Blood River Down

by Lionel Fenn

  And when it rose on several of its hind legs, Gideon caught a glimpse of blacklight flaring off claws thin enough to be razors.

  "Nothing to be afraid of," Whale assured him, plucking one of the bombs from his pouch.

  "What the hell is it?"

  Red lowered his head and pawed at the ground, adding to the dust clouds that hovered around them.

  "If memory serves, an ant."

  Gideon snatched the bomb from the old man's hand and stepped to Red's side. "You've got to be kidding!"

  "At a time like this?"

  Gideon lobbed the ball without aiming to the top of the hill and turned away as it exploded. Vorden, who hadn't been warned, threw himself to the ground and rediscovered the foxhole; Ivy, however, only brushed off the twigs that showered around her and snatched at Tag, who had decided he wanted to join Croker's band instead.

  When the dust cleared, the creature was gone.

  "It's gone," Gideon said with a grin.

  "Right," Ivy said, whirling around when the ant appeared behind them.

  Tag ducked as a leg awkwardly tried to decapitate him, cutting wildly with his dagger and shouting his surprise when the leg came off neatly and thudded to the ground. The creature roared again, but this time at the loss of a second leg to Ivy's swift weapon. Vorden, who had seen the ant's vulnerability, took foil to hand and proceeded to slice away, ducking nimbly away from the claws as he reached Ivy's side and laughed. She glared at him and took another leg. Tag jabbed at the thing's exposed stomach, then raced around to its back to bedevil it there.

  "What the hell kind of thing is that?" Gideon said.

  "Stupid," Whale told him after Red lowered his horns and charged.

  "You think we ought to help?"

  Whale pointed at his chest. "Too old. I could be killed."

  Gideon felt as if he should be doing something, but the ant was the one in trouble, not his friends. They were standing knee deep in furry limbs, still fighting, and the longer they attacked, the slower the ant moved.

  "Why doesn't it disappear, the way it did before?"

  Whale shrugged. "I told you it was stupid."

  But not so stupid that it didn't, finally, whip one remaining claw around and slash it across Tag's chest. The lad screamed and fell back into a bush, and Ivy cried out, leaving Vorden to drag the boy off to one side. Immediately, Gideon put bat in hand and ran forward, just as the gallant woodsman saw his shoulder opened to the bone.

  Stupid? Gideon thought, cocking the bat and letting fly against the ant's abdomen; stupid enough to have a few dozen pairs of false legs, that's how stupid it was.

  The ant staggered under the blow, and a fair portion of its chest cavity caved in.

  Gideon struck again at its supporting legs, and it began to topple, slowly enough for him to back out of the way, not slow enough to allow Vorden to crawl out of its path. It landed directly atop him.

  And broke in half.

  Gideon wiped a hand over his eyes, not only to clear them of a sudden rush of perspiration, but also to watch as both halves of the ant seemed to crumple to dust, leaving behind a creature no taller than his shin. It darted into the trees before he could smash it, its bellow no less loud but rather ludicrous now.

  Whale, pouch in hand, ran to Tag while Gideon brushed off the remains of the ant's camouflage from Vorden and did his best to bind the wound, wincing at the blood and at the man's pale face.

  "Hurt bad?"

  Vorden managed a brave smile. "Like hell, what do you think?"

  "Whale'll be here in a minute."

  The ground darkened with blood, and Vorden's eyelids began to flutter. Gideon demanded help at the top of his voice, yet had to be shoved aside when the armorer arrived with his balms and medications. He had to watch despite the queasiness in his stomach. He had to know that the woodsman would be all right, and he had to know that even in this place it was possible for someone to die. It had nearly happened to him, but he'd never given much thought to it happening to any of his friends.

  An hour passed.

  Ivy sat on the ground with Tag's head in her lap, wiping his face and scolding him lightly for being so clumsy.

