Clockwork Boys: Book One of the Clocktaur War

by T. Kingfisher

  The creature thrashed atop him and died.

  Slate stepped back, nodded, and cracked her knuckles.

  It occurred to Caliban that he had been nattering about his oath to protect the weak to a woman who had apparently just tracked them through the woods, found their weapons, climbed up the outside of the hut carrying said weapons, dropped fifteen feet through a hole in the ceiling onto a shaman, saving his life and possibly his soul in the process, and then proceeded to fight and dispatch a stag-man twice her size.

  My god. I am an arrogant jackass.

  Slate rolled the rune sideways off him, pulled the knife free, and sawed through his ropes. By the time he managed to sit up and get the blood back into his hands, she’d also freed Brenner.

  “And now—” Slate said, turning, and then, “God’s balls!”

  All around the perimeter of the room, the rune were rising to their feet.

  “I didn’t see all them from up there,” said Slate, turning in a slow circle. Then she sneezed.

  Caliban got to his feet, feeling his wrists and ankles screaming. His feet were coming back to life and felt like they were on fire. He looked around, found his sword and picked it up.

  Slate sneezed again and wiped at her nose, never taking her eyes off the circle of rune. Caliban limped to her side, and looked up at the deer-people in despair.

  There had to be two dozen of them. Even if his legs weren’t about to buckle, even if his throat didn’t feel as if it were full of shards of glass, even if Slate weren’t bleeding and if half of the rune were too groggy to fight, there was just no way.

  The deer were advancing toward the pit.

  “It was a good rescue,” he rasped, lifting his sword.

  “Pity it didn’t work,” she muttered, and sneezed again.

  The rune were moving slowly. He groped in a pocket and found a handkerchief. Slate took it with a choking laugh.

  Ranks of green bodies circled the pit. The sounds that they made were high-pitched and dangerous, like the screams of hunting hawks.

  “I’m sorry I said you were weak.”

  “You damn well better be.”

  She shoved the handkerchief into a pocket. There were bloody fingerprints across it.

  “Everybody back off,” said Brenner behind them, in a voice so cold and brittle that it sounded as if it might shatter, “and I mean it.”

  The rune drew back, hissing.

  Caliban turned.

  Brenner was holding the antlered doe up with one arm around her waist. The other held a knife at her throat. The old shaman’s eyes were rolling, and blood made a red mask over her face. Several tines had snapped off her antlers, perhaps when Slate had slammed her to the floor.

  “Brenner, be careful! There’s a demon in there!”

  “Well, there’s a whole lot of those bastards out here, so we’re taking our chances.” He brandished the knife at the rune, then set the point back against the shaman’s throat. “Now. Everybody backs off, nice and easy, and my friends and I are going for the door.”

  Whether the rune understood what the assassin was saying, or if the gestures were enough, they backed away from the edge of the pit. Caliban boosted himself out of the sunken circle and pulled Slate up after him.

  “Take her,” growled Brenner, never taking his eyes off the rune.

  “What?”

  “Take the hostage!”

  His conscience twinged like a bad tooth. Good paladins did not take hostages, particularly not old women.

  Brenner must have seen it in his face. “Take the goddamn hostage or you can stay here with the rune!”

  Slate gave them both a disgusted look, reached down, and grabbed Brenner’s knife in her good hand. “Set her on the edge,” she ordered, steadying the silent shaman against her body. Antlers poked at her like tree branches, and she turned her face away.

  Shamed for more reasons than one, Caliban pulled the doe upright. Brenner leapt up after her, light on his feet despite the long confinement, and took his blade back. The hilt slipped briefly in his fingers.

  “You’re bleedin’ pretty good, Slate, darlin’.”

  “Yeah, I know. The tattoo wasn’t keen on this idea.”

  Both men winced.

  The rune were watching them with big, worried eyes.

  “Back towards the door,” said Brenner, taking possession of the old shaman again.

  They backed.

