by Paul Kidd
And then screamed as a thundering blast of fire wrapped him in agony from head to toe.
Burn! Burn-burn-burn!
“Cinders! Damn it!”
The assassin would have been the spy’s contact-the next stepin the chain that led to the mastermind. Now the man was bubbling like a well-done roast, and the whole upper deck was aflame. Cinders had managed to set the entire promenade on fire, and strings of burning bunting fell to spread the blaze all across the lower levels of the barge. The management was definitely going to be annoyed.
The Justicar sheathed his sword, snatched the dazed pixie in his arms, and held the creature tight against his chest.
“Do you like water?”
“No!”
“Good.”
With a heavy bound, the man launched himself across the rails and plunged thirty feet down into the icy river. The pixie wailed, then disappeared amid the splash as the Justicar, his hell hound skin, his black sword, and his armor all speared deep into the water. Swimming with slow, powerful strokes, the Justicar traveled underwater for a dozen yards then broke the surface, letting the struggling pixie take a breath. The man looked back once at the blazing pleasure barge and then grimly struck out toward the northern shore.
4
“Now I’m not saying that I have always been exactly good,but I have tried, in my way, to lead a life devoted to certain positive principles.” Remaining perfectly calm, the pixie tried to let reason speakfor itself. “So although on the surface some of my actions might appearquestionable, I can assure you that I have always been pure at heart.” Thelittle creature shot a dark sideways glance at her companions. “Look, are youlistening to me or what?”
Soaked, dark, and glowering, the Justicar collected twigs and branches and stacked them in a pile. Cinders helpfully shot a small flame jet into the kindling, and a sturdy campfire was instantly ablaze. Bound hand and foot and dangling helplessly above the ground, the pixie anxiously watched as yet more wood was stacked upon the fire.
“Um, all right, I am aware that I have not been… as goodas I should. However, I believe I can try to be better.”
The flames crackled as more and more wood was tossed into the suspiciously large blaze.
“Look! Would you stop doing that while I’m talking to you?”
The lands north of the River Franz were largely covered in fern and marsh. Autumn had broken the riverbanks and flooded the low-lying fields beyond. What in summer were tangled thickets and little hillocks had now become a maze of islands stranded amongst knee-deep, freezing ferns. The Justicar had waded doggedly onward for at least two hours, leaving the river, burning pleasure barge, and vengeful pursuers far behind. With an hour to go before evening, he had finally climbed onto an islet, cut down some bushes, and dangled his captive from a tree.
Helpless in the clutches of a huge, violent man and a pyromaniacal sentient dog skin, the pixie could only kick her heels and jitter in despair. With her hands tied, she could cast no spells, and if she shifted shape, the dog skin would smother her in flame. This left only her considerable powers of persuasion, which would have been more comforting if her captor would perhaps deign to even look her way.
The flames rose higher, spreading heat across the little island. The Justicar planted two forked sticks, one at each end of the fire, then glared at the pixie and began to shave a long, thin sapling into a spit.
Beginning to sweat a little in fright, the pixie gave a squirm. “Look, I’m sure we can make some kind of deal. I mean, you’re with theforces of good, right? And… and I’m a faerie, and faeries are cute, lovablelittle icons of forest fun, right? So… so there’s a joining of interestsright there, huh?”
The Justicar rose, holding his sturdy spit as he marched toward the pixie. He slapped the rod in his hand as he walked, and the pixie’stwin antennae stood madly on end.
“Um, look, you’re a reasonable man. I can see that. Soperhaps it’s time we just came to a logical arrangement?”
The Justicar drew a knife from his belt, cut the pixie from her perch and shoved the skewer up through the back of her bonds. The girl dangled beneath the stick like a rabbit trussed for roasting and instantly began to kick and squeal.
“Oh no! Oh no-no-no-no-no! Faeries have a curse on them,you know! You eat a faerie and-ooooh-and you’ll go sterile! No sex drive at all,I swear!” The pixie wriggled frantically as she was carried toward the fire.“And you’ll get fat!” The girl tried to shrink down to the bottom of the stake.“You’ll get eczema, plus your eyesight will go! A-all food will taste exactlylike week-old ham!”
“Shut up.” The Justicar seated himself by the fire, holdingthe trussed, naked pixie up in the air. “You’re annoying. All pixies areannoying.”
