by David Drake
Neal looked around the company, holding an arrow between two fingers to his bow's handgrip. He seemed to have recovered from his shock at losing Alfdan. "You other archers," he said in a commanding voice. "Nock an arrow and get ready. Dalin, your bow's not strung! String it, man! Do you want to die?"
The rim of violet light rotated slowly like a bit boring through wood. The center of the circle remained gray, but it was becoming paler and increasingly translucent even as the edge solidified into what looked like shimmering purple metal.
Old Burness knelt and started whimpering. He had a hunting spear with a broad engraved head and a crossbar below it to keep a maddened boar from running his body up the shaft and gutting the man who'd speared him. Even rusty it was an effective weapon-but not in Burness' hands.
Neal must've thought the same thing. He caught Sharina's eye, then snapped, "Franca, trade that spear you've got with Burness. Quick now!"
Franca's spear was actually the head and two feet of shaft from a weapon broken in the fight with the fauns. The youth looked startled. He started toward Burness, then paused in doubt.
"Burness!" Neal said. "Now! Give your spear to somebody who'll use it!"
"Franca, take it," Sharina said. "I need you by me."
In her heart she didn't feel she needed anything: she was about to die, and there wasn't room for any other awareness. Franca hesitated no longer; he snatched away the boar spear and pressed the stub shaft of his own into Burness' hand. The older man stood up, hugging the exiguous weapon. He continued to sniffle, but at least he looked willing to defend himself.
The center of the disk of light had become soap-bubble thin. Figures waited beyond it, some of them beasts and the others bestial at least from the distortion.
The membrane vanished as though it never was. "Kill!" screamed Sharina as she lunged forward. She hadn't had the least intention of giving that battlecry until she and the moment merged.
A thing with the forequarters of a lion and lizard haunches leaped to meet her. It wore iron gauntlets whose tips were knives.
"Kill!" cried Beard and Sharina together, and their mutual stroke split the creature's flat skull like an eggshell. It arched its back as violently as a catapult releasing, lifting Sharina into the air. An arrow from behind her grazed her left calf, then vanished down the gullet of the froglike creature waiting with its huge jaws open. That was probably chance, but it was a lucky chance for her…
Sharina came down in the midst of monsters. She wouldn't have been able to stand upright were it not for the crowd of enemies. She swung-Beardswung; the steel killer's own volition guided it-right and left. The edge ripped apart an octopus on human legs, and the axe in recovering spiked the temple of a faun like the ones who'd attacked Alfdan's band on the shore of Barca's Hamlet.
In the space cleared by the falling monsters, Sharina spun widdershins on the balls of her feet, using Beard's narrow blade like a scythe. There was a shower of sparks as the axe sheared through scales, fangs, and the iron carapace of a creature that looked like a giant helmet walking on crabs' legs. She felt no resistance to the blow. Blood and ichor gouted as monsters collapsed or fell apart.
Beard laughed like a demon. The axewas a demon, as horrible and far more deadly than the thing with a hedgehog's face and hands like balls of needles which he beheaded at the end of his circular sweep. Beard washer demon for now, and at this juncture she'd willingly take him against all the saints who ever lived.
"Save the mistress!" cried Franca in a voice as squeaky as a six-year-old's. He rammed his boar spear into the throat of a snake crawling on hundreds of tiny legs as it struck at Sharina. The creature writhed onto its back, fanged jaws working convulsively and spraying a mist of saffron poison.
Men and monsters battled behind Sharina. Toward her came a spider the size of a haywain. It walked on long glass legs; its body was either clear or dazzling with prismatic reflections, depending on the angle of the light. Its mandibles clicked against one another, dripping green venom from their tips.
"Blood and brains!" Beard shrieked. "Blood and-"
Sharina swung the axe high, using the full length of her arms and both hands on the helve. The reasoning part of her mind wondered if Beard wouldn't shatter on the glittering thing the way an ordinary axe would break if driven into a granite cliff.
