Chicks - Did You Say Chicks Part 15

Starhawk ran the horse's reins through the ropes that wrapped one of the barrels piled outside the hospital tent, and pulled down her saddlebags. "Don't tell me you've got another wizard in the city." Two years ago the troop, of which Starhawk had once been second in command, had the misfortune to have a curse placed on it during a siege. The results had not been pleasant for anyone.

Butcher scratched her short-cropped graying hair, and led the way into the tent. Inside, her two apprentices were closing the flaps and lighting lamps. A slave came past with dishes of porridge on a tray. A couple of meres from one of the smaller troops, as well as those of Captain Ari's army, were sitting up in their cots; but n.o.body who looked like soldiers of the Prince of Chare, who'd hired them.

Elsewhere a man muttered in drugged pain. Here on theGwarlPeninsula , where the trade-routes ran from Ciselfarge and points east, there was plenty of access to opium.

"I don't think it's a wizard." The physician led the way through the aisle of cots to a curtained-off rear corner of the tent. "But sure as pox there's something going on. Take a look at this."

An enormous woman rose from beside the cot as Butcher led the Hawk through the curtains. Starhawk nodded a greeting.

"Battlesow here found him," explained Butcher. "They were on watch together, night before last. They usually watched together." She brought the hanging lamp down close, and twitched the sheet back.

Starhawk said, "Mother Pusbucket!" and stepped away.

"We don't know what did that." Battlesow had a small girl's sweet, lisping voice, faintly absurd in most circ.u.mstances. It was hard with anger now. "He was lying with his back against the roots of an oak-tree, with his sword in one hand and his dagger in the other."

"I have them in the other room." Butcher stepped forward, covered over the scabbed and puckered horror again. "We cleaned him up-he was still breathing-" Starhawk shuddered at the thought. "-But there was blood all over the weapons, old blood, like you find in week-old corpses. You've seen some weird things, since you and Sun Wolf left the troop and started mucking around with wizardry. You ever seen anything like that?"

"Sure." The Hawk gazed down at the outline of the distorted face, the sticky rings of dabbled blood visible beneath the sheet. "Last time I saw the bottom of a boat that had been bored through by worms.

But those holes were the size of my finger, not my wrist."

"I've been asking." Butcher led the way along what had probably been a farm-path. The sheathed glow of her lantern bobbed on charred tree-stumps, burned and ruined hedges, and here and there the smashed-in ruins of a house or a barn. Horran was a prosperous little trading port, Starhawk recalled from her own mercenary days, the major source of income for the Prince of Chare. She'd heard in Kedwyr that the Prince had recently hired Ari of Wrynde-Sun Wolfs successor to the command of the troop-to help convince the Horran town fathers not to declare independence. These, she guessed,would have been the garden farms that supplied the city dwellers with fresh vegetables and milk. The Mother only knew where their owners were. Probably sitting in the hills waiting to see who would win.

"According to latrine rumor, five outpost guards have disappeared in the past eight days," Butcher went on. "This morning I made a little tour of the perimeter-nearly getting shot by both sides for my trouble-and found three bodies in the cellar of a farmhouse. They were too chewed-up for me to tell much. Rats, mostly, but some of the wounds didn't look like rats, or like any animal I've ever seen. They were jammed up under the floor-joists."

"That where we're going now?" Starhawk had her sword in her hand, watching all around her, only half listening to what Butcher said, and to the heavy scrunch of Battlesow's boots on the path behind her. It would help a lot, she reflected, if she knew what she was listening for.

It would help even more if Sun Wolf hadn't gone off to look for that little old lady in theKanwedMountains who was supposed to braid love-charms out of moonlight. They were quite clearly up against magic here, and even Sun Wolfs unschooled powers would be of more use than the swords of the doughtiest mercenaries. Love-charms were easily manufactured anyway: you just wrapped a piece of paper bearing the words "I love you" around ten or twelve gold pieces, and there you were. In an emergency you could dispense with the paper.

"There's going to be a sortie through here tomorrow night," explained Battlesow's breathless little soprano. "There's a watchtower right over that way, guarding a postern. You're taking your life in your hands anywhere in here by daylight."