  The noise of a man stepping on a carpet of dead rats in bare feet is “squiickrunch.” Caliban felt that he could have gone his whole life without learning this particular fact.

  “Your boots are outside,” said Slate.

  Caliban glanced at the demon, but it wasn’t saying anything.

  I bet it’s hoping we’ll take it out of here as a hostage.

  We might not have much choice.

  Of the three of them, Brenner was the only one in any shape to fight if the rune got restive. If they dropped the shaman, the rune might follow, and then what would they do?

  At the door to the earth-lodge, Brenner paused. He pointed the knife at the assembled rune. “Stay.”

  The leather curtain fell down. The demon still didn’t say anything.

  “You think they understood that?”

  “Works on dogs.”

  They made it to the edge of the village. Slate ducked into a shadow and came out with their boots.

  “I’ve got a friend around here somewhere,” she said.

  “A friend? What?” Brenner looked up. “Where’d you find a—”

  “God’s stripes, lady, you did it!”

  Brenner whipped the hostage closer, the knife digging painfully into her throat. The rune uttered a high moan of pain, but did not flinch.

  “Stay back!” the assassin ordered.

  “Cut it out, Brenner, it’s not one of those deer things! It says it’s a gnole.”

  “A gnole, that’s me.” It blinked up at them in the moonlight. “You want to cut that wicked boss rune’s throat, you do it. I’m not gonna stop you.” It spat on the ground. “Probably safer for all of us.”

  Caliban, trying not to think about the bits of dead rat still on his feet, shoved his boots on. No socks. The gods only knew what the rune had done with them.

  Brenner, in a display of agility unique to assassins, stepped into his boots without taking the knife away from the rune woman’s throat.

  “Let’s move.”

  * * *

  They moved.

  The rune didn’t follow. None of them emerged from the earth-lodge for as long as it was visible through the trees.

  “Why are they letting us go?” Slate asked. The tattoo had stopped gnawing, blessedly, but every time she took a step, a jolt shot up the side of her body that had impacted the deer-creature’s antlers. The holes weren’t deep, but they were oozing steadily, and the pain was making her list sideways.

  “I think she told them to,” said Caliban. “There’s a demon in her, and it wants to get out of here.”

  “And we’re helping her?”

  “If you have a better idea, darlin’, I’m open to suggestions.”

  Slate opened her mouth, took another step, felt pain leap from puncture to puncture as if they were stepping stones, and went a bit green.

  Caliban tried to get his arm under her shoulders to act as a crutch, but the disparity in their height was too great. The jolts were twice as bad, and she waved him off, growling.

  The gnole came to her aid instead, putting an arm around her waist and shoring her up on that side. The creature reeked of garbage and old goat, but it helped. Oddly enough, it didn’t make her sneeze.

  “Thanks,” she said, as it helped to haul her up a slope.

  “Don’t mention it, crazy lady.”

  Slate’s gnole-crutch didn’t slow them up to any significant degree, since Brenner was already hampered by his grip on the antlered doe, and Caliban’s breathing was coming in slow, painful rasps. Slate figured she’d arrived just in time. />
  She’d watched through the smoke-hole for several minutes, while the old deer woman had been glaring into the knight’s face, and he sat staring into the distance as if drugged. She hadn’t been sure whether to drop down or not, and she’d had no idea that there were dozens of other rune in the lodge, standing outside of her field of vision.

  Then the old rune had started strangling Caliban, and she’d done the only thing she could think of.

  I could have wished for a better landing, but at least we’re all still alive.

  They were most of the way back to the river when they halted, and stood listening.

  “Hear anyone after us?” Brenner asked.

  They strained their ears.

  “Nope,” said the gnole after a minute. “Not hearing nothing.”

  “Me, neither,” said Slate.

  “Nor am—Brenner!”

  Slate turned, following the paladin’s shout, just in time to see the assassin lower the old rune to the ground. Her throat was slashed with black in the moonlight. As they watched, the blunt-fingered hands closed convulsively on Brenner’s sleeves, then relaxed and dropped away.

