A scarfaced rogue plunged toward him, cutlass reaching. He turned inside the thrust, seized his assailant's wrist. The man shrieked as bones broke. Rider caught the dropped weapon and threw himself between another attacker and Belledon. He used the sword with a skill that would have embarrassed Shasesserre's most famous duelists.
The smoke caused confusion and bought time, but not enough. The evening breeze off the Golden Crescent dispersed it all too soon, and the scene it betrayed was not one to inspire hope.
Most of the King's guards had been slain. A score of attackers remained upright. They began to close in.
Rider became aware of a great warp in the web. Someone had cast a powerful spell. He stood at its center. Everyone and everything within fifty paces was invisible to outside eyes.
No help would come, for no one could see this disaster.
He dipped a hand into a pocket, freed the thing he had loosed at the Vlazos mansion.
His men joined him, the King, and two surviving guards, everyone getting their backs together.
The demon raged. And still the villains came on. What had they been promised?
There was a violent twist in the web. Rider's demon shrieked, dropped a mangled victim, began to spin head over heels. And to shrink. In seconds it dwindled to a point, which vanished with a loud pop!
But before it went the monster did, momentarily, frighten the attackers into backing off. Rider turned his attention to the spell that masked the fray.
The attackers again moved in. The area was carpeted with soldiers and assassins. Chaz growled, "These guys must be getting paid gold by the boatload." None were the sort who threw themselves on swords for causes.
The clangor resumed. A guard went down. A blow staggered the King himself. Chaz collapsed, struck on the head. Rider fended blows ... He ripped the fabric of the invisibility spell.
Not three seconds later there was a wild bray of trumpets from the Citadel. The garrison was alert already, concerned because the monarch had not yet appeared.
Soldiers poured from the Citadel. The villains saw their deaths upon them. No reward was worth the mercy they could expect if they were captured. They fled.
Groggy, Chaz caught one by the heel and piled onto him.
The very sky seemed to shriek in frustration.
Rider was ready when the deadly sorcery fell. So swift and sure was his response, none of his companions realized they came within seconds of death by melting.
Rider asked the King, "Now will you concede the possibility Shasesscrre may be in danger?" But he paid little attention to the response.
That attack had not come from Kralj Odehnal. Of that he was sure. It did not have the dwarf's stamp. Nor did Rider believe Odehnal to be that powerful, nor possessed of so mighty an arrogance.
As he helped Chaz with his prisoner, he told his men, "This is even bigger than we suspected. And there are more players in the game than we thought."
XII
Rider wakened with the sun. His body ached from the previous day's exertions and bruises, yet he was eager to be at his new vocation. He leapt out of bed, began doing calisthenics.
Su-Cha stuck his head in the doorway. "Up already?" Su-Cha was always up. Imps did not sleep often. "The juices are flowing, little friend." "Shall I waken the others?"
"No need. They deserve their rest. How is the prisoner?" "Unhappy. And as full of blessed ignorance as ought to elevate him direct to nirvana. Someone put sixty pounds of gold on your head. The King's, too. Chaz is going to wilt when he hears his noggin is worth only five." "What I expected. What of the web?" "Nothing shaking. His nibs ain't moved." Rider abandoned his exertions, though customarily he devoted an hour to exercise. "I'll bathe quickly. Two chores to be done. Take your pick. Cook breakfast or fetch shantor's robes for the whole crowd."
"And if I choose cooking?"
"I'll boot you downstairs."
"What I thought." Having little need to consume food, Su-Cha had no need to learn cookery. His occasional efforts verged on the poisonous. "Enough for everybody?"
"Yes. It'll take the whole crew to corner a rat like Odehnal."
"Remember the old saw."
"I do. I don't expect he'll be taken easily."
Someone in one of the sleeping rooms grumbled about all the racket. Moments later Spud toddled past, headed for the kitchen. He banged around enough to waken everyone else. When Su-Cha returned with the shantor disguises he found the whole crowd tripping over one another while cooking and eating.
