by Lionel Fenn
"Ivy," Gideon said cautiously.
"I'll take the left," she said, "you take the right, Tag and Red the middle."
"That's not what I meant."
Then Kron, with a bark of unintelligible orders to his band, leapt from his place with clubs high and narrow eyes flashing. The others charged as well, and Gideon could only turn his back to Red and face the onslaught, the bat suddenly and disturbingly snug against his shoulder.
Red wasted no time. He met the charge with horns and claws, and before Gideon had a chance to take his first swing, the lorra had skewered one Moglar and flung three more back into the trees, sending Kron and his lieutenant scurrying for cover. Then he whirled to his left and knocked Ivy aside, gored a Moglar square in the neck, trampled two more, and terrified the remaining pair into a dust-raising retreat.
Gideon closed his ears to the screams of the defeated and the triumphant bellow of the lorra now standing panting at his side. He tried instead to judge the distance between himself and the first of the giant warriors, steadied himself, and tapped the tip of the bat on the ground.
There was no need.
So swift had Red's vicious attack been that by the time he had returned, the remaining Moglar, with Kron posturing in their midst, were having second, more healthy thoughts about the purpose of their ambush. Their eyes flitted back and forth over the quartet they faced; their clubs were not quite as menacing; and despite their imposing size, they backed off a step when Red took a step forward and snorted.
Kron finally held his ground and glared.
Red growled.
Kron growled back.
Red lowered his horns and charged.
Kron leapt nimbly aside, permitting his lieutenant to have all the glory, at the same time swatting the lorra smartly on the hip.
Red shrieked in pain and his hindquarters buckled as he hamburgered the Moglar, and Gideon suddenly found himself charging as well, lowering his head and butting the nearest raider in the chin, spinning over the toppling body to tackle another and drive a fist into his throat. A Moglar landed on his back, and he fell sideways instantly, rolled over and picked up the giant dwarf by the front of his vest, lifted him over his head, and threw him into the trees. Red regained his feet and headed for Kron, who was coolly observing the exchange from a position well behind the others. When he saw the lorra approach, however, he uttered a strange whistle that rallied his remaining men to his side and they then vanished silently and abruptly into the forest.
"Jesus," Gideon said, blowing on his hand, sure he had shattered at least four of his knuckles.
Ivy shook his arm and tugged. "C'mon, we can't stay here now. They'll be back."
Gideon didn't protest. He retrieved his bat and holstered it, then with a soft word and a smile poked through the lorra's long hair to see if any damage had been done. Red whimpered, then purred, then butted him away and hurried up the road after Tag and Ivy. Gideon lagged behind, checking to see that no one followed, listening to the forest for signs of further ambush.
It wasn't until an hour had passed that he was satisfied they were safe for the time being; but it wasn't until full dark had fallen and he was virtually feeling his way along the road with his feet that he tried to analyze why he had abandoned the weapon Whale had created for him and instead treated the deadly attack as if it were a scrimmage.
He had no answers.
All he could do was hope that sometime before this damned world succeeded in murdering him, he would be able to defend himself and his friends properly. Though he had admittedly made a good account of himself, he couldn't help feeling as if he had let them all down.
He didn't stop thinking, however, until he ran into Red's tail and realized that the dark which had fallen over the land had finally forced them to halt.
Ivy made a low fire on the verge as the night's chill worked its way into their aching bones; Red stood guard in the road's center, and Tag began composing an epic, nonscanning poem to his own prowess and the ignominious defeat of the Moglar contingent. Gideon sat by the flames and stared at them, his palms cupping his cheeks, his sighs so loud and explosive they threatened to blow the fire out.
Ivy shook her head. "You certainly have a way of fighting," she said in reluctant admiration.
He nodded glumly.
"What do you call what you did back there?"
"Stupid," he said. "They could have broken my back with those clubs, torn out my throat with their bare hands, picked me up by the ankles, and thrown me to the top of the nearest tree."
