* * *
Through darkened corridor and up silent stairwell, the big cat paced.
Her nostrils distending at corridor junctions, she sniffed for humans with her sensitive olfactory nerves. The tiger wended her way upward, stealthily avoiding occasional sentries and late-night passersby. Having shut off her higher order brain functions and psychic centers, the cat was virtually undetectable. Long before, she'd noticed that humans relied primarily on their psychic receptors, often ignoring their other sensory signals. Thus, she traveled with a large degree of freedom within and without the fortress.
Earlier, she'd scratched at the door of Scowling Tiger's suite, and a servant had let her out. Not wanting the bandit general to suspect that she had business outside the fortress, she'd openly descended the spiral stairwell at the core of the mountain. In the lower levels, she searched for a likely spy and killed one—more for the alibi than to rid the fortress of the nuisance. In stealth she returned toward the upper levels through secret passageways. Thus far no one had seen her, but the secret corridors and stairwells didn't extend all the way to the top.
As she approached the upper reaches of the fortress, access became restricted, the corridors more heavily guarded. Finding a way through without alerting a guard became a complex game of timing and deceit. The tiger was becoming adept, having played a few times before.
On the levels of understanding now available to her, she thought it ironic that she could slip past the guards whose primary task was to protect Scowling Tiger from assassins. The guards didn't perform badly, the bandit general's safety unthreatened, but no human could duplicate the tiger's stealth.
Reaching the Lair, the tiger tested the air, finding no new traces of Scowling Tiger's scent. Padding silently up stairs to the mountain cap, the tiger tested the icy wind, smelling freedom.
Avoiding the sentries halfway down the slope, the cat began the long descent, breath after breath coming faster. At a promontory, she stopped to crawl out on a snowy rock, listening and sniffing for human presence. The electrical shields enclosing the fortress prevented a psychic scan. Automatically noting sentry location, she also smelled a doe and a fawn. Her mouth began to salivate. Veering away from food, the tiger resumed her descent. The noise of chase would alert the sentries.
The farther she descended, the thicker the undergrowth, the slighter the declension, the more swiftly she traveled. Past the outermost sentries, the tiger settled into a distance-eating pace that took her quickly westward. Activating only a portion of her prefrontal lobes, she engaged her psychic receptors to scan the area ahead. Clear of unshielded human presence. Several times she crossed new spoor in the snow but didn't turn to pursue. She'd have time to hunt afterward. The half-full moon lighting her way, the tiger loped steadily westward, legs pumping tirelessly.
Two hours later, not two miles from her destination, the tiger drew a lungful of the most noxious human smell she'd ever encountered. As the tiger recognized how new the scent was, she collided with the human and both went sprawling.
Shaking the snow from her coat, she tried to paw off the most revolting stench of buttock that she'd ever stuck her nose in. Shaking her head and backing away, the cat sneezed, sneezed and vomited, sat down, vomited again and growled with displeasure. Sneezing again for good measure, the tiger padded toward the human.
The man was just regaining consciousness. Several feet away was a staff. The cat growled, recognizing its nature. She probed it, taking note of its major features, and then probed the man. Backing away, the tiger saw the staff slide toward the man's outstretched hand.
In panic, the cat turned and loped off in full, reckless flight. She erected all the shielding she could, but the psychic shock still stunned her. Taking another tumble, the cat quickly regained her feet and was running again, losing very little momentum. Expecting another psychic attack, the tiger plunged headlong through forest, heedlessly.
Three miles beyond her destination, the cat slowed. Lowering her shields long enough to make a quick sectathonic scan, she couldn't see the noxious human with her talent.
Stopping, the animal sneezed and lay down, panting and puzzled.
Switching on her frontal lobes, the tiger analyzed with her higher-order brain functions. The man had looked ancient, perhaps ninety years old, his skin blotched, scaly and wrinkled. His encrusted clothes had badly needed a wash. His mental condition was severely incoherent and deranged. In addition to its obvious use as a crutch, the talisman had focus, homing, storage, defense and cloaking circuits. Someone had hand-crafted the staff for the old man.