"If there's something hiding out in these ruins," said Butcher, "I for one don't want to see-" She stopped, holding up her hand for silence.

Starhawk smelled the thing before she saw it. The stench of old blood and maggots, of dust and burned hair; the stink of rat-p.i.s.s and grimy beggar-rags. It seemed to come from everywhere, disorienting, drowning the night-if she hadn't been aware that the wind was onsh.o.r.e she would have thought it was only the stink of the city under siege. There was a sound, too, just briefly: a clicking, knocking clatter squis.h.i.+ly m.u.f.fled.

Then a whitish blur near a barn's broken wall.

Butcher brought her mouth almost to Starhawk's ear. "It's got someone."

Starhawk looked again, straining to see in the starlight. After a moment she signed the other two to stay close, and moved towards the place. Butcher generally didn't carry a sword but she could use one, and had strapped hers on for the occasion. Battlesow had, in addition to her four-foot broadsword Daffodil, a halberd with cross-guards on the blade like a boar-spear's, and an iron war-club that could have brained a horse. Before leaving Butcher's tent all three women had geared up with what meres called dogfight leathers, armbands and collars bristling with spikes, mailed gloves and scouting-weight cuira.s.ses of leather and plate. Starhawk reflected uneasily that the outpost guard she'd seen at the infirmary had almost certainly worn something similar. It was unlikely he'd taken it off for a scratch and been ambushed at just precisely the wrong moment, oh darn.

The bam had been burned during the initial fighting around the walls; roof and rafters had fallen in. In the Gwarl they usually dug root cellars underneath the barns. If the thing was seeking a lair it- They came around the corner of the wall and it was there. It struck unbelievably fast, Starhawk slas.h.i.+ng for the dripping pits where eyes had once been. Itwas worms, she thought: they burst through the curtain of filthy rags that covered the squirming globby flesh, huge as serpents, their round reddish heads groping blind. She pivoted sidelong-the thing faced around and as Battlesow rammed it back with the halberd, it opened its mouth and extruded something that looked like a maggot the size of a hosepipe, snapping and reaching. It had hands, though, human or once-human, like the head. They grabbed the halberd's shaft and wrenched it free of Battlesow's grip-Battlesow who could break a cow's neck with a punch-and lunged at the big woman. Nothing daunted, Battlesow waded in with a leather-wrapped and mail-shod right hook that sent the creature spinning into the night.

Starhawk and Butcher closed up on either side of their friend, fast, a triangle facing three ways out.

Three swords, three daggers ready-not that swords or daggers had done the outpost guards a whole lot of good. Starhawk panted with shock and exertion, the adrenaline-rush of combat making her hands shake, but for a long time the dense blue-black shadows around them were still, chancy in the glimmer of the stars.

"Holy pox and cow-pies," said Battlesow, and leaned from the spiked defensive ring to pick up the lantern. Starhawk smelled the rank cheap oil and realized that the stench of the creature had faded.

"And Ari's still getting guys willing to stand perimeter guard out here?" Starhawk shook her head. "I underestimated his powers of persuasion-or overestimated the intelligence of some of the guys in the troop, I'm not sure which." She settled into flanking position behind Butcher as the physician followed the dribbled slime-trail the thing had left, back towards the barn. "Does Prince Chare know about this?"

"Ari brought him into the infirmary this morning, while the guy you saw was still alive. Chare kept talking about resistance fighters from the countryside and what horrible weapons they carried that could do that, and how we'll all just have to be more careful."

"Weapons my a.s.s. Yike!" she added, as Battlesow slipped the lantern-slide and raised the lantern to throw yellow light into the root-cellar before them. "He can't be one of ours," she added, studying the youthful, snub-nosed face-what could be seen of it under the blood-and the expensive if tattered clothing.

Butcher shook her head. "Look at his hands. He was somebody's clerk, or a student. He isn't even wearing a sword, look. Poor sap must have just been walking home." She looked around her at the darkness. "What the h.e.l.lisit, Hawk? Sun Wolfs been learning hoodoo for two years now, and that things hoodoo if I ever saw it."

