantage, daring the enemy to come closer, then swinging powerfully from the shoulder. He only missed once, and found himself tangled in his own legs, falling to the ground; Tuesday flew into the Moglar's face to distract it until he could regain his footing.
Though it seemed like days, it was only a half hour later that a Moglar bleated a retreat from one of the side streets, and the giant dwarves vanished into the night, dragging their dead and wounded behind them. Gideon immediately dropped to his knees, dropped the bat, and leaned over. Despite all his time here, he was still not used to killing, and the thought of it filled his throat and stomach with acid.
There were groans.
Morj circulated among the company, dispensing medical skills and advice.
One man screamed when Chute was forced to cut through his hair to get at a scalp wound.
And three of those who had not been wounded at all were dispatched with torches into the streets to bring back the clothes that had taken the opportunity to flee for their lives.
By midnight all was calm.
Tuesday, despite Chute's pleading, had stolen Gideon's cloak again and was sleeping on the peak of the longhouse roof; Red was curled up against a tree, snoring loudly and thumping the grass with his tail; and the company at large was unconscious against the wall.
Gideon couldn't sleep. His hands stung, his arms were tight, his legs were cramping every five minutes, and he was so tired he could barely keep his eyes open. But he could not sleep. He heard only the battle cry of the Moglar, and within that horrid sound the cry of Ivy Pholler pleading for help.
Chute walked over and sat cross-legged beside him, most of his uniform back in place and his face lined with worry. "Are you all right, Gideon?"
"I'll live, I think."
"You were very good."
He grinned, and shrugged. "It isn't my usual line of work, actually. But I suppose it wasn't bad against unstoppable horror."
Chute looked at him oddly. "What? That wasn't unstoppable horror. It was pretty disgusting, but it wasn't all that bad."
Gideon licked his lips, scratched at his beard. "What you're saying is, it gets worse."
"Sure, didn't you know that?"
Gideon lay down, closed his eyes, sat up, and said, "If you wake me before this war is over, Vondel, I'm going to give you a crew cut."
"Is it easy to take care of?"
Gideon went to sleep.
And dreamed of a house in New Jersey, and a pantry in the kitchen, and a telephone call that summoned him to the next Super Bowl.
He also dreamed of a featureless plain, a pale red sky, and a dark figure on the horizon, watching him, and waiting.
When he woke up and saw Tuesday sitting on his chest, he closed his eyes again.
She pecked his nose, his chin, and started on his beard. "C'mon," she said. "You gotta get up."
"I don't gotta do anything."
"You damned well better, if you want to be a hero."
CHAPTER NINE
Gideon didn't want to be a hero. He hadn't asked for the job, and hadn't liked it since the day it was given to him. He didn't even know what a hero was, though he suspected it had something to do with doing things no one else wanted to do, and when he did it he was applauded for doing it while those applauding thought they could have done it themselves if they had really wanted to, and a hell of a lot better besides.
He got to his feet.
He ignored his sister's quacking call to arms.
He looked eastward up Pholler's deserted main street and saw, some distance outside the village, a large cloud of yellowish, reddish dust moving rapidly in his direction. It was difficult to see clearly because the rising sun distorted his vision, but he had no doubt it was a cloud of dust all right, and one that was filled with all sorts of dark shapes indicating that a rather large and determined force was on the road.
Chute and his men were already standing behind him, weapons at the ready and muttering their determination not to be ambushed again; Red was testing the nutritional value of the shrubs around the longhouse, but his tail was twitching; and Tuesday, after delivering her message, had taken to the high ground, precariously balancing on a tree branch and wondering aloud how the damned robins did it without cramping their toes.
Gideon touched his side to be sure the bat was in its holster, then began walking up the empty street. His footsteps echoed against the walls. They made him nervous. He stopped. The echoes continued. He looked behind him and saw Chute courageously in his shadow, only once blowing a stubborn curl out of his eye.
"What do you think?"
Chute shaded his eyes and stared. "I think it isn't the unstoppable horror."
"That's a relief. Could it be Ivy?"
"I rather doubt it, actually."
