Cunning Devil

by Chris Underwood

  He withdrew the flask and the redcap holding me clamped his hand over my mouth and nose. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t move. The arm tightened around my throat. Blood pounded in my head.

  I could hear the roggenwolf growling and snarling nearby. I held the liquid in my mouth, fighting against the foul taste.

  “Swallow it,” Likho hissed.

  My lungs began to burn. I grunted and twisted in the redcap’s grip. The eyes of the room were upon me.

  Which meant I was the only one watching as Rodetk snatched a knife from the belt of the unsuspecting redcap and stabbed the creature in the side.

  The redcap snarled with pain. His grip on me loosened for a moment.

  I tore myself free of his grasp, breathing in deep through my nose. Leaving the knife embedded in the redcap’s side, Rodetk grabbed Lilian by the shoulder and pulled her to the floor.

  I reared back and spat the liquid in a spray aimed at the redcaps behind me.

  It wasn’t whiskey. It wasn’t poison either.

  It was witch’s fire.

  A gout of bright green flame burst from my mouth. The heat of it hit me like a wave, scorching my skin and singeing my eyebrows.

  The two redcaps that were suddenly enveloped in fire came out considerably worse. They were still writhing when their blackened bodies hit the floor.

  Rodetk was right. We weren’t talking our way out of this.

  The chamber was suddenly filled with screams. Likho and his redcaps instinctively sprung away from the green fire. The redcap who’d been holding me staggered back, clutching the knife in his side as the light of the unnatural fire shone in his wide eyes.

  The two goblins holding the roggenwolf’s control poles momentarily forgot their duty as the gout of flame swept past them. One of them dropped his pole, and the other one leapt back, flinching at the sudden heat.

  A split second later, the two of them realized their mistake. Their faces contorted, and the one who’d dropped his pole scrambled to pick it up.

  They were too slow.

  The roggenwolf snarled and bounded away. The redcap still holding his control pole was flung across the room by the beast’s sudden twisting. The other redcap found himself staring into the dark expanse of the roggenwolf’s maw.

  Then the creature’s jaw closed around his head, and I don’t think he saw much after that.

  I tried to struggle to my feet, my wrists still tied behind my back. Rodetk reappeared at my side, the silver flask still in his hand.

  “Again!” I rasped.

  He brought the flask to my cracked, burned lips, poured the rest of the witch’s fire into my mouth, and spun me to face the mass of redcaps coming at us from behind.

  I sprayed fire like a flamethrower. The redcaps fell back, shouting, leaving behind another couple of charred corpses.

  Rodetk dropped down behind me and started gnawing on my bonds with his sharp goblin teeth.

  The chamber was in chaos. The storykeeper fled screaming to the far corner of the room. Khataz was being herded to a door at the rear of the chamber by his two redcap guards. Likho staggered back, staring with wide eyes, his lips moving rapidly.

  With blood dripping from its maw, the roggenwolf turned away from the redcap it had savaged. It fixed me with its eyeless gaze and growled, its hackles raised.

  I swallowed, my throat dry and burning. The beast’s lips peeled back and it advanced on me.

  Lilian stepped between us, her hand raised toward the roggenwolf. The beast stopped in its tracks and sniffed at her outstretched hand.

  “We’re not the ones who hurt you,” she said authoritatively.

  The beast paused, regarding Lilian for a moment. Then, with a growl, it streaked around us, hurling itself at a trio of redcaps. They toppled like bowling pins. Lilian lowered her hand and exhaled. She was trembling.

  As the roggenwolf ripped through the redcaps, something shiny went flying and slid across the floor.

  “My gun!” I yelled at Lilian. “Grab it!”

  She leapt for the weapon as a rifle cracked nearby. Something whizzed past my head. The redcaps I’d driven back with the witch’s fire were regrouping. One of them worked the bolt of his rifle and took aim again.

  Lilian snatched up my revolver and snapped off a shot at the redcaps. The goblin with the rifle flinched, his shot flying wide.

  Finally, Rodetk chewed through my bonds and the ropes fell from my wrists. Blood rushed back into my fingers.

