"Stop this!" Phinneas's voice rose over the clangor of the blessing as his hand slapped the amulet from the Paladin's fingers.
Darkness swept over them as the Paladin spun, "Corruption and Darkness, Phinneas, how darest thou strike at my hands with thine?"
"How dare you disobey an order," Phinneas's voice undercut the Paladin's bellow. "Whatever the struck-out hell you think you're playing at, Paladin, it ends now."
"It was none of your affair."
"What?" Phinneas purpled. "You say that to me-" he took a breath, visibly wrestling with his temper. " Emeritus-Professor Paladin, I see the conditions that pertain here have still not become clear to you." He stood straighter, hand resting on the butt of his pistol. "There are not two hierarchies here; there is one. And I, not you, am at the top of it. So if I give you an order, you obey it. If I order you to justify your actions, you striking-well justify them. Do I make myself clear?"
The Paladin's brows lowered, and his mouth opened as if to shout something angry in response. But then his eyes darted to Levanick, and closed his mouth on whatever he had been about to say. He nodded, then continued in a soft voice. "I finished the interrogation."
Kendrick saw Levanick take a small step sideways.
"How?" said Phinneas, "By torturing it to death?"
The Paladin spat. "It is not dead."
In the darkness, the lizard-man mewed wordlessly. Kendrick stared at it. One of its eyes had burst, but the other was now small and round, with a white like a human's. Its face, too, seemed more man-like than before, if horribly bruised and broken. Was that a nose developing over the slitted nostrils? And what had the Paladin said? Remove the curse? Kendrick's fingers itched to try the Blessing on the thing again.
"But can it answer my question, Paladin?" Phinneas was shouting, "No, it can't! Burning libraries, what the struck-out hell is your game, Paladin?"
"Naught, Professor-Colonel. I am fighting this war."
There was a sound from the lizard-man like a bag of water busting. Levanick took another step sideways.
"No, you are not, you are preventing me from fighting it."
"Preventing thee?" The Paladin's voice rose again to a roar, "What knowest thou of the battle between Good and Evil? What knowest thou of the Covenant?
Phinneas sighed, "Thank you, Emeritus-Professor Paladin." His own voice had cooled, as if he and the Paladin sat on opposite sides of a balance. "Thank you for giving me the opportunity to explain the current situation. Levanick, if you move one inch from that spot, you will be court-martialed and hauled before a military tribunal. A rationalist tribunal. Is that clear?" Levanick stopped edging sideways.
The lizard-man had begun to whine, a monstrous, maddening sound that made Kendrick wish he could stab his thumb into its remaining eye. "This is not your war." Phinneas went on, "This is our war, the Rationalists' war. And while your war has gone on for centuries, we plan to end ours," Kendrick saw his smile in the darkness under the trees, "by this time next year."
"Now," Phinneas said, "Levanick, Private-Instructor Fairheart, you will go back to your tents. I will deal with you later. And you, Paladin, will come back to the camp with me. Right after I clean up your mess."
"Test me not, Rationalist." The Paladin's voice had dropped as well, but where Phinneas's voice was icy, the Paladin's was steam—hot, pressurized, ready to explode. "I am a font of the light of Naobel. I am protector of this realm."
"Under whose authority?" Phinneas sneered, "We are not operating under Naobel's law here, but Rationalist Union law, and if you are in violation of that law, I am authorized to remove you."
"Authorized, thou may be, but art thou able?" growled the Paladin. "Think you, Professor-Colonel to pit your rune-spells against me?"
Phinneas looked at him for a moment, the nodded. "No." He said.
There was a heavy clank, and Phinneas's arm came up. "This is a pistol."
Kendrick, who knew what to expect, closed his eyes and covered his ears. Levanick and the Paladin did not and both nearly fell to the ground as the sound of the shot broke the air in two.
Kendrick uncovered his ringing ears in time to hear the second clank.
"I have cocked the pistol again, Paladin," said Professor-Colonel Phinneas, "it fires multiple rounds. Now come with me to your tent. And if I see lights or hear bells, I will shoot you, is that clear?"
"Corrupted monster," wheezed the Paladin.
"Now move."
The Paladin did not move. "Cross me," he said, "and you will lose Between."
