Get Her Back (Demontech)

by David Sherman

  Itzuli translated: “The Great Chief Nagusi wishes you to know that he is lord and master of all the lands within three days comitelot ride of this camp. Whenever Great Chief Nagusi wishes, the people of the Deitua Clan break down the eurts, load them onto pack animals, and the people and their animals move to wherever the Great Chief Nagusi wishes them to, at which place they establish a new camp from which to graze their animals and hunt the food animals, of which the desert has in plenitude.”

  Nagusi stopped waving his arms about; he planted one hand firmly on his left thigh and leaned forward over it. He fixed a steely look on Haft, and dropped his voice to a low growl.

  “No one,” Itzuli translated, “enters upon my land without my leave.” Nagusi’s voice dropped into an even deeper register. “And when I take my people near the borders of my lands, should anyone be near enough those borders to be seen, heard, or smelled, I lead my warriors to attack them and kill the men and rape the women and take the animals and other goods.”

  As soon as the chief mentioned the warriors attacking, the guards inside the hut let out throaty growls, while stamping their feet rhythmically, and shaking their swords.

  Nagusi smiled, baring his teeth, and leaned back to study his guests and their reaction to what he’d said and the display his warriors were putting on.

  If he expected them to quail, he was mostly disappointed. Haft leaned forward, his left forearm laid on his upraised knee, his right hand on the spike that backed the blade of his axe. Balta looked nonchalant and tapped the hilt of his axe in its scabbard. Korona, grizzled campaigner that he was, rubbed a thumb up and down the hilt of his axe and grinned a “Let’s you and me rumble” grin at one of the nomad warriors—that warrior missed a step in his stamping. Tabib smiled in open mouthed delight when Nagusi started to sound threatening, and started weaving his hands through the air in front of his belly. Only Jurniaks reacted in a manner that might have pleased the chief; he fainted.

  Nagusi’s eyes darted to Jurniaks, then he burst out laughing, stamping his feet, and slapping his thighs. After a few moments Nagusi stopped laughing and got his gasping breath under control. His guards stopped their stomping and sword shaking. Itzuli resumed translating.

  “You are worthy warriors,” he said, adding with a nod to Tabib, “and magician. Nearly every man when faced with what you just saw would have wet himself like a little girl, and deserved nothing more than to be handed over to our women. But you were not cowed.” He flicked fingers, dismissing Jurniaks from consideration. “We shall feast most richly tonight.

  “When you arrived here, you said you are in search of friends of yours. We shall discuss them while we eat.” He stood and turned away, indicating that the meeting was over and they should leave.

  But Haft wasn’t finished with the meeting, not yet.

  “You have some of our friends bound in cages at an entrance to your camp. I want them freed and returned to me. Now.”

  Nagusi spun at Haft and took a stride toward him. He leaned forward aggressively and snatched up the sword that had rested against his stool.

  “You come to my camp without permission, and you make demands of me?” he roared. Itzuli had to rush to translate.

  “I told you why we came,” Haft’s voice sounded firm in his own ears, but he could only hope that the shaking in his knees and the quaking of his belly weren’t visible. “We want our friends.” He caught a glint in Nagusi’s eye, and added, “Unharmed.”

  Nagusi stared at Haft for a long moment, before softly growling words that Itzuli translated just as softly, “I will release your friends in the warning posts. Unharmed. And you may have the chance to prove your courage with more than just words before you leave my camp. As for the others, you will see them in good time.

  “Now get out of my hut before I change my mind and kill you.”

  Itzuli led them to an area outside the rings of huts and told them this was where they would stay.

  Lieutenant Guma was one of the four Royal Lancers who was brought to the area outside the camp that was given over to Haft and the Bloody Axes. All of them suffered from exposure and dehydration and needed attention from Tabib and his Aralez. Thanks to the filth that had accumulated on them during their encapsulation, they looked worse off than they were. None of them had known what was in store when nomad warriors took them from the place where they’d first been held when they arrived at the camp. Seax was in the worst shape, he’d resisted going and been severely beaten. Tabib got to work on him first, Haft and some of the Skraglanders were able to tend to the lesser ills of the other three.