  Another shot flew overhead. I dived to the ground, landing on top of a redcap who’d been torn to pieces by the roggenwolf. It was the same redcap who’d taken my bag and truncheon. I slung my bag over my shoulder, picked up my truncheon, and grabbed Lilian by the elbow.

  “Come on!” I yelled.

  I pulled her along as she fired. One of the redcaps cried out. I didn’t stop to see whether he went down.

  We hurried toward the main chamber doors. But before we were halfway there, they burst open, and another half dozen redcaps poured into the room.

  With a choked cry, I skidded to a halt and pulled Lilian behind one of the chamber’s columns. More gunfire cracked, following us. A bullet slammed into the column two inches from my head, scattering fragments of stone and dust in all directions.

  “I’m out,” Lilian said, snapping open the revolver’s cylinder and letting empty casings fall to the floor.

  “Bottom right pocket,” I said. “Give them silver.”

  She stuck her hand in my coat pocket and started feeding the rest of the silver-tipped cartridges into the revolver. Rodetk ducked behind the next column along from us, holding a spear he’d grabbed from a downed redcap.

  “Hey!” I yelled. “Rodetk. You call Early my master one more time, I break your pointy goblin nose. You hear me?”

  He shot me a sharkish grin. “Had you going for a second there, didn’t I?”

  “Boys,” Lilian said through gritted teeth as she ducked out of cover and snapped off a couple of shots at the redcaps moving to flank us. “Maybe we do this later.”

  One of the redcaps caught a silver bullet in the stomach. A wound opened up in his abdomen, the edges black and foul like rotted meat. As he died, smoke poured from his screaming mouth.

  The magic that’d been used to grow these redcaps didn’t react well to silver. That was a weakness I could use.

  I pulled a spherical glass vial from my bag and hurled it. The glass shattered as it hit the floor, spilling a cloud of glittering silver high into the air.

  Redcaps screamed as the powdered silver touched their skin. A couple made the mistake of inhaling as they did so. They clutched their throats and clawed at their eyes, their weapons clattering to the floor as the pain overwhelmed them.

  It was horrific to watch. But it bought us a few seconds. I glanced around the chamber.

  The roggenwolf was still on the rampage. Several new cuts marred its flanks, and the tip of a broken pike was jammed in its rear leg. But that only seemed to make it angrier.

  Still more redcaps were rushing into the room, and with them came other goblins, the white-painted soldiers we’d seen marching the streets.

  We needed to get the hell out of here.

  I grabbed Lilian and pointed to the side of the chamber. “The door we came in through. That’s our exit.”

  She nodded and held up the revolver. “I’m out again.”

  And I had no more silver bullets. We’d be doing this the hard way.

  “All right.” I shoved some normal cartridges into Lilian’s hand and dug another vial out of my bag. “Get ready to move.”

  But at that moment the lights overhead flickered again. I noticed something: the sound of a rising voice speaking in a tongue I didn’t recognize. Likho was chanting. There was something eerie about it. He was speaking with more than one voice at once.

  As the lights dimmed, I had the strange sensation that there were other people in the chamber, other beings, just out of sight. I shivered as I felt their gaze swee
p across me.

  “Shit.” Likho was doing something. And whatever it was, I didn’t like it.

  Without thinking, I hurled the vial I was holding. It cracked at Likho’s feet, and a cloud of silver billowed around him. Sparks flared within the cloud, and the other presences in the room faded from existence. I breathed a sigh of relief.

  Likho himself wouldn’t be harmed by the silver, but it had been enough to disrupt his sorcery. I heard him coughing as the cloud faded. With a flutter of his cloak, he turned and made for the door the Lord of the Deep had fled through.

  “He’s getting away!” Rodetk snarled.

  “Forget him,” Lilian said. “We have to get out of here.”

  “He killed my men. He made my people into slaves.” Rodetk gripped his pike in both hands. “He’s not leaving here alive.”

  Rodetk burst from cover before either of us could shout.

  The little bastard had guts, I had to give him that.

  A couple of scattered shots followed him, but at that moment the roggenwolf barreled through the main body of goblins, and suddenly they had more important things to worry about.

