by Paul S. Kemp
“Then we ambush him,” Jyme said.
Nix shook his head. “Would be nice, but no. Likely he’ll find us soon after and come for us.”
Jyme scratched his head. “I thought we were coming for him?”
“Either, or,” Egil said, his tone casual. “The point is to not walk into his ambush. But he’s a wizard and a clever one, and he’ll realize his plan went sidewise. Then he’ll find us, and then we’ll fight.”
Jyme digested the words. “Think he has more of those flying creatures you mentioned, from back in the Tunnel?”
Nix had wondered the same thing. He figured it was possible the flying constructs could only function for a short time before consuming the magic that powered them, which might explain why they’d been thrown into the Tunnel in ball form rather than flying in. It would also explain why the three of them hadn’t yet been attacked from above.
“Likely he does,” Nix said. “And we may see them yet. You get turned to stone and we’ll make you part of a nice fountain, yeah? Stand you next to that other slubber behind the Tunnel. The girls will tsk over you.”
Jyme grinned. “Just don’t let the birds shit on me.”
“That’s the spirit,” Egil said.
“You want to pray or something?” Nix said to Egil, and winked.
Egil made his face grow somber.
Jyme closed his eyes. Nix tried not to laugh.
“Momentary God, we pray that we kill this fakking wizard before that creature catches up with us and we pray that Jyme doesn’t get shit on by birds after he’s turned to stone.”
Jyme opened an eye and guffawed.
“Well prayed,” Nix said, hoping their jests helped put Jyme at ease. “Let’s go.”
They moved across Dur Follin’s rooftops at a rapid pace, jumping, climbing, balancing, hoping to outrun any premature realization by Kerfallen that they wouldn’t fall into his trap. As they went, Nix poked his head over the side of buildings and surveyed the street below for Kerfallen’s creatures. He spotted them regularly and easily and used them as stepping-stones for their path.
“We could destroy a few as we go,” Jyme said.
Crouched near the end of a flat roof, with a balcony right below them, Egil said, “He’s connected to them somehow. We kill one and he’ll know where we are.”
“And then he’ll know that we’re not following his path,” Nix said. “Keep moving.”
The river put its smell in the air as they closed on Mandin’s Way. Ool’s clock rose high into the sky to their right. From the roofs they could see the Archbridge, the dark line of the river. They bounded across an alley onto the steeply pitched roof of a decrepit, two-story alehouse called the Dark Hole. Nix knew that the proprietor, a one-armed former sailor named Cobert Black, was a deadeye with a hand crossbow and had the reputation of shooting first and cleaning up the mess after.
“Soft tread and quiet voices here,” Nix said to Jyme and Egil.
Egil nodded. “Cobert keeps late hours and if he found us on his roof he’d shoot us by way of a hail.”
“We’re past late and on into early,” Jyme said.
Nix said to Egil, “You know, I looked for you here not a night past.”
“Don’t know why you would,” Egil said. “Cobert’s ale is shite and I don’t drink shite ale. Also, that seems not a night past but a life ago.”
“Aye, that,” Nix said, thinking of all that happened and what he’d learned from the plates. He pushed it from his mind. Time for that later.
“We going or talking?” Jyme asked.
“Going,” Nix said. They were just a few blocks from Mandin’s Way. “Listen, both of you. No one can get these plates. Understood?”
Jyme nodded. Egil nodded, too, but absently. He was looking off into the sky. His heavy brow furrowed. “You’ve better eyes than me. What is that?”
Nix followed Egil’s gaze. “That’s a wizard,” he said. “A flying wizard.”
Kerfallen was flying toward them, bobbing through the night sky like some ridiculous bird. He wore a vestlike apparatus from which sprouted straps and harnesses by which a dozen or so of his flying metallic constructs held him aloft. Another score or two of the flying metal creatures buzzed in the air around him in a cloud. He held a short, gnarled wooden staff in his hand. He looked like a puppet.
Egil put his hands to his hammers. “We need to get down from here.”
The wizard was closing fast. He’d seen them. The constructs whirled around him, as though in excitement or agitation.
“Here we go, Jyme,” Nix said. He pulled out his sling and dropped a lead bullet into the pouch.
