Hard Corps (Quentin Case Book 2)

by John Hook

  “You anticipated that I would miss,” Guido said quietly.

  “You were faster than you look. Not sure I had time.”

  Guido made a barely perceptible murmur that was hard to interpret.

  Just then, Saripha entered with a tray of food and drink. She set them down and gave us all a hug. She was dressed in canvas slacks woven from treated grasses and a dyed blue linen shirt. Her white hair was brushed back, her eyes bright. She made all her clothes because she didn’t have a glamour. Saripha was a witch who had crossed over into this world without dying first. She had great power, but also great vulnerability. We really had no idea what would happen if she died here. Saripha had been the core of the small group when I found them. She had sacrificed her chance to cross back over to try to stay and help the others.

  Saripha introduced herself to Blaise and set out the food, although she did most of the eating. She actually still needed to do so.

  As I passed over to Guido, he said two words quietly enough so that only I heard.

  “Watch him.” He nodded subtly at Blaise.

  “Meaning?”

  However, Guido was quiet.

  “Anything we need to know about the region across the mountains to the West?”

  “Don’t know.” Guido shook his head the way a dog shook off water. “Don’t care much for the Manitor over there.”

  “Why?”

  “Enjoys his job too much.”

  “What is a Manitor’s job?”

  “Keep order.”

  “For whom?”

  “Can’t say.”

  “Can’t or won’t?”

  “Both” His expression remained neutral but I sensed he was enjoying himself. “Bargains.”

  “How come you never know much until after the fact, when you seem to have known everything?”

  Guido fell silent. He had a hard time talking to me. I think he thought I asked too many questions. Of course, he drove me crazy with his riddles-for-answers thing.

  “Whether you can tell me or not, do you know what is over there?”

  “I know what used to be over there. They had a change… in management.”

  “Is there anything over there that would lead a citizen to think there was a ‘better life’?”

  “Probably an illusion.” Guido grunted.

  “Most things here are. Is there a particular illusion over there?”

  “There is something very dangerous over there.”

  “And you can’t tell me what it is.”

  He was silent.

  “Bargains.” I sighed.

  I looked at Saripha. She shook her head. “I don’t know either. He won’t tell me and I think he cares for me a great deal.”

  “Then I guess we should go.”

  “You aren’t in danger so you are going to borrow someone else’s.” Saripha raised an eyebrow.

  “Yes. Because as soon as one person becomes too small a matter to take a risk for, we all really are in Hell.”

  Saripha smiled and gave me a kiss on the cheek.

  “Be careful.”

  “Aren’t I always?”

  She didn’t’ answer.

  We headed up over the mountains. In the higher plains were various sorts of wildlife, some docile and some quite dangerous, but if you were alert and didn’t get either cornered or surprised, you could mostly avoid them. Izzy kept an arrow notched, but we made it through without incident.

  We then descended down into a more heavily wooded area with exposed rock that probably was the border between regions. I took the point. Izzy and Rox walked in the middle, Izzy turning from time to time to look behind, where Blaise brought up the rear. Kyo, as was her tactic, was somewhere, but we would never know where. Neither would anyone waiting to ambush us.

  We didn’t have long to wait. I heard Blaise moving up and watched him. As he passed Izzy and Rox, he held a single slender finger to his lips and with the same finger on the other hand made a circular gesture above his head. Izzy looked up. Blaise came up behind me.

  “Do you hear it?” he whispered.

  “I don’t hear anything.” I kept my voice very low in the spirit of things.

  “I keep hearing something up in the trees. Faint.”

  “That’s probably Kyo.”

  “No. She doesn’t make any noise.”

  I looked at Blaise. Was this guy a professional tracker? I heard nothing.

  Suddenly there was a sound even I could hear and a gray body dropped to the ground two feet in front of me. It was a demon, but different from those we had seen before. He was gray with a more oval head and a snout sticking out in front. His skin was shiny and wet, but scaly. He had longer pointed ears and an orange stripe ran down his back. His mouth hung open, exposing multiple rows of razor teeth, but no sound came out as he struggled with clawed hands at his throat. The throat had been slashed open from ear to ear. Yellow green goo ran everywhere, and after a couple of minutes of wild thrashing, the demon lay still on the ground with his eyes glazed.

  Suddenly another body dropped, but this one was bound with a woody vine and was making ugly, guttural noises. Whoever had tied him up had done a good job and despite struggles, neither his teeth nor claws were in a position to free him. We, of course, knew who that “whoever” was. Kyo slid silently down to the ground on a cord. She wiped her blade on the struggling demon and sheathed it.

  “Nice bug sticker,” Blaise commented. “Any more?”

  “I made a few. I have one, but we left the others with the troops back in Rockvale.”

  “I’ll have to put in an order.” He nodded at Kyo. She smiled.

  I stepped over and looked at our prisoner. “Just when I didn’t think demons could get uglier...”

  The demon, as was typical, didn’t talk but put words in my head. “You are going to die! We will enslave you all.”

