Beyond the Blue Moon (Forest Kingdom Novels)

  “Are they dead?” said Fisher.

  Gaunt frowned. “Unfortunately, no. They ran like rabbits at the first sign of trouble. It doesn’t matter. My zombies will track them down later.”

  “There isn’t going to be a later,” said Hawk. “Your zombies are killing innocent people. That has to stop. Now.”

  “I thought you, if anyone, would understand,” said the sorcerer. “The DeWitts weren’t the only ones considering the introduction of zombie labor. This … carnage I’ve organized will make people too afraid to ever think of using zombies again. I’m saving thousands of jobs here, Hawk; saving lives and livelihoods all over the city. It’s regrettable that some will have to die to bring that about, but you should know; there are no real innocents anymore. Not in a world where the good must damn themselves to hell to gain the power to do good. So don’t talk to me of death and suffering; I face more pain and horror than you can imagine.”

  “Stop this now,” said Fisher. “And we’ll find a way to save your soul. We’ve done harder things in our time.”

  “Right,” said Hawk. “No one is ever really lost, who truly repents.”

  “But I don’t repent,” said Gaunt. “I wanted power, and I willingly paid the price. I’ve … failed so many times, you see. I never did become what I wanted to be, what everyone said I had the potential to be. I never achieved the things I meant to. I couldn’t even protect my friend William Blackstone, never mind the people of the Hook. I have to win this time, Hawk. I have to win, just once. Whatever the cost.”

  “And we have to stop you,” said Fisher. “Whatever the cost.”

  “You can try,” said Gaunt. He gestured almost lazily with one hand, and a bolt of lightning shot toward Hawk and Fisher, crackling and spitting on the air. Hawk brought up his axe, and the lightning glanced away from the great steel blade, smashing through the closed glass window and dispersing in the outside air.

  “It’s not that easy, is it?” asked Hawk, just a little breathlessly. “Most of your power and your concentration is tied up in maintaining control over the zombies, isn’t it? That’s why there weren’t any defensive spells downstairs. You’re not nearly as powerful as you used to be, Gaunt.”

  “I don’t need to be,” said Gaunt. “I have all the help I need.”

  Hawk and Fisher looked around sharply at the sound of slow footsteps dragging along the landing toward them. Fisher ran over to the door and looked out. All of the DeWitts’ private guards, dead once but raised again by Gaunt’s augmented will, came stumbling down the landing toward her, still wearing their stupid canary yellow uniforms. Fisher slammed the door shut, and looked for a lock or a bolt, but there wasn’t one. She put her back against the door, and braced herself to hold it shut. Heavy fists slammed against the other side of the door, followed by the thud of dead shoulders, but Fisher held the door shut. She dug in her heels and glared at Hawk.

  “Do something, Hawk! We’ve got company!”

  Hawk looked at her, and then back at Gaunt, lost in concentration over his spell. Through the broken window came the sound of fighting still going on further down the docks, interspersed with the screams of the hurt and the dying. Hawk knew his duty, but he didn’t want to do it. The sorcerer had been a good man once. He was still trying to be, in his own mad, twisted way. And once he had been Hawk’s friend. The zombies were battering against the closed door now, pounding at it with heavy weapons in dead hands, and the thick wood trembled as Fisher fought to keep the door closed. If they got in, Hawk and Fisher wouldn’t stand a chance in such a cramped space. Hawk looked back at Gaunt, torn with indecision, searching desperately for a way to avoid having to kill a man who had once been his friend. The sorcerer ignored him. And Hawk sighed once, and started forward. He knew his duty. He’d always known his duty.

