The Sky-Blue Wolves

by S. M. Stirling

  “Lacho calad! Drego morn!”

  That was the Ranger war cry: Flame light! Flee night!

  The thing parried in a blur of steel, the familiar unmusical clang; but he didn’t seem to bleed when the edges struck him. Instead he leaked light-swallowing blackness, as if the thing inside him was swelling and oozing. Susan rolled backward and flipped herself to her feet, sweeping out her saber and dancing around to the left to get them on three sides of the . . . thing.

  That made the feeling of cold die down a little. What didn’t was a sensation of not caring. It made her fearful; how could you not care?

  I’m fighting a monster in a cave under the fortress of a demon king, she thought. But when the sun goes out, who’ll give a damn . . . does it really matter . . . is it worth the effort?

  Someone loomed in the door to the corridor. Someone huge, and a contorted tattooed face shouting as he lunged:

  “Ke mate! Ke mate!”

  She knew what that meant: It is death! It is death!

  The palm-broad head of the Maori’s spear smashed into the enemy’s back and broke out through its chest. The thing looked down at it, then threw back its head and roared. As it did the black threads vomited out, and the three companions backed and struck frantically at the tendrils lunging towards them.

  Reiko struck in the hall outside, visible in an explosion of fire. The blade of Kusanagi-no-Tsurugi passed across the half-seen, half-sensed cable of nothing that linked the man to whatever its source was. Where he had bellowed before, now he screamed; Susan could hear the physical voice among the tumult in her head, and it was agony such as she had never heard in her life.

  He turned and stumbled, still screaming, into the corridor. Then he fell. Pip was there, hammering with the silver-and-gold head of her cane at something that crawled out of his eyes, striking over and over again with hysterical vigor. The sluglike thing whimpered as she struck, crying in a voice like a baby.

  Órlaith extended the tip of the Sword of the Lady and thrust it home. The scream cut off and silence fell. The body was vacant now, just a man. Then it began to collapse in on itself, until there was only a flaccid skin lying on the stone.

  Susan leaned against the wall, panting, feeling as if a layer of wet felt had been unwrapped from around her mind. She also felt a stinging on her skin, and saw welts where spatters of . . .

  Well, it wasn’t blood, exactly, she thought.

  . . . had landed.

  “There is great evil here,” Deor said quietly.

  “You think so?” Pip half-yelled. “You think so? Do you really bloody think so? I’d never have suspected there was evil here. Sod all, we really needed a magician to figure that out at this point!”

  Toa bellowed laugher at her expression of indignation. “Let’s get on with it.”

  Reiko nodded sharply and pointed with the Grasscutter. “The . . . whatever it was I struck . . . linked the . . . man, I suppose I must say . . . in that direction.”

  “Yes,” Órlaith said in agreement. “There is a sense of . . . center-ness there. As if that was a limb, and the brain lies there.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Pip raised the cane above her head. There was more traffic in this part of the . . .

  Warren of bloody tunnels, she thought. Ant-farm of demonic minions? Holiday spa for orcs?

  Her other hand came out in the hold in place signal. The passageways were better-lit here, and better ventilated; the slight draft on her skin spoke of some sort of convection system. There were also cooking odors and a disgusting reek—the tunnels managed to be unpleasantly bare and give an impression of filth at the same time.

  The door beside her opened, and she heard the creek and wobble of casters, some sort of cart. Then more noise; it was a series of the carts moving in a convoy. Two soldiers came through first, swaggering along with their hands on their hilts and eyes rigidly front—you didn’t expect trouble when you were guarding a meal delivery in a palace. Then the carts, with open tubs of some sort of very odorous pickled cabbage and covered trays of meat.

  Heuradys d’Ath was on the other side of the door. Pip started to move, and was almost startled out of it as the knight’s sword blurred into the left-hand guard’s throat first. D’Ath was recovering into guard position even as the serrated knob of Pip’s cane smacked into the face under the other helmet. Both men collapsed limply. Pip whirled and lunged like a fencer; the knob punched the throat of the first cart’s server. The knight cut at the second, and then the third was fleeing, eyes bulging in terror and tongueless mouth gibbering.