  Likho had a head start. He pulled up the hem of his robe as he ran for the door. Rodetk sprinted after him, snarling.

  Rodetk hurled the pike at the fleeing sorcerer. It wasn’t exactly an Olympic-medal-winning javelin throw. The heavy pike slapped the ground behind the sorcerer, twisted, and spun.

  The shaft of the pike struck Likho in the back of the legs. The sorcerer went down in a tangle of robes. Cursing in some language I didn’t understand, he started to pull himself to his feet.

  But Rodetk was already on him. The goblin snatched up the pike again and leapt at the fallen sorcerer.

  Likho wasn’t out of tricks yet, though. He spun to face Rodetk at the last second, dodging the point of the spear. With a hiss, the sorcerer ripped off the rag that concealed his left eye.

  Or what should have been his left eye. There wasn’t even an empty socket there, like the roggenwolf was sporting. There was just a hole.

  A hole that moved and shifted like a drowning man trapped beneath a layer of oil.

  The sorcerer spat a word. The blackness burst from his eye socket, buzzing around Rodetk like a cloud of insects.

  Rodetk screamed. The sound cut through all the shouting and fighting and gunfire that filled the chamber. Not a scream of pain. A scream of horror. The kind of horror that breaks a man’s mind and turns him into a gibbering wreck.

  The sorcerer closed his puckered eyelids over the hole, and the blackness began to dissipate. As Rodetk stood there, frozen, Likho reached for the necklace of bones he wore.

  “Shoot the sorcerer!” I said to Lilian. “Now!”

  But she was too distracted by the regrouping redcaps to act. I could only watch as Likho ripped one of the bones from his necklace. With a sick smile, he snapped it between his fingers.

  Rodetk’s scream became a strangled cry. He collapsed to the floor, writhing, as dark blotches and boils began to rise across his skin.

  “Hell,” I breathed.

  The goblin’s mouth foamed. He twisted his head to the side and let out a roar of pain. There was nothing behind his eyes.

  “Get to the door!” I yelled to Lilian. “Cover us.”

  “Cover…? Wait, where are you—?”

  But I was already running. I sprinted across the open chamber with head down and teeth gritted. A bullet struck the floor beside me and ricocheted past, smashing into the Lord’s throne and sending splinters of stone flying. I didn’t think about it. I just dug my hand into my pocket and rummaged as I ran, pulling out a bag of prepared herbs.

  Likho had left his curse to do its work. I caught a glimpse of his robes disappearing out through the far exit as I reached Rodetk’s side. Part of me wanted to chase the sorcerer down and beat him until there was nothing in his robes but mincemeat.

  But I dropped to Rodetk’s side instead, grabbing him by the jaw. Somewhere back across the chamber, the roggenwolf roared with renewed rage. I didn’t pay any attention.

  Rodetk stared through me. His eyes danced, like he was entranced by something only he could see. The boils were growing fast. His skin was slick was sweat as I held him still.

  I wrenched open his jaw and shoved the mixture of herbs into his mouth. His jaw slammed shut again, nearly taking my index finger clean off. The spread of boils slowed, and some of the pain left Rodetk’s face. But he wasn’t cured. Far from it.

  “Ozzy!” Lilian shouted. “I can’t hold them!”

  I looked back. Lilian had made her way to the door, but the redcaps were closing in fast.

  The roggenwolf was in bad shape. It had left half a dozen mauled redcaps in its wake, but it was badly wounded and backing away from the pikes of a group of regrouped redcaps.

  If we wanted to leave this place alive, we had to leave now.

  I grabbed Rodetk and hauled him over my shoulder in a fireman’s carry. He weighed practically nothing.

  A scrap of cloth on the floor beside him caught my eye. I shoved it in my pocket without thinking. As I ran back toward the cover of the columns, I dug one last vial out of my pocket and hurled it across the room.

  It shattered against the floor with the sound of a banshee’s scream. I closed my eyes as a sudden burst of blinding light ripped through the chamber. Redcaps cried out, stunned by the sunflare. It was designed to ward off vampires, but goblins—with their eyes attuned for darkness—didn’t much like them either.

