Hel looked at me then, eyes blazing, burning into my own for a heartbeat before snapping back to her intended targets. She screeched something in the Gamla Toonkumowl, and the air between us shimmered like a soap bubble.
A shield… I wanted to laugh aloud. She’d put up a buffer between us to ward away bullets.
The two groups of blue flankers closed in a pincer movement and blocked my lines of sight to the ones goading Hel. With a cry that set my teeth on edge, they fell on Hel from behind, serrated blades raised.
I unloaded both pistols into their backs, and though blood splashed the ground and I saw some of them stagger, none of them fell or stopped their advance.
“Hel!” I screamed at the top of my voice.
Luka crashed out of the forest behind the group that had been goading the Dark Queen, fifteen feet of furious oolfur, fangs and talons flashing as he set upon the small blue forms. Half a heartbeat later, Mothi sprinted out of the trees, screaming as if he were insane, swinging his axes, and Yowrnsaxa sprinted by his side, her vicious short sword drawn and already bloodied—no doubt in a battle back in the trees. Mothi and his mother swept down on the far group of flankers, and I turned my attention to the closest group, firing both pistols again and again. I was doing damage, but the damage was being mitigated somehow.
“Hank! Look out!” cried Frikka.
I glanced in her direction—just in time to see the three small blue bodies leaping at me. I tried to dodge, tried to duck, but against three acrobats, it was no use. They slammed into me, one hitting me across the thighs like the best flying tackle the NFL never saw. The others hit me higher, one slamming a hard foot into my right wrist and the other torpedoing me in the left bicep with his head. Both pistols went flying, and I fell into a heap of biting blue mouths, chopping blue hands, and kicking blue feet.
“Puppies, no!” Sig screamed from somewhere hidden in the trees.
Keri and Fretyi came out of nowhere, snarling and leaping. They each grabbed a limb of a different Plowir Medn and first shook them viciously, then flung them away. The last of the little blue men was all over me, hitting, kicking, scratching, biting like a banshee. I did my best, but in close-fighting, and on the ground no less, the short blue warrior had all the advantages.
His hands slashed at my eye, and his feet pummeled my thighs, kicking my legs out from under me every time I tried to get to my feet or leverage myself on top of him. He seemed to be everywhere at once.
And then he was gone—flying through the air holding his stomach, wearing a stricken look on his face. An invisible hand grasped my shoulder and pulled me up.
“Okay now, Hank?” asked Yowtgayrr’s disembodied voice.
I stood with my hands on my knees, breathing hard. “A little dizzy.” Something warm ran down my cheeks, and my heart gave a little fluttery jerk as the blood dripped to the ground beneath me. “Where is everyone?”
“Safe for the time being. If we can keep these Plowir Medn from calling more of their kind, we may—”
“SISTER!” The word rolled across the sky, the grinding, basso roar of an earthquake crossed with a humanoid voice.
I shut my eye, knowing who it was. “Mirkur,” I breathed. “We can’t stay here,” I said louder. “Into the trees! Everyone into the trees! RUN!”
My voice echoed through the trees for a moment, then was drowned out by booming laughter. Something streaked down from the sky, seeming to suck all the available light into itself—like a blackhole turned meteor.
“Run!” I gasped, gaze darting around in a frenzy, looking for my guns.
The blackhole-meteor slammed into the earth twenty yards away. A black mist swirled around the impact area, and the laughter continued unabated.
Fear unraveled in my guts, icy hot streaks of it slicing through my bowels into my chest and head. Where are they? a small, childlike voice in the back of my head screeched. Where is Kunknir? Krati? Fighting panic, I abandoned the search for my guns and looked for the two varkr pups that had adopted me instead.
They were close by, ripping and shredding at the Plowir Medn they took turns holding pinned to the ground. Each puppy seemed to have grown, easily more than a match for the slight blue men they fought.
“Keri, Fretyi! To me!” I cried. “Everyone run!”
“Agreement! Flee!” Mirkur laughed all the harder.
I shot a glance toward the place the meteor had impacted. Like a fog burning away in the morning sun, the swirling stygian mist faded into the background, revealing Mirkur’s dreamslice reflection.