  I looked at the others. They nodded. It was a public broadcast. That told me these demons didn’t know who I was and weren’t specifically taunting me.

  “Who is ‘we’?”

  “I am not afraid of you.”

  “Probably because you just met him.” Izzy giggled.

  I was careless for a moment and the demon snapped up at me with his teeth. However, before he could make contact, Blaise hit him between the eyes with the handle of his walking stick. The head snapped back painfully in response to the knot of very hard wood, which gave me time to step back before he started thrashing frantically, snapping his jaws in all directions.

  “You always have this effect on demons?” Blaise asked.

  “Only the ones I really like.”

  “So what do we do with him?”

  I looked at the demon. It was hard to read his expression.

  “Have you encountered any other humans lately?”

  “Maybe.” If it is possible for a demon, he was being coy.

  “Someone from our territory?”

  The demon grinned.

  “We will have all of you soon.”

  He didn’t know anything useful and I wasn’t going to find anything out.

  “Since you’re scaring me so much, looks like there is only one thing I can do.”

  I drew my short sword and slashed the vine in the right place to make it fall apart. The demon dropped to the ground, momentarily surprised. He thought of jumping up and charging us, but found himself staring at Izzy with an arrow drawn back in his bow. The demon scrambled and disappeared into the woods. I looked at Kyo. She nodded and disappeared nimbly up her cord and was gone.

  “She does have some nice moves.” Blaise rubbed his head.

  “Yes, and she’ll find out the only thing that demon can tell us.”

  “Which is?”

  “Where the other demons are.” Izzy smiled.

  “You’ve done this before.”

  “Demons are predictable.” I grinned.

  We were gathered on the edge of a slope, hidden in the trees, overlooking a small encampment of demons like the t
wo we had just encountered. In fact, the one we had released was among them. He seemed to be addressing one of the larger demons in the middle who, based on his size and the general deference the others seemed to be showing him, must have been the leader. The fact that they were camped out was evidenced by woven grass bedrolls and a larger tent, although it was little more than a blanket thrown over a hastily assembled frame of tree branches. This seemed an odd place for a patrol of demons, but I had to remember these were a different breed from the diminutive and rather stupid tribes that had been in charge of Rockvale. They did not like being away from their home base and only patrolled. They never camped out in the wild.

  I looked at Kyo, who had led us here. Of all of us, she had the widest experience of this world so I usually looked to her first to see if she had a take on any new situation.

  “What are they doing?” I kept my voice very low, leaning close to Kyo. I had no idea how sensitive their long ears might be.

  “Looks like they are staked out.”

  “Looking for us?”

  “Or something from our direction—we’re following the most logical and obstacle-free route through the western mountains.”

  “Or maybe something from the West.”

  “I don’t think so. This is a different breed of demons. I haven’t seen anything like them in our territory and I doubt they would stray too far from base in such a small group.”

  “So they probably aren’t an attack force?”

  “Not unless they are an advance and the rest are not far behind. However, they seem more like a group that is waiting and watching.”

  “You think we are looking at the whole group?”

  Kyo nodded. “I did a quick excursion around in the trees before I came to get the rest of you. Judging by the number of bedrolls, this looks like it.”

  “Then let’s find out what they are up to.”

  I nodded to Izzy.

  “How many?”

  “Use your imagination. I think we only need the big guy.”

  Izzy took up a position between two trees that gave him a clear line of sight on the encampment.

  Kyo used a vine to get back up in a tree. The trees grew down part of the slope and she’d be able to use the canopy as cover for her descent. There was no sound when she moved, no shaking of leaves. I wasn’t quite that good, but I could use the tree line to move closer, and right now they seemed to be too wrapped up in what was going on in their encampment to pay too much attention to me.

  When I was about halfway down, the big guy tore out the throat of the demon I had sent back. He screamed a sound that almost hurt my ears. The sound echoed through the canyon and then the demon fell over into a lifeless heap of green goo. The big guy was visibly angered and the other demons, like good toadies, were backing off.

  Suddenly one demon’s head seemed to explode and he went down with a shaft in the back of his skull. The demons looked around, momentarily confused. Two more went down the same way. I stepped in and slashed another’s throat with my short sword. There was only the big guy and one other demon left. The smaller demon ran. I turned toward the big guy.

  There was pure hatred in those eyes.

  “I’ll kill you.” Telepathic as always, delivered with a snarl.

  However, suddenly a shadow fell from the trees above and Kyo was behind him with a blade poised at his throat. He seethed but did not move.

  I stepped up to him. I knew there was a risk he could decide he didn’t care about his own life and he might disembowel me before Kyo could kill him, but I had to show him I wasn’t afraid of him, so I got right up in his face.

  “Ehh, what’s up, Doc?”

  He grinned. It was actually not a good look for him.

  “I will give you a special death.”

  “Nice to see someone with a dream.” I moved to one side and looked back up the hill. “There. If I stand here, my archer has a clear shot.”

  I could see the demon rake the trees with his eyes, looking for the archer but not finding him.

