Fire and Dust

by James Gardner

  No. He didn't. But I'd kill him anyway if he came through that window. When a dog goes mad, you don't have a choice.

  I waited, forcing myself not to hold my breath. He'd come through the window, or maybe the broken-down door. I stood where I had a clear path to each, a single step forward and the killing thrust. Seconds trickled by; and then a wail came from the kitchen, Hezekiah cursing, «Damn, damn, damn, she did it to me again! I'm completely blanked.»

  «You really have to work on your willpower, darling,» Rivi called from the street. «You're a dear wee child, but you don't have the instinct for blood. Too soft. Too… undirected.»

  Hezekiah shouted back, «I'll 'direct' you if I get my hands on you.»

  «That's the spirit,» Rivi laughed. «Focus on hatred and vengeance; you'll be as strong as me in no time. Of course, that's precisely what you have: no time.»

  «How'd you find us, Rivi?» That was Yasmin, asking a question I would have asked myself, except that I didn't want to give away my position.

  «Your friend Kiripao has been an utter dear,» Rivi replied. «He met two of my colleagues in a drinking establishment not far from here. Picked them out of the crowd, walked right up, and told them precisely where you were. I'd say that he sold you out, except that he's not interested in monetary reward.»

  «Peel them,» Kiripao cried. «Peel them all!»

  Rivi chuckled. «Apparently he's developed some fascinating ideas on how to free your souls from their wee prisons of flesh. He cares about you, he really does; he sees himself as your personal liberator.»

  This last statement prompted Kiripao to make a whuffling sound, like a bear slavering over a carcass. Perhaps the sound was laughter… or weeping.

  «Now, darlings,» said Rivi, «far be it from me to interfere with a monk enlightening his flock; but I could try to restrain him, if you showed a wee bit of cooperation. Give me the grinder, right here, right now, and I guarantee we'll all walk away from this, whistling tunes of cheer.»

  «I can't whistle,» Hezekiah snapped back, in what he must have thought was a brilliant retort.

  Wheezle said in a low voice, «Once the honored madwoman gets through, you'll whistle any tune she wants.»

  «I don't have to be nice about this,» Rivi called. «I have enough wights to take what I want by force. But Plague-Mort is such a dear wee town, it makes me sentimental to a fault. Why don't I give you a count of ten? One… isn't this exciting? Two… no, it isn't. Ten. Sorry, I got bored.»

  That's when the wights charged en masse.

  * * *

  I don't know what instructions Rivi had given the wights – probably to fight their way inside and kill anyone who resisted. Whatever she told them, the nasty wee albino still hadn't realized her hate-filled slaves yearned to pervert the intention of her commands; or perhaps, Rivi was so used to being loathed that she no longer gave it any thought. She certainly hadn't told the wights to exercise any useful tactics, like a two-pronged attack through window and door. Instead, the wights simply swarmed forward, claws swinging, throats hissing, until they collided with the front wall of the building… then they took out the wall.

  It didn't happen all at once. A dozen sets of claws smashed the building simultaneously, stabbing through the wood exterior and the plaster inside. I could see individual fingers piercing the wall in front of me, talons flexing. In unison, the fingers clenched into fists and pulled backward with supernatural strength. Plaster broke off in handfuls… and with a groaning of rusty nails, board after board ripped off the front of the house, leaving long horizontal gaps. It took the wights a few moments to shake off the lumber still clinging to their fingers; then their hands crashed out in unison again, like claw-tipped battering rams.

  You know, I thought to myself, in a normal town, bar fights, prowling monsters, and a house being demolished by the undead would eventually catch the attention of the city watch. But in beautiful Plague-Mort, pearl of the Outlands…

  The wights heaved and ripped off another bunch of boards. It was a riveting visual effect, strips of the house being ripped away to let lamplight glimmer through: lamplight choked with plaster dust and twinkling off the broken glass on the floor. A painting of that would sell very well to an Anarchist… not that most Anarchists had money, of course, but there must be some prominent merchants who were secretly Anarchist sympathizers…

  «Are you going to stand there and let them tear the house apart?» Yasmin demanded.

