Текст книги "The Banshee's walk"

Автор книги: Frank Tuttle

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Текущая страница: 17 (всего у книги 18 страниц)

A stone struck the House, tearing through it from roof to cellar in the blink of an eye. The floor beneath us tilted. Timbers began to groan in a long, building, awful noise that that set my teeth on edge.

A sudden rush of falling stones fell about the thing in the forest. More trees went flying, as it rolled, and then it was still.

The rain of stones ceased. Then the lightning. Then the wind, which died as abruptly as it had been born, dropping its volleys of limbs and lumber in a single great tumble.

Evis dared poke his head through the shattered window.

He didn’t suddenly sprout arrows, so I let go of Darla and joined him.

Outside was ruin.

The catapults were simply gone. Only shallow craters remained. Bodies were everywhere. Many began to move as I watched, though with the clumsy, slow gestures of the stunned and the injured.

A single glowing blue stave lay alone on the blackened earth. As I watched, a man clad in beggar’s clothes stumbled toward it, picked it up, and carried it toward the woods, ignoring the showers of sparks the thing loosed at his head.

Evis shook his head.

“The one with the red scarf. See him? Over there?”

Evis pointed. I found the man he meant. He was on his back, a pair of longbow arrows lodged deep in his chest.

As I watched, the man sat up, snapped off both arrows with no apparent hesitation or pain, and then rose to his feet and picked up a sword before calmly and methodically beginning to slaughter any injured soldiers stirring in the yard.

“That’s not considered good sportsmanship,” whispered Evis. “Dead man or not.”

I shuddered. Because the red-scarfed man was certainly dead. As he was joined by a dozen of his brethren, and then more and more and more staggered to their feet, I realized why they all seemed so familiar.

They were dressed in rags. Some were barely dressed at all. All were filthy. Many were barefoot. But even in their disarray, there was something familiar about them all.

They were familiar because I knew them. They were the Broken-the beggars, the weed-heads, the drunkards, the addicts. The men who’d survived the War in word only. The ones who’d returned with limbs intact, but their spirits slain or mortally, incurably wounded.

And then I knew they hadn’t survived. They hadn’t returned. Not as the living.

They belonged to the Corpsemaster. They always had. They walked among us, begging, lying still and silent in rags in alleys, haunting the docks, scrambling under porches and stoops-among us, but not living.

They’d just been waiting. Waiting for Hisvin’s call.

My heart sank. We knew. We knew the Corpsemaster’s dark secret, knew the source of his secret, private army-they were our dead. Harvested during the War, when there had been so many. He’d raised them up and he’d kept them walking and he’d brought them home, all so he could keep them against a day such as today.

Evis turned away from the carnage. His dead white eyes held the same realization.

Darla joined us. I pulled her away before she saw too much.

“Who won?” she asked. “Is it over?”

“Can’t say. Catapults are gone, though. They won’t be building any new ones tonight, either.”

Darla frowned. “Then why do you look like you’ve seen your own ghost?”

Evis spoke before I could answer.

“Damn,” he said. “Damn damn damn.”

I whirled. Evis had already turned from the window, and was heading for the door.

“Time to go, ladies and banshees,” he said. “Right now.”

Before I could speak, he laid hands to the makeshift barricade against the door and simply tore it away.

Another casual heave pulled the bar from its mounts. He didn’t bother with the locks. He just shoved the door right out of its frame.

I did risk a glance out the window. I did see soldiers ride out of the woods. They cleared a section of yard of Hisvin’s dead by riding them down, or pinning them to the ground with lances.

Behind the mounted soldiers were more horses. They carried wheeled things behind them, things I’d never seen-fat black iron cylinders, each as long as a man was tall, and open and flared at one end. Each of the contrivances was riding on a pair of sturdy iron wheels and accompanied by four men on foot.

The men quickly unhitched the things from their teams and wheeled them around so that the open ends pointed toward us. Then they gathered at the front of each contraption and busied themselves with bags and boxes.

Evis grabbed me.

“No time,” he said. “Go!”

Darla grabbed my hand as I was propelled through the door. “I need an answer,” she said.

We ran. Evis scooped a cussing Mama up and carried her while she kicked and scratched.

“To what?”

“You know what. Are we, or aren’t we?”

Sara and Victor joined our charge. Victor took the fore, while Sara guarded the rear.

We got down to the second floor before the mob ascending the stairs collided with Victor.

Shouts turned to screams. I saw a couple of bodies go flying over the banister, arms flapping all the way down. I shouldered my way to the front and knocked a hatchet out of some terrified kid’s hand and pushed Victor’s blade aside as it flashed toward the throat of poor Scatter.

