Web of Defeat

by Lionel Fenn

  Gideon did not believe in omens; he believed in hard facts. And the hard fact was that a fair number of somethings was heading their way at a rather distressingly fast pace, and he did not for a minute believe, in addition, that old crock about standing still in front of a herd of stampeding bison because they'll think you're a rock and go around you.

  That was the way rocks became pebbles and people became legends in their own, very short, time.

  "Therefore," Abber continued as he turned away from the line of insects he had squashed with one foot, "instead of an omen, I bequeath to you a last and fond look at the Wall of Demarcation before we set out to—"

  "Run!" Gideon shouted, and did so.

  "What?" Abber asked in confusion.

  Gideon pointed without slowing down. "Run!"

  "That's not what I was going to say."

  "Then change your mind quick. Or don't. I haven't got time to argue with you."

  Abber protested.

  Gideon was too far away to hear, and wouldn't have wanted to even if he weren't because the man was prattling on about omens and leaves and didn't the hero think he was being a bit hasty since he was, after all, a stranger in these parts?

  Stranger or not, he decided the safest thing to do was head for the protection of the nearest trees, which were, in his feeble estimation, some two or four hundred yards away, perhaps half a mile. It didn't matter. He was lousy at distances but knew he was right about the dust cloud when a sharp gust pushed him rudely to one side and Abber streamed ahead, staff pumping at the earth like a ski pole, loincloth streaming, aiming directly for a densely clotted grove of red-leaved trees whose scarlet trunks, even at this distance, were obviously of a size large enough to give pause even to that dragon of Thong's.

  Though he was still a little stiff from sleeping on the ground, his legs soon understood the difference between a lope and a sprint, and he was amazed to feel himself racing smoothly over the ground, nimbly veering around patches of impassable brush, leaping stag-like over deadfalls, and generally making better time than he ever had in his life. His tattered shirt snapped in the wind of his own making; the hole in his jeans whistled; he soon made up the ground Abber had gained on him.

  Incredible, he thought gleefully as he saw the trees grow nearer; absolutely incredible.

  Obviously, it was more than his healthy fear of being trampled that set the wings of Mercury on his heels; he knew it had something to do with the grey man's subtle ministrations after the battle in the jungle. Somehow, a new life had been given to him. New strength. New stamina. Youth had been restored at the magical hands of a half-loon magician dressed in a shade of green even a banker couldn't love. It made him smile, grin, once laugh out loud when he looked over his shoulder and saw the dust cloud no nearer than it was when he'd set out.

  It also didn't last very long.

  A hundred yards shy of the first hundred-foot tree, every muscle below his waist, and a few lodge members above, signaled their contempt at his adolescent fling with spring fantasies by acting their age and general condition.

  He yelled as he felt himself falling.

  He yelled as his chest skidded along the ground and the rocks proceeded to take new strips from his shirt.

  He yelled when he stopped sliding, rolled quickly onto his back, and saw the advancing dust cloud loom far more closely than he was willing to accept in the few moments it took him to get shakily back on his feet and limp along to Abber's hysterical and largely incoherent encouragement, offered from the safety of the tree to which he himself had been heading before disaster had struck him down in his prime.

  Sonofabitch, they're fast, he thought in wasted admiration; and just in case, he brought bat to hand and changed his gait to a sidling, a stumbling, and realized that unless something happened damned soon, there wasn't going to be enough left of him to fill one of Tuesday's preserve jars.

  An anguished look to Abber, a pathetic farewell wave, and his eyes widened as the trunk the grey man was clinging to moved, widened further when the trunk beside it moved and most of the red leaves showered to the ground.

  Abber leapt to the ground.

  Gideon contented himself with falling.

  Damn, he thought, that sonofabitch is tall.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Somewhere at the back of Gideon's mind, in the approximate spot where his second childhood was prompted to stir prematurely and with no thought to its own safety, he recalled reading an item that had to do with something called the cube root rule, a simple law of physics that said, in layman's translation of its elegant simplicity, that there can't ever be giants because their legs would never hold the weight.