Such a device was impossible to get, talismans contraband everywhere. The design and construction of these talismans required a combination psychological-electrical Wizard. Those who risked their lives to make them rarely charged less than ten thousand taels for the simplest of focusing tools. A talisman as complex as the old man's had to be worth at least a million taels, likely more.
The circuits having cloaked the man, the tiger hadn't detected him before the collision. Replaying her memory, she realized that she hadn't seen the man with her eyes, not until the staff had left his hand. Why would a Wizard build a circuit to cloak someone from the eyes—but not the nose? the tiger wondered. True, smell wasn't a sense upon which many humans relied. Still, this oversight puzzled her.
Quartering the area, she tried to perceive the man by scrutinizing the psychic flow thoroughly. Although focused to hear the slightest flow disruptions, she saw no trace of the old man, as if he were a chameleon and had blended into the background.
Giving up the search, she felt the touch of a psychic feather. Someone had spotted her: Her liaison, whom she'd seen already. The person yet a mile away, the tiger rested, lazily keeping guard with a half-closed psychic eye.
* * *
Soon, Leaping Elk and a companion loped into the clearing. Pulling an electrical shield from his belt, he set the range and turned it on, found a rock free of snow near the tiger and sat. The other man looked on from outside the shield.
Animal and man engaged in a psychic conversation, their communion aided by the tiger's flexibility of frequency. The tiger first narrated her unpleasant meeting, minutes before. Leaping Elk reciprocated with what he knew of the old man. His information was incomplete; Lumbering Elephant hadn't returned from his surveillance.
“What does the bandit general plan to do about Guarding Bear?” Leaping Elk asked. The news of the General's volunteering to lay siege to the fortress had spread across the continent within minutes. The delivery of the spies' carefully preserved heads had been an intolerable insult.
The tiger emitted a psychic grunt. 'Scowling Tiger's goal in delivering the heads was to provoke the retired General's attack.'
“No one has ever taken the fortress by siege without treachery from within!” Leaping Elk said.
'I eliminated nearly all possible treachery by killing the spies, eh? The General Tiger has carefully built this snare to kill the Peasant Bear. Do you want the spies' information?'
Infinite knows how Guarding Bear will succeed, Leaping Elk thought, gesturing the other man to join them. 'This is Changing Skin,' he told the tiger, keeping his thoughts very disciplined.
Changing Skin developed black, orange and white stripes, smiling at the animal. Sitting, the man prepared a place in his mind where he wouldn't distort the information.
The tiger transferred the information raw, having also kept it carefully dissociated from her thinking faculties. Their task was merely transfer, not analysis. The recipients would do any analyzing. Leaping Elk listened in on the transfer. When they were done, he said, “That's your message to the Lord Emperor Jaguar this time, Lord Skin. Infinite be with you.”
Changing Skin turned black, then white. “Infinite be with you, Lord Leaping Elk.” Bowing, the man left.
'Have we discussed everything?' the tiger asked.
Leaping Elk gave a psychic shrug, his shoulders twitching.
'Personally, I'm hungry.
Care to share my fare?'
“Only if you cook it first,” he said aloud in the Southern tongue.
The cat purred, the equivalent of a chuckle. 'I'll be back.' Getting to her feet, she padded silently away. The moon-lit night swallowed the animal.
Why does a poor, half-insane, decrepit old man own a talisman worth an Empire? Leaping Elk wondered. One danger inherent in making a talisman was that the user might turn the tool on the creator. Many a wielder had done so simply to keep the talisman a secret. Another danger was arrest by the authorities, a talisman being death for both wielder and Wizard. What Wizard would dare construct such a tool in the first place?
Leaping Elk remembered the psychic battle between the two Wizards, one of whom had been Lurking Hawk. Skulking Hawk and his son, Lurking Hawk, had both trafficked in them while serving Lofty Lion. Ironically, early in his reign, Lofty Lion had killed both Skulking Hawk and Assuaging Comfort for making a talisman for the Eastern Imperial Medacor. The former Northern Sorcerer probably made the talisman for the old man, Leaping Elk thought.
For whom would Lurking Hawk make such a talisman? he wondered. The Sorcerer's primary motivation was his loyalty to the Northern Empire. Since the only Northerner still alive was Lurking Hawk himself, Leaping Elk could think of no one. The only alternative was a person committed to avenging the Northern Empire's destruction, like Lurking Hawk. Or committed to the Northern Empire's reconstruction.