"But they didn't."
"I was lucky."
"You were good."
He looked up sharply, a curse on his lips, and swallowed it when he saw no derision in her eyes, heard no sarcasm in her voice. When she smiled, he realized that she was probably right, that he hadn't actually been half-bad at all.
"Not great, though," she said then. "If Red hadn't scared them so much, they probably would have torn you to pieces."
His mouth opened, closed, opened again, and he laughed, loudly and fully, until, with an effort, he was able to regain control. Then he stretched out on his side and let the fire warm him.
"When do we get to Rayn?"
"In the morning, I think. Late."
"Then what?"
"Then we tear down the walls," Tag said as he squatted next to Ivy and poked eagerly at the embers with his dagger. "We'll start on the north side—that's the weakest, I think—and pull the walls down until they give us what we want. We'll have to kill a few guards, I guess, but that shouldn't be any trouble. After that we'll attack the city itself, probably go for the market so they'll starve. Or—"
"Tag," he said.
"—we might go for the armory. Kill the guards there and head straight for the best weapons. Once we have them we'll go right to the Hold and take the Wamchu. Once we do that it'll be no—"
"Tag," he said, more loudly.
"What?"
"What the hell are you talking about? There's only three of us and Red."
Tag looked to Ivy, who shrugged. "So?"
Gideon dropped a twig onto the fire and watched a leaf brown and curl and fall into sparks. "What is the Wamchu?"
"He's not a what, he's a who," Ivy said.
"All right, who is the Wamchu?"
"Which one?"
"The one Tag is talking about. The one that Kron person talked about."
When the others exchanged somewhat wary glances, Gideon did his best to appear impatient and menacing. Then Tag hugged himself as though he'd gone deathly could.
"The Wamchu," Ivy said, "is the one you've been seeing. The one with the red eyes."
"Ah."
"He comes from Choy."
Gideon frowned. "Where's that?"
"The end of the world."
"What? I thought we already went through that. Or over that, as it were."
"Chey is the end of our world," she explained, pointing over his head and upward. "Choy is the end of Chey's world."
He foolishly considered asking if Choy had an end of the world as well and decided against it; esoteric geography was not one of his strong suits. Instead, he went for the obvious: "But what is this... this Wamchu doing here if he's from there?"
"He's only from there sometimes. The rest of the time he's from here, and because we're here, he won't go back there."
"Just because of us?"
"Close enough."
"I see." He watched a tiny whorl of ash stir into a mound. "It's the duck, right?"
"Right."
The ash stirred again and scattered.
"This Wamchu. Is he a magician?"
"Huh?" Tag said.
"I mean, can he do things like Whale can?"
"I don't know. He doesn't need to, I don't think."
"And who are his friends?"
Ivy looked puzzled.
"You implied," Gideon said patiently, "that there is more than one of this Wamchu person, which I assume is a title like a king or some
thing."
"Oh no," Tag said eagerly. "Wamchu is his name. The other ones, they're his wives."
"He has more than one wife?"
Ivy looked disgusted and lay down, her face a mosaic of light and dark between the flames. Gideon was distracted for a moment by the sight of her, by the snaring of the firelight in her hair, and had to blink once and hard when something Tag was saying slipped past him.
"Again?" he asked.
"Chou-Li," Tag said.
"What's that, the end of Choy's world?"
"No, Gideon. That's his first wife. Then there's Thong, who's supposed to be the nicest one, and then..." The lad glanced around him at the dark, at the snap and sway of the leaves, at the reach of their shadows onto the road. "Then," he said in a voice so low Gideon barely heard him, "there's Agnes."
"Agnes?"
"Shhh!" Tag said with a finger to his lips. "God, I don't want them to hear us. Even Red couldn't save us then."
"Agnes?"
"Agnes Wamchu," Ivy said, sounding like a little girl being dragged into a nightmare. "She's the worst."
"Why?"
"She just is," Tag said. "She's the one who's going to kill us, you know."
