Sung in Blood

  "What're we waiting for?" Chaz demanded. "Let's go get them."

  "Haste is not indicated," Greystone scolded.

  "He's right," Rider said. "A clue like this is almost too sweet a find. For the moment we'd better assume it was left deliberately. Instead of rushing into a trap, let's see if we can't entangle Shai Khe in his own snare. In any event, we can close that door when we want. For now we'll concentrate on thwarting his assassins."

  Rider started the airship down river in a not very hopeful search, leaving the hulk burning behind. After a few minutes, he said, "We've won one victory, of sorts. We've forced him to abandon his designs on the City. To lower himself to the spiteful murder of fancied enemies."

  "Kind of understating there," Greystone observed.

  "Possibly. Our job now is to take away his killing game. To compel him to come at us head to head."

  "Wonderful," Chaz said. "That's what I've been waiting for all my life. A chance to go one on one with a guy so bad he scares himself when he walks past a mirror."

  "We can handle him," Rider promised. "And while he's preoccupied with us he won't have time for anybody else."

  Chaz grumbled a lot.

  As Rider expected, they found no sign of Shai Khe's boat.

  XXVI

  Between them, Rider and his men had hundreds of friends and acquaintances in all walks of life and at every stratum of society. Most notably at the lowest stratum, where the dark deeds and secret things are known, and the wicked deeds are done. Rider had the word go out at all levels, with a promise of a substantial reward where that might count: the Protector's son wanted information about certain easterners who might have been involved in his father's murder.

  The Protector's death was a secret no more. And much of the City was aware that strange doings were afoot. The news of the murder had come out slowly, to a populace already certain something bad had occurred. There was tension and apprehension, but no panic.

  Most people believed Rider could assume the Protector's mantle. He was Jehrke's son and Jehrke had trained his boy to step into his shoes. This crisis would test the temper of the sword that Jehrke had forged.

  Chaz thought the whole business had turned hilarious. "Those guys are the ones on the spot now," he crowed. "They stick their heads out anywhere and they're had."

  Rider watched the woman Caracene hover around the barbarian. "I'm uncomfortable being dependent on the help of others. We have to remain self-sufficient. There will be many times, in years to come, when we will have no other resources."

  Greystone countered, "Your father himself said to use the tools at hand. In this case I think the threat justifies an appeal to the people."

  The others were a bit puzzled. They were not used to seeing Rider doubt himself.

  Rider said, "I expect Shai Khe to make a gesture before long. A show of force, if you will, to demonstrate that he can move at will even in reduced circumstances. Chaz, you'd better go back to General Procopio." He also assigned men to Soup, Spud, and Su-Cha.

  "What about me and Greystone?" Preacher complained. "Are you cutting us out?"

  "You hold the fort. Keep track of whatever reports come in. If anything comes in that looks especially good, investigate if you like. Don't start anything with Shai Khe. Just keep an eye on him."

  Looking at Caracene with an odd glint in his eye, Chaz smacked a fist into a palm and said, "I'd like to lay something more than an eye on that wheezer."

  "Where are you going to be?" Su-Cha asked. Already Rider was adopting one of his many disguises.

  As he often did when he did not wish to answer a direct question, Rider developed a sudden deafness.

  Those who were to go out on guard duty began collecting items they might need. No one pressed Rider when he did not want to talk.

  They watched in awe as he prepared himself. It was amazing just how much he could secrete about his person.

  XXVII

  Rider and the others had not been gone twenty minutes when there was a pounding at the door. Trusting no one, Preacher concealed himself within the device of mirrors and covered Greystone.

  Greystone looked through the periscope peephole. "It's an officer of the King's bodyguard." He unlocked the door "What can I do for you?"

  The officer looked embarrassed. "The King insists you guys should take charge of the prisoner Polybos House. His Majesty isn't up to all the fuss and bother."

  Greystone scowled. There were moments when he was not too fond of his sovereign. "I guess we can throw him in with the others. Which reminds me. They're overdue to be fed."

