Trapped lop-6

by James Alan Gardner

"Let's skip the bribery," Pelinor said. "We'll try Plan B. We do have a Plan B, don't we?"

  Impervia scowled. "Bribery was Plan B. Plan A was having Myoko jam the rifle down the shooter's throat."

  We all looked at Myoko where she lay ashen and unconscious in the Caryatid's arms. The bleeding from her mouth and nose had slowed to a seeping ooze; I hoped that was a good sign.

  A moment's silence; then Impervia said, "Flames," in a cold hard voice. "Caryatid, can you set fire to this man who wants to kill us?"

  "I don't know." The Caryatid continued to gaze down at Myoko: rocking the limp body, the way one might rock a sleeping child.

  "Can you do it?" Impervia said more sharply. "There's no way to help Myoko right now; first we have to deal with the gunman. If you aren't up to the job, just say so and we'll try something else."

  The Caryatid forced herself to look up from Myoko and meet Impervia's gaze. "I don't have much range on making flames obey me. And I can't control them at all if they're out of sight."

  Without a word, Annah handed her the mirror.

  "All right," the Caryatid said. "I'll try."

  The Caryatid's ready supply of matches had got soaked when Oberon did his belly-flop. She had to find more matches in her pack, then search for a dry place to strike a light, but at last she had a single flame balanced on her fingertip.

  (All this while, the shooter stayed silent. Everything was still — the town, the docks, the fishing boats. Oberon had to be somewhere, but I couldn't see him. I assumed he was lurking in the water, just deep enough to stay hidden: snout breaking the surface now and then to breathe, biding his time for a chance to rush the shore.)

  The tiny flame leapt from the Caryatid's finger and skittered across the sand like a blazing insect-sized crab. As it rounded the edge of the jolly-boat, it flickered in a wash of breeze… but it held itself together and slipped out of sight. Only the Caryatid, watching with the mirror, could keep an eye on its progress.

  "I see the shrine," she murmured. "And I see the shooter. I think… yes, it's Warwick Xavier."

  "Not much of a surprise," I said. Nobody but the Ring would shoot us on sight; and nobody but the Ring had the connections and incentive to acquire first-rate firearms in this part of the world. Knife-Hand Liz must have landed in Crystal Bay and left Xavier here to stop anyone who might be following. Either that or she was so sick of Xavier's surly attitude, she ordered him to stay behind just to get him out of her hair.

  Xavier must have started shooting as soon as we came into range. But why did he kill Gretchen first? He knew her by sight; he'd spied on her back in Dover. Why waste his first shot — his one chance at surprise — on a woman so utterly harmless? Impervia and Pelinor were far more dangerous threats; you could tell that just by looking at them. But Xavier had taken aim on Gretchen's skull and killed her with a sniper's deliberation. Why?

  A bullet cracked at close range. Sand sprayed as the shot hit the beach. "Damn!" the Caryatid said. "He got my flame."

  "I saw that once in a carnival," Pelinor said. "Fellow shot a flame off a candlewick."

  "Xavier's not that good. He didn't hit my flame dead on, but the sand he kicked up did the job."

  "So light another flame," Impervia said. "And move it faster so Xavier can't hit the moving target."

  The Caryatid shook her head. "Any quicker and the flame will go out. There's too much wind."

  She was right. A spring breeze played around the beach at random, darting in off the lake, then whisking the other direction or swirling crossways. It wasn't strong, but it could easily blow out a candleflame. As if to emphasize that, a gust puffed in my face, carrying with it a mixture of fragrances — fresh tar for patching fishing boats, the scent of last season's catch, a piercing smell of wood smoke…

  Familiar wood smoke: the pheromone that poured off Oberon when he thought Gretchen was in danger. Its smell stood out amidst all the other odors of the port. I'd been wrong when I thought Oberon was hiding in the lake — he must have circled around underwater and come up somewhere out of sight. Now he was sneaking back, close enough that the quirky wind brought his whiff to my nose.

  "We've just been handed Plan C," I told the others. "Oberon is nearby: probably creeping up on Xavier."

  "How do you know?" Impervia asked.

  "I can smell him." I turned to the Caryatid. "Whip up another flame — if you can distract Xavier, it'll give Oberon a chance. Maybe. It's hard to believe Xavier won't notice a giant red lobster sneaking up on him, but let's do what we can."