“Oh my goodness, it’s a vision of Saint Cuthbert!” The pixiestared in amazement off into the empty scrub. “It’s a sign from the gods! I’mconverted to the good life from now on, Good be praised!”
The Justicar jammed the bottom of the pixie-stick into the sod, propping the little creature comfortably close to the fire.
“Shut up. Get warm. Keep quiet,”
The pixie relaxed, her breast heaving a little as she was slowly drained of her fright. The Justicar had taken a knife and sawed the bottom off his own coarse tunic. He began cutting the cloth into a rough, pixie-sized dress, and looked damned annoyed to be doing so. The man’s armor hadbeen hung out so that its felt lining could dry.
Casting a quick eye left and right, the pixie quite suddenly felt safe. “Sure, I’ll keep quiet. My name is Escalla, by the way. That’sPrincess Escalla or Lady Escalla. Sometimes Your Highness or Brightflower Maid. Or-or a pet name? I mean, you could even give me a petname.”
The Justicar glared at his captive through cold, dark eyes. “Pixie.”
“Uh, yeah…”The girl tried to coax a little morecooperation out of her host. “Or maybe a more bonding kinda term?”
“How’s about fishbait?”
The pixie hastened to agree. “Endearing! I mean, a sense ofhumor is good. We can laugh together now, I can see that. We have a rapport!”Escalla blew a strand of stray hair away from her face. “But about the ‘pixie’thing. Funny thing is, most people look at me and say, ‘Ooh! Pixie!’ when I’mactually a faerie. I mean, a proper name for everything, and everything done properly. Am I right?”
Having finished a rough strip of cloth to serve as a pixie dress, the Justicar glowered at the girl and hissed, “I said quiet!”
He untied the girl from the stick, roughly wrapped her torso in coarse cloth, and tied the dress in place with woollen thread. Escalla began to say thank you, only to find herself immediately bound hand and foot again and threaded right back onto her stake beside the fire. She decided to glare in annoyance at the Justicar, watching him as he drew a fishing line from his pouch and sent a line trailing off into the water.
She considered changing shape into a snake and slithering from her bonds. Unfortunately, the hell hound skin lay propped on the ground a foot from her rear, and she could feel the creature grinning at her. The pixie tried surreptitiously picking at her ties until the Justicar came to sit directly in front of her and glare into her face.
“Speak. Who were you spying for?”
Escalla made a little wiggle-waggle of her head, and the Justicar frowned at her warningly.
“Well how can I tell you if I have to keep quiet?”
The huge warrior gleamed like a demon in the red light of the campfire.
“You will tell me who paid you to spy. Where were you sendingyour information?” The Justicar glared at the pixie and folded his arms. “Startnow.”
“Or you’ll what?” With a sudden, brilliant surge ofinspiration, Escalla gave a derisive toss of her hair. “You’re not going tostick me in that fire! I can tell. Oh yeah, you look tough, but there’sno way you are going to take a sleek, pretty, helpless young woman and simply burn her alive.” The pixie stuck out her tongue. “So I guess I’ll just keep mylittle secrets after all!”
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nbsp; The Justicar gave the faerie a level look, then picked her up, levered open Cinders’ jaws, and fed her feet first into the hell hound’smaw. He closed the hound’s jaws about her rump, then simply went back to tendinghis fire.
Sweating rather large, genteel beads of perspiration, the faerie tried to remain perfectly calm.
“Um, he still has a tongue in here, doesn’t he?”
Cinders gave a snigger, wig-waggling his ears.
Girlie taste good! The hell hound’s nostrils leakedsulphur into the air. Burn now?
“Oh, gods…” Wide-eyed, Escalla bit her upper lip andgave a dazed, measured little nod. “All right, I’m going to scream like a peeledweasel now. I just wanted to warn you that you’ve only brought this onyourselves.”
Escalla took a deep breath and suddenly began to shriek and thrash in abject terror. Her screams sent echoes shooting all across the swamp.
“Get me out! For the gods’ake, get me out!Don’t~kill~me~don’t~kill~me~don’t~kill~me! God~oh~god~oh~godplease~please~please~please~please! I’ll spill my guts! I’ll tell you everythingI know!”