"I'm guessing it's a wight of some sort," said Starhawk. "According to the books the Chief picked up in Vorsal they're usually hungry like that. When they meld into corpses they often have some kind of vague memories or thoughts picked up from the brain of the corpse, but they're not bright enough to take orders or anything. And if itisa wight, we'd better make ourselves scarce, because wights are-"

Her hand flipped up for silence and in the same instant, it seemed, Butcher rapped shut the lantern-slide.

The three warriors pressed automatically back against the wall and slid along it, getting clear of the boy's corpse, swords held low in the shadows beside them but ready again.

The stink of the wight was like drowning in rotting glue.

White movement where the starlight struck, in front of the ruined barn. A vast obscene wriggling underthe filthy shroud. Bony hands groping over the ground.

Battlesow leaned to breathe in Starhawk's ear, starlight slipping over the shaved curve of her head, the glister of the five-carat diamond in her earlobe. "What's it looking for?"

"Probably," breathed Starhawk back, "its teeth." She'd seen several go flying when Battlesow decked the wight.

The bony fingers fumbled something up from the mud, traveled to the s...o...b..ry mouth. Then back to the earth, picking at pebbles, old nails, miscellaneous animal-bones and snail-sh.e.l.ls. Looking more closely, Starhawk saw how the thing's head was wrapped in a sort of dirty turban, beneath which wisps of hair hung down, faded in the blanched light like frost-painted gra.s.s. Butcher raised her sword a little-she could amputate a leg in fifteen seconds-and Starhawk touched her hand, and shook her head.

"Cutting it to pieces won't help," she breathed. "It'll still come after us."

"If this situation gets any better I'll burst into song. Where's Sun Wolf when you need him?"

"Where's any man when you need him?" muttered Battlesow.

The wight froze.

Pox rot it, thought Starhawk,it heard us.

It was on its feet then and turning, not towards them but in the direction of the black crumbled debris of what had been the main farm building, as two figures emerged from the darkness. One stepped forward, lifting a halberd-a woman, the Hawk identified it, by the movement more than by the dim glimpse of trailing braids-and the wight fell on the newcomer, knocking her down and aside with the force of its rush. The second figure, also female though both were clad as men in breeches, tunics, and boots, sprang to her companions defense, slas.h.i.+ng with another halberd, a weapon whose length and leverage were often chosen to compensate for a woman's lighter weight and shorter reach.

Drawn off its first victim, the wight whirled upon the second, and by that time Battlesow, Butcher, and Star-hawk had reached the struggling group. Disregarding all Starhawk's warnings about dismemberment Battlesow plowed in like a demented woodchopper on has.h.i.+sh, Daffodil rising and falling in time to battle-cries like the shrill barking of a very small dog. Wriggling, serpent-sized maggots flew and splacked on the damp earth; one brown-gummed bony hand whirled away and crawled spider-wise into the ruins. Mewing and pawing, the wight backed off and fled; Starhawk and Butcher had to grab Battlesow to keep her from following it into the darkness.

"Stinking thing." Battlesow spit after it. "That'll teach it."

"It won't," pointed out Starhawk. "They don't learn. They just come back. Indefinitely. Whatever you do to them, they incorporate into themselves. Absorb it, and make it part of their attack."

"I was married to a man like that once," remarked Butcher.

They turned back. The tubulate, serpent-like growths had already crawled away from the ruined dooryard. One of the two newcomer women gave over trying to help her friend to her feet and sprang up herself, grabbing her halberd and bracing herself for another attack. "Relax," said Starhawk, crossing to them and stopping just out of halberd-range, not that she thought either woman capable of doing much damage. She sheathed her sword and her dagger, and held up her hands to show them empty. "That thing yours?"

The two women-one standing, the other, whom the wight had first borne down, scrambling painfully to her feet-looked at one another, then at Starhawk and her friends. The older woman, scrawny as a cut-rate chicken a poor housewife would have to boil for most of a day, said at length, "In a manner of speaking. Are you all right, Elia?"

"More or less." Her friend brushed filth and soot from her sleeves, wiped the spattered slime of the wight's mouth off her face, to reveal a plain, square-jawed, motherly countenance. She leaned her halberd against the wall near her and held out her hand to Starhawk. "I am Elia, representative to the town council of Horran from the Seven Streets district. This is Teryne."

