Manx
Page 40
Some of their number started cheering when they realised that the battle was over. Sorsha didn't have the strength. Instead she simply collapsed to the ground beside the remains of her jerkin and tried to make sense of what had happened. But she couldn't. So mostly she just sat there and did nothing at all except wipe her burnt hand on the cool grass and covered herself in water.
She was still doing that when a soldier in his blue and white with a golden ram emblazoned on his chest, approached her.
“You're Sorsha Hooper, a walker and the leader of this band?”
Sorsha nodded, wondering who he was. He cut a dashing figure she thought. All dressed up in his uniform with the crass buttons polished and shining. And maybe if she hadn't been so tired she would have given him a second glance. Even a third. She might even have smiled. But she was simply too tired, so she went straight to what mattered.
“What did you do? What were those things?”
“Deep impact ordinance,” he told her proudly, as if it should mean something to her. “Though most of the soldiers just call them crushers.”
“Uh huh.” She nodded as if anything in what he'd just told her made sense. But it didn't. It meant a bomb of some sort as far as she could tell.
“Three thousand pounds of high explosive, wrapped up in a tempered copper shell with a hardened tip. You drop them, they hit the ground and turn everything around them into a crater a hundred yards across and twenty deep. Fortifications crumble. Structures become powder. And tunnels collapse.”
He paused for a moment. “And in this case whole areas have collapsed. Cities.” He looked strangely at her. “The craters are two hundred and fifty yards across and just as deep. The land was hollow.”
“And the spiders?” She didn't care about his obvious pride in whatever these crushers could do or his shock at what had happened. The spiders were what mattered after all.
“If they were within two hundred and fifty yards of the impact, they will have shattered. Been crushed under countless tons of collapsing dirt.” He smiled – though it looked a little forced. “There won't be much left except mush. And we've pounded each city half a dozen times.”
“They burrow,” she pointed out.
“And those that survived the impact, are now buried alive underneath craters that have no exits. That means no tunnels bringing them air.” He smiled some more. “I'm Air Commander Phillips, by the way. Leader of the Seventh Airborne. The Mighty Skyhawks.”
The seventh airborne? As in there were at least six others of these squadrons of skyships and their oversize bombs? Truly, she thought, this world had changed, and perhaps not for the better without the hand of those with magic to guide it. That was going to have to change. For the moment though, the only thing that mattered was the spiders. And she didn't completely believe in his confidence.
“We'll have to post a watch and see what comes,” she told him.
“Nothings coming,” the Air Commander told her. And then he flashed that smile at her again, as if he was trying to convince her with it. “We destroyed all eight cities. They're craters now.”
“Eight cities?” Sorsha groaned. “We were only fighting two before.” And if the spiders were still alive and came out from all eight cities at once, they would be in a lot of trouble. Had these soldiers in their skyships just made things even worse?
“And now you're not fighting any!” he told her proudly.
Sorsha resisted the urge she felt to groan. Instead she just told him to go to the tent in the middle of the camp and tell them what the Seventh Airborne had done. She was just too tired to argue. The man could believe what he wanted to. She would stand watch until she was certain no more green spiders were coming. It was the smart thing to do.
But maybe she thought as she lay back on the grass and closed her eyes while he walked away, she'd have a nap first. And maybe, she prayed, she wouldn't dream about giant green spiders. But she knew she would.
Chapter Forty One
“Look! I saved you!” Whitey announced, causing Manx to turn around in surprise. “Again!”
“You saved me?” Manx didn't understand. And quite frankly he didn't want to be disturbed. He was having a rare afternoon off. It had taken longer than they'd expected to unravel the dimensional prison in the town, and the decision had been made that it was too late to set off for their next town. So he was getting to enjoy the evening sunset in the garden with an ale in one hand and a slab of bread with a piece of cheese and a pickle in the other. And it was a pretty garden. Much like the one he'd had – before the boars had started chopping it up.
Actually Westlake was a nice town. Maybe it was large enough to call it a city – he didn't know. But whether it was or it wasn't, he loved being able to sit in a garden, smell the flowers and enjoy the gentle breeze, and wonder why their lodgings were called the Harbourside Inn when there was no harbour. He quite liked the giraffes too, as he studied them as they wandered down the street, looking for something to eat. They were elegant animals, and they added a certain something to the rural feel of the town.
Then he saw the spider in the cat's mouth and he understood what she was talking about as she dropped it on the lawn beside him.
“That's not one of the green spiders,” he told her. “It's a daddy long legs. And it's dried out. It's been dead for weeks.”
