by Lionel Fenn
Gideon slipped down off the lorra and moved to his left, shoving Horrn still farther away and watching Red claw at the ground while his eyes turned a dead, unfriendly black.
The Qoll advanced on their hind legs, and Red began to growl, then lashed his tail against the grass and rose on his hind legs, bellowing a challenge. Gideon was not impressed. Not only had he seen it before, but there was also the matter of the animal's inclination to fight—sometimes he did, sometimes he didn't.
Slime dripped and steamed.
An angry clicking came from the teeth that gnashed and ground and sharpened themselves.
Then a Qoll dropped suddenly to all six legs, and jumped. A long jump that would have placed it directly on Botham's head had not the blacksmith at that moment chosen to demonstrate how good he was at twirling his axe—the blade neatly sliced the Qoll in half, and Botham had the presence of mind to dodge as he swung so as not to be lethally drenched by gouts of purple acid blood.
"That's why Harghe didn't do it," Horrn said, awed.
Gideon didn't answer. A second Qoll had leapt for him, and he slugged it with the bat, jumped back, and watched a dollop of blood burn a hole in his new boots.
Red, seeing how things were and how they were likely to be if he didn't do something soon, charged with a feline scream that froze the acid in the Qoll's veins. This wasn't, it was clear, part of their plan, and they were too stunned to move when the lorra burst into their midst, using horns and tail to flick them contemptuously aside while, at the same time, making sure he didn't puncture, scratch, or otherwise break the sanctity of their shells.
Many of them landed on their backs.
The shells broke anyway, and they ate themselves to death before they could get back on their feet.
Jimm Horrn turned his blade to the side and whacked it against a disgusting head that tried to snap off his ankles; the Qoll flipped over, and the thief, in a poetic leap over its struggling body, neatly pinked it before landing to face yet another attack.
Gideon, though he admired Red's courage, saw no profit in following up with a charge of his own; instead, he wandered about the suddenly noisy, steaming battlefield and dispatched several heads with carefully timed swings. His boots were a mess. His shirt was smoking. He could feel great burning welts rising on his arms and neck. Once, he tripped over a burning shell and nearly toppled into a premature bath; once, he swung through the fast-rising acid mist and nearly took off Botham's left arm; and once, as he choked on the heavy stench of sulphur, he was knocked to one side by Red, who pickled up a Qoll in his horse-like teeth and threw it away with a disdainful snort.
Visibility worsened.
He heard Botham scream.
Horrn appeared briefly at his side, swinging his weapon wildly before vanishing again.
Red screamed in anger, screamed again in pain.
Visibility worsened.
A pair of Qoll attempted to flank him, and he used the bat to thump one and vault over the second. When he struck the ground, his right leg gave way and he rolled, flailing with the bat at another group of dark shapes that suddenly appeared over his head. It wasn't until he had risen to his knees that he understood he was at the Web itself, and the largest dark shape he could see was the leader, trembling like mad and scuttling upward as the battle neared home ground.
The wind rose, and the mist cleared momentarily, and Gideon realized he was right at the conjunction of Web and Wall. Staggering against the poisonous sulphur clouds lifting yet again from the ground, grimacing at the fire that had erupted just below his right knee, he slammed the bat against a Webstrand that reached into the Wallmist.
The strand snapped loose and slapped him across the chest, spilling him into a puddle of pink slime.
He screamed as he felt the flesh on his left arm peel off in curling strips.
He rose and attacked the next strand up, ducking when it broke loose, laughing when it rebounded and missed him again.
The third and fourth strands were easily disposed of, and he thought he heard a quiet rumbling from the Wall's base.
A trio of Qoll attacked him from the ground. One was beheaded, one was upended, and the third slashed its teeth into his right leg. He shattered its shell, but the head clung on and he swayed, reached out blindly, and caught hold of the Web. The pain in his leg flared to agony as he struck the head again and again, his eyes filled with tears, his breathing growing increasingly shallow.