"Starhawk of Wrynde. Butcher," she nodded back at the others who still watched, weapons ready, for the return of the wight, "and Battlesow. Why 'in a manner of speaking'? Did you call it into being?"

Teryne spat, a crones eloquence. Elia said, "No. I was not informed of the town council meeting at which the decision to-to create such a thing-was taken." She added drily, "From all I can learn, a number of us weren't."

"I could have told them," Teryne said in her harsh, surprisingly deep voice. "I did tell them, Brannis Cornmonger, and Mowyer Silks, and all their merchant friends. Told them old Aganna Givna was so angry and spiteful in her old age that if they opened up her tomb and let the charnal-wight claim her body, the way that book of theirs told them how, she'd turn on anyone she could get at, not just the troops of the Prince."

"Book?" Like Sun Wolf, Starhawk was always on the lookout for the ancient lore of the craft, the only remnant of teaching left. "They had a book of magic?"

The old woman gestured like one shooing flies. "Brannis Cornmonger, that's Mayor-though now he calls himself President of the Independent Polity, if you please." Her voice would have burned holes in a linen s.h.i.+rt. "Only it's not a proper book, not thick, that'll tell you the why and the wherefore. Like so be it's a cookbook, that'll just say how."

"Oh, great!" Starhawk rolled her eyes. Sun Wolf had a collection of such grimoires, picked up in his travels. He also had a collection of appalling stories about people who'd followed the recipes enclosed therein, without inquiring as to what spells of limitation or protection might have been left out of those terse instructions to mix sea salt with human blood, or to repeat certain words in certain places at the dark of the moon. "So these idiots just pulled the ward-spells off a tomb and set up a drawing-circle..."

"To do Brannis Cornmonger justice," said Elia, wrapping her graying braids onto the back of her head and rearranging the pins that held them, "I personally would rather not have Prince Chare's forces take and sack the town. It isn't anything to me if Cornmonger gets fed hot coals by Chare's executioners, but having neighbors, and sisters, and nieces, and a mother who stand to be sold into slavery after being raped repeatedly, I do understand our mayors-excuse me,president's-att.i.tude." She folded her arms, and regarded the three mercenaries with accusing eyes. "The only problem is that wights apparently don't prey simply on one side, no matter what kind of instructions get written in the circle of their calling."

"As I told him," Teryne said again. She tilted her head a little to regard her friend, then the mercenaries before her. "Not that he'd listen tome. 'Old wives tales,' he said; as if reading that sc.r.a.p of a cookbookmade him a wizard instead of just a man who used to live next door to the grandson of one. I notice the man who wrote that book isn't around no more."

"Well, the Wizard-King pretty much took care of all compet.i.tion, good and bad, before he was killed,"

said Starhawk. She scratched the sweat and gore from her loose soft tousle of pale hair, and turned back to consider the starlit glimmer of wet ground and mucky shadows where the wight had been. "You'd think he might have had the sense to ask, though."

"People often don't want to know," Elia said, "when they think they see a way out of their difficulties."

"Particularly not if there's talk in council of dumping those whose stubbornness and greed started the trouble with the Prince in the first place," put in Teryne.

Starhawk was silent for a time, thinking. Thinking about matters she had read in Sun Wolfs books of magic-proper books, Teryne would have called them, thatdidtalk about the why and wherefore of such matters as wights. Thinking about the political situation in the Gwarl Peninsula, something she and Sun Wolf had kept up on through tavern gossip and merchants' reports with the professional curiosity of one-time mercenaries whose livelihood had once depended on knowing who was fighting whom and why. Thinking about the cities she had helped sack, back in her fighting days, and of why she had quit being a mercenary. Thinking about the men and women of those cities that she had met: who they were, and what they wanted out of life.

Thinking about the fact that the wight-stink was growing stronger again, thick and rancid on the night air.

"-book of his said that if the names of his enemies were written on the walls of the tomb when it was opened, the wight would go after those enemies," Elia was explaining to Butcher. "I asked him-and I wasn't the only one-what would happen if the wight started hunting, started killing, inside the city as well as outside. Brannis said that wouldn't happen."

