Wolf and Raven

by Michael A. Stackpole

  Sampson smiled in the same way the school disciplinarians had years ago. “You need not endure this agony, Wolfgang. All we want is Dr. Raven. Here we've gone and chased you all over Seattle and put a great number of people to incredible inconvenience, not the least of whom is you. Give us Dr. Raven.”

  “No ‘or else’?”

  “You won’t like my ‘or else.’ ” Sampson looked back to where Charles came bearing Lynn’s limp body in his arms. “If you decide to resist me yet, I will awaken her and she will take your place. You will watch as she suffers more trauma than if she fell from the tallest building in downtown Seattle. Give us what we want. She will not be harmed and your pain will end.”

  I sighed heavily and tried to ignore the agony in my lower limbs. “This ‘your pain will end stuff’—you’ve said that plenty since I’ve been here. You can come up with something more interesting, can’t you?”

  An eyeblink later it felt like the troll had shoved a molten sheet of glass through my right knee. I cried out in pain and despair. The troll’s hoarse chuckle sounded akin to a car being crushed in a wrecking yard and, suddenly, the whole hideous ordeal collapsed in on me. In the past dozen hours I’d been hounded through Seattle, had escaped traps and ambushes meant to maim, capture, or kill me. The troll had defeated me three times and I’d been worked over by individuals who wanted to see torture made into an Olympic sport.

  As the edges of the pain crumbled away, I held my right hand up. “Wait, no more.” I took a deep breath. “I give you Raven. You let her free, really free, right?” Sampson settled a mask of superiority over his features. “You can trust me, Kies. You are but a means to an end, and she is a means to get to you.”

  I shook my head to clear it. Up beyond Sampson’s head I saw something flit through the darkness. I tried to focus and identify it, but I couldn’t. I was too far gone to make sense of anything but ending the pain. “You make sure she’s okay?”

  Sampson nodded solemnly. “She shall not want.”

  I knew in that instant that Lynn would be auctioned off to the highest bidder. Fine. That makes this much easier. “Doc’s secret headquarters is in the Anasazi Shipping Company warehouse on pier 27.”

  Sampson looked up at the troll. “Overhand blow, shatter his pelvis, then break his spine, one bone at a time. Charles, use the woman as you will, then have Golnartac dispose of her.”

  Behind me the troll chuckled with evil delight. “You’re much too trusting, Wolf.” Sampson dabbed at his split lip again, then spat on me. “I’ll be sure to let Raven know who his Judas was ...”

  The troll loomed up over me, but as his fist began to descend, the ogre holding my right leg began to jerk and spurt blood from a string of holes linking his navel with his forehead. Crimson liquid sprayed the wall behind him, then the whole of his head above his glassy eyes disintegrated. As he toppled backward, his lifeless fingers let my ankle slip free.

  The other ogre, who had increased tension in preparation for the troll’s punch, whipped me out from beneath the troll’s falling fist. I felt the warehouse floor shudder with the blow, and Golnartac’s enraged scream shook the corrugated tin walls like a summer storm. Another screech, this one of ogre-pain, sang out in counterpoint to the troll’s cry, and the pressure on my left ankle evaporated.

  Suddenly I found myself tumbling and rolling across the concrete floor. I landed on my left shoulder and felt a grinding crackle in my ribs, but I used the pain to force my body to react. Adrenaline flooded through me yet again and dulled the pain. I scrambled to one knee, fists balled, then coughed a wet laugh of triumph and joy.

  Kid Stealth stood on one ogre’s back with his smoking Kalashnikov still pointed at the ogre he’d blown away. The sickle-shaped claws on his artificial, birdlike titanium legs dripped ogre blood—the other talons just clung on to the dead body beneath him. He’d been what I saw moving through the girders above the warehouse floor, and he’d nailed the one ogre while dropping down to rake his claws through the second.

  The troll remained down on one knee, cradling his broken fist to his chest. Above the hand, right over where the troll’s heart should have been, rode a red dot. Back by the warehouse’s side door I saw the stocky outline of Tom Electric. The laser-scope on his armor-piercing rocket launcher twinkled reassuringly at me.

