Web of Defeat

by Lionel Fenn

  The audience, for such it was now that the carnage had been abated for the time being, gasped in astounded admiration. It was a miracle. No human had ever before made friends with such a creature. It wasn't done. Lorras ate grass and killed uglier beasts; lorras did not nuzzle anyone, heroes or not, and they certainly didn't arch their necks to expose the proper places to be scratched.

  Which Red did.

  And which Gideon did.

  Until, at last, the merchant army in the corner gathered its courage and began to advance, thinking that the stranger hero was only distracting the ravening animal until someone dispatched it with a collective thrust.

  Their boots were loud.

  Red shook himself free and turned around, his eyes darkening again, the purr shifting to a growl.

  "No, Red," Gideon said, pulling on a handful of hair in hopes of preventing the lorra from slaughtering half the city.

  Red's tail smacked him across the chest and sent him tumbling to the floor.

  The merchants drew closer; the growling grew louder.

  "Jesus, Red, no!"

  Suddenly, from a pocket of passive resistance along the eastern wall, a scrawny young man charged across the floor and planted himself between Red and the army. He had a thin, rather chipped, and sagging sword in his hand, and by his attitude and demeanor he dared the men to go through him first before tackling the lorra.

  Gideon recognized Jimm Horrn and wondered what in the hell the kid thought he was doing.

  The army did not falter.

  Red was not impressed; he lowered his head until he had sighted the points of his horns on the young man's back. For all he knew, this might be a trick, and he wasn't about to provide steaks for the night's barbecue and the morning's pancake breakfast.

  "Red!" Gideon commanded.

  The army began to spread out, causing Horrn to begin turning in a confused and erratic circle.

  "Red, goddamnit!"

  The lorra's growling increased to a deafening level, but the merchants were determined; a day's work, perhaps more, had been carved and trampled by this thing, and they weren't going to permit it to leave unpunished.

  Gideon scrambled to his feet and ran to the lorra, stood in front of it with his hands on his hips, and shook his head. "No, Red. No, please."

  Red snorted.

  "Well, damnit, I said please, didn't I?"

  Red chewed his teeth a moment, then raised his head and lowered his tail.

  "Now, boys!" one of the merchants shouted.

  "Like hell," Gideon answered, suddenly and ferociously whirring his bat over his head. "Stay back, all of you. This lorra is mine!"

  "Then we'll use the thief!" a voice responded.

  Horrn backed swiftly to Gideon's side and gave him a sickly smile.

  "No!" Gideon warned when a dagger flashed in the morning light.

  "Well, shit," someone grumbled. "Who the hell are you to tell us what to do, anyway?"

  Fame, he thought; fickle and short-lived and with fifty cents would get me a cup of coffee except they don't know what coffee is and I don't much like it anyway.

  "These two," he said, putting one arm around Horrn's shoulder and the other around the lorra's neck, "are part of my team."

  "What's a team?"

  He closed his eyes, opened them, and spread his lips in what was either a smile or a patient grimace. Both sides, he knew, had a lot to learn. But as long as they were listening, they weren't trying to carve Red.

  "A team," he said patiently, "is a group of people, or a mixture of people and other things, which, in this case, is going to—"

  "Are," another voice said from the back of the room.

  Gideon stared. "What?"

  "Are."

  "Are what?" Gideon said in spite of himself.

  "Are. You said is. Actually, it's are."

  "What in god's name are you talking about?"

  "The team are, not the team is."

  "Who the hell is this guy?" he asked Horrn, who only shook his head in bewilderment and wondered if he ought to be taking notes of some kind.

  "Are," the voice continued. "There's more than one person or thing on this team thing of yours, so it's are."

  "Not exactly," said Whale, who had pulled himself together and was standing on Red's left. "Team, if my memory serves, is a collective noun and therefore uses the singular verb, no matter how silly it sounds."

  "Are you sure, mayor?"

  Whale nodded.