  «Sorry,» I murmured, collecting my thoughts. «I was just contemplating the beauties of Entropy.»

  She looked at me narrowly, debating whether I was mocking her beliefs. Before she could come to a conclusion I'd regret, I said, «Let's get busy, shall we?» and lifted my sword.

  Truth to tell, wights whacking the wall of one's only refuge might look sodding scary, but the house was built to withstand hurricanes like the one Zeerith had described; the undead were still a long way from collapsing the place, or even clawing their way inside. All they'd really done was rip out the horizontal equivalent of arrow slits: four-inch wide holes, ideal for stabbing swords out at attackers. Even better, as soon as the wights rammed their talons into the wood again, they were as good as handcuffed, like condemned prisoners waiting for the axe.

  Yasmin and I gladly played their executioners.

  I took out two the first time: a pair of quick thrusts, both through rotting faces, the jabs hard enough to drive bone chips liberally through the wights' brains. The first one fell without a sound. The second had enough time to spit a hiss of rage; then my rapier plunged straight between its eyes, pithing whatever last thoughts such a creature might have.

  The other wights tore away a few more boards; but the monsters Yasmin and I dispatched only slumped where they were, their claws still deeply imbedded in the wall. I wished I could see them from the street – a group of dead wights dangling from the front of the house by their hands, their heads skewered and spilling out brains.

  A nice score, I thought to myself. If Yasmin and I both killed two wights with every assault, we'd soon whittle down the opposition to just Rivi and Kiripao… and Qi and Chi, of course, wherever they were.

  Sod it all… where were Qi and Chi?

  The wights slammed forward again… and even as I cleaved the heads of two more, my thoughts raced in other directions. Why had Rivi let the wights make another charge? She'd seen how easily we could kill them. No doubt she had more wights back at the Glass Spider, but they weren't here now. And where were Qi and Chi? Two sneak thieves who had robbed faction headquarters in Sigil while the defenders were kept busy with a diversion…

  «Sod it, she's peeling us,» I growled. In a low voice, I said, «Yasmin, you deal with the wights. I have to check on the others.»

  Still cursing, I dashed toward the kitchen. Breaking into this house would be child's play for experienced thieves: over the back wall into the garden, then a short sneak up to the kitchen door. If the others had their attention focussed on the fight out front, they wouldn't notice Qi and Chi till much too late.

  And it was too late. Even before I reached the kitchen I heard the sound of snoring – Hezekiah's snore, something I'd heard often enough since we began keeping vigil outside the Sigil Mortuary. The Clueless boy certainly wouldn't fall asleep in the middle of a battle, even if someone else was doing the fighting; indeed, I should have been suspicious when he didn't come running to gawk at the wights. Slowing down, I walked the last few paces to the kitchen door as quietly as I could, trusting that the banging and hissing from the street would cover whatever little noise my boots made.

  My father could probably list all the ways of putting people to sleep against their will – spells, magic powders, potions and vapors – but my only knowledge of the subject came from the penny dreadfuls I read as a teenager. In those stories, both heroes and villains had infallibly effective ways of knocking each other out, ones that never made you vomit afterward, never gave concussions, never killed people with weak hearts. I
stopped reading penny dreadfuls when I stopped believing in such wondrous tricks, but clearly I'd done the books an injustice… Qi and Chi had apparently put Hezekiah, Wheezle, and Zeerith to sleep as easily as snuffing out a candle.

  Boy, gnome, and naga all lay on the floor, limp and peaceful. Qi and Chi were already inside the room, one of them rummaging through our backpacks while the other stood guard with a crossbow. Luckily for me, the guard had to divide his attention between the front and back doors of the kitchen; and at the moment I peeked around the corner, he was looking out into the garden. I ducked out of sight again immediately.

  All right, Britlin, think. Rivi sent the thieves to steal the dust grinder while the wights kept us busy in front. I could simply let the bad guys take the piking grinder and hope Rivi would leave us alone once she got what she wanted; or I could try to stop them, hope I won the fight, and hope we could still get out of Plague-Mort with our skins intact. One hope to two – a gambler would say that letting them walk off with the grinder was the safer bet.