  "We'd better get ready to attack too," Impervia said. "Whether Oberon makes it or not, we'll never have a better chance to take Xavier down."

  Pelinor nodded. The Caryatid was concentrating on lighting another match. Until she got it going, we needed something else to draw Xavier's attention away from Oberon. "Hey!" I shouted. "Xavier! Can't we talk this over?"

  "Nothing to talk about," a gravelly voice answered. "Unless maybe you come out and let me end things fast."

  "You mean shoot us in cold blood?"

  "Blood is always warm, boy. Or boiling hot."

  "I'll show him hot," the Caryatid muttered. She'd finally got her match lit. The flame jumped to the ground and scampered across the sand. As soon as it rounded the corner of the boat, a shot rang out. The Caryatid, watching her thimble-sized blaze in Annah's mirror, said, "Hah! Missed, you bastard."

  "Going to waste ammo on miniature fires?" I called to Xavier.

  "I have dozens of rounds," he laughed. "The Ring just smuggled a big shipment from Rustland."

  "Bet we have more matches than you have bullets."

  "I'll take that bet," Xavier said. "And the price of the wager is your life, you stupid — heh?"

  A sudden roar. Oberon's voice. "Assassin!"

  "Rush him!" Impervia yelled.

  My feet hit the sand as a rifle shot fired.

  Impervia and Pelinor moved faster than me; they were already racing up the sand as I rounded the edge of the jolly-boat for my first glimpse of the situation.

  Oberon had got within ten meters of Xavier: coming in from the left, taking cover behind the dockside salting house. I don't know whether Oberon had already begun his final charge when Xavier saw him, or if Xavier caught sight of Oberon first and the big lobster had no choice but to race in headlong; either way, both sides must have acted almost simultaneously. As Xavier brought round his rifle, Oberon must have shouted, "Assassin!" in the hope that a lobster-demon's bellow would make the gunman miss.

  Oberon's strategy worked. Xavier fired but the bullet went wild, zinging into the salting house wall. Before Xavier could correct his aim, Oberon had crossed the gap: claws set at a perfect level to disembowel his target. A normal man wouldn't have dodged in time… but Xavier was the sort who'd been brawling since boyhood, and despite his seventy years, he was still fast and slippery. As Oberon galloped forward, Xavier feinted one way, then leapt the other. The big lobster couldn't adjust quickly enough; he plowed into the hourglass shrine, knocking it off its supports with a thunderous crash.

  Xavier swung his rifle around for another shot. Oberon had plenty of fight left, despite hitting the shrine like a battering ram; but the demon's pincers had stabbed deep into the shrine's pine timbers, and he couldn't pull them out.

  Stuck. Trapped.

  Xavier laughed as he took half a second to draw a bead on Oberon's face. Pelinor, running fast in front of me but nowhere near fighting range, hurled his cutlass at Xavier, end over end like an unwieldy throwing knife. He couldn't have expected it to do damage — just ruin the gun's aim. No good: Xavier evaded the sword with a casual sidestep. Staring straight into Oberon's eyes, he tightened his finger on the trigger… at exactly the same instant Oberon thrust his head in Xavier's direction.

  Leading with the spike on his nose.

  I doubt if Oberon intended to hit the rifle muzzle. Instead, I think Xavier realized the danger of that nose-spike coming toward him, and he tried to block the spike with his
gun. His trigger finger was still squeezing, even as the spike and rifle made contact: exactly as the point of the spike caught the barrel's mouth and jammed its way into the hole.

  Back in OldTech times, guns rarely exploded. Nowadays though, when firearms are built from OldTech blueprints but without OldTech metallurgy — no fancy alloys, no computerized quality control, just a single steelsmith muddling away with hammer and anvil to get something that sort of maybe looks right — these days, a rifle barrel with its end plugged tight by a nose-spike is the next best thing to a pipe-bomb.

  As Dreamsinger would say, "Boom."

  The rifle barrel blew itself apart in a shower of shrapnel. Oberon was thrown back, his face a lacerated mess. Chestnut-brown fluid spurted from gashes where steel fragments had sliced through his carapace into the tender flesh beneath. The brown fluid must have been blood; there was a devastating amount of it.