  "I could have sworn it was are."

  "A natural mistake."

  "Are you finished?" Gideon asked, his voice dangerously low.

  "Never avoid a chance to increase your knowledge," Whale instructed him sotto voce. "You stagnate, otherwise."

  "Right," the voice said. "Don't sneer at education, hero, or it might mean your life."

  Gideon felt a bubble of agitation burning in his stomach, but he swallowed until it had settled before spying a little man in blue who had thought to use the diversion to stick a blade into Horrn's shin. Horrn rapped him on the skull with a fist, and the blue man scuttled away.

  "This team," Gideon said when he realized things were getting out of hand, "is going to help you find food. With luck, we'll begin our search in the morning."

  A murmuring started in the grammarian's corner.

  "We think—that is, your mayor and I have suspicions that this shortage we're all suffering is part of someone's plan to take over Chey and subjugate you again."

  The murmuring became alarmed.

  "We think..." He looked to Whale, who nodded. "We think the Wamchu is getting ready to come back."

  "Are you talking about the Wamchu, as in Lu?" the grammarian asked. "Or are you talking about the collective Wamchu, which, in this case, would mean his three wives as well? If you are, then it's are."

  Someone on the other side of the room disagreed, using Whale's previous point to make his own. A third voice, a woman's, wondered if they weren't all making too much of this since, if Wamchu was threatening them again, it wouldn't make a hell of a lot of difference which verb they used since they'd very likely be dead and more apt to be thinking about what awaited them beyond the grave, collectively speaking, that is.

  Gideon immediately instigated a round of applause before another discussion could be launched about the possibilities of afterlife, then jerked a nod toward the exit. Whale agreed, and the four of them hurried outside into the relative peace of the square.

  "Well," the mayor said then, "it looks as if you've made up your mind."

  —|—

  Later that afternoon, riding atop Red through the fields outside the city walls, he wondered if he'd made the right choice. That Tuesday needed him was without question; that Ivy was handing him some sort of promise was not without debate, though such debate would, of necessity, be one-sided for the moment. Yet she seemed to care for him, and that described a puzzle he'd been enmeshed in since the day he had met her—whether that apparent affection was not only simple friendship, but something more besides. If it was, he could very well be jeopardizing a rather pleasant future by not returning to her soon; if it wasn't, he could very well lose a very valuable friend.

  The temptation to write back and ask her to join him down here was quickly put aside—there was no time, and he wasn't in the mood for any rejection.

  But she was in trouble.

  And so was his sister.

  "Red, I hope you're going to help me. Please?"

  The lorra bobbed its head.

  "I don't suppose you have any advice."

  Red snorted, stopped, and began grazing.

  "I didn't think so."

  And no advice was needed, and he knew it. He had already announced his leaving, and in such a way that by nightfall there would probably be the first grim signs of panic in Rayn. There was no way out of it and, if he was honest with himself, he wasn't really looking for one. He had been handed on a somewhat tarnished silver platter a way to get himself out of his doldr
ums, though he had hoped something a little less on the dicey side could have been arranged.

  "Y'know, Red," he said, "I think it was more fun sitting on the bench. At least there, I knew where I stood all the time."

  —|—

  He sat amid the ruins of his tent and watched Red taking his grassy dessert on a low knoll. Tuesday was settled beside him, a gaudy pink ribbon loosely tied around her neck. When he asked, she said it was a good-luck charm from Finlay.

  And after almost an hour's silence, she tilted her head against his arm. "Thank you," she whispered.

  "How the hell can I refuse you?"

  "Finlay wants to go. He's big and he's strong and he likes to hit things."

  Gideon allowed the point.

  "He knows how to make weapons."

  "So does Whale."

  "Whale's don't always work."

  "Can Finlay carry his forge?"

  It was meant as a joke; Tuesday told him Finlay kept one in his knapsack for emergencies and ballast.

  "And what about the thief?"