The donning of disguises took place not far from the suspect tenements. The weeping sickness was common in the slums, and the terror of the riverbanks. It was a slow and gruesome killer, and one challenge Jehrke had not been able to meet. Rider's men would not stand out unless they made it appear there were too many shantors in one area. People would stay out of their way. Though Jehrke had proven the weeping sickness not to be communicable like measles or the pox, no one believed him.
"Take your time getting into position," Rider told the others. "Don't attract attention. I’ll touch you through the web when I'm ready." He sent them off in pairs, ringing their warning bells.
He let a half hour pass. He spent that time touching the neighborhood through the web. There was a disconcerting quiet about it, as though people had sensed Odehnal's presence and knew it augured explosion and terror.
Odehnal was not difficult to locate, this close. The woman Caracene made an outstanding marker. From her Rider caught hints of turmoil, from the dwarf a glowing calm.
There were others in the place. At least four more men, none of whom Rider gave any special attention. They would be the dwarf's hirelings.
He tugged that part of the web which allowed him to touch his associates. I am going in now, he sent. Be alert.
He moved into the filthy street, stooped, tinkling his shantor's bell. Through a gap between drunkenly leaning tenements he glimpsed the brown dirtiness of the river. Here the old wooden buildings stood with their tails over the water, supported by pilings rising from the bottom mud. These places were always collapsing into the flood, drowning their occupants, and being rebuilt as slovenly as before.
The suspect structure was identical to its neighbors. Rider tinkled from door to door, pausing before each as if begging. When he reached his destination, though, he flicked a finger. A soft click sounded behind the door, a bolt snapping open. There was no guard.
He stepped inside. Behind him one of his men rang his bell.
The darkness within was asphalt thick. He drew a gem-like crystal from a pocket, whispered to it. It began to glow, no more brilliant than a lightning bug. He did not go on till his eyes adjusted.
Odehnal was too confident, Rider thought. No guard, no spell to alert him to intruders. As a soldier Rider had learned that one must always expect the worst in enemy territory.
Eyes adapted, he touched his men again. I am going upstairs now. Odehnal was above somewhere. Caracene and the others were in the rear, also upstairs.
Odehnal was not as lax as first glance suggested. Two thirds of the way up, Rider froze. Something was wrong. He allowed his senses free rein, not moving a muscle. His attention focused upon a stairstep a couple above that where his feet rested.
Even knowing where to look it was a moment before he spied the black thread stretched taut an inch above the worn and grimy tread.
Tricky, setting the trap for a point where an intruder would begin worrying more about what lay ahead. He examined the steps above with even more care. He would have set a back-up.
There it was. A step set to trigger an alarm when weight fell upon it.
He stepped over both carefully.
The stair ended on a balcony which ran athwart the building and L-ed to his right. Several doors along the back leaked light beneath them. But Odehnal waited out along the L.
He paused to scatter pop seeds at the elbow of the L, then moved to Odehnal’s door. He listened, sensed. The dwarf seemed to be sleeping.
&n
bsp; He examined the doorknob minutely. The crystal's light revealed no trap.
Below, he heard the slightest breath of sound. Sunlight poured inside. He saw a shape the size of Chaz slip inside, followed by one of Su-Cha's slightness. He frowned. It was too soon for them to come.
Move quickly!
He turned the doorknob, passed through the doorway swiftly ... and stopped, startled, awed.
The room was as opulent as an eastern potentate's private quarters. Odehnal lounged upon huge down-stuffed pillows, face asmile and dreamy. Burnt opium embittered the air.
Quickly, now! Before Chaz or Su-Cha called attention to their presence.
He cast a small spell which sealed Odehnal’s lips. He used a modified form of the same spell to join the dwarf's ankles, then his wrists, and even his fingers one to another.
Odehnal stirred once, but only to make himself more comfortable.
A gong hammered in the rear of the house.
Rider hurtled out of the room, into intense light. Chaz stood upon the trap step, a dumb look on his face.