"You have a very high opinion of yourself," said Phinneas. "Levanick, Fairheart, you will start walking down that hill now. Consider this, Paladin: get in my way, and you and your supporters go from being slightly useful native guides to dangerous religious extremists. Now start walking. I won't ask again."
Kendrick was walking ahead of them and couldn't see, but it sounded like the Paladin finally started walking. No doubt Phinneas was behind him, gun pressed into his holy back. Behind them, the lizard-man screamed wordlessly.
The lizard-man's noises continued as the four soldiers made their way through the forest back to their camp. Kendrick picked his way over roots and between bushes, at once disturbed by the sound and excited. Excited of course at the destruction of a servant of the Storm, but disturbed, too, by what it represented.
Between and the Rationalist Union had always been inseparable allies against the Storm, Skrea. Now, though, it looked like that centuries-old alliance was breaking. Why? Both wanted to destroy Skrea and the Kingdoms of Evil. Didn't they?
The lizard-man cried again. Kendrick fancied he could hear a word in its inarticulate shriek. Liar.
"Kendrick, do you have your weapon with you?"
Kendrick looked up. Levanick was facing away from him, apparently intent on the pathless wood ahead of them, but his voice had been distinct.
Kendrick hesitated, then said, "Yes."
"Good," Levanick glanced behind him, past Kendrick, at the Paladin and Phinneas, "you may be required to use it."
"What?" hissed Kendrick, "against who?"
Levanick turned back to the woods ahead and said nothing for a time. Then he said, "Why is this war happening?"
So Levanick had guess Kendrick's thoughts. "To destroy Skrea."
"This war isn't about destroying the Storm," Levanick said, "it's about destroying Between."
Levanick pushed ahead through a thicket of madrone and by the time Kendrick could follow, the Ranger had gained fifteen feet on him. Kendrick had to jog to catch up.
"Think about it." Levanick said, not slowing his stride. "With no Storm, what good are we? What use our magic? The Rationalists will finally have the excuse they need to snuff us out."
"Slow down, strike you out!" Phinneas's voice cracked out from the other side of the thicket. "You two stay where I can see you."
Kendrick stopped, "What are you talking about?"
Levanick, leaned close and whispered, "You've been to college there, you must know. Unless you become like them, give up everything your ancestors fought to protect, they treat you like a savage." He didn't give Kendrick the chance to respond. "Look at us, look at our people. Our reason for existence is being taken from us. Aren't you going to fight the people who are trying to destroy our way of life?"
Kendrick gaped at him, then down at his hand, caressing the hilt of his military-issue dagger.
"I've already made my choice," said Levanick, "but it counts for nothing if you don't also make yours here, and now."
Kendrick swallowed against a sudden surge of anticipation. Would he get a chance to use this weapon? No! That was the wrong thought to have. It was wrong to harm human beings.
Levanick's eyes were narrow, all friendliness gone from his face. "Your choice is this, Kendrick. There are four of us in the woods right now. Are we two Betweeners and two Rationalists, or three Betweeners against him?" Levanick jerked his head backward to indicate Phinneas, cursing steadily as he forced his way
through the twisted, papery madrones.
The Paladin leveled eyes at Kendrick as dark and furious as the clouds of the Storm before the Professor-Colonel prodded him in the back with his pistol. "Good. Forward."
The lizard-man cried out again, quieter with distance, but somehow more agonized.
"Well?" Levanick hissed at Kendrick.
"I can't kill anyone," said Kendrick.
"You've killed before."
Kendrick tried to contain his anger. "Monsters!" He hissed, jogging behind Levanick as he started forward. "I have killed monsters! It was right, it was all right to kill monsters." Nothing wrong, he told himself, told Madene as her disapproving face rose in his memory, nothing to be ashamed of. "But never people! It is Wrong to kill people."
Levanick pushed aside a low branch. "And people who oppose the will of Naobel? What about them?"
Levanick raised his voice under a rising shriek of pain from the lizard-man.
"I can't," Kendrick stated to Levanick's back, "I cannot. I will not."
"Will not? Why is that?" Levanick suddenly stopped walking, turned to face Kendrick, "Because the thought attracts you? Because you know that once you begin killing, you will not be able stop?"