  Sergeant Korona and Corporal Kaplar set the rest of the platoon to setting up a camp; none of them had any idea how long they might be at the nomad encampment. They laid out sleeping areas, established two cooking pits, dug as many latrines, and unobtrusively laid out gear and hobbled their horses in positions where they could be useful in defense.

  “Where are Alyline and the rest of your platoon?” Haft asked Guma as soon as the Zobran officer had been watered and the worst of the filth washed off of him.

  “I don’t know, Lord,” Guma said through cracked lips. “They put us in the cages on the first day. We weren’t able to see where the rest of the platoon was taken.” His voice was rusty.

  “You’ve had no hint of where Alyline went?”

  “None.”

  Haft quickly filled him in on the visit with Nagusi, and finished, “We didn’t see any sign of Alyline or the rest of your men. We didn’t see the musician she came in search of, either. Have you seen him?”

  Guma shook his head. “I haven’t seen or heard any musician since I arrived here.”

  Haft looked a question at Lieutenant Balta.

  “I’ve asked my men about the musician,” Balta said. “No one has seen or heard one.”

  Nomad warriors were spotted around the Bloody Axes’ designated encampment area. They were obviously guards even though the Skraglanders weren’t inside an enclosure. In addition, they were likely observers who would report everything they saw to Nagusi. And everything they heard. So far, there was no evidence that any of the High Desert Nomads except Itzuli spoke a language other than their own. But they needed to know for sure. To that end, Lieutenant Balta and Sergeant Korona told their men to wander about and say insulting things within hearing of the guards.

  The men didn’t need any further instructions, they knew how to get a rise out of soldiers—or barbarians. Every one of the Skraglanders spoke some of at least two other languages, among them they spoke a score or more. They intended to speak all of them in the hearing of the guards.

  “When we’re through here,” Hegyes said with relish to Asztalos when the pair had wandered within ten feet of two of the nomads, “I’m really going to enjoy chopping the heads off some of these barbarian nomads. Beginning with these two.”

  He said that in Skraggish. Asztalos repeated Hegyes threat, but in Matigule. He gave the two nomads a friendly smile. They smiled back, and gave no indication that they understood what the two Skraglanders had said, or even that they had spoken two different languages.

  Thirty yards away, Kes and Parduc stood facing each other in conversation a few yards from a knot of three nomads.

  “Don’t look now,” Kes said in Bostian, his voice pitched to easily carry to the nomads, “but that one behind your left shoulder? The word is, his sister is working as a pleasure girl for the Low Desert Nomads.”

  “You mean the ugly one, the one whose mother can’t keep her skirt down and her knickers on when she’s near a Dartmutter.” Parduc managed to get the words out in Kondivian.

  “Hey, you heard that too!” Kes exclaimed in Frangerian. “Then it must be true.”

  Elsewhere, Halasz and Acel slowly wandered past a guard.

  “Have you ever seen such a pathetic excuse for a warrior?” Halasz asked in Bostian.

  “Never, not in any of my wanderings through this whole wide world,” Acel averred in a version of the Zobran
dialect spoken in the Penstons. “They’ll be so easy to kill when Sir Haft gives the order that even children could wipe them out.”

  Kevekoto declared in Ewsarkan, “Do you know that when the warriors of this clan get too close to another clan, the other clan makes them lay down so they can piss on them?”

  “Yes, I know about that,” Lovag said in Apianghian. “And be careful that you don’t drink water that any of them offer you, not even if it’s been boiled. After the other clans piss on them, these warriors have to gather the liquid, and that’s all they’re allowed to drink!”

  Kevekoto shook his head. “Disgusting. These people are simply disgusting.”

  “They are that,” Lovag agreed. “They’re so disgusting that I wouldn’t bed one of their women with your manhood!”

