Get Her Back (Demontech)

by David Sherman

  He had to say something more, something about the way to the nomads’ camp; Haft, Balta, and the three point men were looking at him expectantly. He decided on the truth; if he said anything else it would soon come out that he had lied, and he didn’t want to face the consequences of being caught in a lie.

  “I don’t know,” he said softly. “I don’t know where the camp is, how far it is, nothing. I don’t even know how long I walked and ran when I escaped from the camp.”

  Haft looked into the distance, obviously disgusted. “Then you aren’t much use to me, are you?” he snapped.

  Jurnieks cringed away from Haft’s evident anger, but thought this might be his best chance. He took a deep breath to steady himself, and said, “Then I should return to the caravan, Sir Haft. So I’m not in the way.”

  Haft barked out a sharp laugh, and shook his head, no longer angry. “You might not be able to find the camp, but you’ve been there, so you know your way around it. If Alyline reaches the camp before we catch her, you’ll be able to lead us through it.”

  Jurnieks choked back a groan—he really didn’t want to return to the Desert Nomads’ camp.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The wind.

  Haft hated having to ride a horse, even one as docile as the mare that was his usual mount, as it trotted for a mile, then cantered for a mile. He relished the miles when he was able to dismount and walk.

  But the wind.

  The wind, now that he really hated. After a time it turned from the north to the south and searched for unprotected flesh to flay from that direction. Then it became easterly, and they had to lean into it and their horses couldn’t canter at any speed. When the wind came from the west, it pushed them so they almost lost their balance and landed on their faces.

  When the wind didn’t come from a cardinal point, it gusted and swirled and spun upward and twisted downward. It changed its direction and force frequently and without warning, so that Haft and the men with him never knew from where the wind would next buffet them. The three Bloody Axes half a mile forward on point, the pair a quarter mile distant on each flank, and the other pair riding rear point a quarter mile behind, all had their difficulties maintaining proper contact with the main column. Haft knew, because he and Balta frequently checked and had to reposition them.

  Once, Balta had to gallop forward to bring the point team back in line when they had begun wandering from the trail left by the Golden Girl and her escort. Another time, Haft galumphed off to find and bring back a flanker team that had briefly gotten lost because the wind and grit blowing in their eyes kept them from watching where the rest of the platoon was.

  “If you can’t maintain contact with the main column because your eyes are closed,” Haft roared at them, “how can you expect to spot a danger before it’s on you?”

  “We’re sorry, Sir Haft,” one of them said, abashed.

  “It won’t happen again, Sir Haft,” said the other.

  “See to it that it doesn’t,” Haft snarled. “If anybody attacks and I get killed because you weren’t watching, I swear I’ll hunt you down in hell and kill you again!”

  “Yes, Sir Haft,” they said. “We’ll do better, Sir Haft. Starting right now, Sir Haft.”

  Haft grunted, then snapped, “See to it that you do!” He gave them a stern look, and wheeled his mare about to rejoin the column.

  Before he reached it, he saw the mage Tabib in his assigned position in the middle of the column. Tabib still wore the colorful scarf around his head, and the colorfully patterned cloth that wrapped around his waist and hung almost to his rope-sandaled feet. And nothing else.

  Haft turned his mare toward the mage, mouthing the words he was going to use to flay the Kondive Islander for not covering up to protect himself from the wind.

  Whatever he had in mind to say, though, remained unspoken.

  “Lord Haft,” Tabib cheerfully called out when the Marine drew near.

  “Why aren’t you covered up!” Haft roared.

  “Covered up?” Tabib waved a hand and grinned, indicating his clothing. “But I am covered, Lord Haft.”

  By then Haft was close enough to see that the mage’s skin was unmarked by the biting wind and the grit it blew about, grit that scratched what skin it could reach on everyone else. Haft turned his mare to trot alongside Tabib’s donkey.

  “Why isn’t the wind bothering you?” he asked in wonder.

  Tabib laughed and lay a finger alongside his nose. “I am protected,” he answered, and chuckled.