He called out.
Botham was there, his hair and beard steaming, his cheeks burned raw. The axe rose and fell, and the head rolled away.
Gideon knew he could no longer stand, and he turned to use the strength of his arms and shoulders to pull him up the Web, stopping only long enough to break another strand, to feel the Wall shuddering and the Web itself trembling.
The wind rose.
The fleeing mist burned his eyes, but he rubbed them clear as best he could and climbed still higher.
The next to last strand parted only after four feeble blows.
The last strand mocked him. He was too weak to go on, too weak to hold the bat, and he screamed, "No!" when his fingers finally lost their strength and the bat tumbled away.
"No," he whispered.
Clicking, then.
"No."
Wearily, he looked to his right and saw the Qoll leader making its way toward him.
Oh Jesus, Sis, he thought; oh, Jesus, I'm sorry.
And behind the Qoll was Jimm Horrn, straddling a strand, sword raised over his head.
Gideon smiled.
The Qoll lunged, and the sword came down, and Gideon felt himself falling after his bat, twenty feet to the ground.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
There was, above all, the Dark.
Gideon didn't think he'd care to be in the Dark on a more or less permanent basis because it frightened him—true, it was soft in there, and it was quiet and comfortable, and if things had been different he might even have enjoyed its restfulness. But he knew that the Dark liked him as well, and once he had grown used to it, it wouldn't release him. He would remain there—rested, calm, and irretrievably dead.
Yet there was also the pain.
Each time his eyes fluttered open there was the pain.
And the pain had no color, just as his vision had lost the ability to see anything but vague shadows drifting around in a hazy grey fog. There was no warning red, no agony of crimson; there was only the pain that soon enough, horribly enough, became like the roar of the surf—constant, powerful and, by its never-ending presence, silent.
Too much of him hurt.
He was unable to pinpoint what bothered him and where; it all hurt, it was all on fire, and he'd only once attempted to find some small place where the pain wasn't centered. He had failed, and he had screamed.
The Dark, then, kept the pain away.
But the Dark was beginning to tempt him, and he forced himself to concentrate on the fog instead, and on the shadows, and on the whisperings he heard when the pain receded and his ears were clear.
—|—
A shadow leaned over him.
"How are you feeling?"
It was Bones Abber.
Gideon opened his mouth and heard a croaking, felt something slip behind his head, felt cold liquid drip into his throat. He choked. He swallowed.
"We gotta get him back." Finlay; it was Finlay. "The bird will skin me alive if we don't get him back."
"I know, I know, but that stupid lorra won't carry him."
"Did you ask him?"
"Ask him?"
"Yeah. You have to ask him."
"But he's a lorra!"
"Ask."
"Christ."
"Nicely."
There was silence.
"Nicely? Are you kidding? It's a beast, for heaven's sake!"
Gideon grunted, the only sound he could make.
A third voice, Horrn's: "You have to be polite to it."
"To a lorra?"
"I
t has feelings too, you know. That's what I'm told anyway. It works for Gideon, doesn't it?"
"To a lorra?"
A faint sound, a brief scuffling.
"All right, all right. Lord a'mighty, never thought I'd have to say 'please' to a goddamned lorra."
Red growled.
Abber said, "Please."
And Gideon felt himself floating as the Dark took him away.
—|—
"He's awake," Horrn said happily.
"Are you awake?" Abber said.
Gideon could only see the fog, and the pain, but he nodded.
"I'm trying to help," the grey man said, "but... I'm trying, hero, really I am."
"Ugh, look at his skin," the thief said, his voice hushed with awed disgust.
The sound of a slap. "Shut up! We have to keep his spirits up. He doesn't need a cosmetic report."
"What's cosmetic?"
"I don't know. It's something I read."
"Well, he still looks... ugh."
"It must be the poison," Botham said. "And the acid. And the fall. And that thing that tried to bite his head off."