“Oh!” Whitey stared at it. And then she realised what he was saying. “No! It's not! It was moving! Walking around! Threatening everyone! And it was green!”
He could have argued, Manx knew. But it was warm, the sun was setting and he was finally comfortable – now that he had a cushion to put under his backside. He didn't want to upset things. “Shouldn't you be with Styl?” he asked. “Isn't she missing you?”
“But I wanted to see you,” the cat told him insincerely. “You know I could never leave you! The spider could have killed you without me here to save you!” She jumped up on to the garden bench beside him. “And I missed you.”
“Ah … hah?” Manx wasn't fooled. “And what's the real reason?”
“She says I ripped her blouse.” The cat looked up at him with innocent wide eyes. “But I didn't! She's lying! I would never damage her clothes! You know that!”
“You mean like you didn't piss in Larissa's boots?”
“Yes!” She nodded hurriedly. “Like that! I didn't!”
“But you did,” Manx pointed out. “You even admitted it. You laughed about it. To her face!”
“Oh!” Whitey stared at him, trying to work out what to say. “I forgot.” Then she shook her head. “But she deserved it! She was an evil cow!”
“Because she threatened to put you on a diet?”
“Yes!” Whitey nodded some more. “Who would do that? To me?! It's wrong!”
“Practically everyone who knows you!” Manx replied. But he had to wonder how much of what she said she actually believed.
“But … but … I'm adorable!” Then she started rubbing herself against him. “You know that.”
Maybe she was, because despite himself he started petting the traitorous, lying little fleabag. It was a bad habit he thought. But his fingers still did it no matter how he tried to stop them. Did the cat actually have some sort of power over them, he wondered?
“So why did you damage Styl's clothes?” he asked as the cat began to purr.
“She was mean to me,” Whitey replied. And then a few seconds later she started as she realised what she'd just said. “But I didn't! I would never!” she protested.
“Liar! Of course you did it, fleabag!” Another familiar voice came from behind them.
Manx turned around to see Larissa standing there, looking somewhat vexed. And Adern was standing beside her just looking confused. Both of them though looked far better than they had the last time he'd seen them.
“And you didn't just tear her clothes up either, did you, fleabag?! No! You left a headless mouse on top of them!”
“I thought she might be hungry!”
“It was a long trip,” Adern told him as he gulped down the ale.
“I can imagine,” he told the walker sourly as he watched his late afternoon tea vanishing down the man's throat. “So why'd you make it – not that I mind the company.”
“To bring you some more company.”
Manx would have asked what he meant except that he heard the footfalls behind him and turned to see two more people standing there. Two people that he had never wanted to see again. But at least they were bandaged up, he thought. They deserved that.
“Theo, Caylee,” he greeted them. Not that he wanted to. Maybe some of that displeasure showed on his face.
“We didn't want to come either,” his brother began. “We weren't given a choice.”
Manx nodded. He understood that. Just as he could guess what they were here to do. There were still a lot of dimensional prisons that needed to be opened up. Two parties or even three could do that more quickly than one. And now that the war on the southern border had more or less come to an end, there were some more walkers and shamans available to help as well.
If the battle really was over. It had only been four days since word had come of the end of the spiders, and no one was certain.
“Well welcome to the right side of the tracks,” he told them glumly. “And to becoming one of the funny people!”
“What?”
“They haven't told you then. All spell-casters have traits that mark them as what they are. That unpleasant itching you feel in your trousers – that's ours, growing.”
The two of them stared intently at him, eyes wide and faces wrinkled up in alarm.
“Tails,” he told them. “We're growing tails.”
Jaws dropped like stones all around him when he said that. But really they shouldn't have. Everyone knew he couldn't sit still anymore. That he squirmed constantly when he tried. And they also knew that the Smythes had been welcomed into the fold of true spell-casters by the gods. He was surprised that the rest hadn't put those things together. Especially now when his own tail was about an inch long and almost poking through the back of his trousers.
“You bastard!” Theo snapped at him. “You did this! And I'll bet you're even proud of it!”
“Not really. Just resigned to it.” But he understood it perfectly. Larissa had told him long ago that the gods gave them their limitations and traits for a reason. This one was obvious. His family were natural thieves and brigands. Assassins too. A tail ended that. Because there was no way to hide it short of cutting it off. Which meant that from now on every time some coin went missing or a man died under suspicious circumstances, the guards would simply look around for anyone with a tail. The Smythes had just been put out of business.
But he suspected there was another reason for it. The Goddess of Knowledge was a little upset with the Smythes. They'd stolen her window after all.
“Tails are good,” Whitey announced unexpectedly. “I love my tail.” And just to prove it she started swishing it around. “So pretty! Everyone's jealous!”