  Obviously, the scientists who had devised such a law had never been to his pantry.

  The pair of red tree trunks, once the red leaves had fallen and had half buried him, soon composed themselves into a pair of massive sunburned legs that rather easily, he thought, supported a body of impressively immense proportions. A quick deliberation had him thinking in terms of fifteen to twenty feet tall, not superior as giants go, but off-putting enough to send the dust cloud veering sharply in another direction.

  There was a grunt that sounded like a thunderclap, and the giant turned around, looked down, and saw Gideon struggling out from under the leaves with Abber's help. Gideon realized then that the trees themselves had not become the giant; the giant had been, for some reason, hiding in the trees.

  He wore red boots thonged intricately to his knees, a solid red kilt, a wide red belt from which dangled assorted polished weapons, fat pouches, and skins that bulged with drinking liquids—and not a hell of a lot else. He was muscled, gleaming with good honest sweat, and his flowing black hair was held away from his face by a headband that split his massive brow like a six-lane highway.

  Gideon stood, and felt like he was still lying down.

  He stepped back, and realized he'd have to go all the way to Hykrol in order to look the man-thing in the eye.

  He waved pleasantly, Abber shouted a joyful greeting, and the giant stomped away, back into the shade of the grove where, after a lot of grunting and groaning and demure shiftings of the kilt, he sat.

  It wasn't much better, but Abber immediately sat in front of him and gestured to Gideon to do the same.

  "Hello, old friend," Abber said then. "How ya doing, big fella?"

  "Hurt," the giant said, pointing to the various areas of sunburn that afflicted great areas of his half-naked body.

  "Yeah, well, listen, a quick little zappo massage with the old fingerooties should take care of that, don't you worry, pal. And hey, while we're sitting here, I want you to meet a friend of mine, name's Gideon, he's from I don't know where and he's looking for you."

  Gideon smiled.

  Harghe leaned forward, examined him with one marvelously beautiful blue eye, and leaned back.

  "Hello."

  Gideon appreciated the fact that the barbarian was trying to keep his voice down, but it still sounded as if he were screaming in a cavern filled with bats looking for a good time. "Hello," he said, unthinkingly offered a hand, and winced when a larger hand covered his. The wince faded. The grip was remarkably delicate—only two knuckles popped.

  Then the giant looked to Abber. "What?"

  Abber quickly explained that his companion had traveled all the way from the magical city of Rayn, beyond the misty Wall, just to meet the master of the Grassplain.

  The giant didn't believe him. "Grahne," he said with a clear note of substitute-parental disgust.

  "Well, how about that, buddy," Abber whispered with a poke to his side. "It seems the big fella thinks all you want is his niece's body." A wink, a nudge. "Don't blame you, of course, but that's the way the ball bounces, no pun intended if that's a pun where you come from."

  Gideon sized the giant up sitting down, figured the niece to be somewhat younger so probably a little shorter, and suggested to Harghe that even if he did just want his niece's body, which he didn't, there was
n't a hell of a lot he would be able to do with it even if he had it.

  "Think," Harghe said darkly.

  "He means use your good old Yankee imagination," Abber translated.

  "Yeah, right," Gideon said, though he doubted his imagination was capable of such dexterity. "Look, Harghe," he said, putting on his best trust me expression, "I was told by a man named Whale that your—"

  Harghe grinned, a damned ugly sight. "Whale?"

  Gideon nodded.

  "Friend!"

  "So I gathered."

  "Want?"

  Jesus, I'm getting the hang of this, he thought disgustedly, though he knew he shouldn't expect Oxfordian discourse from a barbarian who hadn't the brains to come in out of the sun.

  "Whale says—"

  "Whale!" and a joyful hand thumped the ground.

  "Right."

  "Friend!"

  A pause. "Right."

  "Want?"

  He looked to Abber for help, but the grey man was already beginning to use his skills on the giant's vicious sunburn, starting at the knees and doing his best not to look down.

