“Yeah. Right.” Thought I was supposed to get protection?
Shake shake.
“Rhogiro! Trog!” I needed somebody big enough to get this guy’s attention.
What I got was the Goddamn Parrot, who plummeted into the gloom from the afternoon sunlight above. “Where have you been?”
“Trying to deal with a whole parade of these characters.” I got shaken again.
The bird said, “An apparent retard.”
“You see him?”
The huge guy took a swipe at Mr. Big. He missed. The bird stayed over on his blind side, obviously seeing him.
“Be quiet, Garrett.”
“Hard to do.”
Pretty boy looked baffled. He wasn’t used to having his orders ignored. He took a stab at Mr. Big. Maybe he was prejudiced against talking birds. The Goddamn Parrot evaded the blow.
“You try to talk to him?” the bird asked.
“Yeah. He told me to shut up. Then he started playing ragdoll with me. Got any idea who or what he is?”
The big guy pulled me right up close, eye to eye.
“There any divine dentists? He’s got teeth all over his mouth, and most of them are rotten. He’s got breath like a battlefield three days after...”
Bingo.
The Dead Man got it at the same time. “A war god.”
Baffled, the war god set me on my feet and squatted. “You do not fear me?”
“I spent five years at your birthday party. You got nothing left to scare me with.” I hoped he didn’t have a big talent for bullshit detection. “Who are you? What do you want?”
“I am Shinrise the Destroyer.” Roll of drums, please. Thunder of trumpets.
“I know your sister Maggie.”
He frowned. He didn’t get it. Maybe the world wreckers didn’t get together and talk shop.
Where did I get the idea that gods were smarter than people?
“Garrett?” The Goddamn Parrot fluttered to my shoulder. “I don’t know the name. Do you?”
“Actually, it seems I should. Maybe from somebody in the Corps.”
Shinrise the Destroyer swung a fist in a mighty roundhouse. It tore a few hundred bricks out or the nearest wall. On the far side a couple in the throes of lovemaking took a moment to react. They gaped. The woman screamed. She had no trouble seeing Shinrise, either.
He stomped a foot. Bricks fell out of the wall. I said, “I’d better get out of here before he knocks everything down.”
As suddenly as the rage took Shinrise it passed. He grabbed me again. “Have you found the key?”
“No.”
“Don’t even look.”
Far, far off I sensed an echo of Nog is inescapable. “Why not? What do you care? You’re not Godoroth or Shayir.”
“I have cause to wish misfortune upon both houses. You will refrain from...”
“Sure, big guy. Like your wishes are going to override theirs.”
He started to shake me but frowned, tilted his head to one side. Maybe an idea was trying to get in.
The bird told me, “Others are coming.” He fluttered upward.
“I know.”
Shinrise completed his thought. He grinned. His teeth definitely were his weakness. “I will protect you.” He sounded proud of himself.
“Of course you will. And here’s where you start. Nog the Inescapable is coming here to snatch me. Discourage him while I find someplace to hide.”
I jumped through the broken wall into the room just vacated by the lovers, then used the only door. I glanced back. Shinrise looked like he was beginning to wonder if he had been hornswoggled. Behind him, but close, came Nog is inescapable! strong and tinged with triumph. Nog had the scent.
What did Strait tell me? The Commission was going to caution the players about being so rough? Must not have gotten the word out yet. And Shinrise sure wasn’t working for the Board. What he wanted was directly opposed to their desires. Why didn’t I find out what his interest was? Oh, yeah. Nog. Nog arrived.
Bricks flew. Thunder boomed. Lightning walked. I clamped my hands over my ears and kept moving. Shinrise the Destroyer lived up to his name by using Nog to finish off the damaged tenement and several of its neighbors. People screamed.
These petty pewter gods were very much into our world now. Maybe whole platoons of minor gods would come out as the deadline got closer. Maybe...
But gods had moved up and down the Street before without the town getting torn up.
Nog is inescapable. Nog seemed amazed that he could be thwarted.
