Doris’s club met him with a solid whump! The vampire arced right back the way he had come and fell at Marsha’s feet. Marsha bounced a boulder off him before he could move—if he could have moved.
I didn’t go on. I headed for the fire and another of those skunky kegs and hopefully some unsober reflection.
Dojango was shaking worse than I was, but he was on the job, feeding the fire with one hand, keeping a crossbow aimed at Zeck Zack with the other. He didn’t look up to see who or what was coming toward him.
Another twenty-mile shriek shredded the fabric of the night.
42
“I make it twelve,” I said. “One lame. If I stare through this glass anymore, my eye is going to fall out.”
Morley took the spyglass, studied the unicorns playing around the water course and pretending they didn’t know we were nearby.
Morley handed the glass to Dojango. He told Zeck Zack, “One of your traps worked.”
The centaur wasn’t talking to us this morning.
I retreated to higher ground, a better view, and contemplation of last night’s revelation, which remained with me.
It amounted to a direction, a line on which Kayean and I were points. The trouble was, the line ran through me, so I had no certain idea which of the two ways pointed toward Kayean and which ran away.
The Old Witch hadn’t mentioned that problem.
I favored going southeast. That would put the nest nearer Full Harbor and the roads toward the war zone. It also put a large, promising mesa astride the line.
“Hey,” I called down. “Somebody bring me the glass.”
Morley came grumbling up. “Who was your butt boy yesterday?”
“A genie. But somebody threw his beer keg on the fire last night.” I trained the glass on the mesa, asked, “What took you so long with that thing last night?”
“I was trying to get it to talk. It was a new one, barely up from being a bloodslave. Not born to the blood. I thought it might crack. Hey! The stallion and two of the mares are taking off.”
So they were. They headed up our back trail at a grand gallop. The other unicorns moved out of sight behind the scruffy trees lining the watercourse. I swung the glass. “Did you learn anything we can use?”
“Nothing you’d find interesting. What is it?”
“Somebody coming right up our back trail. Too far to tell for sure, but it looks like a big party.”
He took the glass. “Fortune, thou toothless, grinning bitch. Here we are treed by unicorns and there—I’d give you odds—comes your major friend.”
“No bet till they’re close enough to show faces.” “You want a sure thing, don’t you?” “I’ve never had a gambling debt hanging over my head.” He scowled and returned the glass.
The male unicorn was back. He and the trained dogs lurked behind the living screen bordering the creek, waiting for us to make a break. The females had moved to a tributary dry wash a mile away.
Answering a question, I told Morley, “They’ll jump out and try to panic the horses, which isn’t hard unless the horses are well trained. If they succeed, they’ll pick off a few, eat the horses where they fall, and carry the riders back to those who missed out on the hunt. If the horsemen regroup and come back at them, they’ll just scatter and wait. People aren’t going to bother carrying off dead horses.”
“They ought to be close enough to see something.”
I raised the glass. The riders were close enough to pick individuals from the dust but not close enough to distinguish features. “I’d guess fifteen horsemen and two wagons. See what you think.”
He watched awhile, grunted. “They ride like soldiers. Looks like we trade bad trouble for worse. At leastthey seem to know where they’re going.”
“I know where I’m going, too. That mesa.”
“Back the way we traveled for an entire day? When were you struck by this marvelous revelation?”
I ignored him. He didn’t need to know.
The riders passed the female unicorns’ hiding place. “Going to hit them from behind.” I took the glass back. “Well. What do you know. Did you check that lead wagon?”
“No.”
“Can you think of two women who might be roaming the Cantard with Saucerhead Tharpe?”
“What? Give me that damned thing.” He looked. “That stupid bitch. Hell. Your pal Vasco and his boys are there, too. Regular reunion of the Garrett Appreciation Society. Looks like they’re prisoners. I count ten soldiers and one officer.”
My turn at the glass showed me he was right. “That’s my Major No-Name. This puts me in a moral bind.”
“Yeah?”
“I can’t let those women get hurt.”
“The hell. They asked for it. What would they do if they were up here and you were down there?”
I didn’t get to answer that one. The unicorns burst out of the dry wash. At first it seemed their strategy was perfect. The soldiers’ horses darted every direction. Then suddenly they were all facing the rush. The soldiers held leveled lances.
The groups crashed together. The unicorns broke first, running for the wash. One soldier and two horses were down. The unicorns had lost no one, but they had collected the majority of wounds.
An arrow smacked into the shoulder of the slowest. She stumbled, went down on her knees. Before she could rise, soldiers with lances overtook her. Major No-Name called something taunting. He sent five men to plink arrows into the wash. Angered, the unicorns came roaring out. In another brief mix-up, another soldier, another unicorn, and two more horses died. No-Name held his ground and mocked the attackers. The soldiers who lost their mounts took replacements from their prisoners.
“He do have a hate for unicorns, I think,” Morley said.
“Here comes the boss female after orders.”
“I’m going back down. Give me the high sign if he tells her to take the dogs with her,”
“Will do.”
The major was expecting a fight. He made a makeshift fort of his wagons and baggage off his pack animals, put all the extra animals inside the barricade, armed his prisoners, and had them wait on the wagons. I wondered what he told them.