“I wish those lions had eaten you!” Caylee told him bitterly, ignoring the cat.
“If they had, we'd all be dead,” he replied calmly, strangely unconcerned by her words. Now he knew, because the shamans had finally managed to get his family talking, that he was far from the only member of his family to have been dangled like a piece of meat over the lions. The same had happened to all his brothers and sisters when they were his age. And it seemed that maybe one time in three, the child gained a little freedom from the blood curse that had been laid on them. They gained a little of their magic back. Of course sometimes, the child got maimed. Both Theo and Caylee had endured the same terrifying ordeal he had. Maybe they hadn't been as unlucky as him, but he simply couldn't be angry with them. Not any more. Not when he knew that.
“Bull shite! You're a muck spout of the first water!”
“I'm telling the truth,” he replied. “Freda knew that the arrangement between the spiders and the Silver Order was ending. She needed someone to find the window so she could let her followers and the world know what was coming. She chose me.” He wasn't quite sure how or why she'd done it, but he knew in his bones she had. Probably it was simply about convenience. He'd been in the right place at the right time.
“So when the lions attacked, she made sure I survived. And the first thing I saw when I awoke in the infirmary bed – a damned cat! The cats guided me. Shaped me a little as I grew up – as best they could. Made me a follower of Freda. And when the time came, they told me about the window.”
“Whitey here's little ditty was for my ears as well as the others after all.” He scratched her under the chin.
“I knew enough about verse and riddles to unravel the meaning. And I had the skills needed to rescue the window. And when we did, the shamans of Freda had her knowledge back with them. Just in time to help in the battle against the spiders.”
Manx returned their stares. “If I'd died, we'd all be spider food by now. Or worse, hosts for their eggs.” He shuddered at the thought. Nothing was worth that.
They didn't believe him. That was obvious. But strangely he found that he didn't care. He knew he was right. So he told them to go – actually to piss off – and find themselves somewhere to sleep for the night. And then he watched them trudge off, grumbling to one another. Probably plotting to kill him in his sleep.
“Family, hey!” Adern commented with a cheery grin. Then he slammed down the empty tankard on the garden bench and started looking around for another one.
“Family,” Manx agreed. Then he turned to the shaman. “So the war really is over?”
“Looks that way. All eight spider cities are now craters. Spiders keep digging themselves out of the ground and attacking, but only in trickles. The portal wall can take care of them. And all day every day, Sorsha and the rest of our leaders spend negotiating with the soldiers. Working out a truce, though there was never actually a war.”
“And the Silver Order? All gone?”
“Seven survive. The healers managed to dig the eggs out of them before they hatched. Six of them anyway. Lady Marshendale found a knife and dug them out of herself in her cell. Say what you will about that woman – and she looks about a hundred and ten now – but she is one tough old battleaxe!”
Manx nodded. He thought much the same about her – except that he would have called her a monster!
He didn't say anything for a while after that. Just stared at the distant sunset and petted the cat who was happily purring away. The others were quiet too, lost in their own thoughts. And all of them stared at the giraffes, because – why wouldn't you.
“So it's really over then?” he finally asked. “I can go home in a few weeks?” And surely with a second party travelling across the realm it wouldn't be more than that before all the dimensional prisons were emptied out.
“Looks like,” Adern replied. “You think the landlady's got the dinner on?”
“Yes! Dinner!” Whitey piped up, apparently not quite as asleep as she'd seemed. “I'm hungry!”
“You're always hungry,” Manx told her. “And shouldn't you go and apologise to Styl and then go to dinner with her?”
“Apologise!” The cat stared at him in shock. “For what?!”
“For her clothes,” he answered her.
“Never!” Whitey snorted indignantly at him. “I am She With The Sharp Claws Who Must Be Adored! I do not apologise!”
“Then you do not eat either. I guess you'll just have to go hungry tonight!”
“You wouldn't dare! Monkey face! After I saved your life from that spider?!”
How was he supposed to answer that, Manx wondered? Even thou
gh he knew she'd only found a dead spider somewhere and brought it to him thinking it would fool him, it was almost as though she really believed her own lies. And in the end he relented. He really was soft in the head, he thought. Larissa told him as much. Actually she called him a dolt!
“Don't be mean to my monkey face!” Whitey snapped at the shaman. “He's just doing what he has to. He can't help himself – because I'm so adorable! It's all in my name.”
“You named yourself, didn't you?” The shaman asked.
“Of course.” Whitey made herself comfortable in Manx' lap. “I'm a cat. Do you think for a second that any cat would leave such an important matter to others?!”