I wished I knew where the hell I was so I could get to where the hell I ought to be. Which, I had a notion, might be right in front of the main altar at Chattaree. I was about to step into the street when I saw a blur coming. Jorken was earning his pay today. He streaked past, headed for the divine ass-kicking contest.
The excitement began to draw a crowd. I saw Shayir and Godoroth alike heading for the turmoil. I moved out, a man in shadow, employing all the caution I had learned during the big dance with the Venageti.
The racket got louder. Chimneys fell. Chunks of roof flew around. Members of the Guard arrived. Residents lost interest and fled the area. I went with them.
44
The Goddamn Parrot located me, dropped onto my shoulder, grabbed hold hard, then faded out on me. He would not answer questions. Apparently the Dead Man had no minds to spare for him. But he did not revert to his naturally obnoxious birdbrain style.
Unseasonal clouds were gathering. Lightning flickered within them. The wind suddenly seemed possessed of a hard, dark edge of desperate anger. The people in the street shivered, cursed, acted more bewildered than frightened. This was something new to everyone.
This was something that was getting out of hand. The Commission had to be napping. This couldn’t do any religion any good. I wished I could stop it... I knew how, yes. But I had no viable excuse to pick one god gang over another.
I got my bearings and wished I had not. The Board had done me no favor. I was miles from the Dream Quarter, or any sanctuary. Unless I wanted to duck into Ogre Town. No self-respecting human god would go in there.
No human who wanted to survive the gathering night would go there, either.
I was tired and hungry and thirsty and pissed off about being used and abused. Time was the only weapon I could turn against the gods. I was, definitely, inclined to let as many as possible drift off into oblivion.
It grew dark fast. The breeze became a chill wind. No stars came out. In the distance, lights continued to flicker and flash and reflect off the churning bellies of low clouds. Fires burned and smoke rose and emergency alarms beat at the cooling evening air. Drops of moisture hit my cheek. The last one came in chunk form and really stung.
The air was getting colder fast.
I trotted southward, making good time. Boy, was I getting my exercise today. I reached a familiar neighborhood. It was dark there, and unnaturally quiet. The strangeness was spreading throughout the city. I ducked into a place where I knew I would get served a decent pint and a sausage that wouldn’t come with worries about the inclusion of rat, bat, dog, or cat.
“Yo, Beetle.”
The proprietor glanced up from his mug polishing. “Garrett! You son of a bitch, where the hell you been? You ain’t been in here in three months.”
“Been working too hard. Don’t get time to get over here the way I used to.”
“I’ve heard some stories. I never believed them.”
“The truth is worse than anything you’ve heard.”
I took a pint, sucked down a long swallow, started telling him what had happened the past day and a half.
“Hope you brought a pitchfork, Garrett.”
“Huh?”
He pretended to examine the soles of his shoes. “If you don’t have a pitchfork, I’m going to make you clean that bullshit out of here with your bare hands.”
He didn’t believe me.
“I have a hard time believing it myself, Beetle. I wis
h I could introduce you to those owl sisters.”
“My wife would never understand.”
“Where the hell is everybody? I haven’t seen the place this dead since Tommy Mack’s wake.”
“Weather.”
Something was bothering him. “That all?”
He leaned closer. “Big part of it is, The Call won’t put me on their approved list. Account of I let nonhumans drink here.”
Only dwarves and ratmen do much drinking. And the dwarves tend to keep it at home.
I don’t like ratmen much. I had to work to find the charity to say, “Their money is no different color than anyone else’s.”
“There’s scary stuff getting ready to happen, Garrett.”
I touched my cheek where the sleet had bitten me. “How right you are, without knowing the half. What’s ready to eat?”
He had drawn me another mug of the dark. I dropped a groat onto the counter. That would serve us both for a while.
“Specialty of the house. Sausage and kraut. Or sausage and black beans. Or, the missus made a kidney pie nobody’s touched but old Skidrow yonder.” He indicated the least respectable of his few customers.