They kept coming. Their faces told me Scatter and his brethren at the front of the charge would’ve run rather than face a trio of halfdead, but the mob behind them pushed them on.

Victor snarled at me. I shoved my way in front of him, lashed out with a vicious toe-kick in some unfortunate’s groin, and just as Scatter flung his dagger at Victor and dived headlong over the rail there was a new blast and something struck the House below us with enough force to send us to our knees.

Victor dropped his blade and simply grabbed and threw. I used knees and elbows and together we cleared the stairs.

Smoke billowed, rising up. Another thunderous blast rang out, and another bone-jarring explosion sounded deep inside the House. There was a crash like a landslide and the wall beside us buckled so badly the shattered ends of timbers protruded suddenly through the cracked plaster.

Evis joined the fray, surging ahead with such abandon he outpaced us all and was quickly surrounded by the men we’d just been fighting. All fled down the stairs, fight forgotten. They scarcely acknowledged each other as another blast and explosion added to the smoke and the panic.

Darla’s hand slipped into mine.

The House shook. Somewhere very close, parts of it collapsed with the sound of mountains breaking.

“Well?”

“We will,” I said. “If we get out of here.”

“Promise? No delaying, no excuses, no years and years of waiting?”

Another blast. The stairs tilted. I grabbed Mama, who nearly went off.

“No waiting. Promise.”

We ran. The stairs buckled and the walls leaned. Shafts of bright light sliced through the dark, here and there, and when I remembered there was no daylight I knew they must be from fires.

We reached the foot of the stairs. The room was mostly buried in debris. The hall that led to the kitchen was choked nearly shut by the remains of the collapsed second floor.

An arrow zipped through a gap in the wall and went skittering by my feet.

A dozen of the staff were trying to open a path through the wreckage. Scatter was among them. He turned to me, his bloody face imploring.

“All of you,” I said. “Follow us. If you so much as spit, Victor here will gut you. Got it?”

Another blast, another sudden fall of stone and wood.

Nods all around. Those with weapons dropped them.

“Good. The rest?”

“Either in the tunnels or dead,” said Scatter. “Seen Lank head down when the first catapult threw.”

“The Lady?”

“Down there, I reckon.”

Shouts sounded outside. I could hear them plain through the many gaps in the walls.

Evis came charging up, trailing smoke and ashes. “We can still reach the other tunnel,” he said, coughing. I’d never seen a halfdead cough before. “Need to go now, though, while they reload.”

Darla’s grip on my hand tightened.

“Forget the tunnels. They’d just dig us out. Got thirty artists in there too. Can’t just leave them there.”

“Finder, listen to me. We need to get underground. Right now.”

“Take your people and go,” I said. “I wish you luck. But we’re not taking to the tunnels.”

“You’d go where the Corpsemaster won’t dare?”

“Can you think of a better hiding place?”

Evis snarled, muttered something to Victor and Sara, and stalked off toward the gallery. He did not take the door that led to the second tunnel. He did give it a damned good kick as he passed.

Darla found me a sooty half-smile. “Please tell me you’ve thought this out.”

“In detail,” I lied. I grabbed her briefly, held her close. “Trust me,” I whispered. Forty pairs of eyes looked to me for salvation.

“There’s another way out,” I shouted. “It’s magical. It’s dangerous. You can follow us, or try your luck with the other tunnel. We’re leaving. Keep up if you can.”

I grabbed Darla’s hand and charged.

They followed, one and all.

I hoped I wasn’t merely adding to the numbers of the dead.

Chapter Twenty-One

The gallery was largely intact, though the ceiling sagged and the walls bulged and a steady rain of plaster fell.

The artists, bless them, still slept. I set Scatter and his fellows to moving them out of the way while Evis and the halfdead darted to and fro, arranging the paintings in a rough circle about the room.

I took the canvas I’d painted.

Mama was grasping every bird she owned. Gertriss was muttering with her, her voice too low to hear. Darla held Buttercup in a tight hug and stayed close by my side.

Evis and his halfdead finished arranging the paintings.

“Whatever it is you plan to do, it had better not take long.”

“It shouldn’t.” I moved to the middle of the room, kicked a fallen easel aside, and laid my canvas on the floor.

The strange symbol I’d left upon it did nothing. The other paintings followed suit. Outside, we heard the thunder of hooves, and shouting, and the smell of smoke was thick in the air.

“Dammit, Finder, hurry this up,” muttered Evis.

The canvases watched us, unmoved.

“Knock knock,” I said, aloud.