  Whale had done what he could with Vorden, assured Gideon the man would be well enough to travel the next day, all things considered and if they weren't killed first, and then walked to the top of the hill. Slowly. Agedly. Scratching his head and talking angrily to himself. Gideon followed a few minutes later.

  "I'm sorry I yelled at you," he said, putting a hand on the other's shoulder.

  Whale lifted a hand and let it drop to his side. "I wish I knew how to make jokes."

  "I don't know if it would help, now."

  "I suppose you're right. It certainly won't help them," and he pointed behind Gideon, who turned and got his first look at Umbrel.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  "If Glorian is down there," said Gideon, "she's crazy."

  Umbrel squatted beneath the grey sky in a deep valley whose slopes were barren, whose fields were dust, and whose bleak, colorless features were relieved only by the garish east-west flow of the Blood, in such a contrast that the whole looked to him like some festering wound.

  And a second look showed him it wasn't a city at all, but a single sprawling building broken by open corridors very much like streets that connected each of what he supposed were rooms in such a haphazard fashion that maps were surely needed to find one place or another. It was virtually formless. Its components were low and square and made entirely of stone, and the hallways meandered, some stopping at a blank wall, others winding maze-like until they were lost among the others. And unlike Rayn, there were no colors visible, no pennants or flags or hints of flowers. It was a dark unshaded grey, relentless in its sameness from the tiles in the halls to the low wall that did its best to surround the unguided sprawl. A single narrow road broke out of the forest below and to their left, entered the palace through open gates that even from this distance appeared more rusted than solid, and somehow made its way to the back, where it straightened again and stretched to the farthest slope. Monsters hunkered there with folded black wings, no two hideous faces alike, claws dug into the stone, flat black eyes watching the treeless plains around them.

  "Damnedest place I ever saw," he said with a shake of his head. "It's hard to believe someone could actually live there."

  "I wouldn't really call it living."

  Gideon nodded and thought with a wry smile what a challenge something like Umbrel would have been for his sister. Monica Freeman the actress had always been a frustrated decorator, interior or otherwise, and though she had never touched his own home, she had done wonders with many others. So much so that she made it a policy never to return to the scene of her triumphs lest she find that the Philistines had invaded during the night.

  Slowly, then, they walked back to the others. Tag was sitting up against a tree, wincing at the pull of his healing injury and trying to keep Ivy from fussing. Vorden, on the other hand, was already on his feet, complaining about the rip in his immaculate green jerkin; his arm was in a makeshift sling, his face was still pale, but he didn't seem as near to death as he had been an hour before. And one by one they made their way to the hilltop, when they saw the look on Gideon's face, returned, and sat glumly around a pitfire Whale had somehow managed to coax into life beneath the spreading branches of what could only be a willow that substituted sobbing for weeping.

  A slight wind rattled the branches, and the ground dust stirred without rising.

  An ant roared a mating call in the distance.

  "I honest to god don't see how we can do it," Gideon said at last, resting his head wearily against Red's side and stroking the lorra's foreleg absently. "I really don't. This isn't Rayn by a long shot. There are bound to be a zillion guards like those... those things down there. And they definitely don't look as stupid as a Moglar."

  "I agree," Ivy said with a brisk nod. "And if you want my advice, we'll start back for home. If w
e hurry, we'll be there in time for the party."

  "What party?"

  "The annual Handicraft and Nuptial Fair," she said eagerly. "An event no one misses, that's for sure."

  "Except the bachelors," Whale told her with a grin.

  She scowled. "I still think it's a good idea. We were stupid to come this far, if you ask me."

  "And what about Glorian?" Gideon said quietly.

  "Why do you always have to bring her up?" she demanded, slapping an angry hand on her thigh. "Hasn't she caused enough trouble already?"

  "I sort of thought she was the point of all this," he said without looking at Whale.

  "The point is," Ivy said, "that we not get killed, that's what the point is. We can't do her or us any good at all if we're not around to take care of things. God!"

