Death's Collector

by Bill McCurry

  Ella pushed us south from the keep for an hour, through some thick stands of short, spreading trees. An hour of bouncing on a horse felt like several hours to me, and at last, the trees thinned and she halted.

  “Bib, how long?”

  Ella had become reliant on Limnad’s sense of Vintan’s location. Whenever she wanted to know how far we were trailing the Denzmen, she asked me to ask Limnad for a report. I would ask Limnad, who would tell me, and then I would report back to Ella. Usually, I found this a little amusing. Not today.

  “Krak burn you both until you shit coal! Talk to each other like civilized creatures. I have to put myself back together over here.”

  No one said anything while I poked at my wound and winced.

  Ella hauled in a big breath. Then, just so she wouldn’t be forced to speak to Limnad, Ella initiated a rapid-fire interrogation with me in the middle.

  Ella said, “Bib, would you please—”

  “Limnad!” I yelled.

  “Three hours!”

  “Three hours!” I shouted.

  “Thank you!” Ella yelled.

  If Vintan stayed in place, we would catch up to him in three hours at the pace we’d been riding. When we left the keep, we had been four hours behind.

  Ella said, “We shall rest here for one hour. Ralt, stand watch. Stan, relieve him at the half hour.”

  Just as I was knitting myself back together, Desh came over and sat on the ground facing me. “I need to ask you a question about magic.”

  I grimaced. “Can it wait? If you distract me, I might attach my nipple to my elbow.”

  He leaned down and lowered his voice. “We only have an hour.”

  I propped myself with my palms in the grass. “Go ahead. The scar will ruin my smooth chest anyway.”

  “Limnad has taught me more about magic in a few days than I expected I might learn in a year.”

  I looked at him with my best grave, wise sorcerer expression. “Has she hit you a lot? Where are the bruises?”

  Desh smiled and shrugged. “A few times. Mostly it’s been while we’re riding, so if she beat me too hard, I probably would’ve fallen off my horse.”

  “Grace me with your question, then. Serenade me, even. Can you sing, son?”

  “The girls in my village used to weep and fall on the ground in front of me when I sang.”

  “Damn,” I said. “Let me hear your question. Don’t sing it.”

  “Everything she’s taught me has been theoretical, and like I said, it’s been a lot. Now we’re beginning to work on practical skills. You know, pulling cords and so forth.” He stopped.

  “Don’t hold it in, Desh! I won’t laugh at you.”

  “Well… when she helped me with my stance and line, I felt sort of uncomfortable. I don’t know much of anything about spirits, but if she were a woman and moved that way, I’d say she expected me to do something about it.”

  I blinked at the boy several times. “You do know she’s listening to you right now, don’t you?”

  Desh raised his eyebrows and turned red.

  This was a tender situation. Love between spirits and humans does not tend to turn out well. Desh didn’t seem smitten with her, but it might be one of those cases in which he’d caught her fancy and she planned to keep him forever under some rock in her river. Or maybe it was more—in which case, if he spurned her, she might tear him to pieces as he sat in front of me.

  Straightforward truth seemed to be the best approach. I whispered, “Limnad.”

  After a moment, she stepped out from behind a tree.

  “Limnad, are you in love with Desh?”

  The spirit examined Desh with unblinking eyes. “Yes.”

  “I don’t doubt your word, but my curiosity is bubbling. Why?”

  “He speaks quietly and has a pretty smile. He doesn’t lie like everybody else here. He’s funny. Most humans aren’t funny, even the ones who think they are.” She knelt and stared into my face. “Especially…” She cocked her head at me. “Those who think they are.”

  I hated to throw Desh on this fire, but there was no choice. “Desh?”

  The young man stood. “Limnad, you are mostly spirit so I think love can grow within you very quickly. I am mostly flesh so love cannot grow as quickly within me. Please wait with me to find out what grows.”

  If the boy hadn’t been so close to death, I would have stood and applauded. It was the subtlest nest of deception built from truths that I had heard in a long time. Desh was going to be a great sorcerer if Limnad, or something else, didn’t kill him first.