  Gideon had been thinking about it. When they had separated in the square, Horrn had asked to be included, enumerating his various useless skills at thievery with such enthusiasm that Whale was convinced on the spot. It took, however, a delegation of merchants out for the young man's scalp to change Gideon's mind. If he was going to help Tuesday directly, and Ivy indirectly, and Rayn by extension, and his own ego through action, there was no reason why for an equally absurd reason he couldn't include Jimm Horrn.

  "When do we go then?" she asked.

  "First light."

  "I suggest we make it ten minutes."

  He looked at her and frowned. "Why?"

  "Because," she said, "there's something flying around up there, big enough to cover the moon, and through avian calculation I estimate ten minutes before it reaches us."

  He looked up.

  She was right, and she was wrong.

  It was big enough to cover the moon, but if he didn't move instantly, he was going to have his heart torn out by the roots.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Gideon cried out as he flung himself to one side, his right hand instinctively grasping the handle of the bat. A rush of arctic air swept over him as the great black flying beast narrowly missed its target and veered sharply upward in order to turn for another assault. Gideon had not been able to see much more than its outline before he hit the ground, but he was positive it was the same creature that had attacked him only the night before. This time, however, and for all the good it would do him, he noticed that the creature had a pair of slightly slanted, malevolent blue eyes, whose mocking gaze followed him as he scrambled to his feet and held the bat at the ready. Tuesday, he noted, had burrowed for safety in the folds of the newly collapsed tent, and Red was nowhere to be seen. He wasn't surprised. It was dark. But even now, the lorra might be charging toward the campsite, horns raised to pierce the creature's evil breast, clawed hooves ready to tear at the creature's wings and render it helpless.

  Listening then for the sound of Red's charge, he watched the beast hover for a long moment before folding its monstrous wings and diving—without a sound, without apparent motion, until its bulk blotted out every star in the sky. Gideon planted his feet and swung, grunting as the bat connected solidly with one of the creature's legs, the impact of the blow staggering him to one side just as a hooked ebony beak slashed for his head. His arms stung, his hands ached, but he whirled to face another dive, wondering where the hell Red was and why no one from the city seemed eager to leave the protection of its walls to give him assistance.

  The creature dove again, wind whistling eerily off-key through its feathers, its great blue eyes filled with amusement when Gideon swung grimly at the other leg and was rewarded with an unearthly screech of pain. The creature banked, then climbed steeply and silently, until it rendered itself invisible against the black night. He watched warily, doubting that two broken limbs would deter the creature's determination to end his life.

  And he was right.

  Suddenly, from the sky came a cry unlike any he had ever heard before—except perhaps for that battle-crazed Dallas lineman who had seen him unprotected in the backfield, and he had known that nothing on God's earth was going to save him from being driven nose-first into the turf. Nothing had then; and he knew now that not even the incredible power of the bat was going to protect him from being sliced and mangled and untidily diced by the glinting black beak of the creature that roared at him out of the night sky at such a speed that running would only postpone the inevitable by a few seconds, if he were lucky.

  He ran.

  At the last possible moment he decided that a few seconds were better than nothing and, as the creature dropped toward him, he tucked the bat under his arm and reversed direction, charging directly toward it, under, beyond it, making it impossible, because of the angle of descent, for the creature to do anything but miss him and, in its frustration at seeing its prey scuttle out of the way, miscalculate the distance needed for it to bank and climb again.

  It struck the ground in a fiery explosion of feathers, claws, beak, and bone; it rolled across the field like an overloaded catherine wheel until it came up against the slope of a low knoll. It started upward, slowed, stopped, rolled back, and came to rest in a pyre that burned itself out before Gideon could reach it.

  Cautiously, he walked around the scene of the crash, poking at the feathery embers, watching the nightwind take bits of what remained and send them into the sky. He could find no sign of the head, nor of the blue eyes; but the cold that rose from the creature's remains told him more than he needed to know.