  He knew better than to try to cross the chalk pentacle surrounding the sorcerer. He’d seen such things before. The power harnessed in those innocuous-looking lines would fry the flesh right off his bones. Hawk hefted his great axe, aimed, and threw it, all in one strong fluid action. The axe crossed the chalk pentacle, the runes etched on the steel blade flaring fiercely for a moment, and then it sailed on to neatly sever the scarlet umbilical cord linking the demon to Gaunt’s neck. The cancerous thing toppled backward, screaming shrill obscenities, and the sorcerer gasped in shock and pain as the source of his magic was abruptly cut off. Hawk was already charging forward, crossing the now harmless chalk lines without hesitation, his attention locked not on the moaning sorcerer but on the tiny red demon. It leapt to meet him, moving inhumanly quickly, just a bloodred blur as it shot through the air to slam against Hawk’s chest. He staggered to a halt as its clawed hands and feet sank into his chest, the membranous wings flapping madly as it fought for balance. Hawk cursed at the sudden pain and grabbed the demon with both hands, but its claws had sunk deep into his flesh. Blood soaked the front of his tunic as he lurched back and forth, tearing at the demon. And then its severed umbilical cord whipped through the air like a striking snake, and tried to attach itself to Hawk’s throat. The parasite needed a new host.

  Fisher abandoned her post at the door and ran forward. She heard the door crash open behind her, but didn’t dare look back. She crossed the chalk pentacle, grabbed a handful of Gaunt’s hair, and pulled his head back so she could set the edge of her sword against his throat. Tears ran down the sorcerer’s face, but his eyes were still closed in concentration, and outside the sound of fighting still went on. And through the open door came the slow, steady footsteps of the newly raised dead.

  “Stop this, Gaunt!” said Fisher. “Or I swear I’ll kill you!”

  “No, you won’t,” said Gaunt, not opening his eyes. “Deep down, you know what I’m doing is right. There has to be change in Haven. The guilty must be punished. Or everything we’ve done here has been for nothing.

  “Hawk’s going to destroy your demon.”

  “It has already given me enough magic to see this through. And you won’t kill me, Isobel. I was your friend.”

  Fisher looked across at Hawk, who was still struggling with the demon. It was trying to plunge the end of its severed umbilical cord into Hawk’s neck, but he’d given up his hold on the demon’s body to grab the unbilical’s snapping end with both hands. There was an unnatural power in its jerking movements, and it took all his strength to keep the sucking end away from his throat. He could see his axe, but it was well out of reach, and if he took one hand away to grab for the knife in his boot, the demon would win. It was sniggering now, and its breath was unbelievably foul. Hawk braced himself, and used the last of his strength to turn the umbilical away from him, and plunge the sucking end into the demon’s own distended belly. The cancerous face looked briefly startled, and then it shrieked with pain and thwarted rage. It released its hold on Hawk’s chest, and he threw it away from him. It tumbled in midair, then sucked its whole body inside itself and vanished in a puff of paradox. Hawk, breathing heavily, looked at where it had been and blinked a few times.

  “Well,” he said finally. “There’s something you don’t see every day.”

  There was the sound of dead bodies falling suddenly to the floor, and Hawk spun around to see the DeWitts’ private guards lying slumped and lifeless on the bare wood floor. The nearest was an arm’s reach away. From outside, the sound of fighting had also come to a halt. Hawk looked at Fisher. She was standing over Gaunt’s dead body, and blood was dripping from the edge of her sword. She met Hawk’s gaze unflinchingly.

  “I had to do it while he was vulnerable. He would never have given up control of his zombies. They were his last chance for power. His last chance to be somebody.”

  “Isobel …”

  “He would have let us both die!”

  “Yes,” said Hawk. “I think he would have.” He sighed once, and went over to pick up his axe. He hefted it once, and then put it away. He looked expressionlessly at the sorcerer’s dead body. “He was … misguided. He meant well. He was my frie
nd.”

  “That’s why I killed him,” said Fisher. “So you wouldn’t have to.”

  Afterward it was mostly about clearing up. The striking dockers went home, taking their dead and wounded with them. The Guards called in surgeons to tend their wounded and began the slow process of clearing the various debris off the harborside. The zombies, calm again without Gaunt’s influence, went back to work. The dockers’ demonstration was over for the moment, but both sides knew it would have to be fought again, and again, until someone surrendered or there was no one left to fight. A few hardcore zealots on both sides wanted to resume the fighting right there and then, but calmer heads dragged them away in different directions. There had been enough death for one day.