“Where’s Blowmetal?” Skidrow was half of the only pair of identical twin winos I’d ever seen.
Beetle shrugged. When his shoulders came up like that, you could see why the nickname. Back when he was a lot heavier it had fit much better. “Heard they had a fight. Over a woman.”
“Shit. The guy is a hundred and twelve.”
“That’s in street years, Garrett. He’s only a little older than you are.”
I finished my mug, pushed it over for a refill. “Give me the sausage and kraut. And remind me not to get so far down on my luck that I’ve got to live like a ratman.”
Beetle chuckled as he started digging around in a pot. He gave me an extra sausage. Both looked a little long in the tooth. They had been in the water a long time.
“Hey, Garrett. Don’t get down on your luck. And try to turn the beer-drinking back into a hobby. Or you might get there.”
“What’s this about The Call? They trying to work the protection racket on you?”
“They don’t call it that, but that’s what it amounts to.” He plopped a couple of boiled potatos on the plate on top of the kraut.
“I know somebody who might get them off your back.” That was just the kind of thing Relway and his secret police liked to bust up, and I had no love for The Call.
“Appreciate it.” Beetle turned to hand me my plate. His gaze went over my shoulder. His face turned pale.
45
I turned.
A cascade of black paper was fluttering through the doorway, buoyed by no obvious wind. Through that came a huge dog, tongue dangling a foot, eyes burning red. A second dog followed, then Black Mona herself, bearing up well under the weight of all those weapons.
“What did you do now?” Beetle croaked.
He could see them?
“Who, me?”
“They ain’t after me, Garrett.”
“Yeah. You’re right.”
The doorframe behind Quilraq began to glow golden.
Shadows crept in. Good old Torbit was here, too. Maybe it was a Shayir family reunion.
Had they whipped the Godoroth?
I started wolfing kraut and sausage. The Shayir glared at me.
Beetle filled my mug. “What are those things?”
“You really don’t want to know.” He was a religious man. He would not want to think ill of the gods.
Cold air blasted through the doorway.
Blur. Black Mona staggered. Her hounds yipped. Quilraq rustled. Jorken materialized in front of me. He was not in a good mood. What a day he must have been having. He grabbed me by the shirt and tossed me over his shoulder.
The side wall of Beetle’s place exploded inward. Daiged, Rhogiro, and Ringo charged through. I thought that now Beetle would have to believe my story.
Imar himself followed the flying wedge of double uglies, baby lightnings prancing in his hair. His eyes were not pleasant when they touched me, but his immediate attention belonged to the Shayir.
“Run for it, Beetle.” As Jorken turned, though, I discovered that Beetle was prescient. He had taken my advice before I offered it.
Jorken sprinted through the hole opened by the ugly boys. Egad, we could have used a few like them down in the islands. The war wouldn’t have lasted nearly so long.
The air ripped past so fast I could hardly snatch bites out of it. Light sleet was falling steadily. That dark coach loomed out of the night. Abyss, that darkness in darkness, stared down as Jorken tossed me inside without bothering to open the door. I picked up fresh scrapes on the window edges. I got a pat on the cheek from Magodor before she dismounted from the far side. Her tenderness was false. She was in full Destroyer avatar. She hurried off to do whatever she did. Jorken went with her.
I was alone. With Star. Who had what it would take to make a statue stand up and listen. The coach started moving. So did Star. That gal knew her business.
This insanity certainly did have its moments. The bad part was putting up with what went on in between. Star relented after I begged for mercy. She settled opposite me, gloriously disheveled. She giggled like the last thing you could expect to find in her head was a thought. Every boy’s dream.
I was tying my shoes when the horses screamed and something ripped the top off the coach.
“Damn!” I said. “Now for more of that stuff in between.”
I flung myself out a door, into the cold. I rolled in sleet half an inch deep. A stray thought: What had become of the Goddamn Parrot?
Not far away, Abyss was pulling himself back out of the hole in a wall through which he had been thrown.