That's a crazy idea, Leaping Elk thought. Finding the Heir Sword after it'd been missing so many years was simply without hope.
Leaping Elk tried to think other thoughts. That one persisted, however, nagging at the edges of his mind as if he'd made a bad assumption.
He sighed as the animal returned.
'Two measly rabbits,' the tiger sent, two red-spotted, white-furred carcasses hanging from her jowls. She dropped them at his feet.
With several trace talents, Leaping Elk disemboweled, skinned, cleaned and cooked one of the rabbits. The tiger ate hers raw and whole—skin, bones and vitals. After watching the spectacle, Leaping Elk found his appetite reduced. Even so, he doggedly ate his prepared rabbit.
“You've been capturing a lot of spies lately. Have you revealed the extent of your talents?” Leaping Elk knew the tiger was a Wizard of most of the common talents except chemathonics, the synthesis and engineering of molecules.
'Not all of them. If you humans weren't so susceptible to ostentation, I wouldn't have to conceal them. Like most Easterners, the bandit general respects face more than substance, so I'll continue to introduce my talents at intervals to enhance my value to him.'
Leaping Elk smiled, thinking how simple a cat's life must be.
'Not as simple as you think, human.'
He laughed, knowing his own life quite simple in comparison to some. Grateful he wasn't the Emperor Jaguar, Leaping Elk thanked the Infinite for giving him a younger brother more capable than he.
'Are you going to inform him of your new mate?' the tiger asked.
“Why should I?”
'She carries his child. A child conceived to deceive, as we both know: The Matriarch bargained only for six children. The son in Fawning Elk's womb is the seventh.'
“I'll probably tell the Lord Emperor eventually. Since I won't use the child as leverage, his knowing avails nothing.”
'Except that the honorable Matriarch has been less than forthright.'
“Perhaps,” Leaping Elk replied, yawning. He'd spent too many of his nights lately traveling or meeting clandestinely. He wondered when he'd just retire. Do bandits retire? he wondered, frowning and reaching for the shield. “Ready to go?”
The tiger twitched spasmodically, rearranging its brain.
Probing the animal, Leaping Elk found only an animal. He shut off the shield and stood to—
A psychic call of distress emanated south of him. The signature was the levithon Lumbering Elephant's, the call perceptible now that the shield was off. Waving at the tiger, Leaping Elk started southward, the call containing traces of physical pain.
Through hills layered with snow, he traveled, warming his feet against the cold. He was about two miles north of his caves. The psychic distress call seemed to originate from the side of the mountain opposite his caves—near the abode of the strange hermit with the special staff. Leaping Elk doubled his pace, seeing only the levithon with his trace talent.
He arrived as Slithering Snake and other Elk Raiders did. Fawning Elk wasn't among them, he saw with relief.
Standing over the large levithon's prostrate body was the old man, whom Leaping Elk hadn't detected.
“This your curmudgeon?” the old man asked rudely, his voice acid to eardrums. His smell was worse than his voice. Dregs of glistening eye sunken in socket peered from beneath a precipitous, lupine brow. Only a shaggy ring of silver wisps tufted the mottled, scaly scalp. Nasal mucus dripped from narrow nostril. A crusted sleeve wiped it away. The mouth was nearly toothless, two rotted stubs remaining. Frozen spittle slathered a prognathous jaw. The stiff, twisted posture suggested fused vertebrae and a crimped spine. A cystoid larynx swelled the throat, like an apple half-swallowed. The neck was a corded, wrinkled pillar and buttressed sagging jowls that hung in scaly folds below cheekbones collapsed into the face. Gnarled, trembling hands of shriveled skin, prominent vein, and knobby knuckle clutched a polished staff.
Leaping Elk frowned. “Who you be, Lord?”
“I'm an icy wind to freeze your balls, barbarian! Take this turd-licking whelp of a whore back to the hole whence he came, or I'll send him along to the Infinite!” The decrepit man struck the injured levithon with the staff.
Lumbering Elephant jerked at the blow but made no move to avoid it.