  “You killed her!” Caliban said.

  “You said yourself she was a demon,” growled Brenner. “What were you planning on doing with her?”

  “Dammit—there’s a rite—” The paladin dropped to his knees next to the deer woman. He put his free hand on the creature’s forehead, the other locked around the hilt of his sword.

  A moment slid by. Caliban stared into the dead rune’s eyes, speaking in a language that Slate had never heard before.

  Even not knowing the words, Slate felt the hairs on the back of her neck standing up. It was the voice he was using, the calm, trustworthy one, but it had a timbre to it that she didn’t understand.

  Is that how he does it? Does he actually talk the demons into hell?

  Apparently in this case he could not. He fell silent.

  “Did you do it?” asked Slate quietly, afraid to interrupt him.

  “No,” said Caliban bitterly. “Her soul is gone, and the demon fled unbound.” He closed the rune’s eyes with his fingertips. “No time to catch it. Brenner was quite…efficient.”

  “You were going to do it,” said Brenner. “You ought to be grateful, paladin. This way you keep your hands clean.”

  Caliban stared at him. And reached down. And drew about an inch of steel.

  Oh my god, they’re really doing it.

  They’re really going to have a goddamn dick-measuring contest right here in the woods with a bunch of murderous deer-people after us.

  Slate pushed the gnole back, stepped between the two men, and said “Stand down, both of you, and that’s an order.”

  Neither of them obeyed. She hadn’t really expected them to.

  Oh, well, at least they’re both looking at me instead of at each other.

  “You got crazy friends, crazy lady.”

  “I’m gonna have dead friends in a minute, if they don’t come to their senses!” She put her hands on her hips and glared at all and sundry. “Need I remind you that there’s a whole tribe full of deer-things that are gonna be bloody furious when they find out we’ve killed their shaman, so can I suggest we get the hell out of here before you two go back to pissing in a circle around each other or whatever the hell this is supposed to be?”

  It was quite a speech and she didn’t stop for breath once. Hoping for both men to break into spontaneous applause or abject apologies was probably too much, but they did have the decency to look embarrassed.

  Someone came thumping and scrabbling down the opposite bank of the river. Slate turned and saw Learned Edmund skidding the last few feet down the slope to the water’s edge.

  “Mistress Slate! Is that you? I heard yelling—”

  “It’s us. Saddle the horses. We need to get out of here now.” She turned her back on Caliban and Brenner. Let them kill each other if they wanted to, she’d done her job. The gnole’s arm went around her waist. Slate leaned on the little creature and limped down the slope to the river.

  She was trying to figure out how she was going to get across the river—there wasn’t room for two on the stepping stones—and someone reached down and scooped her up.

  She expected it to be Caliban—it was such a typical knightly thing, and she was prepared to get very cutting if he said anything about weakness—and was rather surprised to get a whiff of tobacco instead.

  “Chivalry rubbing off on you, Brenner?” she asked.

  The assassin smirked down at her and strode out lightly out across the rocks. The hands curled around her knees and shoulders were wet with blood, but she was too tired and too bloody herself to care.

  “You’d better hope not, darlin’.”

  “That was some pretty quick thinking with the hostage,” she said.

  “I thought so.”

  He set her on her feet on the opposite side, but left an arm around her shoulders. Caliban followed them across the river, his eyes unreadable. Slate stifled a sigh.

  This is probably just another example of pissing in a circle. Oh, well…

  The gnole bounced up to her, and she abandoned Brenner’s embrace for her small, foul-smelling crutch. They limped up the hillside together.

  “Do you have a name, crazy gnole?”

  “Yeah, crazy lady. Name’s Grimehug.”

  “I’m Slate.”

  “Crazy Slate. Good name. Could almost be a gnole name.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  Learned Edmund led her horse forward. Slate scrubbed at her eyes. “They’ve all got saddles on. You struck camp. They’re ready to go.”