The Abber shadow nodded. "Yes, I suppose so. A nasty business, by all accounts."
"Yeah, tell me about it."
"I can't, I wasn't there."
Horrn giggled.
Botham's shadow drifted away, drifted back. "I don't think he's going to make it."
Gideon didn't want to hear that and let the Dark take him away.
—|—
He had stopped swaying and thought for a while he was lying on the ground. His arms were down at his sides, and he extended his fingers to probe around him—soft, warm, slightly on the scratchy side. His eyes opened, and the fog had cleared a little, showing him a distorted view of a ceiling and its beams.
"Hey, he's awake!"
He tried to smile, and couldn't feel his mouth. After several minutes, or several hours, he did sense something soothing that was pushing and pulling and rubbing carefully at his left leg. He couldn't lift his head, but the faint off-key humming he heard told him it was Abber, working his magic fingers dexterously over his unfeeling limb.
Jimm Horrn leaned over him, his face solemn. Gideon almost laughed—the young man's hair had been scorched almost to the roots, and he realized that the spikes were not a result of the thief's constant hand-brushing—that's the way the hair grew, and right now his scalp looked like a herd of randy young goats just growing their horns.
Jimm grinned and gave him something cool to drink, and he got most of it down.
Abber shifted to the right leg.
He cleared his throat and grimaced at the burning, and when Jimm brought his head closer, he said, "You... saved... my life."
The thief blushed. "I just snuck up on him. That's what I'm good at, you know. Sneaking. All I did was sneak up on him." The blush faded. "I couldn't catch you, though."
He sighed and closed his eyes, and the Dark let him sleep.
—|—
He sighed and opened his eyes, and saw Ivy perched on a chair beside the bed. She was all in white and had let her nose grow. Then he blinked, and it was Tuesday.
"You're back," she said.
He swallowed dryly but couldn't speak.
"Nice job."
An eyebrow raised.
"You mean those idiots didn't tell you?"
The eyebrow lifted higher.
Tuesday ruffled her feathers, stretched a wing out, and fanned him gently. "Well, you didn't get the last strand, you know. But I guess the weight of the Web was enough to pull it out. It broke into a zillion pieces, and the Wall... went away."
The eyebrow almost reached what was left of his hairline.
"The wind took it. Once the Web broke connection, the wind just blew the sucker away." She changed wings and snapped her beak. "I suppose this means you'll be insufferable, right?"
"Hey," Botham said, coming up behind the chair. "Hey, I was there, too, my love. If it wasn't for me, that lobster there would be a cooked goose."
Gideon didn't know how she did it.
One moment she was sitting on the chair; the next she was in the air, almost upside down, and slugged the blacksmith with a right uppercut. Botham slammed against the wall, crossed his eyes, and slid out of sight.
"He brags a lot," Tuesday said when she settled again. "He'll get over it."
Gideon licked at his lips and felt the scabs, tried to lift an arm and failed.
"Don't worry about it," his sister told him. "You look okay for a guy that's in your shape."
—|—
The Dark would not leave.
The pain made him scream in the middle of the night.
—|—
A door opened, and he saw Grahne on the threshold. She was so close to being naked that he wondered why she bothered even to put on what she had. But he gave her a crooked smile and she crossed to the foot of the bed. There was a faint sheen of excited perspiration over her dusky skin, her bosom rose and fell, and her hips described blatant circular patterns that made him hope he was responding so as not to insult her.
Then she sighed. "Oh, gross," she said, and left.
—|—
"I'll be frank with you," Abber said.
Gideon could see the setting sun from his window. He had no idea how many days he had lain in this bed, nor how many hours the grey man had worked to restore him. From the look on Abber's face, however, he knew that he was going to be told something, and probably a lot of things, he wouldn't like. He considered dying now just to get it over with, and decided it was a bad idea; Tuesday would kill him for leaving her before she changed.