  Pip dropped the cane and had the slingshot off her belt in the same motion. The arm-brace snapped open and the curved metal snugged home just inside her elbow; she had a ball bearing nearly the size of a golf ball in the pocket and stretched the tough rubber back as her left hand pushed forward.

  Thock.

  The ball struck the fleeing servitor in the back of the head and he dropped limply forward, face plowing into the roughened stone planks of the floor. Thora and Deor ran past them, through the swinging door where the food carts had come, and Reiko and Órlaith trotted up the sloping corridor. Pip just had time to notice . . .

  “No blood,” she said, looking down at the bodies.

  They were dead, there was no doubt about that. But she’d been cracking in faces—the blow to the face had been full-force and right into the skull just above the man’s nose—and crushing throats, while Heuradys ran the narrow point of her longsword through a throat. Yet the bodies were curiously unmarked.

  The one who’d fled was bleeding, but only where his face had struck the stone.

  “That’s damned—” Heuradys began, when Deor and Thora backed out of the kitchen-storeroom-whatever.

  The Mist Hills scop was white-faced, and Thora was holding her free hand over her mouth. Pip’s brows went up. She’d been in action or around the pair of adventurers for a year now, and she knew they were . . .

  Not squeamish. The opposite of it. Bodies don’t bother them.

  “Don’t go in there, Pip,” Thora said. “Nobody should see that, but especially not a new mother. We . . . took care of the cooks and . . . butchers.”

  Pip looked at the food-carts, and judged the size of the salver covering the main dish on each.

  “You were right, Deor,” she said; there were things you imagined that you couldn’t get out of your head either, but it was better than actually seeing. “Let’s go.”

  “They were headed this way,” Órlaith said. “That was for a lord’s banquet. It’ll give access to the hall of this place’s master.”

  * * *

  • • •

  “This is a service elevator,” Órlaith said grimly. “Everyone in!”

  “I’m not usually one for chasing down evildoers,” Pip replied; Órlaith thought she looked rather drawn. “But I’ll make an exception for this.”

  They poured in. It was a bit crowded, but only slightly so. The sides were a metal lattice showing the carved rock and cement and rusted steel of the shaft’s sides, and at the rear was a large crank sticking from a cylinder two feet across and man-tall. The cable from above ran through it, and the handle was brass worn shiny with use. Toa leaned his spear against the side, and John sheathed his sword and slung his shield over his back, and they gripped it together.

  “Annnnnnddd . . .” the prince said.

  “Go!” the Maori replied.

  Huge muscles bunched and rolled beneath the tattoos of his arms and shoulders, and he grinned a gargoyle grin of effort and pride. John’s lips were hard as he added his strength to the mix, and there was a slight lurch. The gears whined in the mechanism, and they began to rise as the two men kept up their constant motion.

  Do we really need to do this? Órlaith thought.

  Something gibbered above them. Then there was a
thud on the sheet-metal ceiling of the elevator. Everyone tensed . . . and Órlaith knew what would come of that, with the pack of wolves she had along; she threw out a hand to keep the reaction in check. Toa and her brother labored at the crank, but it went slower and slower as they strained. There were more thumps, and the metal above them began to bulge and creak.

  “I don’t know what that is, I don’t want to know, but I don’t think it likes us,” Susan said; lightly, but her teeth were bared.

  “Together,” Órlaith said, and Reiko nodded.

  They drew their weapons, and the elevator lit . . . as if they had been in darkness before, and were only now aware of it.

  “Sutoraiku!” Reiko snapped: Strike!

  The Sword of the Lady punched through the ceiling of the elevator with less effort than she would have felt with a shield-cover. The Grasscutter did the same less than a yard away. What was beyond the metal resisted; a soft feeling that was enormously dense as well. The scream that followed was entirely without sound, but the elevator shook violently; even the trained reflexes of her followers couldn’t keep all of them on their feet. Heat and light blossomed across her face, and then the motion stilled.

