Guardians of the Flame - Legacy

by Joel Rosenberg

  Walter's group headed into the water; the four silently swam away toward the island.

  Karl turned to the dwarf. "Looks like it's just the three of us for a moment. Ten, you keep your eyes on the trail. Ahira, you want to keep watch to the east, or to the west?"

  Ahira shrugged. "Dealer's choice." He clasped Karl's hand, hard, with one hand, while he hefted his axe with the other. "It has been too long."

  * * *

  It felt like hours, but it couldn't have been much more than half an hour later when Slovotsky and Ganness returned, pushing the floating sacks.

  With Ahira and Tennetty watching for possible slaver patrols, Karl waded thigh-deep into the water and helped Ganness and Slovotsky drag the explosives up on the beach and back up to the treeline, then helped Walter and Ahira assemble a dozen sticks, detonators, and igniters into a dozen bombs.

  The big man and the dwarf disappeared into the night.

  Tennetty sighed.

  "Save it for later," Karl said. "And keep an eye open." He turned to the captain. "As far as assembling the bombs goes, it's you and me, Captain Ganness," Karl said.

  "Captain Crenn—" Ganness caught himself, and gave an almost Gallic shrug. "Ahh . . . it makes no difference, I suppose."

  Karl looked over the path. He mainly had to go by a memory of what it looked like in the daytime, but there was a little dogleg about thirty yards in; that would be a fine place for the ambush, when the slavers were sent charging down the path.

  But first things first.

  "Ganness, were you watching when I assembled the bombs for Walter and Ahira?"

  "I could do it," Tennetty put in.

  "Shut up. Just keep your eyes open. Ganness?"

  Ganness spat. "No. I've been too busy trembling to watch, if you must know."

  "Do what I do. It's not difficult." He beckoned to Ganness. "First, you take a stick of explosive, carefully—easy, easy; this stuff would just as soon blow up on you as not—and stick one of these metal things in the end. That's a detonator. Then this thing that looks like a match—I mean, then this other thing. You stick that in the other end."

  The mixture on the end of the fuse was mainly gunpowder; the detonators were fulminate of mercury; the explosive itself was guncotton, nitrocellulose. Karl had first used these bombs against slaver cannons, but he had avoided making more since the end of the Holtun-Bieme war. Until Ranella's new wash had gotten rid of impurities in the guncotton—if indeed it had—the stuff had been too unstable to leave around for long.

  The British had fooled around with guncotton too early; deadly explosions had forced them back to black powder for years and years. Better to have to make the transition only once.

  Ganness spat on his palms, rubbed them nervously together, and knelt next to Karl. He reached out his hands, then drew them back. "No." The captain rose, shaking his head. "No. A man has to say no sometime. I won't do it, I won't do it. This kind of magic frightens me, Karl Cullinane, and I won't have any part in it." Ganness folded his arms over his chest.

  "You're not thinking of abandoning us, are you?" Karl said in a low, cold voice, forcing a grim smile to his face. It was intended to chill the blood.

  It worked. Even in the starlight, Ganness visibly paled. "No, no," the captain protested. "But I don't want to touch that. That's all."

  Karl shrugged. "Then you keep watch to the west. While I finish."

  While Ganness kept watch, Karl assembled the bombs. He was only halfway done when Tennetty spoke up.

  "Karl, I heard—"

  Something whizzed by Karl's ear.

  Tennetty's word turned into a harsh scream as she looked down at the crossbow bolt projecting from her belly; drooling blood, she fell writhing to the sands.

  A harsh voice whispered, "Ta havath, Karl Cullinane. If you move, you die."

  Two large men stepped out of the darkness. Each carried a slung rifle and an unslung crossbow, the nearer reloading his with a fresh bolt.

  Avair Ganness turned toward Karl, his face even paler than before. "I was looking, Karl Cullinane, but—"

  "Silence," one of the men hissed. "Karl Cullinane, step away from there, and set that device on the sands, then stand back. Or you may fight us and die here and now. It doesn't matter." He spared his companion a brief grin. "We've gotten him, Chuzet."