Kerfallen shouted at them, his voice strikingly deep for a man of his stature. “I credit you for cleverness in avoiding my ambush. But this is over now. Give me the plates.”
While Nix formulated a reply, Jyme unslung his crossbow, cocked, and fired at Kerfallen with impressive rapidity. The bolt flew true and would have struck the wizard in the chest, but one of the creatures in the cloud of constructs flitting about his person intercepted it, allowing the bolt to strike it instead and falling from the sky.
Nix followed Jyme’s lead, spun his sling, and let fly with a sling bullet and another one of the creatures interposed itself in the path of the ball, took the impact, and fell to earth. Kerfallen, carried aloft like a marionette by his creatures, his feet dangling, looked like he was hopping across the sky.
“Like Egil said, we should get down,” Nix said. “Move.”
But they were too slow. Kerfallen pointed his staff, shouted a single word in the Language of Creation, and a swirling, twisting column of green-veined black energy flew from its end toward them, the column shaped like a serpent, jaws wide, fangs tipped in a radiant, sickly green.
They cursed as one and dove over the peak of the roof, sliding down the far side, their boots knocking free tiles, as above them the energy struck the roof, exploding tiles and splintering the bricks of the chimney. The force of the blast accelerated their slide into a fall and Nix careened toward the far edge of the roof. He spun as he fell, unable to arrest his descent, and reached out blindly as he went over the edge.
His hand closed on Egil, catching the priest by the forearm, even as Jyme, likewise going over the side of the building, reached out and grabbed hold of Nix by the wrist and shift. Buttons sprang loose and fell down to the alley below but the two of them jarred to a stop, hanging in space, the abrupt halt wrenching Nix’s arm. The priest gripped the edge of the roof with one hand and held the two of them in the other. Egil growled with the effort to hang on. Nix did the same with Jyme.
“My grip’s slipping!” Jyme said, gripping more tightly on Nix’s shirt.
Nix could hear the buzz of the wizard’s constructs. They were coming.
“Egil!” he said, his words strained, his arms stretched between Jyme and the priest.
“Right,” Egil said. “Like a pendulum now.”
Without waiting for a response, Egil grunted with effort and swung his arm to one side, then back again, then forward once more, all the while the three of them struggling to keep their holds. The swing of Egil’s arm got Jyme close enough to the roof’s edge that he let go of Nix, caught himself on the edge, and started to pull himself back onto the roof. Nix planted his feet on a windowsill and flattened himself against the wall. Egil, no longer bearing the weight of his two companions, slid over the side of the roof and started to move down the building. Nix couldn’t see Kerfallen and couldn’t have done anything even if he did. He needed to get to the ground.
“Shite,” Jyme said, seeing something Nix couldn’t. Jyme scrabbled over the side of the roof just as another blast from the wizard’s staff sent a shower of tiles and debris over the side. Chunks of tiles struck Nix in the head and hands but he held his grip. The blast caused Jyme’s boots to slip off the wall and he started to slide down the face of the building, between Egil and Nix, shouting, but he somehow caught himself on a shutter after only a short distance
. The shutter opened and came off its top hinge but Jyme held on and swung back onto the wall to get a better grip.
“Gods!” Jyme exclaimed.
“The man said he could climb,” Egil said, moving down the face of the building as fast as he could.
“Move!” Nix said, his own descent more like a controlled fall than a climb.
A voice carried from the alley below and Nix looked down to see Cobert standing there in a long, ratty nightshirt. He held a small crossbow in one hand and had it aimed up at them.
“What’s this now but three bastards climbing my establishment and wrecking my place and needing a shot of this crossbow is what.”
Nix didn’t slow his descent and neither did Jyme or Egil. Jyme was almost down.
As he descended, the priest half-shouted, half-growled, “If you fire that fakkin’ crossbow, Cobert, I will shove it so far up your arse that the only thing you’ll say for the rest of your fakkin’ days is ‘twang!’ You hear me?”
Nix added his own shout. “Also a wizard is about to appear over your roofline and it’s him who’s actually ruining your place! We would not take it amiss were you to shoot him in the face. Oh, and those are his creatures lurking up the alley there.”
