Or tried to. As the kick to his midriff propelled Freetrick back, Chitinous, was suddenly in the space between them. The Monster Killer's hand slid across the black surface of the plates across the Chitinous's chest. Then General Blaarg's lackey rushed forward, saw-edged limbs snapping out and down.
"Why are you doing this?" Freetrick shouted at the Monster Killer as she dodged backward. "I told you I'd let you walk out of the striking Castle. I told you I'd give you a striking ambassadorship! Why are you still here?"
"Can I talk to you after I kill your henchman?" Sand sprayed up as she planted a foot and leapt forward. Chitinous's serrated forearms came up, opened, then hesitated. The monster looked over his shoulder, his eyes sliding around to look back at Freetrick as if asking a question.
"What—" Freetrick began, and then black ichor spewed from Chitinous's mouthparts and he twitched and slumped.
"To answer your question, Feerborg," the monster-killer said as she jerked her knife free of the stump of Chitinous's neck and straitened, "I am the Monster Killer. All the monsters are here."
She stepped toward Freetrick, over the twitching body.
"Minions!" Freetrick raised his voice, "defend yourselv—"
The monster-killer blurred forward, smashing into Freetrick's belly with a force that rang his armor like a bell and sent him pin-wheeling backward. Freetrick hit the ground.
He felt the floor strike him hard in the back, pressing the air from his lungs. The Monster Killer's outline blurred and refocused as she passed above him. Black sparks swam before his eyes.
Black sparks.
Freetrick's fingers clenched against the sand.
The Monster Killer blew backward in a black cloud of necromancy. The magic coiled around Freetrick, lifted him from the ground, and spun him to face his attacker, who leapt up to meet him.
Freetrick's arm came up to protect his unarmored face as the other sliced out at the place where she should have been, strike it! The Monster Killer seemed to flicker, faking a dash to one side, then suddenly appearing on the other.
Freetrick gasped a breath into his bruised lungs, aware of his dwindling magical resources. He had only killed two guinea-pigs this morning, and now, burning necromantic potential fast as he could, Freetrick could barely keep up with her.
A foot appeared in the air in front of him. Freetrick accelerated sideways, losing more death energy. He needed to do something creative, but she wasn't giving him time!
A tendril of black energy slashed along the ground, seeking to trip her, but her feet never touched the striking ground for more than a moment before she leapt up again. Black clouds swirled through the air, but the Monster Killer didn't seem to care if he blinded her. He couldn't evacuate the air from the area without suffocating himself. But maybe—
The foot that had been swinging toward his head suddenly flipped upward as a hurricane wind exploded underneath them. For an instant, Freetrick and the Monster Killer floated, unsupported. She had nothing to push against. No way to attack.
"Help!" Shouted Freetrick into the sudden stillness. " It's okay to striking hit the women!"
There was a gurgling, chittering, screeching cheer.
Freetrick hit the ground and suddenly the Monster Killer wasn't in front of him. She was behind him, pushing, toppling him forward.
"Still?" Freetrick cried, catching himself with ropes of darkness and halting his fall. He spun in the air to face her. "Give up, strike you! There's no way you can win now."
She spared not a glance at the monsters rushing up on all sides. "Only if by 'win' you mean 'survive,'" she said, and launched herself at him.
Freetrick pulled himself into the air, higher than the arc of her leap could take her. The Monster Killer dropped back to the ground in a crouch, snarling up at him, then spun up to slice her knife through the belly of the first monster to run into reach. He was a secretary Freetrick hadn't had a chance to talk to yet.
"Tempest blast you!" he shouted, and reached out with night-colored tentacles to yank her off the ground. The monster-killer's wide, crazy eyes seemed to expand as she rushed through the air toward him, and her small smile never wavered.
"What is wrong with you!" Freetrick shouted at his attacker as he held the struggling Monster Killer 15 feet above the bottom of the Audience Pit. "I thought you were a freedom fighter. Protector of the innocent, you told me! Can't you see I'm trying to make things better?"
"If you really believe that," she said, "then you are the most insane dark lord I have ever met." She was still smiling. "And I have met many."