  And on and on, different Bloody Axes speaking in a score or more of languages, all in easy hearing of the guards, and moving on to speak close to others. By the time they finished, each of the guards had heard insults in at least seven or eight languages. None of them gave any indication that they had understood a single word spoken for their benefit.

  Soon after, satisfied that the warriors watching over them didn’t speak any of the languages they knew, Balta sent Sergeant Korona with three men to walk the circumference of the nomad camp, in search of where the Golden Girl and the Zobran Royal Lancers were being held.

  “We have traveling companions,” Maros said.

  “Did you think the nomads would let us wander around without keeping a close watch on us?” Sergeant Korona asked.

  “I guess not.”

  “I’m not going to look. How many and where are they?”

  They were walking clockwise around the camp and had gone just far enough around the curve of the circular camp to be out of sight of their own small encampment area. Maros was a few yards to Korona’s rear and a bit to his left, his peripheral vision allowed him to see farther to the right rear of the small reconnaissance team than Korona could.

  “I can see four. They’re about twenty-five yards back.”

  “There could be more than four?”

  “There could, yes.”

  “Are they showing weapons?”

  “They’ve got those big spears in their hands. Carrying them like walking sticks.” Maros turned his head to look into the space between two huts that they were just passing, which allowed his peripheral vision to see farther to his left rear. “There are five of them,” he reported. “The one on the outside, the one I couldn’t see before, has his bow in his hands and an arrow nocked. The bow’s not drawn,” he hastily added.

  “Let me know if anything changes,” Korona said. “Do you see anything, Teto? Kocsi?” Neither of the other men had seen their followers, or anything else of interest.

  So it went for another hundred yards before half a dozen nomad warriors stepped out from between two huts a few yards to their front. Half of them had their spears held ready to lunge, the others had drawn swords. Itzuli, the translator, was with them.

  “What are you doing here?” Itzuli demanded.

  Korona spread his hands, showing that he wasn’t holding a weapon, and said in mock surprise, “We’re just taking a walk, stretching our legs after the long horseback ride from the ocean to here.”

  “I know you,” Itzuli said to Korona in a fiercer tone than he had used when he was translating for Nagusi. “You are a leader among these outlanders. You are not just walking—you are spying!”

  “Spying! That’s not true, we aren’t spying. What could we hope to find by walking in the open during the day? Spies skulk about in the dark, and keep to shadows. Why, if anybody was saying something you don’t want us to hear, they’d see us coming and stop talking. Or hide away anything they didn’t want us to see.” He turned his head to the side and spat. “Spying! That’s nonsense.” He snorted. “Do you really think we can understand your tongue?”

  Itzuli stared at Korona for a long moment, breathing hard, obviously thinking. Finally his arm shot out, pointing back the way the Bloody Axes had come from.

  “Go. Return to your place until you are summoned. Do not leave it before then under pain of death!”

  “If that’s the way you feel about it,” Korona said, in a tone that implied that the interrupted walk was of no importance. He gave a brief bow that was barely more than a nod, and turned about. To see the five nomad warriors Maros had reported a short time earlier. The five were grinning at him and his men. They caressed their weapons as though they were anxious to use them.

  Korona just looked at them without making a move toward his own axe.

  Itzuli barked something in the harsh language of the High Desert Nomads, and the five, still grinning, stepped aside to allow the four Skraglanders to pass.

  “I don’t know if it’s the Zobrans or the musician—or something else,” Korona reported when the recon team returned, “but they’re hiding something. And it’s probably closer to the left side than it is around to the right.”

  Haft looked into the camp, his eyes unfocused as though trying to see through the rings of huts that blocked his view.

  “Too bad we don’t have some Lalla Mkoumas with us,” he muttered.

  “Ah, but Lord Haft,” Tabib murmured, “we most certainly do! Do you really believe that a mage as wondrous as I am would be so careless that he would embark on a mission of such importance as this one without a demon so powerfully beneficial?” He whipped a cloth cover from a smallish chest, exposing holes drilled in its top, and opened the chest.