  Behind and above Tom four more people appeared. Two were the local gillettes I’d taken to calling Zig and Zag. Also armed with Kalashnikovs they flanked the most beautiful member of Raven’s crew, Valerie Valkyrie. She looked over at me with horror on her face, while the two street samurai covered the Halloweeners. Plutarch Graogrim, an ork, moved away from Zig and Zag, keeping his pistol trained on Charles the Red.

  I saw Sampson go pale and I knew Raven had arrived. I looked over at Doc as he stepped from the shadows. The blackness rippled off his coppery skin and clung to him long enough to deeply score lines around his muscles. Tall, even for an elf, he looked human because of his extraordinary build and the high cheekbones his Amerind blood granted him. His long, black hair fell down over his leather vest to mid-chest and all but hid his pointed elven ears.

  I like to pride myself on having silvery eyes and a scary stare, but the incendiary look Doc gave Sampson put even my best effort into the amateur category. His eyes burned with blue and red highlights as if an aurora rippled through their black depths. Muscles tensed at the corners of Raven’s lantern jaw and the flesh tightened around his eyes.

  Raven’s voice sliced through the silence like a laser through cheap tin sheet. “You had a message for me?”

  Those six words might as well have been .50 caliber slugs for the effect they had on Mr. Sampson. He shook his head violently and cursed. “No, dammit, not here, not now!” His hands flew up and around like snakes writhing in pain, then something flashed and Sampson vanished.

  The Halloweeners started jabbering nervously among themselves, but the click-click-click of Kid Stealth’s talons against the concrete as he ran over to cover them killed their conversation. “I have nothing on IR.”

  Raven stared at where Sampson had stood as if memorizing all that had just happened. He looked up and over quickly, back along the path Stealth had used to come into the warehouse, then nodded as someone yelped in pain. “He went out the way you came in, Stealth.”

  The Murder Machine smiled. “A strand of razor wire can cut you bad when someone booby-traps his backtrail.”

  “Time enough to track him later,” Raven said, then trotted over to where I knelt. He dropped down beside me and wove a quick spell that cut the pain at the same time it told him what was wrong with me.

  “Take it easy, Wolf. Nothing that won’t heal in time.” He gave me a smile that buoyed my spirits, but it sank into a thin line of concern as I reached out and grabbed his hand.

  “Doc, I need some help, now ...” I looked over at Golnartac. “I want him . . .”

  Raven looked deep into my eyes. He didn’t use any magic, at least no magic I could feel, but he knew what I was thinking. “Wolf, you don’t have to do this. Lynn is safe. Give yourself time to heal. You know if I use magic and it goes wrong, or there’s a complication, it might stay that way.”

  He looked over at Kid Stealth. “For him, for any of the others, the possibility of replacing a defective part mechanically is there. For you, for me, that option is not possible.”

  “You heard Sampson, Doc. You heard what they were going to do to Lynn.”

  “That was their fantasy, but we’ve stopped them, my friend. I only deal in realities, and reality says she’ll be fine.”

  “Yes, but I won’t be.” I pointed at the troll and he sneered at me. “Sampson called a tune, and the troll would have gladly played it. Well, I’ve got a variation on a theme to teach him.”

  “This is stupid, Wolf.”

  “We’re here, Lynn’s here, because I was stupid. I want to spend the rest of my life with Lynn, but to do that I need to know I can keep her safe. He always had an advantage over me, and n
ow we’re just about even. I have no choice, Richard. I have to do this.”

  I saw the lightplay in his eyes quicken. I only called him Richard when it was truly important, but he still did not want to damage me permanently. “Wolf, there has to be another way.”

  I shook my head. “Don’t fix anything. Just kill the pain long enough for me to reach the Old One.”

  Raven stood and helped me to my feet. “And if the troll kills you?”

  My eyes narrowed to silver slits. “Don’t worry about it. You only deal in realities, remember?”

  * * *

  As Raven’s spell washed over me like a warm, spring shower, I retreated deep into my heart of hearts. I swam through lines of pain that shimmered like heat lightning playing through dark thunderheads, but the spell took me beyond its touch. At times the going was difficult, but I forced myself on, haunted by the knowledge that I had almost gotten Lynn killed.