Below them, Freetrick was peripherally aware, virgins and monsters were still fighting. There was a hot tingle as a dying woman stumbled through the shadow his body cast against the ground. The fight had become more even, but the monster's weren't winning as easily as he had hoped.
Bloodbyrn, for her part, seemed to be doing fine. She was standing, arms and legs spread in a martial stance, blood from her wrists flowing into a cloud of droplets orbiting around her. Bloodbyrn crooked her fingers, made a pass in the air, and Freetrick saw a warrior woman's screaming attack turn into a headlong tumble as her legs spasmed out from under her. Even as the dead attacker slid to the sand at Bloodbyrn's feet, she was turning, flicking out another drop of her blood.
A deep, cold part of Freetrick's Frantic mind cursed the waste of a death. He needed the energy.
But it wasn't as if he was in much real danger. The women, foreigners all, were as helpless as monsters against the magic of the Kingdoms of Evil. As long as he could keep this advantage…
"Call off your people," he said, "and we can talk."
"I have no desire to talk with you," answered the Monster Killer, "and they are not my people any more than they are yours. I merely gave them a chance to fight."
"You aren't making this easy."
"I should not have to," she said, raising an eyebrow in a very Bloodbyrnesque expression. "Kill me, if you think it will help."
"Don't tempt me—" Freetrick said, and then his necromancy ran out.
Freetrick and the Monster Killer dropped out the air. She rolled. Freetrick didn't, but a pair of huge, horny hands closed around his ribcage and turned a bone-shattering impact into a mere armpit-bruising.
Grimp set him down.
"Thanks," gasped Freetrick.
"Duty could demand no less!" Squeaked the little white creature from amidst Grimp's tangled fur. Close up, it looked a bit like a monkey-armed rabbit. Then the huge, shaggy troll turned under his translator, and a massive arm swung like a gun-turret to catch a leaping woman across the belly. "Excellent! Now, if the fiend will cast his shadow across this snack Grimp has immobilized…"
He was angry. Yes, he wanted to.
Grimp was too slow to stop the Monster Killer as she leapt feet-first into Freetrick's back. As Freetrick shot forward and she bounced up, the ogre let go of the other woman and fumbled toward the person who had attacked his master.
"Still want to talk?" came the snarling voice of the Monster Killer, "Tell you what, I'll carve out your skull after I kill you and talk to that."
The woman Grimp had released landed with in a plume of sand and spun to fix her insane gaze on Freetrick. In the time it took Freetrick to pull his heavily-armored limbs back under him, she had closed the space between them. Freetrick saw her arm lift, her dainty fist around a long, jagged black dagger. She opened her mouth—
The only warning the woman got was a faint zipping sound, like a piece of paper tearing, and then the pinhead-sized drop of blood penetrated her skin. She blinked, then her right eye twitched suddenly upward into her skull. She made a furious, glottal "gak!" sound, and the woman's right arm and leg jerked simultaneously.
Freetrick rolled to the side and his would-be assassin flopped, twitching, to the sand. Gritting his teeth, he overcame his fear and disgust and reached his hand out to cast a shadow over her. There was a burst of un-bright non-heat.
The monsters all agreed later it was
a great party.
***
In Tinesmurk's camp, in the woods, in the pass between the Light and Dark sides of the Bulwark Mountains, in a little wooden cage, Kendrick sat in the pine-smelling dirt, thinking furiously.
Not about escape. That was easy enough. All he needed was a wheel-stone, and then he would hit the monsters guarding the other men, then the main body of fighting monsters, then the necromancers. The battle would push him from necessity to necessity like a train on tracks. No, it was the choice of whether to begin the battle that was the difficult one. What should he do? Who could he trust to command him?
Kendrick had learned at an early age that the things he wanted to do were never Right. The games he liked to play, the things he liked to tell his friends, every human interaction earned hatred from his peers and punishment from adults.
If not for his parents... if not for the fact that Kendrick's home town was Downhill and modern, with no monster hunters...well. Kendrick had survived his childhood.