  On the other hand, no self-respecting Sensate ever made safety his first priority…

  The Hounds had scattered plenty of debris during their raid. Close to hand were numerous pieces of ripped clothing, the smashed remains of a wooden chair, and an oil painting with its canvas slashed. From what I could see, the painting hadn't been much of a treasure – a bad approximation of a woman looking at an even worse version of her face in a mirror – but its gold-leafed frame was sturdy and solid, rendered with admirably detailed curlicues. Flat and heavy, it would fly like a discus, at least over the short distance between me and the thief with the crossbow. If it stopped him from plugging me with that arrow, the painting would have served a more useful purpose than most abstract art.

  A deep breath in. A slow breath out. Then I leaned around the corner and whipped the painting at the bowman with all the strength I could muster.

  The frame struck him hard, one corner burying its point into his solar plexus. His breath whoofed out and his trigger finger on the bow must have jerked in pained reaction – the arrow snapped away from the bow with a crack, glancing off the closest wall, and digging into one of the cupboards. Even before it had chunked home, I was crossing the gap between me and the bowman, shouting at the top of my lungs in the hope of jolting him. It didn't work; before I got close enough for a slash with my rapier, he had raised the bow to block, knocking my blade away from a killing stroke.

  «Qi!» he shouted… or maybe «Chi!», it was hard to tell. Not that he needed to alert his partner to my presence – I'd made enough noise to wake the undead, though my sleeping companions continued to snore placidly. Any moment now, the other thief would enter the fray, probably with a crossbow of his own; and my current target only had to parry my thrusts until I took an arrow through the heart.

  You wouldn't think a crossbow made an effective fencing weapon; and in more appropriate conditions, it wouldn't have. However, the kitchen was dark, its floor was littered with easy-to-trip-over rubbish, and I was doing everything I could to keep my target (the githyanki) between me and his fellow thief – the last thing I wanted was to give the githzerai a clear shot at me. All these complications prevented me from delivering any swordplay worth the name… which meant that thrust after thrust got deflected by the crossbow's wooden body. Even worse, it was just a matter of time before my blade bit too deeply into the wood. If my sword got stuck, the githyanki would leap on me instantly, scrabbling to take me apart with his bare hands.

  An arrow buzzed past my ear – the thief at the far end of the room had taken a shot at me, despite his partner in the way. I wondered if a fragment of his racial instincts remained, despite Rivi's tinkering with his mind: the githzerai hatred of githyanki, secretly delighted if his bolt went awry and took the githyanki in the back. Perhaps he simply thought he could hit me… and he came piking close, near enough that I felt the arrow's wind. If I gave the berk time to reload, I wouldn't be so lucky the next time.

  Still, what could I do? The githyanki in front of me had reflexes like an eel, swiping aside my every strike. He had a smile on his ugly face, almost as if he was playing with me – as if he knew he could hold me off for as long as he needed. Perhaps he could have too, if he hadn't made the mistake of stepping too close to Wheezle's small body.

  The gnome wasn't really asleep: he'd just been playing possum, biding his time for the moment when a magicless paraplegic could make a contribution.

  Wheezle reached out, grabbed the githyanki's ankle, and bit hard into the thief's fleshy leg.

  The githyanki opened his mouth as if to yell from the pain. It looked like a target to me… and I jabbed forward with an all-or-nothing thrust, the tip of the blade punching through the roof of his mouth and straight into the hind-brain. His body jerked in a violent spasm, dancing uncontrollably on the end of my sword as muscles were suddenly freed from the mind's command; then he slumped into dead-weight, dragging my rapier down until he slid slickly off the blade.

  «Thanks, Wheezle,» I sighed.

  «A pleasure to serve, honored Cavendish.»

  «When this is all over,» I said, «tell me what his leg tasted like.»

  * * *

  I leapt the crumpled body of the githyanki, prepared to plunge my sword into his githzerai partner. What I wasn't prepared for was a ram-force gusher of white dust smashing me in the chest. It knocked me backward like a mace, and I tripped over the corpse I'd just killed; Wheezle barely got out of the way as I fell heavily to the ground. Then the dust spray struck again, sending me, the gnome, and the githyanki corpse skittering across the trash-strewn floor. Pans clattered as we smashed into them, and silver cutlery, knives and forks, were swept up by the hurricane of dust to slap against our faces.