Reason didn't control Sharina's actions at this instant. She was filled with the same bloodlust that Beard caroled as his bright steel face shed ropes of blood. As the spider reached for her with its forelegs, she smashed the axe into the middle of the creature's flat face.
A flash of crimson wizardlight pierced the ice in all directions. It illuminated both the sea bottom and cloud-huge bladders with dangling tentacles which swam through the sky above the ceiling of coruscance. The spider disintegrated into shimmering dust finer than jeweler's rouge.
The corridor ahead was empty save for a small man or woman sauntering toward them from a furlong away. Sharina looked behind her, at carnage. Half the band was down, dead or crippled, and all the survivors except her were bleeding.
Burness was dead; his blackened, bloated body was almost unrecognizable. He'd lost his grip on the half-spear in his final convulsions. The man-sized creature that killed him, a black-and-red striped wasp walking on its hind legs, lay nearby. The short shaft stuck out of its faceted right eye.
Scoggin and Franca were both alive, though the older man had been stabbed or bitten through the left shoulder. Franca'd packed the wound with a portion of Burness' silk sash and was wrapping it with the rest of the sash to hold the wad in. The youth showed a deft hand for basic wound dressing.
Sharina reached down to rub the inside of her right calf, then looked at what she was doing and giggled. She was bleeding after all, though not badly. The arrow'd broken the skin and the cut itched like fury.
Her giggle became a loud chuckle. If the wound were worse-if the arrow'd smashed a bone, say-she'd have been in shock and wouldn't feel any discomfort.
"What do we do now, mistress?" Neal asked. Blood matted the left side of his scalp, but his eyes focused and his voice was firm. Instead of his bow he held a sledge hammer, its shaft forged from the same piece of iron as the head. Sharina hadn't seen the weapon before; one of the slaughtered monsters must have carried it.
"We'll continue up this corridor," Sharina said, speaking firmly to give the impression she knew what she was doing. Though in a manner of speaking, shedid know: either they went on or they went back, and 'back' meant an ice desert where the only life was hostile to men. "I think we'd better get going at once, before She sends something else against us."
"She's already sent something, mistress," said Beard in a dreamy, sated voice. "See him coming? His name's Tanus."
Sharina turned again to the figure she'd discounted in the immediate aftermath of the battle. Tanus was now within fifty feet, a pale youth with short blond hair and a supercilious grin.
Sharina's eyes narrowed. She couldn't be sure ofhow close Tanus was because the tabard he wore over his tunics was woven in a pattern that didn't allow her eyes to focus. In his right hand was a curved knife with a silvery blade. It looked like a ceremonial tool, but the blood smearing it was so fresh that it still dripped.
"You're one of Count Lascarg's children, aren't you?" Sharina said. She recalled the face, but without Beard's identification she'd have had to guess whether the androgynous features were male or female. "What are you doing here?"
"I'm here to kill you," Tanus said in a thin, childish voice. "I'm going to kill you all."
"Tell the Sister that!" said Werbeg on a rising intonation. He took two steps forward and flung his javelin at Tanus' chest with all his strength. When the missile left his hand the point was almost in contact with the youth. It missed, clattering down the ice corridor.
Tanus laughed. He slashed at Werbeg, cutting his throat in the middle of a scream of terror.
Neal snarled and brought the hammer around in a horizontal stroke that should have torn Tanus
in half. The force of the blow saved Neal's life by jerking him to the side when the sledge didn't connect. The youth's knife opened the skin over his back ribs instead of gutting him.
Sharina moved without thinking, swinging Beard high. Tanus faced her with an expression of ecstasy. She saw his moon-bladed knife sliding toward her belly. The axe twisted in her hands, keen edge slanting away from the grinning face of the youth who was about to kill her.
The thunk! of contact surprised her. Beard had split the youth's skull down to the bridge of his nose.
Sharina waggled the helve in a reflex she'd learned since she came to this world. The axe came free, slobbering joyfully. Tanus crumpled to his knees and fell backward. When his tabard rucked up, she could see him clearly; but not until then.
"Oh, it's been a long time since Beard fed on wizard brains!" the axe said. "Oh, mistress, you're so good to Beard!"