Ropes creaked and groaned, the wall beside up began to tilt. I hadn’t heard the grappling hooks hit, hadn’t heard them swat the oxen, hadn’t heard them start to pull down the damaged walls.

But I was hearing it now.

“Me again,” I said. Darla locked her eyes on mine. She smiled.

“You said you would open a door for us. It’s now or never. They’re about to pull the House down on top of us.”

Nothing.

I put my right hand on the symbol.

“Please let us in”

The soldiers outside fired their iron weapons again, in a tight-spaced volley. The wall to my right erupted in splinters and stones, and Darla opened her mouth to draw in a gasp, and Mama opened hers to shout something.

Mama’s word was never born. Darla’s gasp went unbreathed. The splinters and the stones that erupted from the breached wall simply halted, hanging in mid-air, stilled, engulfed in newborn flames, chaos frozen, gone inexplicably peaceful.

And then it all simply faded away. All of it-the walls, the cracked ceiling, the tangle of easels and chairs and stools. Painters and halfdead and Markhats remained, surrounded for a moment by mists, and then we were somewhere else.

It was bright and sunny. Birds sang. Butterflies flitted past, riding a breeze that was scented with honeysuckle. There was a marble floor below, and a wide blue sky above, and lush rows of green ferns set around a wide shallow fountain.

The water in the fountain burbled and splashed. Great gold fish the size of dinner plates swam in it, and when they saw me they poked their heads through the surface and began to speak to one another in chirps and whistles and quick wet laughs.

Behind me were rows of easels, exactly like those I’d just left behind. On each easel was a portrait, and when I saw them I shivered and the crowd of fish whistled and hooted.

Darla was portrayed on one canvas. She was standing in the doorway to my room at Werewilk, her hands on her hips, her face in that bemused expression she’d worn the instant before she’d spoken when she’d walked in on Buttercup’s ill-fated first bath.

The artist had somehow captured that twinkle of razor-sharp wit in her eyes, and the devastating humor in the lift of her eyebrows.

A portrait of Evis was beside her, gaunt and tragic, his halfdead face finally able to reveal the compassion and charm that refused to die within him.

Mama was there too, squat and stalwart, those tiny Hog eyes piercing right through me even though they were mere dabs of paint.

Gertriss, in her canvas, stood half-concealed behind the trunk of a bloodoak. Only half of her face showed, and that was dappled with shadow.

And Scatter, and all the rest, each portrait the work of a master.

Only Buttercup and I were missing.

“Thank you,” I said aloud. I realized I’d been holding my breath, and I let it out in a long loud sigh. “For bringing us to safety, I mean.”

There was no reply.

Buttercup came prancing up. She grabbed my hand and dragged me to the fountain before leaping barefoot within it and splashing merrily about. The fish turned from discussing me and began to play some intricate game of chase with Buttercup instead.

I waited for a long time before speaking again. I wandered through the easels, taking them in, hoping with all my soul that the people portrayed were indeed safe and only out of sight.

Buttercup squealed and splashed, and for the first time I heard her speak. Her words were foreign, but the fish knew them, and responded in kind as their game went on.

“The people up there want to take her, and use her,” I said. “They think they can either free you, or free you of certain of your belongings. I myself have no such intentions.”

“I know what they want.” The voice came from nowhere, and everywhere. It was female, and when it spoke, Buttercup shrieked and danced and put her hands toward the sky. The fish whirled and vanished in a sudden spray of silver water and fine golden scales.

“Then you know the kind of danger she’s in,” I said. “That we’re all in, as long as we keep her from them.”

“I know.” Buttercup fell silent, listening, though I could hear nothing.

“Are you dead?” I asked, after a while.

The voice laughed. “I had all but forgotten this world. Oh, sometimes I dreamed of it, I suppose. They were pleasant dreams.”

I thought of the paintings.

“They were indeed.”

Buttercup giggled and whispered, as though sharing secrets with a trusted friend.

“Is it true, that she could free you from this place?”

“It is true. It is also true that I have long been free. So many worlds, Finder. I had no idea there were so many, when they first laid me here. I’ve learned…so much.”

Buttercup pointed at me, and continued to whisper.

“She’ll never be safe. Not as long as people believe she is the way to you.”

I heard a noise, as of far-off thunder. Buttercup looked to the sky and grew troubled.

“Your friend the dark sorcerer is outmatched,” said the voice. “She will fall. Tell me, Finder-would you show mercy to the one you name Corpsemaster? Or shall I let her perish?”

I glanced toward the portrait of Evis. I sighed.

“Can you bring the Corpsemaster here?”

“Are you willing to assume responsibility for her actions?”

“To a point. I mean yes. I owe her one, your, um, Excellency. Please. Spare him. Her. Whomever.”