"Brannis didn't inquire," remarked old Teryne drily, "whether Aganna couldreadthe names of Brannis'

enemies or her own name, for that matter, which she couldn't."

"The council voted against Brannis' plan," Elia went on. "But two nights later the husband of one of my neighbors disappeared-the shutters of his room broken in, and the smell there..." She stopped and looked around her at the darkness, realizing that while she had been speaking, the smell had returned.

Stronger, and growing stronger still.

"Give me that lantern, Butcher," said Starhawk. "And watch my back."

The four women formed up a perimeter around her, a moving circle that followed her out into the open patch of ground where the mud glistened with the foulness that had dripped from the wight's wounds.

Starhawk slipped back the lantern slide and knelt, edging this way and that in the muck, searching.

"There's been three others taken so far, that I know about," Elia said. "That's just from my neighborhood, which is one of the poorest in the city."

"Your Mayor could have saved himself trouble," remarked Butcher. "I can't see Prince Chare turning loose one square foot of territory that belongs to him no matter how many soldiers get killed, his own or somebody else's. He's a stiff-necked b.a.s.t.a.r.d."

"Stiff-necked has nothing to do with it." Starhawk pulled off her mail-backed glove to run her fingersover the greasy earth. "The council of Horran's got to be negotiating with the Lady Prince of Kwest Mralwe. Chare would be a fool to let Horran out of his-Ah!" She found what she sought and picked it up, crumbling, brown and slimed from the dirt. Deep in the darkness, beyond the orange-lit shoulders of Butchers scouting-leathers, beyond Battlesow's thick tattooed neck and shaven head, a noise started, a low throaty growling, like a cat when cornered by a dog.

"Tell me this," she added, searching more quickly now-there had to be more of these. "Did somebody on the council come up with articles of compromise? Here-No, dammit, just a dog's foot-bone. Articles are pretty standard in fights like this and I heard something about it when the Chief and I were over in Ciselfarge last month. Here we go." She picked up a second hard little chunk, wiped it off and stowed it in her belt-pouch. The growling in the darkness grew louder.

"Coriador Toth." Elia's voice sounded strained, but she kept it steady and quiet. "He's one of the greatest merchants of the town, but a good man. Neither Chare nor Brannis would sign-Chare because he said it gave away too much to the Council, Brannis because it didn't give enough."

"Idiots, both of 'em," said Teryne.

"Can you get us into the city?" Starhawk got to her feet. And, when Elia and Teryne looked at one another, she added impatiently "You must have gotten out somehow-shemust have gotten out. I'd offer to turn over my weapons to you," she went on, annoyed, "except I think we're all going to need them in about-"

The wight flung itself from the darkness.

It had grown. Where Butcher's sword had nearly taken one arm off, another had been grafted in, raising the complement to three: a man's arm, bearing the gouges of the serpentine corpse-worms in its bleeding flesh and clutching a sword in its hand. Where Battlesow had hacked its body nearly in two, a head had been shoved like a plug, eyes staring, mouth leaking blood as it tried to speak. Elia screamed and Battlesow said, "b.u.g.g.e.r me, it's Lieutenant Egswade!"

Starhawk, nearly borne down by the wight's rush, slithered out of the thing's way, slas.h.i.+ng and cutting-the whole bulk of the creature seemed greater, swollen and fleshed out as if it had gorged to replenish itself after its defeat. With mindless rage it sprang after her, striking and clawing and grabbing.

Battlesow and Elia intercepted it, halberd and sword flas.h.i.+ng in the lantern-light.

"b.u.g.g.e.r this." Butcher caught up the lantern Starhawk had dropped and made ready to throw.

With a yell Starhawk flung herself at the physician, wrenching the hot metal from her hand. "Don't do that!"

The wight hurled Battlesow to one side, hurled itself towards Starhawk and Butcher with a yammering hiss. Starhawk nearly dislocated her arm, dragging Butcher-and the lantern-out of the way. "It absorbs what it touches, dammit! You want to give it fire?"

"Oh." Butcher looked at the little vessel of clay, horn, metal and oil. "Got any flowers? Or jelly?"