  "Just be careful. Do what he says now, Karl Cullinane. Or die now." The slaver gave a half-shrug. It didn't matter to him.

  "Let me get some healing draughts into her, first," Karl said. "The bottle is in the bag over there."

  Tennetty was almost motionless, her eyes staring glassily up at him. But even in the starlight he could see the pulse beat in her neck.

  "No. I'll put her out of her misery, if you like. But put the device down now, or die now."

  Play for time, he thought. There wasn't anything else to do; these two looked like they knew what they were doing.

  Karl took three slow steps away from the explosive and then crouched to set the bomb gingerly down on the sand in front of him.

  "Now, Chutfale? May I?"

  "Now. Stand up and move away from there, Karl Cullinane."

  Chuzet pulled a horn from his pouch, brought it to his lips, and blew. The horn shrilled a pure note into the night.

  The clear, pure sound chilled Karl Cullinane quite thoroughly.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT:

  The Cutting Edge

  I begin to regard the death and mangling of a couple of thousand men as a small affair, a kind of morning dash—and it may be well that we become so hardened.

  —William Tecumseh Sherman

  The blast of the horn shattered Jason's light sleep.

  He hadn't wanted to sleep, but there wasn't anything else to do until some opportunity to do something constructive presented itself.

  Hervian's squad was billeted with the rest of the company in one of the larger Mel feasting lodges; even so, it was cramped. The arch-framed building was really meant to serve as a place for an extended family of perhaps fifty to cook, eat, and drink in close quarters; there was barely enough room for the hundred-plus sleeping places. If a quarter of the company wasn't always on duty, it would have been like being back on shipboard, but at least they hadn't gone to some sort of hot-bed system here.

  It also stank. Of shit, piss, sweat, and fear.

  His campaign of terror was having an effect; the mercenaries huddled together like a bunch of sheep on a cold night.

  The horn sounded again, as Jason sat upright with a start, the almost motionless snoring bodies around him transforming into a flurry of motion.

  "The horn! They got him—"

  "Just give me my gun. It may be a false alarm—"

  "—or it could be some trick by that murdering pig."

  "Don't start counting your bonus money until—"

  "Get yer foot off my scabbard, you pocked bastard, or I'll feed you your balls—"

  A lantern flared, bright, at the entrance to the lodge.

  The loud basso voice of Ahod Channar, the company's commander, boomed through the noise. "Silence, everyone," the slaver shouted, punctuating his words with a thump of his staff against the entrance arch. "We have all heard the horn. It may mean that we are finished here, or it may mean that things are just starting. I want everyone up and awake. I want the weapons loaded, and all outside right now; we'll wait for information and orders before doing anything else."

  Pelius, who had apparently slept fully dressed, hefted his rifle and leaned over toward Jason, who was busy strapping on his swordbelt. "Which means that we're as disorganized as usual," he whispered. "I bet we don't get fed until morning."

  Pelius had the usual mercenary's primary and continuing concern: his stomach. The tall, lanky man always seemed to feel he was at least two meals behind.

  To give credit to Channar, Jason had noticed his preoccupation with getting his men fed at frequent intervals. Jason suspected that Ahrmin didn't care any more for the bellies of his hired mercena
ries than for their necks; quite probably all there was of the cripple's plan was to let Karl hack the hired hands to bits until Ahrmin's hunters got lucky and brought their man down.

  "I bet we don't get fed until morning," Pelius repeated. "What do you think?"

  "I don't know," Jason said, cursing himself as his voice trembled, then realizing that a demonstration of fear wasn't going to blow his cover; he was supposed to be scared.

  "How about ammo and food?" a voice cried out. "I've only got the one flask—"

  "Silence, I said!" Ahod Channar considered it for a moment. "Kakkum—take your squad, go to the armory, and retrieve an additional basic load for each man. As for food . . . Hervian, since your squad has been so damn talkative, you can help the cook build up the fire and bring food to the company."