  «The githzerai has found the grinder,» Wheezle observed, as the spray slammed us into the wall.

  «So how,» I said, choking on dust, «can the sodding thing have so much kick without a speck of recoil?»

  «It was made by gods,» Wheezle replied, «and gods despise physical law. They regard action/reaction as a personal affront, and defy it whenever they can.»

  All this time, of course, I was attempting to squirm to my feet. The effort was fruitless: whenever I managed to get my legs underneath me, the spray simply bashed me down again. Dust clogged the air, pooling up an ever-increasing mound on the floor. I covered my face with my coat-tail, just for the chance to breathe something other than white powder; but the dust kept pelting down, burying me like a Pharaoh.

  Long seconds passed. At last, I realized the pressure from the spray had eased and I heaved myself up, scattering a haze of dust around me. Emerging from the cloud, I saw the githzerai was gone, fled out the back door. I ran in pursuit, but when I reached the garden there was no sign of him – he must have hopped it over the fence, and I had no delusions about catching such a speedy runner in the twisting lanes of Plague-Mort.

  Wheezle came crawling toward me, pulling himself across the dust-heaped floor. He looked up at me, saw my expression and said, «We're piked?»

  I nodded. «We are completely, totally piked.»

  * * *

  Wheezle stayed in the kitchen to wake up Hezekiah and Zeerith, while I hurried out front again to check on Yasmin. She was still in one piece, her sword blade covered with clots of hair and cerebellum. «I'm worried,» she said as I entered the room. «All this wight-fighting… it's making me dependent on head– shots. I mean, spearing a wight through the heart isn't an instant kill, so a head-shot is the most effective approach. Still, I worry about getting into the habit of avoiding the body, when really, in most opponents… I'm babbling, aren't I?»

  «Yes, Yasmin.»

  «How are things in the kitchen?»

  «It looks like the cook spilled some flour.»

  Her forehead wrinkled. «What does that mean?»

  «It means Rivi got what she wanted.»

  With so many boards ripped off the front of the house, I could easily see out int
o the street. Only one wight was left, standing on one side of Rivi while Kiripao stood on the other. The ice-skinned woman faced our direction, but her glittering eyes were distant, focussed far elsewhere. As I looked at her, she suddenly straightened up and smiled.

  «Darlings!» she called, «my wee githzerai pal tells me he's got away with the grinder. What fabulous news! My business here is done.»

  I shouted, «Where do you think you're going?»

  «O, dear heart, I'm bound for Sigil. I told what fun I'll have there – all those wizards and priests, who think they're protected by magic. Can't you imagine the looks on their faces when they can't cast a single spell without burning to cinders? And then I'll claim their minds.»

  «You're barmy,» Yasmin told her. «The Lady of Pain will never let you into Sigil with those two grinders.»

  «That's where you're wrong,» Rivi smirked. «The grinders are older than the gods, older than The Lady, older than the most ancient barriers guarding Sigil. I've heard our quiff modern deities can't even sense the grinders – that's why you could carry them through the Lower Planes without infernal powers trying to steal them. The most powerful forces of antiquity made the grinders invisible to divine eyes… which means that The Lady won't know what I'm doing till it's too late.»

  Yasmin whispered to me, «We have to get out of here, Britlin. We have to warn someone what this slag is up to.»

  «I know.» But secretly, I was gauging how fast I could reach the gloating albino: through the door, into the street, across the cobblestones. Could I reach her before the wight and Kiripao stopped me? Not likely; she was just too piking far away.

  «Time to say good-bye,» Rivi announced. «I have ever so much work planned out. Things to do, people to brainwash… in the meanwhile, however…»

  She chuckled. It was definitely not a chuckle to make children sleep smiling in their beds. Then she clapped her hands, and suddenly a stream of new wights poured around the corner: ten of them, twenty, thirty, and more, all of them racing forward with that peculiar arm-swinging gait, their eyes aflame with crimson fire.