As a demonstration of pure spineless, backsliding terror,it was rather impressive. The Justicar fished the girl back out of the hell hound’s maw, and Cinders mentally smacked his chops.
Aftertaste. Yummy!
“You’re welcome.” The Justicar planted the faerie’s stakeinto the ground and regarded the weeping, wailing girl. “Spill your guts. I’mlistening.”
Now several shades paler, the girl hastened to be as helpful as possible.
“All right all right! N-now you have to understand that I’mnot malicious! I have been outcast from my rightful position as a leader in the forest community by-”
Escalla went into a panic as the Justicar opened Cinders’jaws. “They paid me fifty gold a time! I needed the money! I repent! Irepent! I repent!”
“Who paid you?” The Justicar pulled out a tuber he had foundin the woods and began carefully peeling it with his knife. “Names.Descriptions. Whereabouts.”
“Ah, it was just a guy on the boat. He found me stowing awaybehind the figurehead and cut me a deal.” The faerie gave a shrug. “He was justan extortionist! He worked a ton of different deals-took a cut from pickpockets,gamblers, had his own enforcers. His men were the guys who tried to stab you in the back!”
“And one of them tried to shoot you dead.” The Justicar threwtuber peelings in the fire. “You’re at the top of their hit list. What did yousee that makes them so keen to have you dead?”
Escalla bit her lip in anxiety.
“Well… there was one other guy they reported to. Apriest guy or maybe a sorcerer! He-he’s the one who wanted to know all about thecaravans. Tall, skinny, long hair but only at the rear. They met at Trigol City docks once. That’s all I know, I swear!”
Wiping clean his knife, the Justicar gave a satisfied growl. The information was enough to lead him back up the chain. If he found the paymaster of the spy scheme, then he might be able to bring the conspiracy to justice.
“Excellent. When we get to Trigol, you can help me search forthe man.”
“No! No, I can’t go! Cities are really bad for mycomplexion!” Escalla jerked at her ropes in alarm. “Really! I can give you adescription, paint you a picture, write you a poem!”
The Justicar glared at Escalla in ill humor. “I need to findhim, so you’re coming along.”
“No! No way! They’ll kill me!”
“They are already trying to kill you.” The Justicarsaw his fishing line give a tug and roused himself to pull in a large black bass. “Right about now, they’ll be hiring an assassin-maybe even throwing ascrying spell. They should be on your trail by around dawn.”
The girl dismissed the thought with a superior little sneer. “Hey, if they could do all of that, why hire a spy!”
“A scrying spell costs two hundred nobles, but youwork for fifty.” The Justicar threaded dinner onto a stick above the fire.“You’re not only a snitch, you’re a cut-price snitch. Gives you a real glow ofpride, eh, Your Highness?”
Behind the faerie, the hell hound skin gave another snigger.Seething with hate; Escalla went into a magnificent huff. She kept her hurt silence for almost ten minutes, finally unbending when a sniff of her nostrils told her that dinner was almost done.
Over the next few minutes Escalla let her regal sulk slowly waver; the mere effort of keeping quiet was almost killing her. As she saw dinner cooling by the fire, she finally relented and allowed her captors to hear her speak.
“Hmph! So are you going to starve me or feed me like agood servant should?”
“Ooooh-one look at you, and I can just see that you’re a lady, realprincess material.” The Justicar had been happily at work, constructing a cageout of sticks and woollen twine. “Have you got to go?”
“Go?”
“Relieve yourself.” The Justicar finished his cage. “Or don’tfaerie princesses obey the call of nature?”
“What?” Escalla bridled. “No, I don’t have to ‘go’, and it’sno business of yours anyway!”
“Fine.”
The Justicar scooped up the faerie, pulled off her bindings, and unceremoniously tossed her into her new cage. He tied the door shut, leaving the furious little woman to rattle her bars. Moments later, a chunk of fish, a slab of tuber, and a capful of apricot brandy were thrust through the bars. The Justicar sat Cinders nose-to-nose with the bars, then settled down to thoroughly enjoy his meal.
Escalla ate her fish, burned her fingers on the tuber, and consoled herself with brandy. She looked up to see herself under the unwinking scrutiny of the hell hound’s baleful eyes.
Hi.