  * * *

  Parts of the forest had been canopied over too thoroughly for even Walter Slovotsky's extraordinary—for a human—night vision to cope with, but Ahira's darksight was able to pierce the gloom, leading him down paths that Slovotsky could barely feel.

  Even under these limited circumstances, for Ahira to be better than he was like somebody else fitting better into his clothes, or exciting Kirah more in bed than he could.

  Walter Slovotsky was amused at how much he found that he really didn't like the feeling. On a night skulk, he was supposed to be unequaled, much less unsurpassed. He shook his head. Oh, what fools these mortals be, he thought, including me. He could almost have laughed; Walter was always his own best audience.

  As the trees thinned, the path lightened ahead of them, black touched with gray.

  Indicating with a touch that Ahira should lag behind, Slovotsky took the lead. Now, this was definitely his kind of thing. It wouldn't be possible to move through the underbrush without making a sound, but the paths were a different matter. The slavers would post a guard on all even theoretically possible approaches to the camp, even a too-dark path.

  Where was the guard? That was the question. And were there many backups? Karl's little war of nerves with the slavers would have them all on edge.

  Walter Slovotsky crept forward, looking and listening.

  A single clear note sounded through the night. There were a few seconds of silence, and then it sounded again.

  Up ahead, rough voices talked in hushed tones.

  "You heard the horn. It's supposed to mean that they have him. We'd better get back to camp—"

  "We can stay here on guard until we're relieved, or Ahrmin will feed us our fingers. And that isn't a figure of speech. Now shut up."

  Karl captured? Maybe that's what the horn was supposed to mean, and maybe it meant something entirely different. Ahira's fingers touched his wrist; Walter knelt so the dwarf could whisper to him.

  Ahira's breath was warm on his ear. "I think we continue. You?"

  Slovotsky didn't like any of this. But following through with their part of the plan had to make sense, and God help them all if Bren and Aeia, or Karl, Tennetty, and Ganness, weren't able to do their jobs.

  "Yeah," Slovotsky whispered. He pulled a pair of garrotes from his pouch, handing one to Ahira, hefting the other himself. "We continue."

  Maybe his feeding you your fingers isn't a figure of speech, but neither is "I'll choke you to death."

  * * *

  The camp was a maze of activity, save for Ahrmin's tent and the brothel cabin. Those two were quiet, the slaves apparently secured, only a single guard outside. And he, like everyone else, was watching the approaches to the village, not worrying about his charges.

  Next to Jason, by the now-roaring cookfire, Hervian shook his head, his face sweaty in the light of the built-up cooking fire. "I don't see how we can serve stew," he said, looking at the big iron pot. "We'd have to collect all the bowls, spoon it out, then see that the bowls got back to their owners."

  It was a different kind of organization than Home used, more primitive, less efficient. On a Home raiding team, there would be warriors responsible for cooking and serving food and seeing that bowls and eating utensils were gathered up and washed. Here, although there was a central cooking fire and a hired cook, serving was a bit of every-man-for-himself.

  "Then it will have to be bread and ham," Doria said, her face dry, unsweaty. She gestured at the rough stone oven. "The bread's in there; you can hand it out." She looked from one to the other. "Taren, you can help me cut the ham," she said, lifting a lantern and walking into the darkness of the small hut that was the camp's larder.

  "You, too, Vikat," Hervian said, loading lanky Pelius' arms with the hot, round, flat loaves of brown bread. "Help the two of them."

  Vikat led the way inside.

  Hanging from ropes suspended from an arching bamboo framing member were a dozen hams, as well as long brown ropes of braided strips of jerked beef.

  One of the hams had been carved almost to the bone. Doria took up a butcher's knife and seemed to consider it for a moment before moving to the next one and scraping at the green mold that encased it.

  "Hurry up, old woman," Vikat said. "We don't have all night—fighting could break out at any time."

  Doria raised a finger to her lips as she glanced toward the doorway, and then nodded at Jason. "Then give me a hand. Now."

  Now? he thought.

  She nodded. "Definitely now."

  But . . . he set his rifle down and approached Vikat from the rear.