Two men charged out of rear rooms, weapons in hand. Su-Cha materialized between one's legs. He pitched off the balcony with a shriek. The other saw Rider, whirled, charged into the room where Rider knew Caracene and another man to be.
Rider followed, pop seeds exploding beneath his feet. He hurled a shoulder at the door. It burst inward. Chaz breathed down his neck as he entered a room outshining Odehnal’s. A thrown knife ripped between them.
In the rear of the room, in shadow, Caracene stood with hands at mouth, looking down. The man who had preceded Rider slammed her out of the way, dropped like a badger plopping into its hole. Caracene scrambled ...
Then Chaz had hold of her and Rider was staring down at a man thrashing through brown water, chasing a boat which meant to waste no time on him.
Rider's gaze fixed on the man in the boat, a lean, powerful oriental with astonishing green eyes. "Shy key, Vlazos said," he murmured. "Shai Khe." One hand came from a pocket clutching a phial. He hurled it.
The man in the boat dropped his oars, raised hands, loosed a warding spell. The phial plopped into the river.
The man saved himself from the misery in that fluid, but lost his oars. He drifted at the mercy of the current.
Rider heard shouts. Soup and Greystone. They had spotted the fugitive. Someone threw a line to the man abandoned.
The Oriental's long fingers began weaving sparks. Rider snapped, "Out of here, Chaz. Take the woman. Su-Cha. Get Odehnal." His tone brooked neither questions nor argument.
He drew on the web, began binding it around the sorcerer. Chaz and Su-Cha pounded away.
Too late Rider realized what the oriental was doing. Not attacking him directly at all.
A piling snapped like a twig. The house lurched. Another piling went. The house began to shift, to groan, to tilt toward the river.
Rider did not hesitate. He dropped through the hole, hit the water feet first. He drove himself deep with one powerful stroke, then swam with the current. His strokes were strong and practiced.
The water screamed with the sound of the building collapsing. The scream grew to a roar. But no building comes down in seconds.
When Rider surfaced he was beyond danger of the collapse. Indeed, the structure's main mass smashed into the river as he came up. It raised a wave that lifted him five feet. From the wave's crest he looked at the man in the boat.
The sorcerer's face betrayed frustration. His fingers began weaving again. But the wave caught the boat and toppled him into its bottom. When he recovered Rider had made the riverbank. The oriental wasted no time on an enemy in a position to best him. His boat flew away as though upon a lightning current.
Rider clambered between houses, to the street, where he settled on a stoop to dram his boots.
Chaz settled down beside him, Caracene held almost negligently in one arm. "Who was that guy?"
"Shai Khe," Rider replied. "I should have thought of him when Vlazos tried to tell me. He said Shai Khe and I heard shy key."
"That's his name," Chaz said. "But it don't tell me nothing about him." They watched Su-Cha drag Odehnal their way. The dwarf remained imprisoned in his opium dream.
"I know only one thing more," Rider said.
"Uhm?"
"My father was afraid of him."
Chaz looked startled.
"Yes. He wouldn't talk about it. Shai Khe is some great terror in the east. He commands an empire more vast than Shasesserre's. But that does not satisfy him. He wants it all."
Wreckage from the collapsed building drifted away. Rider's men assembled. Neighbors came to watch from a distance safe from shantors.
"More prisoners," Greystone said. The man who had jumped into the river was trying to talk Soup and Spud into turning him loose.
Rider caught his eye. "You're luckier than your friends." He indicated the wreckage. Two men were in it somewhere. To his own men, he said, "We've done what we can do here. Take these people to the Citadel. We'll question them later. Spud, Su-Cha, Preacher, come with me."
"Where we headed?" Su-Cha asked.
"Airship yards. Before we left the Citadel I sent word for a ship to be readied. We'll use it to hunt Shai Khe. Particularly if he runs to his own ship."
Shai Khe, not Kralj Odehnal, had killed Vlazos and escaped in an unlicensed airship.
Chaz stepped close as Rider was about to leave. He whispered, "What about the girl?"