The lizard-man's scream rose to a furious shriek, and then went on, and on.
A chill ran down Kendrick's body as a Levanick smiled a narrow smile. "You truly are Betweener."
"What the struck-out hell?"
Kendrick nearly jumped at the voice of Phinneas. The Rationalist Professor-Colonel stood behind the Paladin, not ten feet from them. But he was not looking at Kendrick or Levanick.
Slowly, Kendrick twisted his head around. They had come through the last stand of brush to stand on a small rise of ground overlooking their camp. What was left of their camp.
The campsite below them was a ring of chaos. Monsters of the Storm, more than twice the number of the previous ambush, swarmed over the ordered ranks of Rationalist tents, all ripping claws and howling mouths. Blue and tan coated men tried to run or wield their bayonets at their attackers, but the goblins and lizard-men overran, surrounded, and cut them down. Already a pile of bodies was growing in one corner of the clearing.
"You want to kill?" Murmured Levanick. "Good. There are always those who need to die."
"You." All the blood was gone from Phinneas's face, his skin the color and texture of under-cured leather. "You did this."
Neither Levanick nor the Paladin said anything.
"You had them attack the camp," Phinneas's shocked whisper became a furious snarl, "while I was tramping through the woods!"
"No!" Said Kendrick, "those are monsters down there, sir! It must be the servants of the necromancer the lizard-man called 'Liar,' whomever that may be. They must have come back again and overwhelmed the Rangers…"
The expression on Levanick's face dried the words out of Kendrick's throat.
"Look down there, boy," spat Phinneas, "do you see any brown buckskins on that pile of corpses? Do you hear any Naobelite blessings going off? Or muskets. Ha." He looked down at the back of the Paladin's head. "Your people must have sabotaged our weapons. Ha." The Paladin winced as the Professor-Colonel prodded him with the gun, "no wonder that lizard-man called you a liar."
As if in answer, the wounded lizard-man howled in the woods, a drawn-out wail of almost human despair. And Kendrick's mind whirled. Of course the creature didn't serve anyone called "the Liar." It had been calling the Paladin a liar. Because he had made a deal with the monster, a deal he broke by using the Blessing against it.
"And you very efficiently weeded out half of my men in that little raid, too," Phinneas shook his head. "Oh, wonderful." He said, "I spend my career rooting out Betweener secessionists and Skrean collaborators, and it turns out they're the same striking people, and their leader is my striking native guide."
"Between will never let herself become the dog of The Rationalist Union," snarled the Paladin.
"Shut up," said Phinneas. "Or I'll shoot you."
"No!" Kendrick cried. "Uh," he said as Phinneas directed his glare at him, "s-sir, if you kill your hostage…"
"…what's to stop your friend there from killing me? Or if not him than the legions of monsters and bent Rangers arrayed before us? Hm." The Professor-Colonel gritted his teeth in an expression totally unlike a smile, "do you play chess, Ranger?"
Levanick shook his head, eyes narrowed.
"Ah, well, then I suppose you won't understand me when I say the Union would be sacrificing a rook to capture the enemy's queen. I trust Mr. Fairheart will translate, though."
"He means he's less important than the Paladin is," mumbled Kendrick. "Even if you kill him" If you kill him. Not me! Never me! "you'll suffer a greater loss than the Rationalist Union."
"Exactly so." Phinneas nodded. "So, now, here is the situation. Private-Instructor Fairheart. Either you are loyal to your government, in which case you are bound to obey my orders, or you have thrown in your lot with these traitors, in which case I hold your leader hostage. In either case, you will both throw down your weapons. Then, all four of us will walk quietly and quickly away from my camp—" a muscle twitched under his eye "avoid the monsters you've called down on us, and head back down the mountain."
Levanick's eyes narrowed, his hand went to the hilt of his sword.
"Slowly, Ranger."
The Paladin spoke: "Be you not a fool, Phinneas."
"Shut up."
The Paladin winced as if the barrel of the gun had just been jammed into his spine again. "You would never make it down the mountain with three enemies in tow."
"I count two," said the Professor-Colonel, staring levelly at Kendrick.