  When they withdrew the blades, something dripped down through the slits the Swords had cut. It wasn’t black, or any other color; more of an absence than a presence, but you could see it.

  Or at least, we can see it, as we are now. Is it like this for Deor all the time? I sincerely hope not, Órlaith thought.

  “Back! Don’t touch that!” Deor said sharply.

  “I have absolutely no desire to touch it,” Pip said sincerely. “Would you gentlemen care to get us moving again?”

  Órlaith’s breath stopped for a moment as the gears groaned beneath the strain, and then the cage lurched into motion once more. As it did there was an odor that might be decay, but wasn’t exactly like anything organic—more of a sour acidic taint, and they all felt a piercing chill. Frost blossomed on the metal above and where the . . .

  . . . whatever it is . . .

  . . . had dripped with a dry crackling, and after a while dust flowed down rather than the liquid seeming matter.

  She and the Tennō looked at each other, and Órlaith knew they shared a thought: it was time and past time that this was done.

  There’s something ahead of us. Something that’s pushing, pushing at our minds, pushing at all minds everywhere, but we’re getting closer and closer. Above us lies the heart of the enemy . . . no, not the heart. More like the brain, or the spinal cord.

  “This is right,” Reiko said. “Not the slow grinding of armies, but a single swift strike.”

  “I wish it were even swifter,” Órlaith replied.

  Not long after the elevator jarred to a halt. Egawa Noboru and Toa started to shoulder forward. Reiko put out her fan, and her hatamoto stopped in surprise.

  “Not now, my faithful bushi,” she said, tucking the tessen back in her sash and taking the Grasscutter in the two-handed grip. “The High Queen and I must lead, because of what we bear.”

  “Everyone else, follow closely,” Órlaith said. “We’re about to hit them where it hurts. If this can’t be done quickly, it can’t be done at all, so don’t stop for anything.”

  Órlaith took the long hilt of the Sword in both hands, with the point down to her rear and right, the neben stance of the ancient swordmasters, to complement Reiko’s overhead Jōdan-no-kamae. Toa leaned forward around them—and she admired the courage of it even then, to put that massive arm close to these edges—and gripped the knob that opened the sliding doors. He threw it back.

  “Morrigú!” Órlaith called, her voice an eagle’s shriek as she invoked the Battle Hag, the Threefold Doom who drove her House forward in battle.

  “Dai-Nippon Banzai!” Reiko shouted.

  The door slid back, and Órlaith saw a great antechamber. Some distant part of her mind took in a change from the inhuman bareness they’d seen below, a luxury of gilt and ornament and carving . . . but dusty and neglected, as if it was something that had been put aside, dropped, no longer of concern.

  A startled guard’s face confronted her, beneath a spiked helm—someone who’d been expecting to escort a train of food-carts. Órlaith had just enough time to realize the guard was a woman, though with nose and lips and ears removed that was hard to tell. The enemy spear drew back, and the Grasscutter whipped it to the side and struck in a curving upward stroke to the neck. Where the gift of the Sun Goddess met flesh, flesh burned.

  Ash drifted away, and armor and weapons fell and clanked on the pavement.

  More crowded forward. Órlaith struck, and ruin flopped away from the supernal keenness. They stepped forward together; their followers were behind them, Heuradys to the left of Órlaith and Egawa to Reiko’s right. A wind built behind them, mingled of fire and beams of moonlight like spears of ice. Órlaith felt herself carried beyond herself; part of her was fighting, a thing that struck and struck and struck as the enemy pressed them desperately. Part was full of a raging pity, the sorrow of the Mother of All at the pain of Her children, even these. The battle cries rose behind her, then to either side as the others fanned out in a wedge behind the two monarchs:

  “Athēnē Promachos! Alala!”

  “Ho, la, Wotan! Wotan!”

  “Thor with me! Hakkaa päälle!”

  “Saint Michael guard!”

  “Te mate! Te mate!”

  “Flame light! Flee night!”

  “Hoka hey, you bastards!”