And then at college, Madene had kept him under control. Traveling up the mountains, Kendrick had hoped the army's hierarchy would do the same. But here in the forest, in this cage, what did Kendrick have to keep him separate from the darkness? He meditated on this as the hours passed.
The monstrous guards standing at the door to his hastily constructed cage changed and changed again. Then they were replaced by a single man. No, not a man, Kendrick saw as the silhouette imposed itself over the sunset colors in the clouds to the west. A monster approached him in human shape.
"What troubles you, Do-Gooder?" The sun cast Maulrag's shadow over Kendrick as the wendigo came to stand before the door of his cage, "thinking about what I've been doing to your woman?"
"Zathara isn't my woman," Kendrick said.
"Perceptive of you." The wendigo squatted on its haunches and peered past the wooden bars of the cage with its mad dark eyes level with Kendrick's.
"Well," said Kendrick after a few moments, "what do you want? Does that witch you call queen have more words to throw at me?"
The monster only stared at him, its eyes searching.
This time Kendrick had enough presence of mind to wonder what Madene might have to say on the subject of poking out those eyes. Madene…once again, the situation was too different from anything they had experienced together at Eldritch. The Covenant said it was good to kill monsters, of course. On the other hand, this creature would probably bite his fingers off. Better to wound with words.
"Your queen fears me." Kendrick tried.
"She fears your god, Do-Gooder," said the wendigo, placidly, "and how He might seduce monsters away from her service."
"Into death, yes."
The wendigo snorted. "Do not be stupid, pup! You could not possibly kill enough of us before we destroyed you. But many of our monsters are fresh. Recently converted." It cocked an eye at him as if expecting him to make a connection.
"Convert?" Kendrick said, "what are you talking about, monster?"
Maulrag bent closer to him, hissing. "Idiot Do-Gooder. Don't you know what wheel-stone talismans are for?"
Kendrick considered telling the corrupt agent of the shadow to shut up and bother him no more. But the beast might still reveal some information about Zathara, and honor demanded that he save her."To kill monsters," he added.
"To bring humans back to life " Maulrag corrected. "Do you think The Rationalist Union is the first nation to learn how to invade a neighbor? Necromancy works no better in The Rationalist Union than word-magic does in Skrea. Listen to me, pup. Each nation uses its magic to create weapons that can cross national boundaries. The difference is that while The Rationalist Union uses metal and plastic, Skrea uses flesh." The monster gestured to its own head. "Life-twisting."
"If you have something to say," said Kendrick, "say it. Or I'll call for a guard and get you killed for treason."
"Not before I take your throat in my fist and---no." The wendigo shook its head. "We have no time. Just listen, blast you. Naobel is a protector god. He doesn't make weapons. He un-makes them. He turns monsters human."
Kendrick stared at the wendigo for a moment, then shook his head. "Liar. The wheel-stones kill monsters."
"Not all. You've noticed that some, mostly wendigos, survive the Blessing? As for the rest, well, some have been monstrous for generations. The original human can no longer be…cleanly separated from the life-twisting."
Kendrick narrowed his eyes. "Why are you telling me this, monster?"
For a moment, anger washed across the wendigo's face like a bath of steaming lye, dissolving the mask of humanity it wore and showing the vile, crippled soul beneath. Then, trembling, it inhaled and closed its eyes. When they opened again, it's voice was calm. "Because you carry the same taint as I." It tapped its head, just a little above and forward of the right ear. "And yet you can lead men."
"I'm nothing like you," Kendrick snarled.
"Do not be stupid, Do-Gooder," it said, "I can see the joy on your face when you cause pain in others. There is wendigo blood in you. How can your men obey you if they know how much you will enjoying leading them off a cliff?"
Or on a week-long wild goose chase through the woods. Kendrick considered. Deceit was not what the monster needed, but truth. "They follow because they know our cause is just," said Kendrick. "We all follow the word of my god," and then, before the wendigo could spit derision at him, "and yours. The Covenant."
The Wendigo blinked, lips closing over formerly bared teeth. "All your works we shall oppose."