"I think I've healed most of the broken bones, though that one shoulder was a hell of a near thing. Took all I had. It nearly killed me."
Gideon frowned.
"Sorry."
The duck quacked a warning.
"I said I was sorry, didn't I?" Abber sniffed and wiped a damp cloth over his head. "The acid, though, that's a pip. I've never had to work with it before, you see, and I'm having just a spot of trouble finding the key that will clear up your skin." He looked down the length of Gideon's body and shuddered. "Not very pretty, I'm afraid."
"Gross," Gideon whispered.
Abber nodded. "Yeah, that too."
The duck quacked again.
"Then there's the matter of your insides."
Gideon closed his eyes, but he couldn't fall asleep and the Dark wouldn't come.
"What I'm trying to say is this—that if I could slip my hand down your throat, see, I might be able to undo the internal damage to the various organs and subcutaneous tissue which are no doubt severely traumatized. On the other hand, if I slipped my hand down your throat to take care of all that I'd probably choke you to death, which would, if you're following me here, sort of defeat the purpose of my bag of tricks." He rubbed his hands together. "So. Do you have any ideas?"
Gideon nodded.
Abber waited.
Gideon managed, through head and eye signals, to get himself a drink of water that would permit him to speak. When, with a great deal of difficulty, he had swallowed a few drops, he said, "I don't want to die."
Tuesday waddled out of the room without looking back.
Abber looked embarrassed.
Gideon stared.
"I'll try," the grey man said. "I'll try, Gideon, I swear it."
—|—
The Dark.
Stronger, and the pain held him down there.
—|—
Ivy came to him, her blonde hair unbraided, her vest half undone, and her eyes filled with anger.
"You're helpless, you know that?" she said.
He reached for her.
"Really helpless. I knew I shouldn't have gone home. I knew I should have stuck around for when you got in trouble again."
His hands passed through her.
"Damn, Gideon, when are you going to settle down?"
—|—
Tuesday was on the bed, fan
ning him with both wings and digging in her feet to keep from taking off.
"Now, the way I see it, brother, is that you need a reason to live, besides not wanting to die. Right? And if you will recall, your primary reason for doing all this in the first place was to get me back into shape."
He nodded; she wasn't watching.
"So it stands to reason that you can't die, and you don't want to die, because you don't want to leave this hallowed ground without completing your task. Which is to get me out of feathers for whatever life I happen to have left, which won't be much if you don't turn me back into a vibrant and loving woman again. Right?"
He wanted to nod; he couldn't.
Horrn and Abber came in, and Red poked his head through the window to purr at him.
"Now," she continued, "there is also another reason." And she looked at him. "You are the only family I have left, you jackass, and I'm the only family you have left, and if you die I won't have any family at all and neither would you and I'm too damned old to be an orphan. Are you reading me, Giddy? Am I making myself clear here?"
His lips moved.
She leaned closer.
"I can't feel anything," he said.
—|—
It was nice in the Dark, a black beautiful enough to make him weep, to make him wish everything and everyone would just go away and leave him alone for a change. Let him rest. Let him sleep. Let him hide from the pain that no longer numbed him.
Abber massaged him frantically.
Tuesday began molting out of season.
Red went out to the plain and stomped a herd of benst.
No, Gideon thought; no, I don't want to go.
Horrn tried splashing water on his face to cool him, then tried forcing it down his throat.
Abber stopped.
Tuesday wailed.
No! Gideon thought as the Dark moved in; goddamnit, no!
Horrn slapped his face, one cheek, the other, and yelled incoherently until, at last, Bones grabbed his arms.
Horrn looked at him tearfully.
Tuesday said, "Shit."
And the last thing Gideon heard as the Dark dragged him down was Abber whispering solemnly, "He's dead, Jimm."
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Being dead had a number of disadvantages he hadn't counted on, and he was, in the main, rather disappointed.