  Xavier's blood was red, but it flowed just as freely. The explosion had slashed the right side of his face where he'd been sighting up the shot… but it had also blown wads of debris into the upper part of his torso, perforating the old man's leather jacket in a dozen places. The damage was far more extensive than one would expect from a single bullet; the initial charge must have detonated the rest of the gun's ammunition, blasting apart the breech where Xavier had it nestled under his arm. Slivers of wood and steel stabbed straight into the man's chest cavity… not to mention flaying his hands to bloody pulps.

  When Impervia reached the scene, she kicked the rifle's shattered remains out of Xavier's blood-smeared grip… but it was an empty gesture. The gun would never fire again, nor would Xavier pull another trigger. He was wheezing with untold damage to his lungs, and the right half of his face looked like chopped meat. Still, he managed a vicious smile with the half of a face he had left.

  "Went out fighting," he whispered. Impervia crouched beside him, not to offer help but to pat him down for weapons. Xavier went on talking as she roughly pulled a knife from a sheath at his ankle. "And I killed a Spark Lord," he whispered. "That must be worth something, yes? Tell everyone…" Cough. "I killed a Spark Lord."

  "Which Spark Lord?" Pelinor asked.

  "That Dreamsinger." Another cough, this one bringing up blood. Xavier spat it out and turned proudly toward Pelinor. "Shot her clean between the eyes. You saw, yes?"

  Pelinor stared back confused; so did I. Impervia stopped searching for weapons and leaned into Xavier's face. "Fool. The person you shot wasn't Dreamsinger — it was Gretchen Kinnderboom. A vain woman, but harmless. Killing her was no great victory."

  "Gretchen?" Xavier's face puckered with confusion. "I wouldn't kill Gretchen. She's… beautiful…"

  I groaned, understanding at last. When Xavier had seen Dreamsinger last night, she'd been disguised with Kaylan's Chameleon; so what had the Spark Lord looked like in his eyes? What sort of woman did he lust for?

  One like Gretchen. Whom he'd spied on with his telescope. He fantasized about Gretchen, and when he looked at Dreamsinger, that's who he saw. Maybe not an exact look-alike — maybe overlaid with features from other women he'd known over the years. But close enough if you were looking at someone a good distance offshore. And when he saw Gretchen wearing sorcerer's crimson…

  He'd jumped to the wrong conclusion. And my clothes were now spattered with the blood and brains of a woman I once (might have) loved.

  Bending over, I snarled into Xavier's face, "You didn't kill Dreamsinger, you killed the real Gretchen. How does that make you feel?"

  I never got an answer. I hope he lived long enough to realize he wasn't some great Spark killer: just a stupid man who'd murdered a woman he found beautiful. But I'll never know if my message got through. By the time I'd got out my last word, Xavier was dead.

  Oberon was dead too. Pelinor tried to help the big lobster… but there was no way to staunch the bleeding or repair the damage from metal shards gouging Oberon's brain. His pincers clutched convulsively, clack-clack, clack-clack, in some kind of postmortem reflex; Pelinor had to keep back for fear of getting sliced in two. But Oberon had already stopped breathing, unable to draw air through the mutilated mess of his mouth.

  After a minute, the brown blood stopped flowing. It began to cake. The claw-twitching continued but with longer gaps between each clench.

  Clack… clack.

  Clack.

  Clack.

  Pelinor looked away, brushing his eyes with his hand. Impervia stepped over Xavier's corpse and went to kneel beside Oberon. "In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritae Sanctae…"

  If she'd prayed like that when Gretchen died, I hadn't heard it. Possibly Impervia had been too busy rowing the jolly-boat; or possibly, Magdalenes didn't pray for rich idle women who were caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. They would pray, however, for anyone — even an alien — who died in righteous battle.

  We all have standards for who is worthy of our prayer. I wondered if anyone would ever pray for Warwick Xavier.

  17: BEACHHEAD

  I made my way back to the jolly-boat. People peered surreptitiously from nearby fishing jacks: peeping over railings or around the corners of deckhouses, wondering if the shooting had stopped. A few slipped out of sight when they saw I'd noticed them — the folk of Crystal Bay had no intention of getting involved with whatever death and lunacy we'd brought to their town.

  Inside the jolly-boat, Myoko was still unconscious in the Caryatid's arms. Blood had dried on Myoko's upper lip; I don't know why the Caryatid didn't wipe it away.