  Suddenly there was a shriek at the edge of the clearing and the one remaining demon had dropped to the ground. I had thought Izzy had nailed him, but I saw it was Blaise using his hard wood cane to split the demon’s temple. Rox next to him grinned and gave me a thumbs-up.

  Demons don’t sweat, but I could tell the big guy was feeling a bit less confident.

  “Are you going to kill me too?”

  “Not sure yet. What are you doing here?”

  “Why should I tell you?”

  “Because I want to know and if I don’t find out from you, I probably don’t need to keep you alive.”

  He was quiet for a moment, thinking. It was hard to watch demons think. They weren’t very good at it and they took too long to figure anything out.

  “We are just supposed to watch the road.”

  “Why?”

  The demon strained against Kyo’s knife blade just enough to show anger but not enough to cause a deep cut, which wasn’t easy considering what a sharp edge these knives had.

  “I don’t need to tell you anything.”

  “Do you know who I am?” This was actually an experiment I wanted to pull rather than just bravado.

  The demon looked at me in a manner that I assumed was meant to be disdainful.

  “No. I don’t know humans. I just kill them when I get the chance.”

  “My name is Quentin Case. You ever hear of me?”

  The demon’s eyes widened and he even pulled his head back a little.

  “The human pet of Kanarchan.”

  “Kanarchan?”

  “I think he means Guido,” Kyo offered.

  “So you know about us.”

  “Everyone knows about the town of free humans.” If it was possible to sneer telepathically, the big gray did so.

  “Maybe you want to do something about our little town?”

  “We will. Kanarchan won’t be able to protect you.”

  I slapped the big guy a couple of times. It may have hurt my hand more than it hurt him, but I did it because I figured it was humiliating to be manhandled by a human.

  “Talking pretty tough for a guy that so far has failed pretty miserably at, well, gosh…” I slapped again. He snarled. “…everything you were sent here to do.” I brought up my hand as if to slap him one more time. He flinched. I ended up just patting his cheek in an almost friendly manner. “You have one chance. I’m looking for someone else from our town. He probably came by here.”

  The demon smirked.

  “Not while I was here, but I heard. A human who thought he was important. Thought he could become friends with King.”

  “King?”

  “Demon King.”

  “What happened to him? This human.”

  “You’ll never find him.”

  “You don’t know what happened to him, do you? Where is this King?”

  Then the demon did something unexpected. He rose up sharply, letting the sword bite into his shoulder, but it missed his neck. He was able to club Kyo aside with his elbow, although she was already reacting and rolling away so as to minimize the blow. The other arm came up with claws extended and raked my ribs. The wound burned white hot as I staggered back. He was leaping for me when an arrow shaft, placed precisely, opened his head like a melon.

  The demon hit the ground in front of me and stayed still.

  “You okay, Quentin?” Kyo already had some medicinal mixture from her belt and was applying it to my side. Rox strolled over and put her arms around me.

  “I see your ability to make friends hasn’t improved much.”

  Izzy came up. “Sorry I had to take him out. I had to react pretty quickly.”

  “No apology necessary. If he had more time I might be a proto now.”

  “Learn anything?”

  “Some, but not yet sure what to make of it. They know about me, but I don’t think they were looking for us. Not sure what they were looking for. Wish I knew.”

>   “Where does that leave us?”

  “I did find out that word about me is out there which, to me, confirms that we are not going to be left alone forever. This might have been the first step.”

  “And Philip?”

  “Seemed to know something about him, or thought he did, but I never found out very much.”

  “Now what?” Rox asked.

  “I think we need to find out what this ‘Demon King’ is.”

  4.

  “I think we found our first clue.” Izzy chuckled. He leaned against a rock as the rest of us came up to the cliff’s edge.

  The previous evening we had made it to a line of low hills and decided to camp for the night rather than stumble about in the dark. As darkness crept over us, we could see there was something waiting on the other side of the hills. Something big. We could see the sky behind the mountain being illuminated in an orange light. Now, in the morning sun, we stood at the edge of a valley overlooking a large city.

  It was hard to gauge how large. The buildings were big, boxy structures made of stone and adobe with some wood. Nothing was more than five or six stories, but most were two or three. Nothing showed any architectural imagination, and everything was very packed together. It wasn’t very orderly either. Streets were narrow and twisty and, as things moved toward the center, they became more densely packed and chaotic. Many windows were dark but some were illuminated by clay pot torches. There were also some fire pits around the city, probably with lava, that contributed to the city’s appropriately hellish appearance.

  However, despite the lamps and fire pits, the city seemed terribly dark, even in the morning sunlight. Walls and streets were dirty and stained. Buildings near street level were so crowded together that very little light got down there, especially since roads didn’t run straight, but curled around in nervous twists and turns. There were people down there, but it was hard to make anything out about them. I presumed we would find demons too. They would be running the place.

  “This must be the big city Philip mentioned to Anita.”

  “Didn’t she say what he was looking for was beyond the big city?” Izzy asked.