He stood seven or eight feet tall, humanoid arms and legs in perfect symmetry, his radiant, ebony skin unblemished and unbroken by eyes or any other distinguishing features. He resembled a man wrapped head-to-toe in shiny black vinyl.
Pulling the puppies with me, I dashed for the woods. I hated leaving my pistols, but what other choice was there? Besides being ripped out of existence, I mean.
The others were dashing into the trees ahead of me. Hel had changed from bear-form to deer-form—her long legs ate the distance to the trees, her doe-like upper body gleaming with sweat. Luka flung away one last broken body of a Plowir Medn and with a snarl at Mirkur, turned and dashed after the Dark Queen. The Isir were already gone, and I had to hope the Alfar were too—I had the feeling their stealth would be no match for Mirkur.
“Brother!” yelled Owraythu, sounding far away in the forest.
“At the Conflux!” he yelled, his eyes never leaving me, marking my progress. “Negation,” he said. “You, this one shall converse with!” He strode toward me, the picture of an angry father going to discipline his child.
Something shrieked, and a flurry of brown wings dove on Mirkur from out of Iktrasitl’s branches. Tindur ripped at the Plauinn with his huge talons, snapped at him with his huge, sharp beak. He flew in tight circles, slashing, biting, gliding away, only to return moments later for more of the same.
I didn’t know if he could damage Mirkur, I only knew it was the break I needed. I turned and sprinted into the trees, Keri and Fretyi padding at my side. Without my pistols, there was nothing else I could do.
Behind us, Mirkur screamed in fury, and Tindur squawked. Ratatoskr added his chittering to the fray. Blue shapes snapped and twisted through the trees to my sides, and my companions bounded through the forest ahead of me.
Time after time, my hands fell to my hips, seeking the pistols that were not there as a target presented itself. Althyof’s trowba came to me on the wind, and energy suffused my body and mind. I chanted the triblinkr that split my animus, and peeled the two raven-shaped forms away, sending one to the rear, to hover high above the glade containing Iktrasitl, and teleporting the other to the clouds above with a thought.
From the clouds, the entire area was beginning to look like a smoke-filled war zone. Long gouges rent the forest’s canopy, ragged tears in green velvet. In the glade dominated by Iktrasitl, black and blue forms battled Tindur and Ratatoskr, the latter swollen up to the size of a bull. The two icons dodged and ducked, twisted and turned, leapt and loped as they attacked the interlopers or defended themselves. Owraythu was nowhere to be seen, and I couldn’t decide if that fact relieved or frightened me anew.
I matched Tindur’s size with the raven I’d sent to Iktrasitl and joined the massive eagle in his twisting pattern of tearing at Mirkur or flinging a Plowir Medn high into the air. Tindur cawed a greeting as I did so.
Ahead of me, more and more blue bodies twitched and popped out of thin air, all accompanied by the butcher’s sound of dismemberment. Hundreds of them poured into the woods until I could hardly look in any direction without seeing ten of them.
I picked one at random and pointed at him. “Syow echkert!” I called, blinding him. I pointed at another—a woman this time. “Hayrthu echkert!” Deafening the little blue woman seemed to do nothing, so I blinded her as well.
I winged my way to the north, where I’d last seen Owraythu, staying high up and adopting the purplish-black of the an
gry cloud cover. The forest below me was silent, dead. No trees exploded, no Plowir Medn danced among the trees. Where is Owraythu? I wondered.
Mirkur shouted in rage, and with a wave of his hand, sent Tindur rolling and tumbling to the ground. He swept the glade with an angry glare and strode toward the path I’d taken into the woods.
I dove at him again and again, but he ignored me. I flew in front of him, stretching my wings wide and slamming them together with his head in between. He waved his hand, and with a pop, both my ravens disappeared.
I staggered with momentary disorientation as my consciousness reintegrated against my will. Two Plowir Medn stepped from behind a tree in front of me, and the air between us filled with discordant phrases and atonal singing and my vision swam with it. The noise grated along my cochlear nerve, making my whole face itch. I staggered to a stop, and the puppies whined, swiping at their faces with their front paws.