  The scholar nodded, and then, much to her surprise, leaned down and offered her his hands as a mounting block.

  “Why’d you saddle them all? I told you not to leave until noon…”

  He was much slighter than Caliban, but he held steady enough as she climbed into the saddle. “I knew you’d be back with them. I thought we should be ready to move when you were.”

  “How’d you know that? I was sure I was a goner.”

  The scholar sketched a benediction in her general direction. “I had faith.”

  Huh.

  “Bowels turned to water yet?” asked Brenner snidely, passing the scholar on the way to his own horse.

  “It appears to be a very slow process.”

  * * *

  There are limits to what horses can do in the dark. They could not go at a canter, nor even a trot. They went at a steady, shambling walk instead. Learned Edmund led, with the bright-eyed gnole before him. It had excellent night-vision, and it kept up a cheery stream of talk to the scholar. Oddly enough, they seemed to be getting along.

  Slate clung to her saddle. Her clothes were stuck to her wounds, making crude bandages, so she wasn’t going to bleed to death any time soon. She was dreading getting the shirt off when they finally stopped.

  We just have to get away. If we can reach the road, we can put enough distance between us and the rune. We’ve just got to keep moving.

  It seemed much darker on the back of the horse than it had when she was moving under her own power. She couldn’t see where the animal was setting its feet. This would have worried her, but she was rapidly too exhausted to care.

  It had been at least an hour, probably more, and she was sunk in a dumb haze of pain and exhaustion and feeling generally ill-used by the universe when Learned Edmund pulled the horses up.

  “We haven’t hit the road,” he said worriedly. “We weren’t that far off it, and we’ve headed straight for where it should be. We should have been there half an hour ago.”

  This sounded bad. Slate lifted her chin off her chest, wincing as dried blood pulled at her skin. “Are we lost?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Could we have passed the road in the dark?” asked Caliban.

  “I don’t think so. The ground hasn’t changed at all.”

  Slate realized th
at the scholar was looking at her to make a decision. Oh, sure, now he trusts me…She waved a hand. “Let’s keep going for another half hour or so. If we don’t hit the road, we’ll assume we’re lost and look for a defensible place to hole up.”

  Learned Edmund nodded.

  Slate was dreading what she’d do when the half-hour was up, but within ten minutes the sound of the horses’ hooves changed, from the chuffing of pine needles to the thudding of a roadway. Slate sat up a little straighter.

  It was a narrow path, barely a lane, and badly overgrown. It did not look like the hard-packed smugglers’ road. Between patches of grass and horsetail rushes, the mud and packed pebbles glittered like the reticulated hide of a lizard.

  “This isn’t our road,” said Caliban.

  “No,” said Brenner, “but it’s a road.”

  Everyone looked at Slate.

  Shit, do I have to be in charge again? She rubbed her forehead.

  “Any road is better than no road at this point. Let’s follow it.”

  Learned Edmund nodded, and kicked his horse into a brief, brutal trot. Slate sank her teeth into her lower lip to keep from shrieking. Her shirt pulled away from one of the punctures, and she felt a new wetness of blood slide over the already layered stickiness.

  My torso has got to look like raw ham.

  The light began to grow. Dawn already? Really?

  It was. Her horse’s ears stopped being a black cut-out and became infused with brown and pink. The black mane that washed over her hands separated into individual hairs. Green began to leach into the grey of the grass on the roadway, and the gnole’s cloak became a ragged patchwork of violet and carmine and dun.

  In a way she was astonished, and at the same time the night seemed to have lasted at least a thousand years already.

  We’ve got to stop soon. If I don’t stop soon, I’m going to fall out of the saddle.

  The road opened up before them.

  Learned Edmund led them forward into an empty clearing as broad as a sheep meadow. Trees lined it on three sides, and on the fourth, it rose up into a hillside, and…something else.

  Slate couldn’t figure out what it was. It could have been a building or a statue or a strangely symmetrical rock formation.