Gideon sniffed, took bat in hand, and started forward again. Of course it wasn't Ivy. Why should it be Ivy? She was probably busy keeping the Wamchu and his renegade wife from conquering the world, so why should she bother to come see him, even though she had sent for him? Personally. With a plea, no less. To save her life, for crying out loud.
Tuesday flew erratically overhead and landed on the roof of the last house, gripping the chimney as best she could with one wing. Her neck extended, her eyes narrowed, and when her brother came abreast of her she called down to him to put away the bat, the newcomers looked friendly. Dusty, but friendly.
"How can you tell?" he called back.
"They have hair like Chute's. I think I'm jealous."
Chute, with a scowl of disbelief, strode toward the cloud, stopped, strode back and sighed. "Oh, bother, it's York," he said glumly.
"Who's York?"
"My brother. The other brother. He's probably coming to tell me I'm in trouble again. How embarrassing. He never did like me awfully much. The only good thing is that he doesn't like Morj, either."
Gideon holstered the bat and waited, wondering if York would fall in love with his sister too, and if there were any rules for three-way duels. He didn't move when Morj joined them, heard the news, and tried to kick down the low wall in front of the last house. He didn't move when Chute's left shoulder pad made a break for it and the soldier stomped a foot on its tail. And he didn't move when the dust cloud stopped moving, settled, and he saw a group of nearly forty men, all dressed in writhing pelts, and all with hair they couldn't keep out of their eyes. The leader was blond, taller than his brothers, and with a slight sneer on his lips, most likely a result of the scar that ran from the corner of his mouth to the corner of his left eye.
Tuesday quacked softly from the roof.
York Vondel put his hands on his hips and glared. "You were supposed to report back this morning."
Morj kicked the wall.
Chute straightened his beret and pointed over his shoulder. "We had a little trouble. Moglar. If you must know."
"And who's this?" the blond said, the sneer shifting to his voice.
"Gideon Sunday," Chute said.
"Oh." No surprise, no disgust, no smile. Nothing. "You're wanted, dear brother. Now."
Chute opened his mouth to protest, shook his head instead, and signaled his men to move up and fall in with the others. Then he took Gideon's arm and pulled him to one side. "He's really not a bad brother," he whispered. "He's just upset."
"Why?"
"He's in love with Ivy."
Gideon's back straightened.
"She tells him to put a desh in it, and he tells her he'll have her before the war is over."
Gideon's chin lifted.
"She tells him it'll be over his dead body, and he tells her he's not afraid to die for the woman he loves."
Gideon's hand tightened around the knob of the bat.
"I just thought you ought to know. When York falls in love, he's awfully impossible. Dreadful. Actually, if he weren't my brother, I'd probably kill him."
York sneered in their general direction, b
eckoning impatiently until Chute sighed and patted Gideon's arm. "Talk to him," he advised. "Let him get to know you. He needs a friend, actually, because no one else can stand him."
Gideon refused to comment. Instead, he whistled for Red, and made a show of climbing onto the lorra's back when York, like others of his people, professed disbelief that one of the caprines would deign to permit a human to ride it. Then Gideon whistled for his sister, who flew down from the roof, circled Chute's head once, and landed on Red's haunch. Immediately he rode to the head of the column, glanced behind disdainfully, and moved on, leaving the others in his dust.
"Don't you think you ought to wait?" Tuesday said nervously as the troop fell behind.
"For what? Before we've done a mile they'll be fighting each other tooth and nail, and I really don't need that aggravation right now."
She nipped at his back. "Jealous?"
"Of what?"
"The blond with the crooked mouth."
He snorted. "That sort of emotion is beneath me, Sis. I have better things to do than to waste my time wondering how many rivals I have."
"Three so far," she said.
He frowned. "Three?"
"Y'know, Giddy, even for a man you're awfully dense. Why do you think the Vondels hate each other so much? It sure as hell isn't the hair."
He thought about it, thought about it a bit more, and decided that perhaps he could stoop to a twinge of jealousy. But just a twinge. To prove to himself that he still felt strongly about Ivy. After all, he didn't want it to cloud his judgment.
An hour later, he said, "Bastards."
"Who?" she said. "Them or those?"
He reached back and pulled her around to what would have been his lap, were he sitting on the ground with a lap to put her on.