The male unicorn was either stupid or had lost a favorite. They do become mercurial when that happens.
I signaled Morley. I thought I knew what he had in mind. I didn’t like it but I could see no alternative.
So. The dogs went howling toward the major’s group. The unicorns charged behind. A fine, merry dust-up got started.
The male unicorn didn’t want to watch. Morley proved that by racing from the foot of the scree to the watercourse unchallenged.
Zeck Zack was after him before he was halfway across. There is nothing on four legs faster—in the short run—than a motivated centaur.
The unicorn heard hoofbeats. He popped up to see what was happening.
It was too late. Zeck Zack was all over him, and showed us he had handled a unicorn one-on-one in younger days. It didn’t last long.
All the while I was bounding down the slope. It was move-out time.
43
Everything and everyone was ready when I got down. I scrambled aboard my horse. For once we agreed on absolutely everything. We were a team with a single mind. That mind said, “Make tracks.”
I got out ahead of the crowd so I could lead by example. I steered around the base of the butte so we were headed east again, until we reached a point where I could see the battleground. That journey took an hour and a half.
We halted. I raised the spyglass. Nothing moved except the vultures. From that lower angle of vision it was hard to tell how great the disaster had been. I could distinguish one wagon on its side. A vulture perched on a wheel.
“Somebody ought to take a closer look,” I said, staring at Zeck Zack.
He nodded. Without comment he borrowed a couple of javelins and trotted off. The morning had wrought marvelous changes in him. “He might be back in the army,” I told Morley. Dotes just grunte
d. I added, “Don’t forget, somebody thought enough of him to get him Karentine citizenship.”
“It isn’t what you were, it’s what you are, Garrett. And that creature is the worst kind of night trader. The kind that sells your kind to them. ”
Yeah.
Zeck Zack circled the mess a few times, closing in, then he raised a javelin and beckoned, knowing I had the glass on him.
“Let’s go.”
It was grisly. The dogs were all dead. So were most of the unicorns and a dozen horses. But there was not a human cadaver to be seen.
“They went on,” the centaur said.
I told Morley, “For a Venageti he sure sticks tight to Karentine field doctrine. Challenge unicorns when you can. Carry away your dead. Poison the flesh of the animals you leave behind.” Every dead animal had been cut dozens of times. Each cut was stained a royal blue where crystalline poison had been rubbed into the wound.
No one was going to profit from dead army animals.
I counted eight slain unicorns. They had kept at it until the dominant female had been killed. The survivors would be in bad shape.
Unicorns in that part of the Cantard would seek easier prey for a while.
I raised the glass and searched the base of the butte. There they were, looking back at us.
“See them?” Morley asked.
“Yeah. Burying their dead. Can’t make out anybody special except Saucerhead.”
Zeck Zack took a cue from that and galloped off toward the butte shadow where the major was returning the earth’s children to her.
“Trying to ingratiate himself,” Morley said. “So you’ll be a little loose on the rein when the time comes.”
“When do you figure he’ll run?”
“When we start into the nest. We won’t dare waste time chasing him. And with us keeping them busy, his chance of making it would be good. This is his country and he can still pick them up and put them down when he wants.”
I watched Dojango for a minute. He was collecting souvenirs. He had cut the dew claws off a unicorn, had knocked out some of its razor teeth, and was trying to figure how to take its horn. That would bring fifty marks bounty in Full Harbor and more as a curio in TunFaire.
“What are you going to do about it?” Morley asked.
“Let him run. I won’t have any more use for him.”
Zeck Zack came prancing back. He reported that four soldiers and the major had survived, and four other men as well. I knew about Saucerhead. One of the others sounded like Vasco. The remaining two could have been anybody.
“Survived don’t mean unscathed, either,” the centaur said. “They got cut up pretty good.”
“What about the women?”
“Not much scathing there. A little frayed around the edges, as anyone would be after that.”
Morley muttered, “Bet we can thank that dope Saucerhead for that.”
Zeck Zack went right on. “One of them kept screaming at me to tell you she going to crack your eggs, fry them, and feed them to the unicorns. When the boss soldier tried to shut her up, she bit him and gave him a knee in his eggs.”
“My lovely little Rose. What a wonderful wife she’ll make some poor sod. Well. Let’s go.” I urged my mount to face east. Our unity had begun to unravel.
“She does bounce back, doesn’t she?” Morley said in a tone that sounded suspiciously like admiration. “You just going to ride off?”
“Yes. The major isn’t going to make prisoners of anybody again. That’s going to turn into a three-way marriage of convenience that’ll be as rowdy as those marriages get. But they’ll take care of each other. Do you think you could get Doris and Marsha to pull a wagon? We might have a use for it.”
The one wagon was not damaged, just overturned and lacking a team.
“It’s army. We wouldn’t want to get caught with it.”
“We won’t.”
He spoke to the grolls. They responded in what sounded like impolite terms. He told me, “They want to collect unicorn horns. Those could be more use than any wagon. Stick one of them in the heart with a horn and it’s all over, sure as silver. And they can’t smell horns coming.”