  "Want?" the giant repeated.

  Gideon scratched his singed beard thoughtfully, poked at the ground, and tried again. "I've been told," he said, and congratulated himself on a good start, "that your niece, Grahne, can help me with a problem my sister has."

  "Who?"

  "My sister."

  "Oh."

  "You see, Whale—" Oh, shit.

  "Whale!"

  "Friend," Gideon said immediately, hoping to cut the ritual short.

  Harghe nodded, thumped his hand, and waited patiently.

  "Anyway, my sister needs this spell cast, and according to our friend back in Rayn, your niece is, or has, or knows of, the missing ingredient."

  Harghe narrowed his eyes in thought, tilted his head, peered out over the Grassplain. Then, with a grunt that spilled Abber from his thigh, he reached into one of his pouches and pulled out a large leg from a beast that obviously had no use for it anymore, and wouldn't want it if he had. He gnawed a little, chewed a little, spat out a splinter of bone and put the snack back.

  "Why?"

  Gideon did not want to answer. It was one thing to call another man's niece various names that lent description to her proclivities among members of the opposite sex and no wonder dinosaurs are extinct, but it was quite another to call your own sister a duck. There were, after all, limits.

  "She's a duck."

  "What?"

  "She's a duck," he repeated. "Magic. Turned her into a duck."

  "Oh."

  "Grahne."

  "Help?"

  "Yes!"

  "Oh."

  God.

  Abber crouched beside him and smiled. "Not bad, laddie. You've got it, by George."

  "Quiet."

  "See what I mean?"

  Gideon suspected that reaching for the grey man's throat would only provoke the giant into perfectly warranted violence, so he contented himself with a murderous scowl that effectively whimpered the masseur into silence. Then he rose, dusted himself off, and looked expectantly at Harghe, who was peering over their heads at the distant Wall.

  "Duck?" he asked then.

  Gideon nodded.

  "Know."

  "You what? You know her?"

  The giant nodded.

  "No. That's impossible. I mean," he added quickly when the giant's gaze swung down at him, "I lost her a couple days ago, back by the River Khaleque. See, I was having some trouble with the sisters Wamchu and—"

  And, he thought, I should have kept my big mouth shut.

  Harghe growled. Grumbled. Rose to his feet and plucked a devastatingly huge club from his belt, whirled it around his head until it produced a deafening whistle, and smashed the hell out the nearest dozen treetops. When the leaves stopped falling, he shook the club and a fist at the sky that matched his clear blue eyes. Then he reached down and, with admirable restraint, picked Gideon up without breaking a single rib. He turned until Gideon could see the Wall hazing the air to the nearest clouds.

  "There," Harghe said.

  "Yes," Gideon gasped, forced as he was into taking very shallow breaths. "Chou-Li and Thong."

  Harghe pointed to the grove. "Here."

  "Yes, we are."

  The giant nodded sharply, returned Gideon to a more natural standing position, and put his hands on his hips.

  Gideon waited.

  Abber climbed one of the boots and continued his adroit and tender ministrations.

  Gideon waited.

  Abber had worked his way halfway up Harghe's back when the giant, evidently feeling much relaxed and soothed, plucked the grey man off and set him beside Gideon. And put his hand back on his hip.

  "What the hell is he doing?"

  Abber adjusted his grimy hair and squinted toward the Wall. "I would say he's waiting."

  "For what?"

  "For the Wamchus, ol' buddy. For those cute little foxes to come sashaying right in here where he can pound them."

  Gideon looked up, looked out, looked over. "How long will he wait?"

  "For practically ever, ol' son. Man has a powerful hate for them fillies. Used to be, back in the old days, Harghe could walk his north forty without getting so much as a freckle on his nose. Had a run-in with the Big Man from Choy."

  "I see."

  "Doesn't even tan, the poor old fella. Peels like a sumbitch and burns again."

  Despite an understandable lack of absolute sympathy, he winced before suggesting that Harghe had intimated a knowledge of his sister, and wouldn't it be a good idea, pardner, to head on back to the corral and see if he was right?