  Preacher groaned from concealment. It was his turn to make the meal.

  The officer said, "The sergeant of the guard said to tell you he's got a bunch of reports for you guys down in his office. Everyone in town wants a piece of that reward. They're lined up at the gate."

  "I'll go down while you're getting House."

  Greystone was astonished. Four harried scribes were taking statements as fast as they could write. They had completed a stack of reports nearly a foot high. "We didn't expect this," he told the sergeant of the guard.

  "It's just getting started. Take a look outside."

  Greystone looked. There must have been two hundred people waiting. Quite a few wore shantor's robes.

  That made sense. Both Jehrke and Rider had done their best to help victims of the weeping sickness.

  "I'll come back down as soon as we've digested these," Greystone promised, scooping up the stack already prepared.

  "Anything strange happened around here lately?" Chaz asked as he joined General Procopio. The general was in his study again. Chaz noted that several meticulously mounted giant bees had been added to the old soldier's collection of memorabilia.

  "Been as quiet as a mouse's fiftieth birthday party." Procopio moved to the window.

  "Mice don't live ... " Chaz reddened.

  "Unless you count the shantors." Procopio pointed.

  Chaz watched as two victims of the weeping sickness moved slowly past the house.

  Procopio observed, "They usually don't beg this neighborhood."

  Chaz grunted. "Bet they usually ring their warning bells, too."

  "And they don't keep shuffling around the same block."

  "Maybe we should go down and give them some alms."

  Procopio put on a big grin. There was a lot of adventure left in that old soldier. "Maybe."

  The shantors Spud encountered were ringing their bells. They seemed old and advanced in their disease. They moved at a snail's pace, leaning upon their staffs heavily. "Alms?" one croaked hopefully as Spud came up.

  Spud reached into a pocket.

  And the instant his hand was engaged the shantor on his right swung his staff.

  Spud managed to evade that blow but not the one coming in from his left. That fake shantor tapped him over the ear. He sagged into the grasp of his attackers.

  Bystanders gawked. Then they began shouting. Someone had recognized Spud and reasoned that these fake shantors must belong to the gang Rider was hunting.

  But there were few bystanders, and none of them armed well enough to overcome two villains skilled with staffs. The shantors dragged Spud away.

  The two who tried to take Soup were less fortunate. Bystanders overcame them. In moments they were trussed up and on their way to cells in the Citadel. Soup was on his way, too. He whistled. But now he was more alert.

  The shantors outside the Citadel gate were not ringing their bells. They had been, but with so much enthusiasm that the sergeant of the guard had ordered them to stop.

  They were very nervous. Their master had ordered out every man he had left on what seemed to be a desperate last gamble. One man, more bold than the others, dared say, "This is a pretty savvy plan. We go charging into the Citadel so we don't inconvenience anybody by making them drag us here from halfway across town."

  "Shut up and listen for the signal."

  The sergeant of the guard was never sure if the sh
rill whistle came from behind him or from outside. He would never forget exactly what happened next, though.

  A mob of shantors poured through the gate, clubbing guards, would-be reward collectors, and scribes. He managed to cut one attacker with his shortsword, then his lights went out.

  The gang split into two parties. One went upstairs. The other went down, toward cells where many of their associates were confined. As fate would have it, the latter group took a wrong turn, became lost for five minutes, and when they found their way again also found that they had used up too much time. Soldiers and jailors fell upon them while they were opening the cells.

  What followed was a merry roughhouse.

  The invaders did not get the best of it.

  "It's that captain and House and a couple of soldiers," Greystone said from the peephole. He opened the door.

  The soldiers started House through ...

  A wave of shantors hit them from behind. Greystone, House, the captain, and the soldiers went down under the tide.

  Preacher shot one man and brained another with his crossbow before the rush made a shambles of his hiding place. Then he was trying to defend himself against clubs with bare hands. He got in a few good licks before he fell.