Cobert turned to look at the mouth of the alley, where eight or so of Kerfallen’s tall, lumbering automatons had gathered. The constructs stood there, still and ominous, as if awaiting instructions.
Jyme hit the ground a few strides away from Cobert but the old pirate barely seemed to notice him. He looked down the alley at the automatons and back up at Nix. “Fak you boys, is what. I ain’t even ate breakfast yet. Don’t destroy my place no more!”
With that he darted back inside his building, no doubt barring the door behind him. Jyme unslung his crossbow again and nocked a bolt.
“You can end all this without harm,” Kerfallen called down from above.
“Harm to whom, fakker,” Nix muttered, and let himself drop the rest of the way to the alley. Egil did the same. Jyme fired at the automatons, striking one in the chest, but doing it no noticeable harm. It did not respond.
Kerfallen came into view against the slit of night sky visible through the gap in the buildings that formed the alley. They flattened themselves against the walls.
“We need to get him down here,” Nix said.
“Yeah,” Egil said.
“Look,” Jyme said, and pointed. They saw movement at the opposite end of the alley, automatons gathering on that side, too. They were blocked in on either side and couldn’t go up. But Nix saw something else. Down the alley toward the automatons they’d just spotted, the buildings leaned so closely together that they almost created a tunnel, and it went on for twenty paces. They’d have some shelter from Kerfallen there.
“We need to pick a side and rush the creatures,” Egil said. “Break out. Maybe hit the sewers.”
“I have a better idea,” Nix said, nodding. “Let’s just get in the lee of those buildings and stop. He’ll have to come down a bit, then I’ll get him all the way down. Come on.”
Without waiting for assent, Nix sprinted down the alley and Jyme and Egil followed. Kerfallen’s voice carried down from the sky, shouting in the Language of Creation, and a wide cone of green-veined black energy flew down toward them, engulfed the entirety of the alley. The cloud stank of rot, and voices whispered in it, repeating a phrase over and over, the words mumbles that Nix could not quite make out.
Nix’s body went cold, the vitality draining out of him. He stumbled, his body nearly numb. Beside him, Egil and Jyme groaned and staggered. Jyme went to all fours, retched onto the ground. Egil grabbed him by the back of his shirt and half-lifted, half-dragged him toward the tunnel of buildings.
Nix plodded on, each step a labor, until all three stood under the sheltering roofs of the dilapidated buildings, shivering and cold.
“Good?” Nix asked.
Jyme nodded, spitting away the taste of vomit.
“Good,” Egil said, hefting his hammers and eyeing the automatons. “What the Hells was that?”
“Wizard shite,” Nix said. “More comin’, no doubt. Listen, I’m going to clear a hole in those constructs around Kerfallen. You get ready to throw and you to shoot, yeah?”
Nods from both Egil and Jyme.
“Do it quick, Nix,” the priest said.
From each side of the alley, the automatons started advancing at last, their dead eyes fixed on the three of them.
Nix scrabbled in the dirt of the alley, collecting a handful of pebbles. When he had a fistful, he said, “Get ready. Follow me out and be ready to shoot. Don’t fakkin’ miss.”
“Do it,” Jyme said. He bounced on the balls of his feet, his crossbow at the ready.
Nix yelled out, “Leave or I’ll destroy the plates, Kerfallen!”
The wizard’s laugh answered Nix’s idle threat. “They can’t be destroyed, you imbecile! They’re fundamental! They are forever, existing to tempt us!”
The wizard’s voice gave Nix an idea of where he was in the air, so he darted out from the protection of the tunnel of buildings, Jyme and Egil on his heels. The moment he could see sky, he saw Kerfallen. The wizard hovered low over the alley, surrounded by the cloud of his constructs, at a height slightly below the roofline of Cobert’s place. The moment he saw them Kerfallen’s face twisted into a leering smile. He leveled his staff; the automatons coming down the alley broke into a stiff run.
Nix threw the stones as hard as he could at the wizard. As he’d hoped, the constructs protecting Kerfallen from missile fire were unthinking, and therefore unable to distinguish between a projectile that presented danger and one that didn’t, and they reacted quickly. They flitted and darted here and there to block the pebbles, and their occupation with the stones opened Kerfallen up to Jyme and Egil.