There was a shifting in the air, and suddenly Milton Werewilk stood before me.

“I should have known,” I said. What better way to keep an eye on House Werewilk than to have a body living there. “Welcome to the afterlife, Corpsemaster. Please don’t loose any spells just yet.”

Milton blinked. He was covered in soot. His expression was one of sudden and intense confusion.

“We’re in the tomb of the alarkin,” I said. “She generously opened a door before the House blew apart. I brought us here. We exist at her mercy. Please don’t provoke her wrath.”

Give it to Hisvin. She only blinked once.

“Remarkable. I salute you, Finder. And I thank our host for her hospitality.”

Something glittery and gold fell out of the air above Buttercup, and she clapped her hands with glee and caught it as it fell.

It was a cloak, woven of something so fine it was difficult to focus on. Buttercup wrapped it around her shoulders and splashed about, calling for the fish, who one by one began to reappear by poking their heads above water and whistling to her before darting away, lightning-quick.

Milton looked quickly across the paintings arrayed behind us. “Are those…?”

“Essences,” said the alarkin. “Soon to be restored.”

Milton nodded. “Well. We’re at your mercy, Esteemed One,” he said. “Might I inquire as to your plans for us?”

“Plans?” The alarkin seemed bemused. “I have no plans for you, sorcerer. Other than to return you to your proper place, once the worst of the fires are out.”

The Corpsemaster lifted an eyebrow.

“I think what my sorcerous companion is trying to ask is this,” I said. “Do you mean to go stomping about the Regency, re-establishing a reign of terror, crushing all and sundry beneath your mighty heels?”

Hisvin nearly choked.

The voice laughed.

“Ten thousand years ago, perhaps. But now? Let me show you a thing.”

We moved.

Only for an instant. But the alarkin and the Corpsemaster and I, we went somewhere. We became-other people. For the briefest of instants, I led another life, one so alien and strange I cannot even begin to describe it.

And then again. We moved. The world changed.

And again, and again, each wonder brighter and stranger and more delicious than the last.

And then we were back by a sunlit marble fountain where the breeze smelled of honeysuckles and the sun shone down untroubled and bright.

“What care I for your world, sorcerer? What need have I of lordship over it?”

The Corpsemaster had no answer. Nor did I.

Buttercup dived into my arms, dripping and giggling, her cloak of starlight and spider silk wrapped around her.

“I had forgotten her, her kind,” said the alarkin. “I free her now. She is in your care now, Finder. Do not displease me by failing in this.”

And the alarkin spoke a strange word, and Buttercup laughed and hugged me.

“Pardon me, but the ones above?” asked the Corpsemaster. I’d never heard sincere, polite deference from one of her rank before, but I was careful to hide my grin. “I found myself overwhelmed. Without my defenses, they will still seek to loot your resting place.”

The voice seemed to ponder this. The chattering of the golden fish took on a decidedly worried tone.

An ornate stone table appeared before Milton and I. Upon it was a plain wooden wand.

“Dissuade them” said the alarkin. “Protect my creatures. This should suffice.”

Hisvin reached out and took up the wand.

He closed his eyes. I assume he was engaging in some form of sorcerous exploration of the wand.

When he opened them, he was smiling.

“I believe it shall indeed suffice,” he said. Then he looked at me, winked, and when he spoke again, his voice was that of a woman.

“You have my gratitude, Finder,” she said. “I shall never forget. Upon that, you may always rest assured.”

And then he-she-bowed to me, turned and bowed to the fountain, and vanished.

I gaped. The alarkin laughed, and Buttercup giggled with her.

“We have a few moments,” said the alarkin. “I will return you to your time and place when the conflict above is resolved. Please, sit.”

A chair appeared behind me. It was an exact replica of the chair I keep behind my desk. When I sat, it even squeaked as that one did, and the seat was warm. I surmised Three Leg Cat was even now glaring angrily about my office wondering where his resting place had gone.

“Thank you.” Buttercup curled up in my lap. I briefly considered asking for Darla to be freed from her canvas, but decided not to press my luck.

“Your dreams,” I said. “They’ve been quite an inspiration.”

I felt something smile, way up in the sky.

“I am pleased that is so. Perhaps this will atone for my previous acts of-how did you phrase it, Finder? Stomping about in a reign of terror, crushing kingdoms under my heels?”

I cringed.

The alarkin laughed. When it did so, the butterflies all took flight. I smiled.

“I was so young. So intoxicated with power.” A breeze rose up, and I felt a shrug. “So long ago.”

I just nodded. Thunder rolled, distant and not threatening.