  Tag wrinkled his nose at her and swiftly, if painfully, drew a diagram in the dust with the point of his dagger. "That's silly and you know it. What we should do is put a man here, here, here, here, here, and here. At a signal—maybe Gideon can do it—we climb over the walls, rush to where Glorian is, kill those garks—"

  "Garks?" Gideon said.

  "Sure. The guards on the wall are called garks. Haven't you heard of them?"

  "Not until now."

  "They're easy," he said confidently. "You can take them without any trouble at all."

  "They have wings, Tag."

  "So you duck. No problem. Then I'll get Glorian, Gideon'll take the duck, and Whale can blow the place to smithereens. We can't take any prisoners, but that doesn't matter. They wouldn't want to come, anyway. Then Ivy will—"

  "Not," she said. "Ivy will stay here and watch you all get slaughtered."

  "Jeez," the lad pouted. "You never want to do anything."

  "What about it?" Gideon asked Vorden. "What do you think?"

  The woodsman shrugged his good shoulder. "I would like to see my son again, it's true and I shall not deny it, but I had hoped it would be in a place rather more hospitable than this. Something of the old gloom about it, wouldn't you say?"

  Whale, when he was asked, offered no opinion save to say that he was in an awkward position, chasing after the man who had, after all, taught him everything he knew.

  Hell of a teacher, Gideon thought sourly, and suggested they have another look at the place to seek out its weak points, find its Achilles' heel, hunt for the underbelly as a place to strike. Tag was all for it, though he reminded them that all the best generals didn't waste time worrying about their men; they just went ahead and did it and wrote their memoirs later.

  Vorden, claiming weariness from the effects of the battle with the camouflaged ant, remained behind and, when Gideon knelt by the fire to drop more twigs into the pit, asked him what he thought.

  "You really want to know?"

  "It's the polite thing to do."

  He grinned. "Well, to be honest, what I really want is to go home, fix my pantry wall, have a good stiff drink, and then go get a job as a sportscaster on some lousy little station that never heard of me or football. That shouldn't be too hard to find. They do it for baseball players all the time."

  Vorden frowned his puzzlement. "What's baseball?"

  "A game."

  "Have you played it?"

  "When I was a kid. Never professionally."

  "And what was your profession?"

  "Football."

  "What's football?"

  "Exactly," he said, and sat back with Red to listen to the others on their return begin their arguments again. By the time the sun had set, Whale was proposing an undercover assault while Ivy was demanding first crack at plucking the duck and Tag was using as many trees as he could reach to demonstrate the best way to demoralize a gark. Several times the boy and Ivy nearly came to blows, and Gideon sighed as he scratched the lorra between its ears.

  "Y'know," he said, "I am not optimistic."

  Red, who had eaten the last of the berries, belched.

  On the other hand, he thought glumly, I don't know if I could just up and leave if a Bridge came along. Not now, anyway. After all, someone had to teach Tag a little restraint without diminishing his enthusiasm, and Whale, for all his flakiness, wasn't quite as dim as he made out to be, and Ivy... He sighed again and watched as she stalked back and forth along the path, gesticulating, debating, once taking her braid and slamming Tag across the head. He was more than a little flattered that her jealousy—and he wasn't stupid enough to think that it wasn't—tended to save more than her own skin. But suppose there was no conflict, no danger, no threat to life and limb and the avid pursuit of healthy breathing? Would she care then? And did he care enough to find out if she really cared?

  Jesus, he thought, these quest things are a bitch.

  Finally, as the last of the medicines were applied to Lain and the boy in order to hasten their healing, Whale prevailed, though not without a certain amount of dissatisfaction.

  "A slave?" Ivy said, choking as a result of trying to keep her voice down. "The hell I will."

  "But my dear, it won't look right otherwise, don't you see? What good is a reputable slavemaster if he doesn't have at least one delectable female to offer to the bidders?"

  "Over my dead body," she declared, and demanded with a look that Gideon defend her.