  He lay there in semi-consciousness while the raiders located Caracene, the prisoners, and the hairy man-ape. Going into and returning from the suite the raiders gave Jehrke a superstitiously wide berth. They kept yelling at one another to hurry.

  Hands grabbed Preacher up. He saw Greystone lifted, and Caracene ...

  After that there was a lot of confusion. A lot of fighting, in which a lot of Citadel folk seemed to be helping the raiders and getting killed for their trouble.

  Then one of the men carrying Preacher got bashed in the face with a pike butt. His partner dropped Preacher and ran for it.

  Preacher's world went watery for a while.

  A vigorous shaking wakened Preacher. He swore, then admonished himself with a scriptural quotation. He opened his eyes.

  It took him a moment to recognize the man shaking him. The fellow had blood in his hair and all over his face. It was the captain who had tried to deliver Polybos House. The captain asked, "Are you all right?"

  "I'll probably live. Worse luck. Did we get them all?"

  "Maybe a dozen got away." The captain looked around. "Really brought all the rats out of the walls this time. Your eastern friend played every counter he had. And used most of them up."

  "That seemed an awful lot of trouble just to rescue Polybos House."

  The captain laughed a hard laugh. "Rescue him? He's the first one they killed."

  "Then what? ... "

  "The woman. That ape thing. You and your sidekick. But I think mainly the woman."

  Preacher tried to get up. The pounding in his head forced him back down. "Greystone?"

  "Took him with them."

  The first reports began to filter in soon afterward. No one was stopping the raiders—they were moving faster than the news—but their every step was noted. Their path—of course—led directly to the river.

  XXVIII

  Rider noticed the men tailing him immediately. There were three of them and they were fairly good, but he spotted them all the same. He shook them by a method that was almost cruel.

  He began running, confident none of his pursuers could stay with him all the way to his destination.

  The toughest kept up for five miles.

  Rider ran five more miles, at a slower pace. By then he was well into the farm country west of Shasesserre. He ducked into a woodlot and adjusted his disguise slightly. When he reappeared upon the road he looked to be just another farm laborer trudging along with hands thrust into pockets.

  His trudge was deceptive. It ate ground quickly. And when he was sure no one was watching he ran.

  It was the hard way to make this journey. The slow way. But Shai Khe's spies and eyes would not be watching for a man afoot. An airship or a dromon, yes. Perhaps chariots, coaches, or horsemen. But not a lone, stooped, tired farm hand.

  At dusk he came to the ridge that formed the spine of Shroud's Head. He was more than forty miles from the Citadel. That much walking tired even him. He located a sheltered place and fell asleep immediately.

  He wakened six hours later, in the ebb hour of the night, exactly as planned. He listened to cricket sounds. Nothing else was moving, a fact he confirmed by cautious extension of his wizard's senses.

  Confident that he was alone and unwatched, he began working his way up and out the ridge. He avoided trails and easy traveling. In the dark even the most skilled of men could overlook some warning device.

  He reached the crown of Shroud's Head without incident or discovery. Once there he settled himself and set his wizard's senses roaming in earnest.

  There were guards, yes. And warning devices. And an incredibly complex net of spells meant both as alarm and trap ... And something more. Something dark, the nature of which he could not immediately discern.

  There were only two men, though. One was asleep and the other was nodding. There should have been more. Unless Shai Khe had grown so short of manpower he had stripped his airship of its crew.

  That must be it. Rider could detect no other human beings anywhere within reach of his talent.

  That other thing, though ... He had begun to sense its outlines, its black formless form. And he had begun to suspect what it might be. And if it was, he had learned much about the horror that slithered within a man named Shai Khe.

  If that thing were loosed, no single sorcerer, not even a Jehrke or a Shai Khe, would be able to bind it again. An army would be needed, and many of them would die in the struggle. Horribly. But for now it was confined and constrained and could, with relative ease, be returned to that foul place whence it had been summoned.

  If Rider could untangle the net of spells shielding both airship and devil.