  Haft nodded slowly. “Ah, yes, I can tell that much. But how? What are you doing? And can the rest of us do it?”

  “Oh, I am so sorry, Lord Haft. I am using a magic—”

  “I figured that much on my own,” Haft grumbled.

  “—spell to keep the wind and its effluent off of my body. Alas and alack, the spell will not work for any person other than me! So, you see, I cannot use it to protect you and the platoon of Skraggish axemen, worthy of protection though you and they are.”

  Haft looked off, his mouth twisted in a scowl. Then he jerked his view back to Tabib.

  “Are you sure?” he demanded.

  “Indeed I am, Lord Haft,” the mage said, offering a shallow bow. “Look like this: You have used the Lalla Mkouma, have you not?” He went on without waiting for a reply. “She is a most wondrous demon, and protects you from the vision of other people. True? But she can only confer invisibility upon one person at a time. True?” This time, he cocked his head and waited for Haft to speak.

  Haft twisted so the back of his head was to the wind, and spat. “Right,” he acknowledged sourly. “One person at a time. Like a Lalla Mkouma.” He shook his head. Except if two people are in close contact, she can make both invisible. “Just be careful that you don’t anger any of the ‘Skraggish axemen.’ They might react badly.” He tapped his mare’s flanks with his heels, nudging her into a reluctant canter, so he could return to his position at the head of the column.

  “Oh, no, gollygee, let the axemen not react badly to my protective spell,” Tabib murmured, his voice lost in the wind. “Wind, sand, and dust are not the only things this spell protects me from.”

  The wind died down at sunset, and the air was calm enough to allow the Bloody Axes to erect low-slung sleeping tents. Haft didn’t allow the men to light cooking fires, instead they ate their jerky and biscuits cold. He let Lieutenant Balta set the watch, three men at a time for one-hour shifts. That way, nobody lost much sleep, and a few didn’t lose any sleep at all. Once the rotation was set, Haft instructed the third watch to wake Balta, and the sixth to wake him. He and the Bloody Axe’s commander would each check the perimeter during the night and assure that everything was all right.

  The night was uneventful. The first surprise of the High Desert came when they were halfway through their morning meal of cold jerky and biscuits.

  “What was that?” Haft asked, looking up from the biscuit-wrapped piece of jerky he was gnawing on.

  “It sounded like a pussy cat,” Balta replied.

  Haft grunted. “A really big pussy cat.” Sweat popped out on his forehead, and began dribbling down his sides. He and Spinner had had a run in with a gray tabur, a very large cat, before they’d begun accreting their refugee train. He had no desire to fight another big cat.

  Most of the others in the platoon also heard the low yowl, and many of them were on their feet, looking around. Some had taken their weapons in hand and were nervously turning them. Haft didn’t know whether to draw his axe, or ready his demon spitter.

  “Tabib!” Haft called. “What can you tell?”

  “I have no bees, Lord Haft,” Tabib called back from where he was rummaging through his chests.

  “Bees?” Haft asked nobody in particular.

  “Some magicians use them as scouts,” Balta told him.

  “Really?” But Haft wasn’t really interested in an answer about bees. He wanted to know what had yowled.

  The yowl came aga
in, but from a different direction.

  The small door on the side of Haft’s demon spitter cracked open. “Wazzoo goam doo abou tha’?” the tiny demon inside the tube demanded.

  “About what?” Haft asked, straining to keep fear out of his voice.

  “Tha’.” A twisted, gnarly arm poked out of the door and pointed.

  Haft looked where the demon indicated and swore. He could barely make out a feline form slinking through the sparse growth toward the camp. It wasn’t nearly as big as the gray tabur that he and Spinner had managed to kill before Spinner nearly bled to death from the gash the big cat had sliced into his leg. But it was huge compared to the house cat that its form resembled.

  The feline wasn’t where either of the yowls had come from. Nor was the yowl that came right after Haft saw the cat.

  “There are at least four, Sir Haft,” Balta said softly.