  He, however, wasn't so sure about his own role. It reminded him too much of his quarterback days, when every season he was aware that his contract—and his body along with it—was up for grabs for anyone who needed someone to hold the end of the bench down. It was, to be sure, demeaning, ego-damaging, morale-squelching, and at the same time a part of the game. It never occurred to him until now that "slave" was also a good word for what he was. Paid well, but ultimately a trading-block slab of living meat that was—

  He stopped before he slit his own throat.

  "Well, I think it's a capital idea," Vorden said with a snap of his fingers. "I'm not so sure I'll be much good at the groveling and fawning parts, but I think I can give it a good try if that's what we need."

  "No," Ivy said. "No. And no. And in case you weren't listening, no."

  "You're just mad because you're not down there instead of Glorian," Tag said.

  "What?"

  "Sure. If you were down there and Glorian was up here, then Gideon would be after you, not her."

  Gideon checked on the condition of his leg.

  "Tag," she said, leaning toward him with her fingers clenched, "if Glorian was up here and I was down there, there would be no need for you or anyone else to go down there because you'd have what you wanted up here."

  "Say, Tag," Gideon said.

  "You keep out of this," Ivy told him.

  "Well, you are," Tag insisted.

  "I most certainly am not."

  "Are too."

  "Am not!"

  "Jesus!" Gideon exploded. "What's the big goddamned deal, huh? For god's sake, it's only until we get inside. It isn't like it's going to be forever."

  Ivy folded her arms across her chest. "Then why can't I be the slavemaster?"

  "Because I am," Whale said simply. "It was my idea, and I'm too old to be a slave. You, Gideon, the others, are young and healthy enough to make it work. My goodness."

  "It's demeaning," she said, though less firmly.

  "It's only for a while, child."

  "It's sexist."

  Gideon blinked.

  "It's my wish," the armorer said gently.

  Ivy took a deep breath, held it, released it, and reluctantly nodded as she rose and walked up the path toward the hilltop. Gideon followed after a few moments and took her arm. She did not protest. And in the pallid moonlight they looked down on the darkened city.

  "Why are you so nervous?" he asked.

  "I'm not," she said, her lie too evident to be comfortable.

  He let it pass; to go further would be to invite confidences he did not think he was ready to accept or willing to share.

  "And what about that 'sexist' remark?"

  "What about it?
"

  "I don't know. It just seems to me that this doesn't seem the right place for it. I don't mean the situation," he said to her puzzled look. "I mean, this world of yours. That's a my-world kind of word. Where did you hear it?"

  "Around," she said with a shrug.

  "Around where?"

  "Around Glorian, if you must know," she answered testily. "She was always talking about the rights I'm supposed to have, and how men are always taking them away from me."

  "Do they?"

  "How should I know? I didn't know what the hell she was talking about."

  They stayed for a few minutes more. Then Ivy suddenly leaned over and kissed his cheek, snarled at him to be sure he didn't take it the wrong way, and hurried back to the fire.

  Gideon watched Umbrel.

  And for the first time in days he saw the red eyes watching him.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Shortly after what passed for dawn in this seldom traveled part of the Middle Ground, Whale asked for permission to ride Red, which was given with a doubtful nod of the lorra's head. Makeshift chains had been improvised from vines Vorden had discovered under a suspiciously dead tree, and once all had been tenuously linked to a central strand Whale held in his left hand, they were off.

  Halfway down the slope, Tag asked a question: "What about the wives?"

  They stopped as one, quickly considered as many answers and implications as they could, and immediately returned to camp. Once there, the armorer attempted to convince them that despite all the powers exhibited in Rayn against their persons, prescience wasn't one of them. They were almost perfectly safe as long as they weren't in eyeshot of the three women. When Gideon reminded him sourly that Thong and Chou-Li seemed to have damn good eyes, he was told that the women, diabolically and perhaps even preternaturally clever as they were, could not see through walls. The light-bolt was meant to cause an earthquake. It did. They could have been anywhere in the vicinity and still have been affected.

  "And the ice critters?"

  Whale shrugged; he could not, after all, be expected to know everything.