  Lilian was shielding her eyes when I got to her. Squinting, she pointed the gun at me.

  “Whoa, easy!” I said. “It’s me.”

  “Jesus, Ozzy. Little warning next time.”

  “You want to tell me off, or you want to get out of here? Huh? Thought so.”

  I grabbed her by the elbow and hauled her blinking and swearing toward the door.

  We ran.

  30

  Well, I call it running. “Staggering” might be a better word. “Lurching,” maybe.

  Lilian was still half-blind, bouncing off walls. And me, I was hauling a writhing goblin on my shoulders. My ribs ached like all get-out, and my burned, cracked throat stung with every breath.

  Spitting witch’s fire took its toll.

  But we were moving. We careened down stairs and burst out into the long, empty corridor where the door to Likho’s chamber had been hidden. My charm of True Sight had long since dissolved in my stomach, hiding the door from my eyes once more.

  It didn’t matter. We couldn’t afford to stop, not even to try to free the little ones from their cages again. We had one plan.

  Haul ass.

  As the corridor flashed past, I heard a panting behind us. My brain told me to just keep on running, that looking back was a good way to trip over my own feet and never get back up again. But I couldn’t help myself.

  The roggenwolf was following us. It bounded along with a loping, limping run, its tongue hanging out of its mouth.

  My heart skipped a beat. But after a moment’s terror, I realized the beast wasn’t trying to run us down. It was keeping pace with us.

  The beast was badly wounded. So badly wounded any natural creature would’ve been long dead. Long gouges had been ripped from its flanks, exposing ribs. A bullet had torn away most of the roggenwolf’s right ear, and two snapped spear tips still stood embedded in its flesh.

  But on it ran with us, shaking its eyeless head, following by hearing and scent and whatever otherwordly senses it had.

  Roggenwolves were savage creatures, known to hunt down unwary humans for the sport. But I guess the beast figured we were just its best chance of getting out of here.

  The corridor branched and we veered left. That was the way back to the main city. At least, I was pretty sure it was. We’d gotten so twisted around following the storykeeper through all these unused tunnels I could barely keep track.

  We were suddenly in a passage that looked like part of the old system of mine shafts,
with ruggedly cut walls and wooden beams supporting the ceiling. Had we come this way? I couldn’t remember.

  It couldn’t be much further. Once we got to the city, we could lose ourselves among the crowds, or sneak back into the dark corners I was more familiar with. We could retrace our steps from there and return to the surface.

  Part of me rebelled at that thought. We weren’t done here. The Mills boy could still be down here somewhere. We hadn’t found out all we needed to know. Hell, all I had now were more questions.

  But Rodetk wouldn’t last that long. He needed Early’s skills to break the curse that ravaged his body. He was a bastard and a goblin, but he’d saved us back there.

  He wasn’t going to die if I could help it.

  We staggered past an animal-skin painting that’d been hung in a small opening in the shaft. I recognized it from our earlier journey down here. We were on the right track.

  “Nearly…there…” I said to Lilian as I fought for breath. She just nodded grimly.

  But just as I was beginning to hope that we might actually get out of here alive, I heard the clanking of iron boots behind us.

  I risked another glance back. The roggenwolf was loping along a few yards behind us. And further back, gaining rapidly, came the redcaps.

  They sprinted along the corridor and clambered along the walls, leaping from beam to beam. They moved faster than I thought possible. There was murder in their eyes.

  “Run!” I shouted at Lilian.

  She hadn’t dared look back. “What is it?”

  “Just run!”

  I pushed myself harder, legs pounding until they burned. My lungs couldn’t draw in enough air. I ran as fast as my straining body could bear.

  It wasn’t enough. The sound of the redcaps’ boot steps were growing louder by the second. We weren’t going to make it.

  I slapped at my pockets as I ran, trying to determine what I still had available to me. My pickings were slim. No more silver bullets. No more sunflares. No more witch’s fire. No more powdered silver bombs. About the only thing left of any use was my truncheon. And once the redcaps swarmed over us, even that wouldn’t be any good.