Egil roared and hurled his hammer. Jyme’s crossbow sang.
Nix grinned at the sight of Kerfallen’s surprised gawp, but his smile disappeared when the crossbow bolt struck the wizard in the chest and deflected away, the shaft splintering under the impact. Egil’s hammer, meanwhile, struck Kerfallen in the head and rang off so hard it sounded like a gong. The wizard’s head should have been pulped, his heart skewered by Jyme’s bolt, but he appeared unharmed.
Still, the impact of Egil’s blow knocked him backward and the abrupt movement caused a few of the constructs holding him aloft to lose their grip on his straps. He dangled there for a moment, a marionette with broken strings, before spiraling toward the ground, the attempts of the remaining constructs to keep him airborne made futile.
“He’s either warded against steel or a construct himself,” Nix said and ran for the downed wizard. “I have him! Destroy those automatons!”
“Aye, that,” Egil said, and charged in one direction at the advancing constructs. Jyme joined him, their shouts echoing off the walls of the alley.
Before Nix could reach the wizard, Kerfallen, on his rump on the ground, spoke a word and the small flying constructs swarmed toward Nix. He slashed and stabbed as he ran, slapped at them with his free hand, and did not slow his advance. His blade knocked one of the insectoid creatures from the air, another, but there were so many that he couldn’t avoid them all. One slammed into his head, opening a gash that leaked blood down the side of his face. Others locked into his flesh, one biting him in the arm, another in the back, another in the shoulder. He cursed, fearing they would transform him to stone or worse, and smacked them frantically away.
Kerfallen stood and pointed his staff at Nix.
Nix lunged the final few paces between them and slashed with his falchion, not at Kerfallen, since he knew his blade wouldn’t hurt the wizard, but at the staff. His blow knocked the staff out of the wizard’s hand. Kerfallen cursed, bent down to get it, but Nix grabbed him by his robes and flung him hard against the side of the building. The impact sounded like metal hitting stone, but the wizard bounced off the wall like a sling bullet, unharmed, and reached for something in his robes as h
e said, “The bag at his side! Take it!”
One of the constructs bit Nix on the arm. He cursed, slapped it to the ground, and stomped it into the earth with his boot. And that gave him an idea.
The remaining constructs, heeding Kerfallen’s order, went for Nix’s satchel, their claws and teeth clutching at the flap.
Nix slashed with his falchion, knocking another from the air, but half a score latched on to the bag and tried to lift it away.
Cursing, Nix tucked it under his armpit and held on as tight as he could. Meanwhile, Kerfallen withdrew from his robes a thin stick of ivory or bone and started uttering a phrase in the Language of Creation.
Desperate, Nix, still holding his satchel with one hand and arm against the pull of the metal constructs, lowered his shoulder and charged, slamming into the dwarf wizard and again driving him hard against the wall. The blow did no harm but at least knocked Kerfallen backward and fouled whatever incantation the wizard had intended. He dropped the wand and Nix ground it underfoot while using his greater weight to keep the wizard pressed against the wall.
“Egil!” Nix called over his shoulder.
—
Jyme and Egil waded into the dozen or so of Kerfallen’s automatons. The creatures came at them from both directions. The constructs, slow-moving, ponderous creatures, grabbed for them, tried to overwhelm them by sheer force of weight and numbers. Their fists rose and fell, one of them striking Jyme in the shoulder and causing his arm to go numb. He stabbed the creature through the midsection, his blade grating against metal and wood and whatever else the wizard had built them from.
As the automaton started to fall, he jerked the blade free and crosscut the head from another. A hand closed on his biceps and squeezed, sending a shock of pain along the length of Jyme’s arm. He cursed, kicked at the automaton, but the thing was so heavy the kick barely registered. He twisted in the creature’s grasp and stabbed it through the face. It fell but another one struck him in the back, knocking the wind from him and driving him into the reach of another, which tried to punch in his skull. Jyme ducked under the blow, spun, and slashed weakly at the creature as he backed off.