A few final tasks remained before the evening was done. Clothing was dried and then put back on. The Justicar apparently intended to sleep fully armored with his boots on and his black sword at his side. The ranger brushed Cinders’ fur into a nice clean shine, then banked over thecoals, bedded himself down upon the hell hound pelt, and went to sleep.
Left alone inside her cage, the pixie muttered to herself, seething with plots of revenge. She planned a hundred ways to escape. Unfortunately, they all required that the hell hound drop dead or fall asleep. Showing no inclination to do either, the canine merely fixed her in his gaze, watching as the prisoner paced her cage.
Eat. Scratch tummy. Sleep.
“Yeah right, red-eyes.” Escalla sneezed and waved asulphurous wisp of smoke away with her wings. “And a good night to you too, youflea-ridden throw rug!”
With nothing else to do, the faerie burrowed into a bed made of dead, dry grass and drifted off into a muttering, dismal sleep.
Up! Kill! Kill!
Jerking up out of sleep instantly, the Justicar rolled over and wrapped Cinders about his shoulders. He immediately slithered into the cold water and lay almost submerged. Nerves tingling, he searched the empty night, feeling Cinders bristling instinctively in hate.
“Cinders, where?”
High!
Awakened by all the untoward activity, Escalla poked her head out of her nest of grass, saw that it was scarcely midnight, and made a huge, irritated yawn.
“What is it now? Don’t you bastards ever sleep?”
A chilling scream suddenly echoed over the fens. The howl sobbed and yammered in unearthly hunger as a palpable aura of evil flooded through the night. Summoned by the echo of Escalla’s voice, a hunting screechcame from above. With a rush of wings, something huge and terrible came plummeting wildly down out of the sky.
The faerie wailed in fright, instinctively turned invisible, and fluttered madly about inside her cage.
“Open the cage! Open this gods damned cage!”
High above the island, a dark shape banked and flung itself straight toward the sound of the faerie’s voice. With ragged wings spread wide,the monster lofted low across the water and screamed for Escalla’s blood.
Sickly moonlight sparkled from the water, illuminating the monsters face. A head shaped like a huge huma
n skull gaped over a muzzle full of fangs. Huge bat wings held aloft a body that ran with mucus like an enormous rotting corpse. The beast hissed, chemicals slobbering from its mouth to drip a phosphorescent trail into the water. Escalla stared at the apparition in fright, trying to wrench apart the bars of her cage as the monster blasted a putrid column of acid straight toward the isle.
As the fiend neared the campsite, the water beneath its wings erupted. In a sudden flash, the Justicar’s black sword smacked a long gouge intothe creature’s wing. With an outraged howl, the monster sawed aside, spinningtoward the source of the blow.
A blast of stinking fluid thundered from the creatures mouth, eating away the plants and soil as it hosed across the campsite. Deflected by a handspan as the creature wrenched in pain, the acid hissed past the faerie’scage. Escalla made a dazed little sound as she saw one side of her cage simply slump and disappear. An instant later she flapped out into the open sky.
Surging up out of the water below her, the Justicar saw huge bat wings swerve to pursue the girl and gave a shout of warning. “It’s anabyssal bat! Get down in the water or it’ll see your body heat!”
Cursing, the Justicar hefted his sword and sped to the remnants of the campfire. He dug out the warm ashes with his helmet, tossing them across the tiny island until the place became a maze of coals and fine white dust.
High above the swamplands spindly trees, Escalla blurred herwings and flew as fast as her skinny little body could go. A savage, bubbling shriek revealed that the monster was coming up fast from behind. Escalla frowned, looked back across her shoulder, and let her brilliant mind deal with the problem. The monster couldn’t possibly be pursuing her. She wasinvisible and also far too clever to have left a traceable trail. The monster merely happened to be flying in this direction.
Escalla decided to haul off and simply let the creature pass her by. She made one of the graceful loops for which she was so justly admired, looked derisively over at the monster, and saw a seething jet of acid coming right toward her eyes. The faerie screamed and made a mad tumble through the skies, the acid clipping her across the back as she tumbled free. She felt one wing collapse, and agony spasmed through her as she tumbled through the air. She hit the treetops, ripped through twigs and branches, then felt herself caught by a waiting pair of hands.