  A tiny voice from inside it piped, “Veed mee!”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Haft wanted to use the Lalla Mkouma right away to turn himself invisible so he could go on a solo scouting mission to find out just what it was that the nomads were hiding somewhere counter-clockwise from the Bloody Axes’ encampment.

  But Lieutenant Balta insisted that Haft couldn’t be the one to go. “The nomads,” Balta explained, “aren’t being overly obvious about it, but if you look, you can see the warriors they have dotted around our encampment, keeping an eye on us. And surely each of the watchers knows every member of the command group by sight, and at least one of them would notice if you are suddenly missing. Besides, at least one of them is likely watching you at all times, and would see when the Lalla Mkouma did her magic to make you invisible.”

  “I hate it when you’re right,” Haft grumbled. “But when you’re right, I have to accept it.” He looked Balta in the eye. “They’ve probably got a close eye on you, too, so you can’t be the one, either. The same goes for Korona and Tabib.” He shook his head. “I can’t even send Jurniaks—even if I could trust him to do the scouting instead of run away.”

  Balta nodded agreement. “I suggest we send Corporal Kaplar,” he said. “Not only is he a good NCO, but he’s an experienced scout. Plus, he’s used demon spitters, which means he’s familiar with how to deal with demons—and he knows to feed them immediately when they demand food.”

  “Won’t the nomads notice if Kaplar’s missing?”

  Balta shook his head. “Only if one of them is looking at him when he disappears. When he assisted Korona in setting up the camp, he was working alongside the junior men. He wouldn’t have stood out as a leader.”

  “That’s right, Sir Haft,” Korona said, backing up Balta.

  Haft didn’t look happy about it, but he had to agree. “All right, get Kaplar.”

  Balta looked at Korona and nodded. Korona nodded back and went to fetch Kaplar.

  “Corporal Kaplar, I have a mission for you, if you’ll accept it,” Haft said when the platoon’s junior NCO joined them.

  “‘If’, sir?” Kaplar said, surprised at the suggestion that he would turn down an assignment.

  “It’s a dangerous mission, Corporal.”

  “I’m a corporal in the Bloody Axes of Skragland, Sir Haft. I expect my missions to be dangerous.”

  Haft looked at him for a moment then, all business, and asked, “Are you familiar
with Lalla Mkoumas?”

  “The little female demons who make a man disappear? Yes, Sir, I’m aware of them.”

  “Do you know what happened when Sergeant Korona tried to take a recon patrol around the nomad camp?”

  “Yes, Sir. They were turned back before they’d gotten very far.”

  “That makes me think that the nomads have something on the other side of their camp that they don’t want us to see. I need to know what it is, but we can’t go there. However, it so happens that Mage Tabib has a Lalla Mkouma with him. If any of us,” he gestured to indicate the members of the command group, “use the Lalla Mkouma to go to the opposite side of the camp, the nomads will notice he’s missing. So I’d like you to go.”

  Kaplar’s nostrils flared slightly. “Thank you, Sir! I’ll be most honored to go.”

  “Good. Come in close and sit, to meet the Lalla Mkouma.”

  Kaplar sat cross-legged on the ground, in a tight circle with Haft, Balta, Guma, Korona, and Tabib. Tabib opened a chest and reached in to withdraw a foot-tall female demon, which he stood in the center of the circle.

  The Lalla Mkouma had lustrous red hair that hung to halfway down her thighs. She was built in an exaggerated form of female pulchritude, one that would turn the head of even the most celibate aesthete. A fact that was abundantly visible through the diaphanous gown that was her sole garment. She looked around at the men surrounding her and giggled behind a tiny, but perfectly formed, hand.

  “Lalla Mkouma,” Tabib said to her as he placed a hand on Kaplar’s forearm, “this is Corporal Kaplar. He is going someplace...” His voice trailed off when he noticed that she wasn’t paying him any attention. Instead, she scrambled onto Haft’s crossed legs and climbed onto his shoulder, to snuggle against the side of his face.