“It is done. You may return, now. Take care of Buttercup. She will be lost in your world without you and yours.”

I patted Buttercup’s hair. She yawned and rubbed her eyes wearily.

“We will. That’s a promise.”

“Good. Farewell, Finder. Trouble me no more. I shall return to my slumber, and my dreams.”

“Good night, Your Majesty,” I said. I’d never used such a title before without sarcasm. “And thanks.”

Buttercup went limp in my arms, fast asleep.

And then, without any fuss, we were back where we’d come from.

The House was gone. All of it, except the floor under our feet. The mighty slate and timber walls, the arching rooftops, the tiny windows, the red-painted door-gone.

Gone, but laid about us in every direction, in splinters and stones and heaps of smoking gravel.

Darla gasped. Mama shouted. Evis knocked me on my ass, sending Buttercup spilling and me scrambling and cursing.

They started diving and running and shouting at once. It didn’t last long, because the blast never came, the roof never fell, the walls never collapsed-there was nothing but silence and the odd wraithlike waft of drifting white smoke.

The trees had even been uprooted whole and cast aside, in a huge circle a couple of acres across, all around us.

House Werewilk was simply no more.

Darla caught my hand and hauled me to my feet and wrapped me up in a wordless hug. I could see and hear people beginning to talk, to turn around, to stare around them, eyes wide with wonder and confusion.

Only Mama Hog seemed unaffected by the sudden quiet.. She calmly stuffed her dried birds back in her bag and casually picked up a shiny silver spoon mixed in with the debris. “Reckon anybody wants this?” she said.

Evis laughed. Gertriss laughed. I think Darla and I did too, while Mama shrugged and dropped the spoon in her bag as well.

Milton Werewilk came ambling out of a cloud of fast-vanishing smoke. His hands were empty. He fought to hide a smile.

Somewhere in the distance, one of the monstrous uprooted trees came crashing back down to earth.

Singh appeared, scurrying out of the lawn, his clothes burned nearly off, blood running down his chest. Nevertheless, he managed to reach Milton’s side, and guide him toward us, leaning on his charge as he came.

Evis saw, turned toward me.

“I assume you struck a deal.”

“I got lucky,” I said. “But yes. We were spared.”

“You spoke to it?”

I nodded. “Less said the better.”

“Hisvin?”

“Alive, I think. Out there somewhere.”

Evis frowned. “Damn,” he said, quietly. “I was hoping maybe that little problem might have solved itself.”

“It’s not a problem anymore. Don’t ask. Just trust.”

“Do I have a choice?”

“Nope.” Singh and Milton lurched up. I wondered if the Corpsemaster was in Milton’s body, or whether she’d hurried on home after the ruckus was done.

There was no animation in Milton’s eyes. But I knew that meant nothing. The Corpsemaster isn’t seen, unless she wants to be seen.

I shuddered.

“The Lady?” said Singh. “The others?”

“The tunnels,” I replied. I looked about the shattered House, realized we’d be better off trying to force open a door from the cornfield. “Scatter. Round up the ones that aren’t injured. We need to get your people out.”

“Sir?” He looked at me as if I sprouted wings. I realized he had no idea what he’d just been through, and he wasn’t dealing with the shock very well.

“Magic,” I said. “It was a spell. It’s done. Get a move on. Lank’s down there, somewhere.”

“Right, right.” He started shouting and yanking at elbows. I held Darla close and gave Gertriss a big wink. She caught Buttercup up and cradled the sleeping banshee in her arms.

Somebody found an intact shovel in the wreckage. Someone else found a steel pipe that would work as a pry-bar. I found my former bathtub, perched among the debris, undamaged, the towel I’d left folded on the rim still there.

I led everyone I could find toward the burned out cornfield, and we set about finding the hidden door while Milton drooled and stared.

We dug beneath a sky as nearly as blue as the alarkin’s. Crows circled warily overhead. If they came for a meal of corpses, they flapped away disappointed-not a single body lay anywhere. I imagined them all in the forest, shambling toward Rannit, eager to serve their dark new mistress, but I shoved that thought aside and put my back into turning up great spades of scorched earth.

We found them. Lady and Marlo and Lank and all, bruised and terrified and filthy, but alive, to the last.

It’s eight miles to the nearest other lonely House. The march took us the rest of the day and half the night. The Lady led her people in song until her voice gave out. Marlo can’t carry a tune and the man only knows one song, but by the Angels he finished the march.

And then we slept. Darla and I together, with Buttercup between us, Mama and Gertriss on the floor beside us.

I’ve never slept so soundly. If I dreamed at all, they were pleasant dreams, dreams I don’t remember.