  Limnad nodded at Desh. “That will be good.” She walked off behind a tree and disappeared.

  I looked up at Desh and put my finger to my lips. It might be fatal for him to forget that she was always listening and say some fatally stupid thing. He nodded and walked toward the horses.

  I closed my eyes while clenching and unclenching my fist. My arm felt bruised where that Denzman had broken it, like somebody had smacked it hard with a stick of firewood. The wound on my chest smarted, as if a vindictive wasp had walked all the way up it, stinging me every step. Annoying, but it wouldn’t slow me down too much.

  When I opened my eyes, I saw Stan walking toward me.

  I scowled. “What?”

  “Well, if that’s the way you feel about a friendly gesture, then I’m not sure you’ll ever get one again—at least not from me, and I’m known as being a right generous fellow.”

  “I’m sorry, Stan. I’m just grouchy from being cut up and broken.”

  “Huh. Ralt and I were thinking that since you got all beat up and everything, killing those bastards with crossbows before they could kill me, we should share with you.” He held out a small skin of liquid, and I took it.

  “We snatched it off a dead Denzman’s horse at the river where we all nearly got killed, and we been saving it since. I wanted to drink it four or five times already, but Ralt is a stingy git.”

  I unplugged the skin and smelled wine. “Thank you, and thank Ralt. But don’t give it all to me. I’ll share with you boys.”

  Stan smiled, showing his appalling teeth. “Nah, we got three more for us. Desh says he’s not much of a drinker, but just wait till he’s been with us for a few months.” Stan strolled away, stretching his arms over his head as he went.

  I drew a big swallow from the skin. It was decent, as far as caustic liquids that can kill young livestock go. On my third swallow, somebody touched my shoulder from behind. I let my shoulders and head sag forward.

  “Just let me get drunk and sleep,” I said.

  “May I sit?” Ella nodded at the ground in front of me.

  “It’s not my dirt.” She sat on the ground facing me, and I handed her the wine.

  After she’d taken a swallow, she held up the skin. “You are attempting to kill me.” She took another swallow and handed it back. “What harm have you suffered, Bib? It won’t help to try to put me off.”

  “I found out I’m too old to master the sackbut. Broke my damn heart.”

  “Not funny. Be truthful with me.”

  “That was true. Fairly true.”

  She grabbed my hand. “Not only do I want to know, but I require it. We must have faith in one another.”

  “I’m sorry…” I shook my head. “No, I’m not sorry. This is something I will not talk about. You’ll just have to trust me and have faith in my ability to take a beating.”

  She grabbed my other hand. I’m not sure whether she was being sympathetic or making sure I couldn’t whack her if I didn’t like the next thing she said. “I shall assume that your debt is somehow involved.”

  “You go right ahead and assume that. Reality pays no attention to your assumptions.”

  “I know that you have entered into an agreement with the God of Death to dispatch people for him, and that only he knows how many you must kill. Please don’t deny it.”

  “All right. I do not deny it. I accept it, and I’m proud to.”

 
; “I believe that. I am, however, mystified. Why did you accept that agreement, Bib?”

  “Don’t ask me why I did it. Ask yourself what would make you do it.”

  Ella sat back and looked at the ground, scratching her forehead. “I don’t know. I can’t imagine anything causing me to make that bargain.”

  “Why are you here?”

  “To save the prince… oh! You did it to save your daughter. But what happened?”

  “I saved her.”

  “But… what happened?”

  “Seven days later, she fell and broke her neck.” I rubbed the back of my head. “I’m sure Harik knew it was going to happen.”

  Ella didn’t say anything. Her eyes filled up, but she didn’t cry.

  “It was worth it. I’d do it again right this minute, if I could have seven more days with her.”

  We sat for a couple minutes, drinking in silence.

  “Why do you enjoy it?” she asked.

  “What?”

  “Why do you enjoy killing people?”

  “What in the baggy sack of Lutigan makes you think that?”

  “When we were in Crossoak,” she said, holding her hand out for the bottle, “you said that you enjoy it.”