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Sleep came with great difficulty, and Gideon was not greatly annoyed when Ivy woke him shortly before dawn. They ate a hasty footh breakfast and set off hurriedly, taking turns riding Red, who after his nightlong vigil slept as he walked, his purring snores the only sound in the forest.
By the time the sun was up, the trees had begun to alter shape and composition, growing wider apart, shorter, until they were little more than shrubs on the edge of a fan-shaped plain. As they rushed along the road, Gideon looked behind him and saw what appeared to be a ridgeline of mountains impossibly high, peaks and high slopes permanently encased in billowing cloud; and he was momentarily chilled when he realized that it was the cliff he had fallen off of only a few days earlier.
By midday he began to notice a change in the land ahead of him. Though he could see no mountains on the horizon, there was a definite break in its configuration, a speck that grew to a blot that puffed to a dot that soon broke apart into what he identified as the roofs of houses.
The city of Rayn, temporary home of the Wamchus and, with any sort of luck at all, the end of his search for the mysterious and by now intriguing white duck.
By midafternoon, however, it was clear they were not going to be able to reach the city until long after nightfall, and he suggested they stop now and camp, giving themselves a chance to rest and be fresh for the next day's journey. Tag disagreed, saying that a night assault was the best chance they had of overcoming the Wamchu's armies and rescuing Glorian and the duck. Ivy, on the other hand, was evidently running low on her reserves and took the opportunity to rest with a vengeance—she slumped onto the grassy field beside the road and collapsed into a deep and soundless sleep.
"Women," Tag said in disgust as he watched her. "They just don't understand how it is with a man."
Gideon almost laughed, turned away quickly, and followed Red to a hidden stream, where he drank, splashed water over his face and hair, and stared for a moment at his reflection. I'll be damned, he thought. He was growing a beard. A hand passed wonderingly over his jaw as he turned his face side to side, angle to angle. He had never had a beard in his life, and as he turned his face side to side he decided that he probably wouldn't have one again. He looked less like a roguish buccaneer or a dashing rake than a parrotless pirate who had suffered and not recovered from a childhood disease that had killed off half his facial follicles.
Another burden to be borne, he thought with a resigned lift of his shoulder, and he straightened, rubbed at the small of his back, and turned around to call Tag.
The name remained glued to his tongue.
Tag was standing with dagger in hand over Ivy, who was sitting up and glowering at a portly, green-dressed man with a tricorn green hat; a bow was slung over his shoulder, a quiver filled with green-feathered arrows dangling down his back. His hands were on his hips and he was laughing mightily as Tag darted back and forth like a cub whose genes told it it would soon grow into a full-blown wolf.
Slowly, hoping the man hadn't seen him, Gideon unholstered his bat and crept through the grass, crossed the road, and came up behind them. He didn't bother to look for Red; the lorra obviously wasn't inclined to fight anything it judged was human.
"My dear boy," the man said to Tag, "would you please stop that infernal dancing about? You're making me dizzy, and I'm simply not in the mood for it today."
"Just defend yourself," Tag demanded. "I don't want to kill you in cold blood."
"Girl, please," the man appealed to Ivy. But Ivy was trying to get out from under Tag's legs and reach her own weapon, a move that eventually entangled their legs and had them both in a squirming, helpless heap.
The man reached for the foil at his hip.
Gideon gently placed the bat on the man's shoulder and pressed down slightly. "Don't," he said.
"I won't."
Gideon took the foil's gilt-etched hilt and pulled the sword free, stepped back, and ordered the man to turn around. Tag immediately made feinting moves with his dagger, and Ivy scrambled to her feet and ran to Gideon's side.
"I am, as you see, right and truly outnumbered," the green man said, spreading his hands wide, his round, flushed face beaming with a smile. "May I assume that your current plan is to have me done away with?"
"Yes," Tag said delightedly.
"No," Gideon said.
"Well," the green man said, "you had best make up your minds before my men make up theirs."