Sharina felt a wash of dizziness as if her mind were a flag in the breeze. The things that'd just happened didn't touch her-now. But they would. She'd done things before which came back to her in the third watch of the night, when dawn was a distant hope and past horrors ruled the darkness.
A slim, blond youth was dead and she'd killed him. She didn't regret what she'd done, but she regretted very much what she'd had to do.
"Lady, may the soul of Tanus find peace in You," she whispered. "And may the souls of those who kill in Your name find peace as well."
"Mistress?" said Neal, his face contorted with pain as Franca bandaged his shallow wound. "Down there, the way the, this one-"
His boot spurned Tanus' body; it was already rigid because of the way Beard had split the youth's brain.
"-came at us. There's more people."
Sharina looked up. She squinted, but even so she couldn't tell more than that there were figures. They didn't seem far away, but the rippling azure light within the walls of this corridor distorted vision.
"All right," Sharina said, slanting Beard's helve over her shoulder for the time being. Her arms were tired, her soul was tired, but she knew the axe would be ready to strike no matter how she carried him. "We'll deal with them next."
Some of Beard's personality was entering hers. For the present, that was desirable-and she no longer believed in a personal future.
Sharina started forward, resigned to death but unconcerned about it. She and her demon companion had more strokes to give the forces of Evil before that happened.
***
Roaring blue wizardlight left Ilna blind and deaf, but she could still feel. The winged men's fingers were short but as strong as whalebone; they held her arms like crabs' pincers, hard enough to cut the skin. Then the creatures released her and she fell.
She threw out her hands to catch herself, wondering as she did whether the Rua had dropped her into the pool of boiling sulfur or if there was a worse place than that. At this instant Ilna couldn't imagine a more unpleasant death than the sulfur, but she'd seen enough of the world to know that it could always get worse.
The globe of blue light surrounding her sucked in and vanished. Her feet landed inches below, on bare rock at the edge of a dead volcano. The slope stretched down before her, its red-brown surface pitted and gullied by the rain. The shallow sea ran up on the shore and spewed foam. The water was the ultramarine hue of yarn dyed with eggplant peel.
Chalcus dropped beside her, his sword lifted and his left arm thrown back for balance. He crouched, sweeping his head right and left, taking in all his surroundings.
The Rua who'd dragged Ilna through the topaz lens hovered just beyond the rim of the cliff, their translucent vans bowed to catch the updraft. Chalcus thrust at the nearer of the pair; she canted her wings a trifle and ballooned up beyond reach of the curved sword.
"We are allies, Ilna os-Kenset!" cried her mate. His voice was squeaky and piercing, but perfectly understandable even over the moan of the wind.
Hundreds of the winged men soared and wheeled in the sky overhead, some of them so high that the wispy clouds blurred their shrunken outlines. Ilna looked behind her. The cone's outer slope was a harsh cliff only spotted with vegetation, but grass and gnarled shrubs with gray leaves covered the far side of the crater's sheltered interior.
"Take us back to where we belong, then!" Ilna said. She grimaced to hear the words, then quickly corrected herself with, "Take us back to where we were."
She knew by now that she didn't belong anywhere. This windswept cliff hadn't much to recommend it, but considered by itself it was an improvement on Gaur's stinking dungeon.
"We will return you to your world, sister," said the female Rua, sliding sideways through the air so that she hung closer to Ilna but remained well beyond reach of Chalcus' blade. "But first we must talk."
"The only right you have to ask that is that we're completely in your power, not so?" said Chalcus in a ringing voice.
He laughed and sheathed his sword in a curving gesture as graceful as a fish leaping, then went on, "Which is a right I've asserted too often myself to deny to another. If Mistress Ilna will bear with me, I'm interested to hear what you winged folk have to say."
"All right," said Ilna. "I don't mind having the smell of Gaur's den washed out of my nose. But we have business in the place we came from."
She pointed to the ground beside her. "Come," she said. "Land. You may be comfortable fluttering out there, but I'm not comfortable watching you. And besides, I want to get out of this wind!"