  “That was a foolish thing to say. You caught me. Yes, I do like killing people. I thought I knew why, that the debt made me like it. But that wasn’t true. Nobody makes me like murder, so I’d better just own it. It’s who I am.”

  “Horseshit,” she said, but nodded just a little.

  “You know some blistering profanity, dear. You know a lot more than that.”

  “Yes, but I prefer to select my vocabulary for the day so that it includes a single imprecation. Listen to me. I slay men as readily as you, and I would prefer to refrain, but I neither like nor dislike it. Ask yourself what would cause you to feel as I do.”

  “No, you can’t use my own words on me. I know how stupid they were when I said them.”

  “Ask yourself.”

  I closed my eyes and tried to imagine what it would be like to only kill when forced to it, to just see it as a regrettable task. That’s the way it was when I was young, but I couldn’t remember how it felt. “No, can’t do it. Maybe when you’re old and chewed up like me, you won’t be able to do it, either.”

  “Perhaps. Why are you here?”

  “To drink and listen to impertinent questions.”

  She began tapping my boot, and after about fifteen taps, I felt like I had to say something. “I’m here to kill Denzmen. They’re a nation of venomous, crawling whores and scat-faced, baby-crushing murderers.”

  “Very well. Why am I here?”

  “To save the prince.”

  “That’s something to ponder on, isn’t it?”

  I snorted, mainly because I didn’t know what to say. Instead of answering, I drank the last of the wine, which had been hiding an extraordinary amount of sediment in the bottom.

  Ella patted my knee, perhaps the most un-amorous gesture I have ever witnessed. She rolled to her feet and said, “Perhaps I shall visit Stan and ask whether they have yet consumed all of their wine.”

  She’d taken four steps when sudden shouting whipped me out of my self-pity. I heard a horse galloping away.

  “Spy!” Ralt yelled. “He’s riding off south!”

  I was the second one to mount, and I could see the rider ahead. I suppose it made sense that Vintan would leave men behind to hide, observe, and report what they saw. It was just another point on which Vintan had outsmarted me. I kicked my horse, and within a minute, I had pulled ahead of the others.

  The spy was forty or fifty lengths ahead of me, and unless his horse was a lot faster than it looked so far, I would catch him within a few minutes. I almost lost sight of him as the trail curved around some trees, and then I did lose sight as he topped a tiny hill and headed down the other side.

  I saw it. There was a gigantic invisible sign painted on the side of hill that said Ambush, but I saw it anyway. I reined in my mount as I shouted, “Hold! Stop! We don’t want to go over there blind.” I heard everyone behind me yelling at their horses to hold up, and I heard a number of unhappy horses.

  Desh galloped past me, with no sign of slowing down.

  “Desh! Desh, stop! You’ll get killed! It’s an ambush!” I shouted and screamed at him, but neither he nor his horse responded.

  Stan and Ralt rode after him first. “Can’t let him die by himself,” Ralt said as he passed me. Ella went next, trailing the spare horses, and she didn’t even look at me.

  I shouted, “Curse you to the fire-farting, muck-tongued, prevaricating, never-to-be-pounded-enough-right-in-their-nuts gods, Desh Younger!” By the time I’d finished saying that, my horse was at full gallop toward whatever fun Desh was about to have.

  Twenty

  I may be the world’s oldest living sorcerer. I’ve never met another sorcerer as old as I am now, and I’ve never heard of one, either. All the ones I knew in my youth are dead, presumed dead, or possibly disintegrated. That last part is a sorcerer joke, but nobody’s around to laugh at it these days.

  I was born hard to surprise, and I’ve become good at killing people before they kill me. I can often put myself back together if the man who takes me apart makes a poor job of it. But mainly my durability is due to an improbable amount of luck. I suppose that’s redundant. Any amount of luck is improbable. If you have a probable amount of something, then by definition it’s the amount you expect everyone to have, and it’s not lucky at all. I have wasted a fair number of drunken evenings with other sorcerers speculating on the nature of luck. All we ever concluded was that it’s good to have a lot of it.