I glared at the two blue men and yelled, “Thun!” But instead of falling silent, their faces distended with hideous grins and their eyes twinkled with evil glee. Again, I pawed at the holsters on my hips, forgetting my pistols were gone in my haste to stop those hideous sounds. I cried out, slapping my hands to my ears, squeezing my eyelids shut and driving away the tears that pooled in my eye sockets.
The hideous sounds stopped mid-syllable. With a sigh of relief, I peeled back my eyelids. Yowtgayrr stood between the corpses of the Plowir Medn that had accosted me, his weapons dripping with their azure blood. He had decapitated one of the tiny blue men, and the other bore savage stab wounds through his neck.
“Thanks,” I called, stumbling into a jog toward him.
He nodded and sheathed his long dagger. He dug Kunknir from his belt and tossed it my direction.
I caught the pistol in my right hand, unconsciously wiping away the dirt. “Did you find Krati?”
Yowtgayrr shook his head. “Skowvithr has it, I think. He’s ahead of us.” His eyes darted over my shoulders and widened with alarm.
I racked Kunknir’s slide, functioning on automatic, ensuring there was a live round chambered, and spun, sinking into a low crouch. A hundred yards behind us, Mirkur stomped through the woods.
“We must flee, Hank,” said Yowtgayrr.
I nodded and snapped Kunknir into firing position. I fired it dry and grimaced at the effect the bullets had on Mirkur.
The black-swathed form didn’t even wince. In fact, he didn’t seem to notice being shot, he just kept moving inexorably toward us.
I spun on my heels and broke into a sprint, calling for the varkr pups to stick by me. I thumbed the release, ejecting the magazine into the clever pouch Prokkr had crafted for me. My last loaded magazine stood at attention, and I slid Kunknir down over it. “I need to reload,” I hissed.
“No time for that,” said Yowtgayrr. “For now, conserve your ammunition. Use your cloak and let’s try to lose Mirkur through guile.”
“The pups—”
“Leave them to me.” Yowtgayrr tucked his shoulder and snapped into an acrobatic tumble, ending up with a varkr puppy under each arm. He scrawled his spidery runes in the air and faded from sight. “The cloak!” he hissed.
“Vakt!” I whispered, and my fettle twisted out of phase. I darted away, moving from tree trunk to tree trunk, making sure I was behind a thick ash tree when I came back into phase. Through it all, I had that ants-on-my-shoulder-blades feeling, as if Mirkur’s eyes never left my back.
I darted a glance around the tree, and Mirkur was staring right at me. Cloak won’t work! My mind shot around in circles, and my gaze flitted from tree to shadow to tree. There was nowhere I could hide, nowhere I could run without Mirkur seeing me.
Think! I screamed in my mind. Think of something! I found Kunknir in my hand, but that was no use against Mirkur! I slammed it back in the holster and ducked my head out again.
Mirkur had cut his distance by half and walked toward me at a steady pace, but without haste. Behind him, a group of Plowir Medn pointed at the tree I hid behind and laughed.
Wait a minute! Behind him! A smile cracked through the fearful expression that seemed chiseled into my cheeks. I spun a proo into existence and moved its exit point behind and fifty yards to the left of the Plowir Medn. This would be the real test of whether or not the Plauinn could see my preer.
I activated my cloak and touched the proo, appearing as a cloud of smoke and ducking behind another tree, behind Mirkur and his annoying blue friends. I closed the proo and streaked away on a course perpendicular to Mirkur’s path. My fettle untwisted before I found cover again, but neither Mirkur nor the Plowir Medn were looking my way—they were too intent on the tree I’d hidden behind.
With a grin, I ran on, not yet turning, wanting to put more distance between myself and Mirkur. I spun another proo and flicked its exit ahead of me, using the same method Hel and I had used to increase our speed. When I came out of the proo, something felt wrong. Without second-guessing it, I twitched my cloak and disappeared into a cloud of smoke. I glanced behind me. Mirkur had reached the tree and bellowed with rage when I wasn’t behind it. He spun, his eyes scouring the forest nearby.
Still out of phase, I created a proo and tossed the exit as far away from me as I could, then sprang through it. As I came out of the proo, Mirkur screamed again, and I ducked behind another fat ash tree—just in time as it turned out, as the effect of the cloak wore off moments later.