"Treat her the way she wants you to treat her. If she doesn't suspect she's marked for the web, arrange it so she can escape again. She could lead us again."
"Right. Will do."
Rider and those he had chosen hurried a quarter mile, to where a pair of chariots waited. They shed their shantor's robes as they went.
XIII
Rider's ship was ready. It was a light vessel, capable of carrying just a ton of crew and freight, designed for speed. Rider and Spud went to the control array. There were great magicks involved in the airship's propulsion, but much of its control was mechanical. Spud had helped refine the system.
"Ready to cast off," Rider called to the ground. "Dump ballast, Omar." Rider was the only one of the group to use Spud's proper name. And he forgot much of the time.
Spud tripped levers. The ship began tugging at its restraining lines. "Cast off!" Rider shouted.
The ship lurched upward. Rider murmured to the demonic body, spellbound and beguiled, which constituted its motive force. The airship turned toward the river, began to slide forward like a fish through water.
Aft, Su-Cha and Preacher hastened to take in the mooring lines.
"He was headed Henchelside when last I saw him," Rider said. "And downriver. We'll start looking where Deer Creek Drain runs into the river."
"Keep an eye out for his airship, too," Spud said, making an adjustment to levers which controlled flaps on the ship's sharklike fins. "Be hard to hide something that big."
Rider nodded.
The airship's balance shifted as Preacher and Su-Cha came forward. Spud adjusted with the fins. "Any sign of him?" Su-Cha asked.
"Too soon to tell," Rider replied. The river along Henchelside was crowded with the boats of fisherfolk. Rider directed the demon to follow the shoreline south toward the Golden Crescent. "Take us lower, Omar. I want to see their faces."
There was no tension in the web. Shai Khe was not using his power.
The fisherfolk all looked up as the airship passed over. Rarely did one drop so low.
In time the riverbank curved away westward. The land grew marshy and wild. "Not going to find him this way," Spud said.
"We'll return a ways inland, looking for somewhere where he might have put his ship down," Rider said. So they ran inland again, as far as that part of the city on Henchelside opposite the Protte rookery. Still they found nothing.
Rider persisted till nightfall made continued search pointless.
"You could turn a hand with this one," Soup complained to Cha
z, as they faced the stair to the laboratory. Soup was carrying Odehnal.
"I could. But I like the one I've got just fine." He had Caracene over one shoulder. She was thoroughly bound despite Rider's admonition to treat her well. She wriggled, and squeaked behind her gag. Chaz just grinned at his companions.
Greystone prodded his man with the tip of a sheathed dagger. That fellow never quit protesting his innocence of anything and everything.
At the laboratory door Greystone said, "Somebody tried to get in while we were out. Evidence of attempted entry was obvious. The effort had been a failure, though."
Chaz said, "Vlazos' friends, no doubt."
Greystone popped a signet ring into a small hole in the wall some feet from the doorway. Each of Rider's men wore identical rings. The door responded with a down-scale, musical whine. "Should have done something like this a long time ago."
Soup countered, "When the old man was running things nobody had the guts to try getting in. It'll be that way again when they get used to Rider."
"Let's hope."
One small lumber room had been converted to a cell for the prisoner already on hand. Odehnal and the other man joined him. "Have you some dinner in a few minutes," Soup told them. "Except you, Odehnal. You'll have to wait on Rider."
The dwarf's eyes smouldered.
Chaz released Caracene in another room. He told her, "Couldn't give you special treatment in front of the dwarf. Sorry."
She did not answer. There was an odd, measuring look in her eyes. She watched him closely still when she sat down to eat with the three men.
"Shai Khe," Greystone said. "An ill name out east. One that strikes terror everywhere. I wouldn't have thought his interest in Shasesserre to be so intense as to bring him here personally." He glanced at Caracene.
She said, "Shasesserre is all that stands between Shai Khe and creation of the greatest empire the world has known."
"He the one gave you to Odehnal?" Chaz asked.
"Yes."