  “At least,” Haft agreed. Then loudly, “Listen up, people! We’ve got some big cats closing in on us. Not big like taburs, but big enough to kill a man. So get ready to fight!” He tapped on the demon’s door on his demon spitter.

  “Wazzoo whanns!” the demon piped, opening its door only a crack.

  Having seen that the demon didn’t open its door all the way when it asked what he was going to do about the cats, Haft was ready for a lack of cooperation. He held a small pellet where the demon could see it, but couldn’t reach it without coming halfway out of the tube.

  “Givvum!”

  Haft kept the pellet out of reach.

  “Can you spit at those things?”

  “Zurr ‘nuff mee kin. Naw zwetz.”

  Haft held the pellet closer. The demon snatched it from his fingers, ducked back inside, and slammed the door closed. The sound of crunching came from inside the tube, followed by wet swallowing noises, and ending with a very satisfied burp.

  Before Haft could say anything more to the demon, there was a chorus of yowls and screeches, and several cats bounded at the men, claws extended and fangs reaching to rip into flesh.

  “Aim mee!” Haft’s demon shrilled in a voice so high that he felt it in his teeth rather than heard it with his ears.

  A cat was already in the air, stretching for Haft’s shoulders and neck, too close for him to have time to aim. He swung the tube in the direction of the cat. The impact knocked the cat to the side so it leaped past Haft, but the animal still had so much momentum it staggered him back several steps before he caught his balance.

  Next to him, another cat was flying lower, extending its forelegs and claws to their full length, going for Balta’s lower belly and groin. The lieutenant already had his axe in his hands. He swung it up, over, then downward to catch the cat in its head and shoulders. But the cat was faster than the man, and the axe head slammed into the beast’s lower back, slicing through fur, flesh, sinew, and bone almost separating the tail and left leg from the rest of the cat. The beast screamed in agony and tried to twist away from the pain. The twisting threw its aim off just far enough that its claws ripped into Balta’s hip, rather than into the soft tissue of his belly and eviscerating him. Balta swung his axe a second time, and his blade chocked into the cat’s shoulders just behind its neck. It quickly died.

  “Wach wazzoo doon!” Haft’s spitting demon squealed from inside his tube. “Oo kin brek’um owzz! Aim mee!” Haft wasn’t sure, but as he brought the tube up to his shoulder, he thought he heard the demon mutter, “Gottum cragg.” To his right, he saw several of the cats squabbling over a downed man, who was struggling against them. He pointed the tube and asked, “Can you get the cats without killing the man?”

  “Dry mee,” the demon snarled.

  Haft pressed the lever, and recoiled slightly from the thunderous blast of the demon spitting. When he looked, he saw three cats bleeding and hardly moving. Another was broken, and being tossed aside by the man who managed to painfully rise to his feet.

  Haft looked for another target. “Spot for me,” he told Balta.

  “Yes, Sir Haft,” Balta said, agreeing to help Haft find targets for his demon spitter, and protect him from cats that got too close.

  Elsewhere, Asztalos was slammed in the chest and bowled over by a cat before he had his axe ready to strike. The cat ripped at his neck, but Kes, a couple of paces to Asztalos’s side, swiped at it and took off the top of its head. The cat suddenly lost interest in the fight and jumped off its intended kill, to stagger off until it fell flat and died.

  In another place, Tabib the mage found the chest he was looking for and threw its lid open. With a roar that threatened revenge, a shape changing Bogart, in her guise as a black dog bitch that was surely too large to fit into the medium-size chest she bounded out of, looked around and saw its most natural enemy—cats. The Bogart gave a full-throated roar and bounded into the cats, chomping down on their heads and backs with its huge, slavering jaws and crushing teeth.

  The cats, scenting dog, broke from their attacks on the men to face this new and dire threat. Most of them never had a chance to react to the men who took advantage of their distraction to attack them from the rear, chopping them in twain with single blows of their battle axes.

  As soon as his Bogart was among the nearest cats, Tabib drew an “L” shaped object from within his wrap. He gripped it with both hands by the short leg. His hands bucked high at the thunderclap that responded to the mage’s squeeze. There were half a dozen more thunderclaps, and five of the cats fell, dead or severely wounded, before a demon stuck its head out of the bottom of the short leg of the demon spitter and demanded piteously, “Veed mee!”