  There’s a simple reason why sorcerers tend to die young. We learn best from our failures. A baby learns to walk by falling down over and over. A young sorcerer learns magic just as if he were a baby, except he’s given an alligator on a leash before he starts. If you make a critical error when calling up a thunderstorm, you may not be allowed another chance. Few survive being hit by lightning. Except for luck, I would have died in just that way.

  Now Desh’s alligator was dragging him over a hill into what was probably an ambush. Then that strictly metaphorical alligator would try to bite him in an affable way, roll him under the water, drown him, and save him to metaphorically eat later on. Then it would start on his friends who had just followed him over the crest.

  I must have decided to be among those rolled and drowned, because like an idiot, I was also following the boy. In such perilous situations, I usually look for the course of action with the smallest possible chance of me getting killed. That might include running away and leaving everyone else to die. Now I was just following Desh and not looking for any options. It wasn’t because of any profound fondness for Desh, or even for Ella, although I liked them both. Nor did I want to throw my life away. I cared. I just didn’t care enough to put much work into finding alternatives.

  Before I topped the hill, I heard a lot of neighing. In fact, I heard horses screaming, and Ella’s horse came running back over the hill toward me. That seemed ominous, so I dismounted just before I reached the hilltop, and I sprinted to the gentle summit.

  On the other side, about a dozen horses bucked and ran haphazardly in various states of terror. My companions either lay rolling on the ground or were scrambling to stand. About ten Denzmen were either standing or pushing themselves upright, and most had their weapons drawn. In the precise center of all this havoc, Limnad stood poised as if between striking deathblows.

  A lot of things happened in the next brief slice of time, but I only noticed some of them. Limnad landed that deathblow, pulling both arms off a Denzman and then swinging them around like weapons. Desh got on his feet as I ran past him toward Limnad. Somewhere behind me, Ella shouted at Stan to get up. Five soldiers surrounded Limnad, and she drove her fist deep into one’s chest. As he collapsed, the other four rushed her. One of them pitched forward onto the ground, and when I looked around, I saw Desh relo
ading a sling.

  One of the attacking soldiers half-dismembered Limnad’s leg, and she dropped to the grass screaming. I was near her by then and stabbed that soldier in the back, all the way through his chest—a ridiculous maneuver. I ducked another man’s sword and saw Ella chop off his arm. I heard the hollow whack of a sling stone against a skull, pulled my sword free, and got splattered with blood from a Denzman that Limnad had knocked down and decapitated as she lay on the ground.

  Ralt was fighting the soldier closest to me. I sliced open that man’s throat as I ran past him on my way to shove another Denzman to the ground. I killed that one as he lay there shaking his head and asking me not to do it. Another sling stone struck a skull. Then it was over except for panting, groaning, and receding hoofbeats. All the Denzmen were dead or dying. Limnad lay quiet on the grass, bleeding blue from the hacked leg and from a shoulder wound I hadn’t seen her get. Desh pulled off his shirt and knelt over her, staunching her leg wound.

  “That was stupid.” Desh spared a quick look of exasperation for her, as if she was an ill-behaved child. “You are a stupid spirit. Your stupidity is beyond comprehension. Never do that again.”

  “You’re a perplexing man,” Limnad said.

  Desh shook his head. “Bib?”

  “I’ll do all I can.” My skill at healing supernatural creatures was at best uncertain. At worst, I might kill her right away.

  Limnad said, “An hour will be enough.”

  The shoulder wound was deep but not fatal. The leg wound was a monstrosity. While Desh held pressure against it, I pulled green cords to tie vessels and then green sheets one after another to wrap the gigantic gap in her leg.

  “Limnad!” Desh said after ten minutes. I saw that her eyes had closed.

  “Be quiet,” she whispered. “I’m regarding my existence.”

  “Does that mean you’re dying?”

  “I’m deciding whether I want to exist some more. So be still.” A bit later, she said, “Bib, how do you feel?”

  I started to joke, but instead I said, “I don’t feel like I’ve been killed.”

  “That’s lucky for you.”