  Then a beak tapped him on the shoulder, and he screamed, leapt to one side, and would have taken Tuesday's head off with one significant swing of the bat had she not back winged in midair out of the weapon's deadly arc. Once composure returned, he glared at her, but said nothing when she settled beside him and investigated a single untouched feather that had been thrown clear of the heatless conflagration.

  "This is no ordinary feather," she said decisively.

  He hunkered down at her side and poked at it with a finger; it was chilly now, its burning cold seeping slowly into the ground. "Chou-Li," he said thoughtfully.

  The duck shivered. "You sure?"

  He recalled involuntarily his last meeting with the first of the Wamchu wives, and the cruel, unfeeling way she had filled him, in a very real though somewhat psychic sense, with a cold that could live only in the deepest and most hideous of graves; she had nearly killed him, but he would just as soon not have the memory of how he had survived.

  "I'm sure."

  Tuesday kicked the feather. "Then she's dead?"

  "No," he said, grunting as he rose. "I think this was only a manifestation of her evil capabilities. To kill her you'd have to do it while she is in her human, such as it is, form. I think, though, we've sent her a message."

  "You want to wait for the receipt?"

  He shook his head. "I think we'd better get on the road."

  He turned, then, just as Red lumbered toward him. "And where the hell have you been?"

  The lorra belched.

  Gideon glared at him. "Do you see this mess here? Didn't you hear all the screaming and yelling? Didn't you realize I was nearly skewered by that thing there?" And he waved an angry hand toward the creature's deathbed. "I could have used some help, you know."

  Red tilted his great head sideways in a lorra shrug.

  Gideon sighed and headed for the tent. He hadn't yet been able to figure out just how the animal decided when it was going to fight and when it was going to play the interested but uninvolved observer; and while the lorra's bulk and companionship were nice and had often kept him from despairing too deeply, it was rather frustrating to have such a formidable ally be so unreliable in times of acute stress.

  Red didn't seem to mind; he followed along behind, head down, as Tuesday explained how fine kettles of fish were not food but p
redicaments such as the one they now found themselves in, hot water aside and the metaphor mixed to a relevant stew. By the time they reached Gideon, he had the tent kicked to one side and their few belongings wrapped in a bundle he tied to the lorra's back. Then he mounted the caprine giant and, with Tuesday behind, swung toward the city.

  Partway there, he had a thought. It depressed him. It made him bare his teeth. It made good sense, which made him even more depressed.

  An hour later he was in the Hold, where Whale was preparing his own equipment.

  "I think," Gideon said sorrowfully, "you won't need that, Whale."

  Whale, who was floundering chest-deep in a steamer trunk, stood and frowned. "What? But how are we going to do what we have to do, as we proceed along the eastern road, if we don't have the proper equipment?"

  "That's not what I meant. I think—"

  But Whale scowled, tugged at his wattles, and proceeded to extract various unfathomable and indescribable items from the seventeen trunks and bags he had already packed. When he had finished, with a sour grin and a silent dare, he had cut the load down to nine; when Gideon shook his head and tried to explain, he cut it further, to four, and the dare; when Gideon groaned and told him there was something they had to discuss, now, before it was too late, Whale ranted without losing his dignity and further sifted things into a medium-sized backpack that he strapped to his scrawny shoulders.

  "I hope you're satisfied," he said primly.

  "Whale, I think maybe you'd rather stick around," Gideon said seriously.

  "I am nothing if not discriminating," the former mayor said, "and I have distilled the essence of what we require."

  "Including the little bitty bombs?"

  "Right."

  Gideon nodded once, sharply, then asked Tuesday to leave them alone. Her puzzlement lasted only long enough to see the expression on his face. Then he sighed, muttered about writing a book on suicide, and returned to the square.

  Whale waited patiently.

  Gideon wished he was wrong and that the man would prove him so. "Friend," he said, "I don't think you'd better go."