  The Old One regarded me with an eager look of bloodlust on his face. “Leave it to me, Longtooth. Give yourself to me and I will destroy the troll.”

  “No. I gave myself over to you and your powers meant nothing without intelligence guiding their use. I need everything you are, but I must have it on my terms, under my control.”

  The Wolf spirit yipped high laughter. “You are in pain and are weak. What makes you think you can control me now?”

  My anger and outrage at having failed to keep Lynn safe tightened around him like a net. “It is enough that I know I must control you. I need your speed and your strength. I need your heart and your endurance. You will meet my needs in my way. You failed, and you owe me the chance to put it all right. It must be a man who destroys that troll, and I will be that man.”

  The old wolf tilted its head in an attitude of curiosity. “But you are not a man—you are more.”

  I ground my teeth together. “Tonight I will settle for being just a man.”

  The Old One sensed my need and my pain. “Very well, I agree without condition. This is my gift to you, Longtooth Man-warrior.”

  The warehouse swam into focus again, but the heightened senses made it all seem as if I had never been there before. I smelled terror from the Halloweeners and death rising from the ogre bodies. I watched tremors threaten to tear the sellspell medic to pieces as I looked at him. All of Raven’s aides looked at me differently than they would have normally—physically I remained the same, but they knew I was not exactly myself.

  No, my friends, I am more myself than I have ever been in your company!

  I turned and met the troll’s evil gaze with an eagerness that daunted the monster ever so slightly. I moved away from Raven and into the center of the warehouse’s open floor. I forced my left hand into a fist and bit back a cry as bones ground together in my forearm. Pointing at Golnartac, I waved him forward. “Come here, you. You’re mine.”

  His laughter had the same grating quality as fingernails being raked across a chalkboard. “Little man will make little smear.”

  The troll lumbered forward, but I struck with a speed powered by my anger. As he swung a ponderous fist through where I had been, I darted forward and drove two punches and an elbow into the muscles bunched above his right knee. My blows crumbled flesh to dust, but the creature’s rock-hard muscles absorbed the impacts more efficiently than a black hole sucking in photons.

  A roar of outrage started in Golnartac’s belly and began to work its way up to his throat. He planted his left foot and tried to pivot back toward the right. I dropped low and spun in the other direction, giving the troll a tantalizing glimpse of my unprotected back. Both his arms swung over my head as a second and third punch missed me, then I sprang up and smashed my right fist into the back of his left hand.

  Pain overshadowed outrage in the troll’s bellow as my punch further splintered broken bones. Unthinking in his agony, the troll backhanded me with that same hand. I saw the blow coming and rolled with it enough to soak off some of the force. Even so, the swat caught me on the left flank, igniting fire in my chest, and sent me flying across the warehouse floor.

  The troll’s renewed scream drowned out my groans as I hit and skidded to a stop against one of the ogres’ bodies. I rolled to my feet, but as I straightened up I felt something give in my chest. More pain shot through me and I felt the urge to cough because of the blood seeping into my lung. I remained half-hunched over and gritted my teeth against the pain. Hooking my hands into claws, I waved the troll forward.

  Golnartac started toward me, but he limped slightly because his right leg failed to respond as it should. I swept in, flicked a glance at his broken hand, then again directed an attack against his right knee. Jamming my left elbow into the joint, I felt Golnartac’s kneecap shift sideways and an agonized roar quickly followed. Exultant, I slipped right and stabbed my right fist upward into his stomach.

  The troll reacted to the blow instinctively. His right hand slapped my back and smashed me face first into a wall of rock-hard abdominal muscles. Dazed, I rebounded, but hesitated too long to escape him. Golnartac’s right hand closed over my head and he unceremoniously hauled me off the ground.

  “Like an egg!” he shouted victoriously and started to apply pressure.

  Pain shot temple to temple, forehead to spine, but I refused to surrender to it. My hands hooked up over the troll’s wrist and, despite the tearing pain in my chest, I whipped my right foot up in a savage kick that locked the monster’s elbow. Uncoiling my body for a second, I brought my foot up again and this time drove it through the elbow.