I crouched and peered around the tree, keeping my head low, my body behind the masking mass of the tree trunk.
Mirkur stomped back and forth, kicking at leaves, exploding tree trunks with a wave of his hand, and yelling incoherently at the Plowir Medn. The blue men began to chant, and with that disgusting wet pop, they teleported away—one by one.
I turned and sprinted away, keeping the tree between Mirkur and me. I gazed into the woods, looking for a place to put a proo. A Plowir Medn appeared in front of me, facing away, but I had no time to react, and I bowled him over, barely keeping my feet.
He cried out in that slippery language of the blue men.
Without waiting, I formed the proo and hurled it as deep into the shadows created by the trees as I could and stepped through it. I closed it and triggered my cloak.
This won’t work forever! I had to come up with something besides running, ducking behind trees, and teleporting away. I could leave the Conflux, but without my family and friends, that wasn’t going to happen.
Then it hit me.
With a feral grin burning on my lips, I turned and stared at the Plowir Medn I’d sent sprawling a moment before. They were short, much shorter than I was, but they didn’t wear uniforms, which made it easier. Under my breath, I chanted the doppelgänger triblinkr from my grimoire—the one that let me adopt the form of another—while staring at the blue-skinned creature.
The prayteenk whipped through me, wreaking havoc on my systems. My bones ached with the speed of it, and my muscles shrieked in agony. When it finished, my clothes hung off me like a clown suit, and I had to grab the gun belt to keep it from ringing my ankles.
I squatted and rolled my pants legs up to keep them from tripping me. The cloak would have to trail out behind me, and the mail shirt would flap around like a tent around a toothpick, but there was nothing I could do about that either. The hat was the worst—it tried to slide down over my face every other nanosecond…but then I recalled what it was for, and let it happen, squeezing my good eye shut and enjoying the three-hundred-sixty-degree vision Althyof had enchanted into it.
I stepped out from behind the tree, hand on Kunknir’s butt, but left the pistol in the holster. This was the test, and if it didn't fool the other blue man, I could draw and shoot in no time flat.
The little guy I’d knocked down sat on the forest floor, legs splayed, arms supporting his torso, shaking his head as if to clear it. His gaze swam past me and came rolling back, but no alarm flashed in his eyes, though he cocked his head to the side. He warbled something at me, and I shrugg
ed, turning my back and walking away into the forest.
He called something at my retreating back, and I waved a hand as if I were too busy to talk to him. I fought the urge to look over my shoulder, knowing it would look suspicious. I walked on with the muscles between my shoulder blades twitching.
When I did look, the Plowir Medn had disappeared. I grinned and kept walking, trying to look as if I owned the place and had every right to be there.
Fatigue scratched away at my mind and seared my muscles, but I kept walking farther into the forest. I no longer heard Mirkur and saw fewer and fewer blue-skinned men and women. At the same time, I had no idea where my friends were, no idea which way to run.
I stopped and spent a few moments resting, trying to gain my bearings, and trying to decide what to do next. While I stood there, the soft, wet pop of dislocating joints sounded behind me. I turned to see a Plowir Medn female standing there gazing at me with suspicion.
She trilled something at me in a piping voice—something that felt like three thousand slugs wiggling in my ear canals—and stared at me, the expectation of my immediate compliance showing in the lines of her face, her eyes.
My hand fell to the butt of Kunknir, and her eyes followed the movement. When her gaze returned to mine, her eyes burned with amazement and mischief, in equal proportion. I could shoot her, but the noise would carry in the forest, and I had no idea if I could kill her before she alerted another of her kind. Despair swam in my blood, and a cold lethargy stole over me.
She spoke again, cocking her head to the side. She pointed at Kunknir and cackled, then held out her hand as if she expected me to give it to her.
I looked at her palm before meeting her gaze again, seeing only iron in her eyes.
She snapped her fingers impatiently.
I glanced around, hoping to see Yowtgayrr or Skowvithr materializing close by, but we appeared to be alone.
She snapped her fingers again and barked something that sounded imperious and impatient.
What can I do? If she thinks I’m handing over my weapon… I took my hand off the pistol and lifted it, palm out, shaking my head.
Blood of the Isir Omnibus Page 137