"What men?" Gideon said disdainfully.
"Those men," Ivy whispered, pointing behind them to a band of similarly dressed though not so rotund woodsmen whose arrows were nocked and whose apparent skills were displayed as elaborate notches on their supple bows.
"What if I kill you first?" Gideon said.
"Then my dear and most trusted Croker will take over and kill you second." The man grinned at the symmetry of it all. "The remarkable thing about our company, don't you see, is that none of us is indispensable. I get to carry the sword because I thrashed poor Croker the last time he tried to take it. Isn't that right then, Boole?"
Croker Boole, a scrawny but well-fed youth whose bow was almost as large as he was, nodded agreeably.
"I see," Gideon said reasonably, and after a second's debate with his will to live, lowered the bat and tossed the foil onto the ground at the green man's feet. "Now what?"
"Well, first we shall rob you of all your valuables and life's possessions, since that is, after all, our trade. Then we shall tie you up and leave you for someone to come along and rescue. In a way, you can see that it's a service, can't you—we get what we want, and someone else is rewarded either here or in the grand and glorious hereafter for being kind and charitable to those who are down and out. Since you get to live, you make out as well."
"We don't have anything to steal," Ivy said sullenly.
"You have the lorra," the man pointed out.
"Over my dead body," Tag declared.
"Damnit, don't give him any options," Gideon snapped. Then he nodded, called Red over, and watched calmly as the green man approached the giant caprine, whistling softly and snapping his fingers. Red cocked his head and listened, curled his upper lip, lowered his horns, and turned his eyes black. The green man paused. Red emitted a low but easily translatable growl. The green man swept off his tricorn, wiped his brow with a sleeve, replaced the hat at a jaunty angle, and walked back.
"It appears to be more loyal than others of its breed," he said with some amazement. "I can't imagine how you managed it." He nodded to his band, who put down their weapons and gathered around. "But manage it you did, my friend, and I am well impressed by your skills."
Gideon narrowed one eye. "Your name isn't Robin, by any chance, is it?"
"Robin?" the man said, straightening his back as
if expecting an insult. "Robin, you say?"
"Yes. As in Robin Hood."
The man's eyes widened. "You know Robin?"
"Do you?" Gideon said, equally as astonished.
"No, but I've heard of him."
"No, but I've heard of him, too."
"My god, sir, then we have common ground!" He thrust out his hand. "Vorden Lain, at your service. And I do apologize for the hastiness of my men in thinking to do you harm."
"You were going to rob us," Gideon pointed out.
"But that, sir, is my lot. That lot over there has no lot save to cast their lot with mine."
Gideon rubbed the tip of his nose, decided not to ask, and introduced Tag and Ivy. The next hour, then, was spent in recounting their adventures since their fall from and to Chey; the hour or two after that was spent listening to Lain describe the history of his band of footpads and aspiring brigands and decrying the fact that Lu Wamchu had made things terribly difficult for him these days because of a disturbance among those who would send the man back to Choy with his figurative tail between his allegorical cur's legs.
Ivy, who was attempting not to strangle the man for his not-too-subtle glances in the direction of her chest, let him know that they were probably much of the cause of the unrest since they were attempting to locate a certain woman and a certain fowl.
Boole gasped and glanced uncertainly at the rest of the men.
Lain narrowed his eyes suspiciously. "You do not mean to reference the white duck, do you?"
"Of course," Ivy said. "You think I'm after a chicken?"
Lain rose suddenly and gestured to his men, brought them into a huddle, over which an occasional face rose to check on the strangers. They conferred for nearly half an hour while the sun lowered toward the distant city, but the only voices Gideon could hear were Boole's, raised in obvious dissent, and Lain's, by turns excited and calming. And when they were finished, only Lain returned to the others still seated on the grass.
"You need to get into Rayn," he said.
Ivy nodded.
"We will help you."
She was instantly wary. "Why would you want to do that? You were just trying to rob us a few hours ago."