He was not pleased. The darkness within his hood was deeper than ever. Maybe the madder he got the more fathomless the nothingness there grew.
The right rear wheel of the coach collapsed. The nearest side door flopped open. In a sort of ghost glow I saw Star still sitting there jaybird, grinning, totally pleased with herself.
Time for Garrett to get in some more exercise.
Abyss moved to intercept me. Something whooshed through the night, slammed him through the air. He smashed into another wall. Business would be great for the brickyards tomorrow.
Abyss slid down, did not bounce back up. So. Even a god can go down for the count.
I heard the approach of heavy wings. Lila and Dimna dropped out of the night, became their charming girl selves. “It worked!” one piped. She started toward me like she had that old wickedness in mind. The other one clambered into the coach and planted a distinctly unsisterly kiss upon Star’s lips. Star snuggled right up.
Golden light rippled through the night. Shadows pranced. Faun guy Torbit coalesced. He seemed baffled. “Stop that! All of you. Trog. Grab him and get out of here.” Torbit and Star looked at one another. I had a feeling they would not stick to business long. Make love, not war.
The humongous guy with the club and divinely potent body odor came close enough to be seen. Chunks of coach still stuck to his weapon. He grabbed me up like a little girl grabs a doll. It took me only a moment to discover that struggling was futile.
I was not real happy. It had been one damned thing after another. And now sleet was getting down the back of my neck.
46
It didn’t do any good to get mad. I wasn’t going to kick any divine butts. The one weapon I had in this scrap lay between my ears, and it hadn’t been real deadly so far.
I don’t like whiners and excuse-makers, but... it’s hard to think when you’re getting lugged around in one humongous hand, hardly gently. With hailstones hitting you in the face and sliding inside your clothing.
The bizarre weather had to be connected with the solid materializations of all these divinities. Maybe that required pulling the warmth right out of the mortal plane.
If only we could get the effect under control and harness it for use dur
ing high summer, I could make my fortune. How could I work a partnership deal with a god?
The big guy stopped walking. He began turning in place. Zoom! I saw why. Old Jorken was on the job, circling us. Poor Jorken. He’d had a rough day. If I was him I would demand a raise. Boom! Down came that tree of a club. It bashed a hole in the street. Jorken missed getting splattered by barely half a step.
I had an idea. I decided to put it to work before it got lonely. The Godoroth knew where I was, anyway.
I worked Magodor’s cord loose from my waist. That was a real adventure, what with the big guy prancing around trying to get a solid whack at Jorken. I stretched an inch of rope out to four feet, tied a bowline, made the loop for getting invisible with the stretched section and got my feet worked through it all while being flailed around by the dancing giant. I saw scores of faces at windows, being entertained. I hoped nobody out there recognized me.
Trog’s club flailed. A water trough exploded. A porch collapsed. Jorken stayed a step ahead. It was plain he was keeping the big guy in one place till slower Godoroth could catch up.
I wiggled until I got the invisibility loop over my top end, too, then continued to work the loop around so I could tighten it around the big guy’s wrist. Then I stroked the cord the way Maggie had shown me, so it would shrink back to normal.
Old Trog froze, looked startled, then produced an all-time bellow of amazement and pain. And I splashed into the inch of melting sleet and hail masking some of TunFaire’s more rugged cobblestones. The big guy’s severed hand scrambled around inside the sack of invisibility with me.
That hand would not stop, I guess because it had been nipped off an immortal. I slithered to the side of the street, hoping my trail would not be too obvious. But nobody had much attention left over for me. Trog was in a real fury now. Jorken had a full-time job staying out of his way. Trog’s club swished close enough to make him dizzy.
I wormed into a shadow and started sliding out of that sack. No need to tell anybody which way I was headed.
Jorken noticed me as I kicked Trog’s hand away from me. He lost his concentration for an instant as he turned my way.
Wham! Trog gave new meaning to the expression “pound him into the ground.” He was winding up for another swing when last I saw him.