  Abber scratched his head, his beard, chased something tiny and disgusting off his hand, and nodded. "Seems like."

  "You know the way?"

  "Been there before, yep."

  Gideon hitched up his belt, gave the giant an unseen farewell salute, and headed east, assuming for no reason at all that it was the proper direction. Abber, after a brief consultation with the giant, followed, pointing out a wide, hard-packed road they should follow until, he guessed, the sun was just about to reach the horizon. By that time, if they hadn't been mashed by several of the Grassplain's herds of benst, they'd be at Harghe's place.

  "What," Gideon said, "is a benst?"

  "Kinda like a cow, pal. Only bigger."

  Don't ask, he told himself. "How much bigger?"

  "Bigger'n shit."

  "Mean, I suppose."

  "Meaner'n shit."

  Gideon sighed, but kept on walking. There was no sense turning around and waiting for Harghe; the giant seemed determined to right an old wrong, settle an old score, even up the odds, and while it occurred to him that the large man might be able to help with Chey's famine problem in some way, he still had Tuesday to think about.

  The sun climbed to its midday position. The heat was worse here than in the jungle; the trees were too far apart, the grasses inevitably too low to provide a moment's shade, and though he could have sworn he'd seen a river not far from the red grove, there was no sign of it now.

  One of life's little mysteries, he thought, and yelled when he fell off the road into the water.

  "Tricky things, them Grassplain creeks," Abber said, climbing agilely down the bank to give him a hand out. "Don't like strangers. Shy, y'know."

  Gideon allowed as how the water, no matter how reluctant it was to flow, felt just fine, and he sat down in the shallows, splashed himself liberally, drank cautiously to avoid cramps, and wished he had brought his sunglasses. Though he assumed he should be able to see Harghe's place by now, the glare from the sun was so bright that anything more than a mile or so away was hidden in the blinding glare.

  When Gideon was ready to move on, they waded to the other side, and he walked with his gaze on the road, every so often snapping his eyes up to catch the glare off-guard and see beyond it.

  It didn't work. All he got was a sore neck, sore feet, and the extre
mely un-Christian wish that Abber would stop hopping alongside him as though he were riding a horse.

  By midafternoon he was plodding. The heat was too intense, and the only thing that kept him from throwing off what remained of his shirt was the remembered sight of the sunburn the giant had gotten; as it was, he supposed he was going to look like a red zebra by the time night fell, and would be just as bad tempered.

  An hour later they reached a stand of evergreens whose needles were as thick as his arm. As soon as he was sure there wasn't a cousin of Harghe's hiding there, he flopped to the ground and let the breeze, such as it was, dry the sweat from every inch of his body.

  "Abber?" he said.

  Abber hunkered down beside him, chewing on a needle fragment. "Yes?"

  "Y'know, when I was a quarterback—do you know what a quarterback is?"

  "Certainly."

  He opened one eye, and the grey man nodded.

  "Well, when I was a quarterback, I sat on the bench a lot. I wasn't very good except for one or two things, and I had a lot of time to think."

  "I guess so."

  He opened the eye again. Closed it. Felt his muscles huddling under his bones in fearful anticipation of having to move again.

  "You know what I used to think about?"

  "No."

  "Neither do I. It was so long ago, I forget."

  Abber adjusted the bilious green loincloth, shooed another ugly dark thing from his beard, and wondered aloud to the trees what the point was.

  "The point is," Gideon said, "I forget because I used to forget then, too, because people were looking at me and I never could think straight when people looked at me as if they expected me to think about something they were interested in."

  The grey man shifted closer and began massaging renewal into Gideon's limbs. "I am interested."

  "But I can't tell that. I can't read minds."

  "You can't?"

  Gideon felt his strength returning and decided, not without monumental debate, that using such strength against its source would be rather ungrateful. Instead, he continued to keep his eyes closed, trying to think and knowing it was futile because Abber might in fact be interested in what he was thinking, but there was definitely someone else here who wasn't.