“Deal, then. Wagon for horns. Those people back there are going to be burying and bickering for a long time.”
The grolls took the deal. Crash! Down went the wagon onto its wheels. The grolls scampered from unicorn to unicorn, perhaps dreaming of buying a brewery.
A pair of adolescent females, outraged by the trophy taking and not too badly injured, charged out of the wash. It was disconcerting, watching the absent-minded way the grolls clubbed them to death.
44
We didn’t try for the nest mesa that day. I wanted to go in early, when they had settled for the day, not late when they were about to awaken. Once they were soundly asleep, while the sun was high, it was almost impossible to wake them. Even the elder bloodslaves would have trouble responding.
So legend went.
We got out of sight of our pursuers, then went to work hiding our trail and laying false scents. Zeck Zack worked hard making himself useful. He knew all the tricks. He even had the grolls hand-carry the wagon two miles off to leave false wheel marks.
We set up for the night atop the corpse of a small butte not more than two miles from the face of the nest mesa. My head throbbed with the nearness of Kayean. From that vantage I could see most of the scrap facing the mesa and our back-trail.
“No fire tonight,” Zeck Zack said as I crouched behind the spy glass trying to tell what kind of luck the major was having. “Also scatter a little and stay near the stones that got the hottest during the day. That is how they find their prey from a distance. Through their warmth. It would be wise, too, to keep too much metal from accumulating in one place.”
“You wouldn’t give them a holler, would you? To score a few points?”
“I’ve never been known for an inclination toward suicide. I am known to be quick-tempered, rash, foolish, sometimes even stupid. But not suicidal. I enjoy the good things in life too much.” Wearing a distant look, he echoed himself, “Too much.”
“You might remember that the major wants you as much as he wants me. Your blackmailing priest was a buddy of his and you know it,” I added.
“He has to get out of the Cantard before he can cause me any grief. He has to get through tonight. Last night he was too strong for them. Tonight he won’t be. Especially if they haven’t fed for a while. And they have not. The two who came to Full Harbor could not restrain themselves, though their attacks put them at great risk.”
“Why would they spot him more quickly than us?”
“Eleven humans are easier to find than one.”
“Oh.” The day was getting on toward failing. Those who were tracking us were having no luck and seemed now to be more interested in settling for the night.
“There.” The centaur pointed. A darkness was rising from the mesa face.
I shifted the glass. “Bats. A billion bats.” And coming up from a point right on the line through my head, my mystical connection with Kayean.
Morley came in from scouting around. For a city boy he caught on fast. I repeated the centaur’s advice. He gave Zeck Zack the fish eye, then nodded curtly. “Makes sense. Don’t sleep too soundly tonight, Garrett.”
Right. With us here on the lip of it, I’d be lucky to get the old forty winks. You never admit it to the guys you’re with, but you get scared. Damned scared. And this time there might be a bigger stake than just death. I could be dead and have to keep walking.
If you ask me, the difference between a hero and a coward is that a hero finds some damnfool way to con himself into going ahead instead of doing the sensible thing.
They never did give me much credit for sense.
I did sleep, because a hand shaking my shoulder woke me up. Morley.
I heard it before he told me. A hell of a row over by the foot of the mesa. Gods, how I had wanted to run over and warn them when they had chos
en to camp less than a mile from the gate to the nest. But, like Zeck Zack, I am not renowned for my suicidal tendencies.
As Morley said, the women were at little risk, and they were the only ones we had to give a damn about. Still, I had a soft spot for Saucerhead Tharpe. Saucerhead was implausibly romantic. He deserved preservation as the last of a knightly breed.
I got up where I could see just as the last of two campfires yonder died. Not two minutes after that the screaming and banging stopped. And about two minutes after that somebody finally said something. Dojango: “Guess we don’t have to worry about the army anymore.”
No. I guess not.
Nobody got any more sleep. I stared at the stars and wondered about the size of certain mouths, and about how much Rose, Vasco, and the major had yakked it up among themselves. Between them they had enough to work out what I meant to do. Did they have guts enough to stay buttoned up on the chance I might get them out?
“Going to have to be careful work over there tomorrow,” Morley said sometime in the wee hours. He didn’t have to ask if I was awake. He knew. Just as I knew that he and the others were awake and hanging onto something silver.
45
We started the crossing two hours later than I’d originally planned. That gave the sun two more hours to get up and glare at the gate to the nest. Two more hours for the night people to sink more deeply into slumber. Two more hours for us to prepare and two more hours for us to get crazier with fear. Every instinct screamed, “Get out of there!”
Morley spent that time rechecking every damned thing we would carry: flares, fire bombs, spears, crossbows, swords, knives, unicorn horns—the list was endless. I watched the gate through the spyglass, looked for secondary outlets, and helped the triplets polish off the last few kegs of beer. Zeck Zack mapped a convoluted route across that would be out of sight of spying eyes. The grolls, once the beer was gone, amused themselves by bringing enough water to do the horses for a couple of days. Dojango rigged up hitches they could pull if we didn’t come back. Not much was said. The few lame jokes that were told got roll-on-the-ground laughs. Anything to ease the tension.