  Shapes towered into dimness as they broke through the antechamber and into a vast vaulted space. A hammer flashed, ravens circled a single Eye, a winged warrior wielded a sword that was the blue of the sky, a tall shape held up a shield that bore a Gorgon’s head and wielded a bitter spear that pierced like understanding.

  “Morrigú!”

  * * *

  • • •

  “Toktamish!” Dzhambul exclaimed in astonishment and horror.

  His uncle started up from a bed of cushions. That was near the swollen feet of something that sat enthroned. Sprawled, for it was swollen and pale and rippling, until even the shape of humanity was lost except for the features of a face more moon-shaped than a baby’s. The face screamed through pouting lips, waving limbs tiny and plump.

  His uncle’s face was recognizable, hard and angry, but there was something trapped in his eyes, something that begged. The woman beside him snarled instead, drew a curved blade and leapt at Dzhambul. Börte surged between them, and the sabers clashed. Dzhambul’s own blade was in his hand, but he hesitated.

  “Uncle,” he said. “Let me help you—”

  “Die!” was the only reply.

  He blocked a cut to his head from his uncle’s blade and stepped into a thrust. Fighting his kinsman was like fighting himself in a mirror, the product of the same teachers. As he drove him back he saw what lay gnawed on a platter, and at last anger filled him. Cut, beat aside a downward slice at his leg, and then—

  Something leaked from his uncle’s eyes and mouth and nose and ears as Dzhambul’s curved sword slammed up under the breastbone and out his back. Hands clutched at the blade, and Toktamish staggered backward . . . but no blood flowed. The older Mongol looked down incredulously, patting at himself with his left hand, and started to giggle dreadfully. . . .

  And then looked up, up and over Dzhambul’s shoulder, and screamed:

  “Ancestor!” and turned to run; the word was horrified recognition rather than prayer.

  Shapes bounded past Dzhambul, blue fur and white fangs, hairy shoulders as tall as his. The snarling of the Sky-Blue Wolves sounded, the forefathers of the Mongol ulus, the time of legends come again. Toktamish made only a dozen steps before they were on him, and the screams died down to a gurgling and then a ripping and tearing.

  Now there was real blood, smoking on the flags and tat
tered rugs, and then it was gone along with the Wolves of Heaven.

  That was his soul, Dzhambul thought. I just saw the Ancestor’s emissaries devour a man’s soul.

  The guards were retreating, massed in front of their charge. Arrows were arching over his head as some of the others in his party unlimbered the bows cased across their back; arching towards the great pallid shape that thrashed and squealed. The skull-grinning guards flung themselves between, and fell and died—they were of the Thing, and he could see the severed cords of their connection to It recoiling as they died.

  They’re just its hands and feet, Dzhambul thought with revulsion. It is fighting us . . . but through them.

  Others grabbed the swollen shape and helped it along, on feet and legs far too small to bear its naked bulk.

  “Don’t let that thing get away!” a voice shouted; Órlaith’s, he thought.

  * * *

  • • •

  “Don’t let that thing get away!” Órlaith called. “We can’t lose it in this warren!”

  Guards threw themselves between their master and the attackers, with a courage she would have admired if there had been more of humanity in their eyes. Órlaith cut, and cut . . . and bodies died, though she suspected their souls had long since. Behind them doors opened in the monolithic stone that backed the throne, graven with symbols that she could have read with the Sword’s help, but desperately did not want to understand. The pale shape bawled and sobbed as arrows were plucked out of it, but it could not, would not die so. The doors began to swing shut again in their faces.

  “Strike!” Órlaith shouted in her turn.

  She and Reiko did, ignoring the black-dripping steel that threatened them as the last rearguards died trying to keep them from the gates.

  The Swords struck together.

  The doors froze for an instant, as the glyphs on them glowed like black pearls in a universe of blackness. Órlaith felt a weight heavier than worlds against her arms, constriction like steel bands squeezing at her head and chest. Reiko strained by her side. Forces balanced for a long moment, and then both of them gave an endless shout and something yielded. It felt the way a cord did as it stretched and then snapped, but one that might have upheld a world.