  When I heard the sharp crack I couldn’t tell which had broken, my skull or his arm. Then the vise that had trapped my head slackened. I dropped toward the ground and launched another quick attack by driving my right heel down on top of the troll’s foot. More bones broke with the pop of a gunshot, and this time I knew I was the damager, not the damage.

  I heard the troll shriek with pain, but it did not matter to me in the least. The second I regained my balance, I whirled around in a circular kick that blasted my left foot through Golnartac’s right knee. The leg bent to the side with a wet, tearing sound. The troll began to flail about wildly, his battle now waged against gravity, not me.

  Golnartac lost his fight and began to sag to the concrete floor.

  The fury in my heart did not allow me to show him any mercy.

  He would have killed Lynn. And he would have enjoyed it.

  Emotions gathered in me like a storm. I took two steps forward before the troll had succumbed to gravity’s relentless attraction. Defying the elemental force that was drawing him down, I leaped into the air. As the troll’s head came into striking range, my right foot flashed up. The ball of my foot hit Golnartac square on the chin, shattering his jaw and smashing ivory teeth into splinters.

  Golnartac’s head snapped back as if someone had grabbed his long black queue and jerked hard. The thick, corded muscles of his neck stretched taut, thrusting his Adam’s apple out like an alien creature fighting to win its freedom. As powerful as they were, even those muscles could not fully absorb all the energy in my snapkick. The troll’s neck cracked as a vertebrae crumbled under the pressure.

  Head lolling uncontrollably, the dead troll crashed to the ground.

  I landed a second later on very unsteady feet. Pure agony told me I’d destroyed my right foot, and black pain exploded in my ribs. For a half-second the Old One let me view my fallen foe, then he, too, abandoned me and I slumped to the floor, unconscious.

  IV

  Leaning heavily on a swordcane that had not seen use since the Silicon Wasp died, I watched from afar as Dr. Raven shook hands with Phil Ingold at the base of the Fuchi tower. The parting seemed amiable, though Phil looked stiff and turned away slowly to walk back into the building. I didn’t sense hostility in him, only sadness and resignation.

  Phil moved as if he hurt on the inside the way I hurt on the outside.

  A fiberglass cast encased my right foot. A similar one sheathed my left arm. Stitches pulled
the flesh together on my right flank and bandages helped hold my broken ribs together on the other side. My nose still hurt when I sneezed, and the bruises all over my body had gone from purple to a uniform shade of brown, with jaundice-yellow highlights.

  I looked up as Raven came over to me. “You explained everything?”

  Raven nodded solemnly. “Lynn is recovered from her ordeal and wants to see you. Neither she nor her mother understand why you won’t be coming around again. Mr. Ingold does understand, but I think he feels his daughter’s pain at not seeing you now more than he fears what might have happened in the future.”

  I shook my head. “He sees future danger as hypothetical, but you and I know it is reality.”

  “Do we?”

  “Sampson went after her once to get at me, he’d do it again. Breaking it off with her and getting her a transfer out of Seattle is the only way to keep her safe. We both know that.”

  “It’s not the only way. Stealth would have killed the Halloweeners for pocket change.”

  “Slaughter of Innocents.”

  “And we will deal with Mr. Sampson.” Raven’s eyes drew distant and the colors in them swirled into a vortex. “Oak Harbor provided some interesting clues about him, as did his display of magic a week ago. His days as a threat are numbered.”

  “And in single digits, too.” I sighed heavily. “Still, if it isn’t him, it will be someone else. The person I would have to be to protect Lynn is a person she would hate.” Raven looked over at me as we walked slowly down the street. “You’re saying that as if she’s incapable of changing and accepting the risks a life with you would entail. She was more concerned about your injuries than her own. Things might not turn out as you think.”

  “All dreams become nightmares, Doc, if you don’t wake up soon enough.” Deep down inside I wanted to believe what he was saying, but in my heart of hearts I knew I couldn’t accept the level of responsibility caring for Lynn required. I’d helped hundreds of people like her, and accepted responsibility for them because I knew that responsibility would someday end. With Lynn it would not, and while a life with her would be glorious, life without her, if she died because of me, would be unlivable.