"There is Good," agreed Kendrick, "and there is Evil. This is the absolute law that any person can depend upon to guide their actions."
"But the battle between Good and Evil is what the Queen aims to restore." The monster's voice sounded confused.
"What the queen seeks to restore is her own power." Just like Zathara. Just like every person without a higher morality to guide them. "Her goals are not the goals of the Covenant, although she mouths its words to gain support."
"True. Most true. But I could lead…in her place…by the Covenant?" Asked Maulrag,
"Only if you use it to lead yourself first," said Kendrick. "And what does the Covenant say we must do?"
The Wendigo was looking at him with an expression that, on a human, would have been hope. "Restore the balance."
Kendrick put his hand through the gaps between the logs of the gate. "Bring me my talisman."
"That," said Maulrag, "I have already done."
Although apparently, Kendrick thought as the monster stood and allowed the pebble-sized stone to drop and roll into the cage, he didn't really need it. Kendrick had performed this conversion perfectly well with no magical assistance at all.
***
"The dungeons!" Stormed the Ultimate Fiend. His eyes were crackling lightning bolts, his head en-haloed by a midnight nimbus of necromancy. "Do not question me again!"
He had no problems with his dark lord voice now, oh no.
"My lord, I will not again mention the fact that these women killed five valuable monsters, but attempted to kill my lord's First Concubine, that is to say, myself." Bloodbyrn was unnaturally pale, and her voice lacked its usual hard ring. Her amber eyes were smoky with fatigue and blood loss. "Nor the fact that they very nearly succeeded in killing my lord, himself, on three separate occasions that I saw. However, even I, accustomed to my lord's unconventional logical processes, confess to extreme bafflement at his insistence that the lives of these reprobates be spared."
"And yet they will be, for that is my command." Fell winds blew around the Ultimate Fiend as he rotated in the air to face his First Consort. Under him, the Monster Killer and her two surviving warrior women shook in their sorcerous chains.
The monsters still capable of doing so stepped back.
"Why, my lord?" Demanded Bloodbyrn, standing her ground, "Is the morality of the Do-Gooder nations so unnatural that from our own that you would allow your would-be murderers to survive?"
"It isn't a matter of morality," said Freetrick. His white hair billowed in a sorcerous updraft. "It's a matter of intelligence. These women possess information. Information that I would…extract. Razanel!" It was amazing. If Freetrick had thought before speaking, he would never have remembered the name of the master of the Guild of Torturers. Now, though, the words just came to him. "Get some ogres in here, chain these women, and escort them without injury, to the dungeons."
"Malevolence!" Razanel's left wing dangled as if dislocated, and his scaly skin was smudged and smeared with blood, but the monster bowed readily enough to his master.
"Without injury, remember," Freetrick said. "Tell your ogres and goblins that every harm they inflict on these prisoners shall be delivered unto them a hundred-fold."
"Malevolence!"
"My lord!" Said Bloodbyrn again, "this is madness of the most unappealing kind."
Freetrick did not answer, but stared at Bloodbyrn with his lightning-shot eyes.
She stepped forward. "Remember our earlier conversation, my lord."
"I do, Bloodbyrn. I believe we discussed who will submit to whom."
Bloodbyrn's eyes widened. She took another step, her voice a furious whisper. "So then, my lord, shall I submit to you?"
Freetrick stared. There she stood in front of him. She was his wife, or first concubine, or whatever, but the important word here was…his. "Yes," Freetrick reached out, placed his gauntleted hand on her cheek, "you shall."
Her amber eyes blazed. "Then, my lord, I demand that we take ourselves back to your chambers."
"What?" said Freetrick, "Why?"
"Because I want to have sex with you, you babbling cretin!"
The Cabinet of Horrors sniggered.
***
When Phinneas brought their men down on the camp, Kendrick was ready.
It was late now, the sky starless and black overhead, fires all banked. But Kendrick, who had been watching, saw the movement against the hastily-erected wooden rampart around the camp. He whispered to his returned talisman, and let its momentary glow wink from between his fingers at the figures skulking in the shadows at the edge of the camp.
The Kingdoms of Evil Page 47