  Hawk and Fisher walked slowly along the harborside, stepping around the pooled blood, already dark and drying. All of the dead had been removed; both sides had a dark suspicion that DeWitt might see the bodies as raw material for their zombie workforce. Guards stood in small clumps, drinking and smoking, smiling and laughing and celebrating their survival. Hawk remembered some of them showing unforgivable brutality to the fleeing dockers, and his hand moved to the axe at his side. Fisher took him firmly by the arm and guided him away.

  “Gaunt was a good man once,” said Hawk. “He really did clean up the Hook for a while. But this … is what Haven does to good men.”

  “You always were too sentimental,” said Fisher. “Gaunt was a power junkie who sold his soul for magic long before we ever met him. The road to hell has always been paved with the souls of those with good intentions.”

  They walked on a while in silence, leaving the docks behind them as they made their way back into the Devil’s Hook. The grim gray tenements were strangely quiet, subdued for the moment by the news of what had happened in the docks. The few people on the streets gave Hawk’s and Fisher’s Guard uniforms hard looks.

  “So,” Fisher said finally. “We saved the city again. Hark how the grateful populace applauds us.”

  “We saved Haven for the DeWitts and their kind,” said Hawk. “The dockers didn’t deserve what happened here today.”

  Fisher shrugged. “It’s politics. I’ve never understood politics.”

  “All you need to understand is that the situation in the docks is still unresolved. This will happen again. More dead Guards. More dead dockers. Only next time … I’m not sure which side I’ll be fighting on.” He looked straight ahead of him, not even glancing at Fisher. “This isn’t what I came to Haven for. It’s certainly not why I stayed.”

  “We stayed because we thought we were needed,” said Fisher. “Because we thought we could make a difference.”

  “How do you feel about working and living in Haven now? How would you feel if I suggested we leave?”

  “I go wherever you go, my love,” Fisher said carefully. “You know that. But can we really leave, with so much still undecided? Turn our backs on all the evil running loose in the city? Last time I looked, we were still the only honest cops in Haven.”

  “I’m worried,” said Hawk. “About the lack of purpose and direction in my life. I’m thirty-five now. Not old. Definitely not old. But I’m not young anymore, either. When I was younger, I always thought I’d have my life sorted out by now. That I’d have made all the big decisions in my life. I can’t help feeling that I’m just … drifting. That I’ve lost my way.”

  “I’ve never been ambitious,” Fisher told him. “We survived the long night of the Blue Moon, and the Demon War. Anything else was bound to feel anticlimactic after that. Hell, I fully expected to die back then; every day since has been a bonus. We’re doing a good job here, mostly—saving people, helping people. Settle for that.”

  “We used to be heroes,” said Hawk. “Everything we did mattered.”

  “Do you really want to leave Haven?”

  Hawk sighed tiredly. “Where could we go that would be any different?”

  And that was when the messenger from a far and distant land burst suddenly into their path, swept off his hat, and bowed deeply to them both. Hawk and Fisher came to a halt and looked, startled, at the messenger as he sank to one knee before them and addressed them in tones of ringing sincerity.

  “Prince Rupert, Princess Julia—at last I have found you! You must return at once to the Forest Kingdom. King Harald has been assassinated. Only you can uncover the truth, bring the killer to justice, and bring peace and hope to the Forest Land again!”

  Hawk looked at Fisher. “Well, that’s torn it.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  * * *

  No One’s Who They Used to Be

  Hawk looked down at the messenger, kneeling patiently before him, and then glared quickly about him. No one seemed to be paying any special attention, but this was Haven after all, and the North Side, too, where absolutely nothing went unnoticed or unremarked by someone, if only because you never knew what might turn out to be valuable information later on. Hawk found his hand had dropped to the axe at his hip, and he moved it determinedly away. No amount of violence was going to get him out of this dilemma. It was the name that had thrown him, the damned name. No one had called him Rupert in a very long time. He’d been a different person then, leading a different life in a very different world, one he thought he’d escaped forever. He should have known better. The past never really lets go of you, and family ties are the strongest of all.

  “Who the hell are you?” asked Fisher, scowling down at the kneeling man. Her voice sounded calm enough, but then, it took a lot to shake Fisher, and always had. Even when she’d been Princess Julia of Hillsdown.