  In hardly any more time after that, the battle was over, with the cats all dead or dying except for three or four that managed to flee before Tabib’s demon was willing to spit again, or Haft could sight his larger demon spitter on them.

  The Bogart looked around and saw no forest, not even isolated trees or high grass. There was no place for her to run to and disappear, free from the magician in whose service she was. So she morphed into a shapely woman, who was probably beautiful underneath the feline blood and gore that was spattered and smeared over her. She glared at the men who were suddenly looking at her, some appalled at the blood and gore, others with lust at her nakedness.

  “I need water,” she snarled. “And don’t you look at me!” Her eyes and a thrusting hand with out-stretched finger swung, including every one of the men in the platoon.

  Haft audibly gulped. He went to a pack horse and removed a large water skin from it. Careful not to look at the Bogart in her human female guise, he carried the skin toward her and set it on the ground.

  “Do you need clothes?” he asked.

  “No. Now back off!”

  Haft did as she demanded. He knew what a black dog could do, he’d seen them in action, and even used one himself in an ambush. He had no desire to be the object of an attack.

  The Bogart waited for Haft to back off to a respectable distance and face away from her, then squatted and began washing, using some of the sparse grass that she ripped from the ground to scrub herself with. When she was satisfied that she’d cleaned herself as well as she could under the circumstances, she morphed back into canine form and padded to Tabib where he was tending to the wounded.

  Near where Tabib worked, two corpses lay covered by blankets. One was Asztalos, who had bled to death from the injuries he’d suffered before Kes knocked the cat off of him.

  “Two dead,” Haft said quietly to himself. Louder, to Tabib, “How many wounded?”

  INTERLUDE

  The following is excerpted from the article:

  HIGH-LOW, HIGH-LOW, TO DESERT LANDS WE GO

  (Part 2, High)

  by

  Scholar Munch Mu’sk

  Which was originally printed in It’s a Geographical World!

  ~

  This excerpt is printed with permission

  from both the author and the publisher

  ... [L]ittle is known about the landscape, life forms, or denizens o
f the High Desert. There have been few exploratory expeditions mounted, and even fewer have returned to civilized lands to report on what they found. I have endeavored in the following pages to give only the information available about the High Desert that is the most likely to be true. You will find, for example, no reports here of trees that walk and waylay travelers, of two-headed lions, or of men who walk on their heads and talk through their toes, although the literature is replete with such absurd tales.

  PROVISIONS FOR LIFE:

  Some travelers have claimed that there is no vegetation whatsoever on the High Desert. This is palpably untrue, as it is known indubitably that there is both animal and human life living on the High Desert! Animal and, indeed, human life are not possible without vegetative life present. And there are most extraordinary tales of what such life is like.

  ~

  It is known from samples that have been returned from the High Desert that there is a small selection of legumes and fruits from ground-hugging succulents, in quantities great enough to sustain a viable population of rodents, which in turn support a population of smallish to mid-size carnivores. It is unknown what animals might sustain themselves on the tough grass that lies in scattered clumps. The vegetation is uniformly ground-hugging because of the constant wind that all explorers agree blows continually across the plateau. There are no reliably known large carnivores, despite numerous stories of Brobdingnagian flesh-eaters.

  Alas! Whether vegetate or animate, legume or succulent, rodent or carnivore, the few specimens that have been brought back are spread far and wide among diverse scholars, and are housed in numerous academies on both continents. These scholars have yet to come to agreement on scientific names for any of the species, so they are known only by their many and various common names. Each explorer who returned with samples called the specimens by a different name, and no two of them are in agreement. Therefore is this vine properly called “trippum-up” or “strangler?” Is that muscular mouse-like rodent correctly named “mickey” or is it more properly known as mighty mouse? I am, therefore, constrained from naming any of the flora or fauna of the High Desert. Suffice it to say, as I have, that there is sufficient flora to sustain an ecological system.