  Now he knew why Kralj Odehnal had said "Devil's Eyes" instead of "Devil's Eye." The deep cave and hidden airship were only half the story. There was, perhaps, the approximation of a pun in confining the devil in the other, shallower eye.

  Rider examined the nest of spells. His regard for Shai Khe, as a sorcerer, rose. It would be a long, arduous, interesting, dangerous job, penetrating that without leaving tracks. He settled in to do it.

  He was through. He was safely inside unseen. He had done what he had come to do and had seen what he had come to see. And now he was trapped.

  Just as he was about to leave, Shai Khe's airship crew returned, having come down the Bridge of the World by boat. And with them they had brought Caracene, Soup, and Greystone. How had they gotten to Greystone and the girl?

  For the moment all three were safe enough. The airshipmen had orders to install them in the airship and keep them confined. Nothing more.

  Rider wished he could get back to the City and learn what had happened. The airshipmen knew nothing. But he could not depart without being seen, or, at least, without leaving traces that would be instantly apparent to Shai Khe's eye.

  He slipped into a shadowed cleft and rested, and waited for a chance to make a properly discreet departure.

  XXIX

  "The boat just vanished?" Chaz demanded, keeping one eye on General Procopio, who had his nose into everything in the laboratory. The general was as excited as a kid. Retirement had been a bore for him. "Right in the middle of the river?"

  Preacher nodded. He was tired of repeating the story. "Then he used sorcery. Meaning he was willing to disturb the web and attract attention."

  "Like maybe he hadn't been noticed so far?" Su-Cha sneered. "The boat only had to disappear for a couple minutes. Just long enough to get to shore and let those guys do a fade."

  Chaz paced. He was concerned about Caracene, though torture would not have gotten him to admit that. He stared at the darkness beyond the laboratory window. The gruesome memorial that had been Jehrke Victorious watched over his shoulder. "Where is the boss?"

  "Gone. Wit
hout saying where he was going. The way he does."

  Chaz stared at the vermilion characters in the window glass. They had, according to Preacher, simply appeared while his back was turned.

  Ride-master Jehrke: You no longer possess the pearl so precious to me. I now possess two gems priceless to you.

  "What do we do now?" Chaz asked.

  "We wait," Preacher said.

  General Procopio was stirring through wreckage left from the recent raid. "What is this thing?" He indicated something that looked like a mummified gorilla head. "Ugly character."

  "No telling," Chaz replied. "Jehrke had at least one of everything weird there ever was around here."

  Su-Cha scooted past the barbarian. "Don't touch that!" he squeaked.

  Procopio jerked away. Startled, Chaz asked, "What's the matter, little buddy?"

  "That's nothing Rider or Jehrke ever had. That's a Koh-Rehn. We've been double-shuffled. Those clowns that broke in here left it for us. A little gift. A little nightmare come midnight, while you're all tucked safely into your beds, you think." He squatted beside the ugly head, studying it.

  "Relative of yours?" Procopio asked, catching on more quickly than the others.

  "In a manner of speaking." After a thoughtful moment, Su-Cha said, "Dirty tricks, eh, Shai Khe?" And after another moment, "We can play that game, too. Listen up, you guys. I've got an idea."

  Midnight. A blinding flash lighted the window of Jehrke's laboratory. Tough though the glass there was, it disintegrated, showering the Rock with fragments. Roars and screams ripped out into the night. A man who might have been Ride-Master Jehrke could, for a moment, be seen battling a huge shadow. Then the screaming stopped.

  One minute. Two minutes. Three. Two battered men fled the Citadel gate, a semi-conscious woman dragging between them. As they neared the edge of the plaza, the shorter man stumbled. He let go the woman to break his fall. The shawl wrapping the woman's hair and concealing her features fell away.

  "Damnit!" Chaz exploded, but softly. "Watch yourself. They find out we've still got her, we lose our chance to pull this out without Rider." He re-wrapped the woman while Preacher muttered weary apologies.