  “I am Allen Chance, Your Highness,” said the messenger. “I believe you knew my late father, the Champion of the Forest Land.”

  “Never mind who he is!” snapped Hawk. “Details can wait till we get him off the street. You, Chance—get up. I never did like people kneeling to me. And no more of that Your Highness stuff, either. Isobel and I are Captains of the city Guard, and we have a reputation to live down to.”

  The messenger rose gracefully to his feet and smiled charmingly. “As you wish, Sir Rupert.”

  “Oh hell, we have got to get him off the street,” said Fisher. “God knows I don’t want to hear whatever it is he’s come all this way to tell us, but we’re going to have to talk to him. And the last thing we need is an audience. Did you come alone, Chance?”

  “No, he bloody didn’t,” said a deep growling voice behind them. Hawk and Fisher looked around, and there facing them was the biggest dog they’d ever seen. His great blocky head was on a level with their waists, and his long powerful body swelled with muscles under gleaming dark brown fur. Half of one ear was missing, and his mouth was stretched in a wide, not at all friendly grin. He had large, sharp teeth. Lots of them.

  “Stone me, it’s a talking wolf,” said Fisher.

  “I am not a wolf!” The dog sounded very certain, and not a little annoyed at the very suggestion. “Wolves are stupid, irresponsible, and they run in packs because they’re afraid of their own shadows. I am a dog, and proud of it. Chance is my companion, and I’ll thank you to adopt a much more respectful tone when addressing him. And if you even look like threatening him, I’ll bite your arms off up to the elbows, just for starters.”

  Hawk was pretty sure the dog meant it. He tried a calming smile on the animal, who didn’t look at all impressed. Hawk wondered if he should try and pat the dog’s head, but one look at the great teeth was enough to make him abandon that idea. He wasn’t too sure just what kind of dog it was. The coat varied in color from all shades of brown, to black at the head and white at the large paws. The face suggested half a dozen breeds, all of them unhappy at the mix. If every dog in the world had gotten together for one great canine orgy, a dog like this would probably be the result.

  “This is my companion,” said Allen Chance, moving forward to stand beside the dog. “His name’s Chappie. He was watching my back, or more accurately yours, just in case. We weren’t actually all that sure how you we
re going to take being discovered after all these years.”

  “But he can talk!” said Fisher.

  “And very nicely, too,” said Chappie. “I pride myself on my diction. And just so everybody’s very clear about this: I am not Chance’s dog. He is my companion. I do not wear a collar, fetch sticks, or come when called if I don’t bloody feel like it.”

  “How did you learn to talk?” said Hawk.

  The dog shrugged. “I used to live with the High Warlock, in his Dark Tower. You hang around with a crazy magician long enough, you learn to talk. It’s no big deal.” The dog padded slowly forward, and Hawk and Fisher had to fight down a strong urge to back away. Chappie sat down and scratched briefly at his ragged half ear with a back foot. “We have met before, but you wouldn’t remember me. I was just a pup then. Just another of the High Warlock’s animal experiments. There were lots of us once. Now hold still so I can sniff your crotch, piss up your leg, and otherwise act objectionable. It’s all part of my doggy charm.”

  “I think we’ll pass on that, thanks,” said Hawk. He looked at Chance. “That dog has too much personality for his own good.”

  “I know,” said Chance. “Trust me, I know.”

  “We have got to get this pair off the street and out of the public eye,” said Fisher. “They are just too weird, even for Haven.”

  “Right,” said Hawk. “Our lodgings are too far. Where can we take them that’s nearby and private? Somewhere we can be reasonably sure of not being overheard.”

  “The Dead Dog Tavern,” Fisher said immediately. “It was pretty decent drinking before that last hygiene scare.”

  “You want to take us where?” said Chappie ominously. “If this is the kind of establishment that has dog on the menu, I will personally demolish it, set fire to the ruins, and piss on the ashes.”

  “It’s just a name,” said Hawk. “Now shut up and stop attracting attention, and I’ll get you a biscuit or something.”