Leaping Elk stepped forward, gesturing Slithering Snake and the others to help him. Together they lifted the heavy man, whose injuries looked extensive. “Why this you do, Lord? He not you hurt, eh?”
“He was snooping around in my cave, Infinite blast him. You keep your malicious miscreants away from me!”
“Humble bandit hear, Lord. Please intrude forgive. Humble bandit trouble not want, eh? In peace live want.”
“What are you, some blasted Southerner? You look like one. Meddling misfit. Go home to your jungles, eh?”
Offended, Leaping Elk gestured someone to take his place at the levithon's side. He waved his band members to take him to their caves, then stepped back toward the obnoxious old man. “Who you think be, eh? You Lion Lofty Emperor Lord think? You land rule think? Humble bandit Leaping Elk be. Humble bandit no man serve. You me around order want?”
“Learn the language, by the Infinite! I can hardly understand you.”
Leaping Elk drew his sword. “This understand?”
“Eh, well, of course, Lord, I, uh, didn't mean to offend you.” The old man's voice had lost most of its gravelly sound.
“Good. I not offend be.” He sheathed it. “How you call, Lord?”
“I'm, uh, Icy Wind, as I said, Lord Elk. Just keep your bandits away from me, eh? I don't want any trouble.”
“Humble bandit hear glad. Wind Lord, neighbor be, to my cave come. First bathe, then come. Fast with me break, eh?”
“Food, you say? I haven't had a decent meal in weeks! When, Lord?”
“Soon. Today not. Bandit not you Elephant Lord hurt like, eh?”
“They may not like it, but they'll learn not to bother me. All right, neighbor. I'll come in three days. Do I have to bathe?”
“Humble bandit polite it think, Wind Lord.”
“If you insist, Lord Elk. Infinite be with you, eh?”
“With you as well be, Wind Lord.” Leaping Elk bowed.
Returning the bow, Icy Wind nearly fell but with the staff saved himself a tumble.
Turning, Leaping Elk walked off, relieved to breathe fresh air again. Skirting the base of the mountain, he followed his bandits.
The levithon was the largest man in the Elk Raiders and one of the band's most skilled fighters. With the s
taff's circuits, Icy Wind would be indomitable, Leaping Elk guessed. He chuckled, knowing Lumbering Elephant would endure years of ridicule because of this incident.
Ascending the winding passage, he entered the caves, where Slithering Snake greeted him immediately. They looked at each other and laughed.
“It'll do his humility good, eh?” Slithering Snake said in the Southern tongue.
Nodding, Leaping Elk grinned. “How is he?”
Slithering Snake glanced over his shoulder. The medacor had laid Lumbering Elephant on the floor of the cavern to tend him. “Hurting. A few broken ribs, a broken arm, possibly a cracked skull and a concussion, but the medacor hasn't finished yet. Listen, my friend, you should be careful about your comings and goings.”
“Eh? What do you mean?”
“I've been awake all night. I didn't see you leave.”
“I left through my private exit and meant to enter the same way. Do you think anyone else noticed?”
Slithering Snake shrugged. “It's not as if you shouldn't have your own exit. Just don't want it common knowledge, eh?”
Leaping Elk nodded, cursing his lapse. He knew he couldn't keep the exit secret forever.
“Listen, Lord Elk, while you were gone, a delegation under the Inviolate Insignia came across the border.”
“What?” Leaping Elk said, his eyes going wide.
“They arrived at midnight, Lord Elk, unarmed,” Slithering Snake said. “An unusual group.”
“What did they want?” Incredible! Leaping Elk thought, remembering the prohibitions against the misuse of the Inviolate Insignia.
“Statements, Lord. They wanted me and Lumbering Elephant to recount what happened last night, when we met the old man. I had to send someone after him. He was still watching the old man's cave.”
“That's all they wanted?” Leaping Elk didn't believe it.
Slithering Snake nodded. “When they first said what they wanted, I thought they were crazy. They insisted, saying they were assembling evidence against a possible international criminal. They wouldn't divulge any more than that, except to assure us we weren't the target. I cooperated with them, and so did the Lord Elephant. They interviewed us separately, then left.”
The Bandit (Fall of the Swords Book 2) Page 12