  Walter Slovotsky had once shown him the grip, and Valeran had vouched for its usefulness; Jason snaked his left arm around the slaver's throat and locked his right arm against the back of Vikat's neck, squeezing before Vikat could utter a sound, only relaxing his grip well after he'd slid the other to the ground, although Vikat went limp almost instantly.

  Jason used a strand of rawhide to tie Vikat's thumbs tightly together behind his back while Doria gagged him.

  "He could choke on that," Jason whispered.

  "So?" Doria looked at him from an impassive, flat face. "When Ahrmin leaves his lodge, he's going to cross the doorway. Just hope that that's soon, before somebody notices that the boy here is missing."

  "But—" But what? But Vikat, like Hervian, had treated Jason well? Did that matter? Didn't that have to matter?

  He looked down at the form of the man he had spent days on patrol with, eating with, even laughing with. Vikat was sort of a friend; Jason couldn't just slaughter him like a pig.

  "You can object to killing slavers after you've been raped by one, little boy," Doria said, her voice, although pitched low, sharp and clear. "No. After a dozen have taken their turns on you."

  He turned.

  The guise of an overweight old woman was gone; Doria stood next to him in her white robes. There was a majestic quality in her bearing as she drew herself up straight; it was the carriage of someone who proudly endured pressure beyond what she had thought she could.

  "Doria—"

  "Come here." She knelt next to a pile of rags in the corner of the tent and produced Jason's rifle, pistol, and the leather pouch containing his powder horn and other shooting supplies. "Quickly now, load. You won't have a second chance, and you're not going to be as accurate with a slaver rifle."

  Across the cooking fire from the larder, Felius, the larger of Ahrmin's blocky bodyguards, was standing in front of the large lodge, his rifle held in front of him, shadows flickering across his face in the firelight.

  As he tipped a measured load down the rifle's barrel and then tamped it down, Jason realized with a shock that it had been only a few minutes since the alarm had sounded. Ahrmin was probably still gathering his wits, deciding what kind of patrol to send out to bring in the hunters' catch.

  Or, probably, deciding if it was a Karl Cullinane trap.

  He might well have caught the hunters, Jason realized as he wrapped a ball in a hastily cut spit patch, then rammed it home, reflexively replacing his ramrod in its slot underneath the rifle. If he did, he might well force one to give the success signal, and decoy some slavers into a trap befor
e running and striking again later.

  Please, Father, let it be so.

  If not, everything rested on Jason's shoulders. Those shoulders had already proved far too weak.

  Jason primed the pan, then snapped it shut and turned to load his pistols, going by touch, his eyes on the compound beyond.

  Ahrmin's other bodyguard emerged from the lodge, a horn held in his hands. He blew a staccato question into the night, and was immediately answered by three pure, clear notes.

  The man raised his fist and shook it over his head as he shouted in triumph, "We have him! We have him!"

  Ahrmin emerged from his cabin and stepped into the firelight.

  Before, Jason had been surprised at how innocuous Ahrmin had seemed: a crippled little man, huddling in his slaver's robes.

  Now, he seemed to gain bulk and strength as he drew himself up straight in the firelight and turned to face the company.

  Lit by the raging central campfire, his face was demonic; his single eye seemed to burn with an inner fire.

  "Brothers, friends, and companions," Ahrmin called out, his voice carrying farther, more powerfully than it had any right to. "We have triumphed. That is Chuzet's horn, and the note is too clear, too calm, the signal coming too quickly for me to believe that he is acting under threat. We will send out—"

  "Now!" Doria hissed. "Shoot him now!"

  Only one pistol was loaded; Jason cocked it and set it on the ground, then took up his rifle, momentarily running his hand down the smooth stock. He put his thumb on the brass hammer and pulled it back, cocking the piece.

  Jason brought the rifle up and caught Ahrmin in his sights.

  The crippled slaver seemed to wrap himself in power as Jason stood there, a darkness creeping in from the edges of his vision as the world seemed narrowed to just Ahrmin.

  Half supported by his bodyguard, Ahrmin turned the remains of the right side of his face toward Jason.