The noose that served Ilna also as a sash had burned in a pool of sulfur with Gaur. The updraft would lift her tunics completely over her head if she didn't fight them down. In addition to distracting her, the loss of dignity made Ilna furious-the more so because she realized how absurd the concern was under the circumstances.
The Rua landed in perfect concert, the male on the other side of Chalcus and the female beside Ilna. With their wings folded to their sides they looked like walking skeletons, though they were nearly the height of the human pair.
"You brought us here to talk," Ilna said, backing from the cliff edge and smoothing her tunics. Three steps toward the interior of the crater there was still wind, but it was no longer an uprushing torrent. "Talk then."
She supposed she sounded curt and unfriendly, but she'd never been good at pretense. The Rua had brought her here for their own reasons. Those might be perfectly good reasons, but the fact didn't require that Ilna pretend an affection for the winged men that she didn't feel.
"You killed the wizard Gaur, mistress," the female said. "He was your enemy and our enemy as well. Will you now kill Her? She is a greater enemy to your world and our world and all worlds of the cosmos!"
"Who do you mean by Her?" Ilna said. She was on edge both from fatigue and the emotions seething through her during the struggle with the wolfman. "If you can't make sense, then send us back!"
She deliberately turned and walked toward the opposite slope to look into the crater. When she looked down at a slant the inner wall looked as green as a meadow, though Ilna knew that the vegetation was actually quite sparse. It grew only where dirt collected in pockets of the rock. There were beehive-shaped dwellings with windows of some translucent material in walls of shaped stone, but there were no fields or grazing animals. This would be good country for goats…
"She is a great wizard, mistress," said the male Rua. "Her world is freezing because of the power She drains from it with her wizardry."
"She is reaching into our world and yours, mistress," said the female. "She will destroy both worlds and destroy all worlds, unless you stop Her."
Ilna turned to them again, scowling in frustration. "But why are you telling me this?" she snapped. "You're the wizards. I suppose we'll help-I'll help, that is-"
"We both will help as we can, indeed," said Chalcus with a little bow to the female. The Rua were almost hairless; the female's breasts were flat, distinguishable only because they softened the ridges of the flight muscles so prominent on the male. "But I think that Mistress Ilna
will be far the greater help; and the pair of you think so as well."
"We are wizards, yes," the male chirped in perfectly formed syllables. "But we could not overcome Gaur. How could we hope to overcome Her?"
"She moved the shoals where the belemites grow from our world to yours, mistress," continued the female, "to bring wealth to her disciple Gaur. Without the shell, the wings of our kits-"
Both Rua spread their wings. They unfolded like fans, narrow strips of skin as fine as sea foam alternating with struts of denser material that shimmered like nacre in the sunlight. Ilna remembered the belemites' similar rainbow hues.
"-do not harden."
"We could not wrest our shoals back from Her grip," said the male. As he spoke, his struts clicked together in sequence, folding and stretching the skin between each pair. Ilna nodded in appreciation of the muscular control required to do that. "We could only open a gateway to your world so we could continue to hunt the shell our kits must have. And for our strength, even holding the gateway open was a struggle."
"Dear heart…?" said Chalcus. Instead of pointing, he nodded outward. The Rua looked toward the sea also, turning their heads without moving their torsos. Ilna could understand the importance of so flexible a neck to a flying creature, but it was disconcerting to watch.
She sniffed in irritation at herself and let her eyes follow the line of Chalcus' gaze to a monster undulating through the sea. Only the top of its great head showed above the surface, but because the pale water was so clear she could see the whole line of the creature's snakelike body. It was as long as a warship. When it turned its flat head toward the land and opened its jaws, Ilna could see individual teeth.
"The thing that attacked Garric's ship," she said. "The whale."
"She sent that creature's mate to your world to aid minions of Hers," the male Rua said.
"Not Gaur but others," added the female. "Your enemies but not ours, save that all who serve Her are the enemies of all who do not."
"It seems, dear heart," said Chalcus with a lifted eyebrow, "that whoever She may be, She's brought us into this fight."