Starhawk fell back again, slas.h.i.+ng at the attacking wight with her sword. The blade-tip caught Lieutenant Egswade's face across the forehead; the bulging eyes stared at them and the mouth formed the words "I'll report that! I'll report you both!" without a sound. Elia stepped in with a low clean sidelong slash, cutting the thing's right leg out from under it; it fell, and ran along the ground at them with its three arms like a spiders legs. Teryne cried "This way!" and flew back up the farm-path like a bundle of blown rags, the other women running for their lives in her wake.

There were tombs along the city wall, doors gaping, the black charnel-smell flowing forth. Teryne plunged unerringly up the steps of one, slipped through its half-open grille of iron bars and slammed it shut again as the last of the women bolted through. The lantern flung jolting shadows over low granite walls, niches filled with broken coffin-wood, cobwebs, nasty little messes of hair and cloth and bone.

"This way," the old woman panted. "It's the entry to the catacomb of the House Toth. The other end comes out in the ruin of what used to be their town house. This is how she's been coming and going. Her own tomb's near by."

Starhawk looked around. Every niche was barred with a line of silver spikes, every keystone written with warding-signs that she recognized from Sun Wolf's books, every corpse surrounded by crystals of salt. "I thought so," she panted. "The whole countryside must be infested with wights, the way in some places tapeworms dwell in the water and the earth. You say you knew her?"

"Everyone in the Seven Streets quarter knew her." Teryne sniffed contemptuously. "She was always a soured and bitter woman, ever since Gillimer Cornmonger-Brannis' father-threw her over for someone prettier and with a bigger dowry. I was little more than a child myself in those days. But even after all these years, when Brannis Cornmonger spoke of making a wight, there was only one person so poison-filled and spite-riddled in anyone's memory, that could be its steed. All this..." she gestured at the ward-written tombs "... is for naught, really. The good need not fear for wights inhabiting their bones."

"Well, there's two schools of thought on that one," said Starhawk, "but I won't argue about it now.

Butcher, you go with Teryne. I think the wight'll come after me rather than her, but I don't think anybody should be walking around alone tonight. Those bars look pretty st.u.r.dy..." She sheathed her sword, and reached out to grip the iron grillework of the tomb door. "They should hold our girlfriend off for awhile, at least until Elia and Battlesow and I take care of what we need to take care of in town tonight."

As Starhawk feared it would, the wight attacked their party when they emerged from the city again in the dead stillness halfway between midnight and morning, and they were hard put to drive it back. It had increased in size again, having killed, it was clear, another outpost guard-clear because pieces of the man were visible among the bones and rags and thres.h.i.+ng, darting worms of its original form. "Holy Three!" whispered Councillor Toth, who had joined Starhawk's party after minimal arguement when she, Elia, and Battlesow had rousted him from his bed. "Isthatthe creature you were proposing to waken, and set upon our enemies?" He turned in outrage and disgust upon Mayor-Excuse me, thought Starhawk, PRESIDENT-Cornmonger, who had also been persuaded to accompany the expedition, though he had not, as Toth had, been given the option of refusing to come.

"Aren't we being nice in our choices of weapon?" retorted Cornmonger sarcastically. He was a handsome man in his mid-fifties who even in an expensive yellow silk bedgown, ta.s.sled red slippers, and a velvet bell-rope tied around his wrists managed to look well-groomed. "Prince Chare will never grant our city the liberties we demand! He will destroy us, if we do not take whatever means we can to turn him away!" He had an orators carrying voice and a demagogue's habit of speaking to mult.i.tudes, even when such mult.i.tudes consisted of only two or three. Starhawk suspected he made speeches to his servants and children over breakfast. "The wight is a weapon of terror, to be used against his men..."

"Only it isn't going against his men, is it?" Elia's motherly face was grim under a mask of slime and blood.

"It feeds on both sides of the wall. Mostly in the poorest neighborhoods, which lie closest to the wall and the tombs-I think that was my nephew Dal, whose body now lies out in one of its farm-cellar lairs tonight-but there have been wealthier children who've disappeared, haven't there, Councillor?"