The Paladin looked at him too, then coughed, "in any case, even the two of you together could not keep guard against both Levanick and myself for the whole of the trek down from these Hills."
"Shut up!"
"You would have to kill one of us," continued the Paladin, "obviously Levanick."
Levanick went pale, and his sword screeched out of its sheath.
Professor-Colonel Phinneas sighed. "That was a foolish thing to say, Paladin. Now I can't drive your Ranger, I can't trust Private-Instructor Fairheart, and…"
The lizard-man's screams abruptly cut off.
"Ah yes. I can't stand here forever, waiting for your pet monsters to find me." His voice dropped to almost to a whisper. "It seems my duty is clear."
"Oh light!" Levanick shouted as the Paladin's face twisted, "Kendrick, kill him!"
There was a muffled crack, and the Paladin flew forward as if someone had kicked him in the back. Then Phinneas was raising his smoking pistol, pointing it at Levanick.
"Damn you!" Levanick ran at the man, his hand going for the sword at his hip, "damn you to the—" The second crack, was much louder than the first. Levanick's feet spun out from under him and he plowed into the ground.
"You killed him," Kendrick whispered.
"He was an enemy of our nation, Fairheart," Phinneas calmly holstered his weapon, "and he would have killed me, or worse. He certainly would have done worse to you." This time, Kendrick heard the mechanism snap as Phinneas re-loaded his revolver. "Now, Private-Instructor Fairheart!" he shouted, "it would be a shame if I had to shoot you, but if you do not drop your dagger, now, I will."
"Funny," a new voice purred from behind Kendrick, "I was about to say the same to you, Rationalist."
The wendigo stepped from the shadows. "Except I would replace 'shame' with 'pleasure,' and 'shoot' with 'eat.'"
Chapter the Eighth
In which the Ultimate Fiend casts down the King of Good
"No!" screeched Feerix, "No no no! Fool! Idiot!"
"Strike it, Feerix, 'no' what? I haven't done anything yet."
"Precisely. You require lessons in necromancy, and yet you do nothing."
Freetrick sighed as he plodded along the corridor in his heavy ceremonial armor. "Well, what should I be doing?"
"Killing something!"
"What?" Freetrick gestured with a razor-tipped gauntlet and nearly sliced the nipple off an ogre bodyguard. "What should I kill?"
"That does not matter!" Feerix snarled. "Anything." He pointed randomly. "There. The man in front of you."
"The man in front of me is DeMacabre."
"My ears are burning!" The Duke sang.
Freetrick wished he could wipe the sweat from his forehead without fear of shaving off his own eyebrows. "Feerix, I don't think this is quite the right time for a practical demonstration of necromancy."
He gestured, more carefully this time, at the procession around them. Dark aristocrats of every description trudged up a sort of spiral ramp that, as far as Freetrick understood things, wound around the shaft leading up from the magma chamber under the castle to the tower at its peak.
Freetrick and Feerix, as well as most of the rest of the human population of Clouds-Gather, were marching grimly forward in the center of the procession, heavy ceremonial boots clanging off the stones with every shuffling step. He had tried telling himself that he would think of some way out of the mess he had stumbled into. But now, as he passed a row of narrow window-slits showing a drop into a vast lake of lava nearly a hundred feet below, he found it hard to summon any optimism.
"But if you do not practice, how can you improve?" said Feerix, "And if you do not improve, how can I kill you?"
"What," Freetrick gasped as they rounded another corner, "You aren't planning to train me up and the kill me on the way to my own coronation, are you?"
"Indeed," said Feerix, "If I can duel and kill you on the tip of the Tower of Death, I can have myself crowned forthwith."
"That would be most convenient," said DeMacabre, "as everyone will already be gathered."
"Thanks a lot, DeMacabre," Freetrick muttered.
"Ah, my lord is most welcome!" DeMacabre was walking ahead of them, hands clasped behind his back, his cylindrical black hat tilted like a badly laid tower as the Duke bent low in conversation with what looked like an enormous crab walking beside him. "For did I not find a teacher of necromancy for my lord, even as I…" He turned to look at Freetrick, and for once he was not grinning. DeMacabre's eyes were narrowed, one eyebrow raised. Even after I saved your life, he expressed.
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