  Annah had blood on her face too. Gretchen's blood. Annah laid Gretchen's corpse on the sand and began fussing with the arrangement of limbs, clothes, etc. She looked up as I approached.

  "Oberon?" Annah asked.

  "Dead. Xavier too."

  "And he was the only Ring man here?"

  "The only one we've seen." I glanced up the beach toward the center of the village. An empty street led from the docks to a muddy square where several horses stood at hitching posts. No people in sight. "We'll keep our eyes open for bully-boys," I said, "but if I were Elizabeth Tzekich, I wouldn't deplete my forces by leaving people in places like this. She knows she might run into Dreamsinger; she'll need all the troops she can get. Probably she dumped Xavier here because he was getting on her nerves."

  Annah nodded. She spent a moment trying to arrange Gretchen's hands in the classic "Death is peaceful" pose: folded serenely across her chest. The hands were too limp to stay put; they kept slumping onto the sand. After several attempts, Annah gave up. "So what now?" she asked softly… as if she didn't want anyone else to hear. "Do we keep going on?"

  "Sebastian is still out there. Do we leave him to Dreamsinger? Or the Ring of Knives? Or Jode?"

  "If the boy's such a powerful psychic, maybe he can take care of himself."

  I looked at her in surprise. "Are you suggesting we abandon him?"

  She didn't answer; she was still gazing at Gretchen's body. Gretchen's corpse. Finally she said, "It's not about Sebastian, Phil. You know that. He's just the excuse we're using."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Impervia thinks this is a holy mission. She's received a heavenly calling and doesn't give a damn what it's about; all she cares is that God has finally given her a job. Pelinor's the same, but without the divine overtones. He didn't start pretending he was a knight just because he wanted to teach at the academy — to him, knighthood was a romantic ideal. A way to use his sword for more than forcing people to pay some pointless border tax. Pelinor's been hungering for a knightly quest the way Impervia's been hungering for a sacred vocation: to be lifted out of a humdrum existence and into something worthy."

  After a moment, I nodded; Annah must have thought this all through back on Dainty Dinghy. I could imagine her waking early, before those of us who'd stayed up late drinking in The Pot of Gold. She might have gone quietly up to the deck, leaned against the rail, and watched the shoreline drift past as she asked herself why we'd let ourselves come this far.
"Go on," I said.

  "The Caryatid's here because Pelinor is. She loves him, you know; she'd never let him run off alone."

  I tried not to gape. "She loves him?"

  Annah laughed. Softly. "Not Romeo and Juliet love — not teenagers who'll die if they can't hurl themselves into bed immediately. The Caryatid and Pelinor have something more courtly: fondness rather than passion. Quite possibly they do share a bed from time to time… but it's not their most urgent priority. They're comfortable, not torrid; but they're still in love, and wherever Pelinor goes, the Caryatid will follow." Annah paused. "Much like Myoko following you."

  "Don't say that." I looked over at Myoko. The Caryatid had laid her flat on the sand, feet elevated by propping them on the jolly-boat's rear thwart. Standard first-aid for clinical shock — slant the body to send blood into the heart and brain.

  But Myoko's face was paler than ever.

  "It's not your fault," Annah said. "She would have come, even without you — she wouldn't let Impervia and Pelinor go off on their own. Myoko always has to prove herself." Annah paused. "You've noticed she's not as weak as she pretends?"

  I didn't want to betray Myoko's private confession to me. "I noticed she dragged seven people and a jolly-boat several hundred meters at top speed."

  Annah nodded. "She's strong, Phil — as strong as any psychic I've ever heard about. But she pretends otherwise. I think maybe she came on this trip for the chance to cut loose. To use every drop of her power in a meaningful cause."

  "And perhaps to impress me?"

  "Perhaps. Or to remind herself what she's capable of. Pushing the boat across the bay… it hurt her, Phil, but she kept on going. Maybe it felt good to stop pretending."

  "Even if she dies from the strain? I've heard of psychics dropping from brain hemorrhage if they push too much."

  Annah dropped her gaze. "We all might die, Phil. We know that, but we're still here."

  "What about you?" I asked. "Please don't say you're following me too."

  She gave a little smile. "Heavens, I'd never do anything foolish just for a man. Women don't do that, do they?" Annah lifted her eyes to mine. "You tell me why you keep going and I'll tell you why I do."