Edge of Dawn

by Melinda Snodgrass

  Once the Old One joined them, they were forced to proceed on foot, and Grenier was beginning to think the walk alone was going to kill him. The creature made no effort to form a body. It oozed through the streets, wormlike and with multiple tentacles. Within the darkness, there was the sense of eyes, hundreds, thousands of them. As they passed, people abandoned their houses, screaming, weeping, turning on each other. Occasionally a tendril would stretch out and enfold a human, and that human would die.

  And each time it killed, Titchen laughed. With each death the laugh became more manic, and even his guards, loyal though they might be, were starting to look at him askance.

  How on earth did he get this rich when he is clearly barking mad? Grenier wondered with some resentment. He also wondered what power the creature possessed that its touch could kill. And if it could kill a paladin.

  * * *

  They were almost at the crown of the hill. Judging from the screams, something terrible was going on behind them. Richard stopped, looked back, and tried to decide what to do. Go back? Could he actually help? Didn’t matter. He had to try. Whatever was happening below was a direct result of his presence.

  He started back down the hill. His leather-soled loafers slipped a bit on the cobbles, so steep was the incline. He was startled when Kenntnis caught him by the arm and kept him from falling. He looked up into the man’s face, but the distant expression never changed.

  An enormous wall loomed up on their right. Richard had noticed it when they’d first passed, heading up the hill. Mixed in among the cut stones were blocks of marble. Many of them bore carvings of Greek and Roman design, and one block in particular sported a bas-relief face, the mouth open as if echoing the screams from the buildings below.

  Richard glanced up at it and froze as a viscous black tentacle oozed from the mouth of the carving. Smaller tendrils emerged from the eyes, and the three merged and braided, trailing down the wall and reaching out toward him. The stink of Old One nearly drove him to his knees. Richard dropped the shotgun, pulled loose a knife, and snapped it open.

  Powerful arms closed around his waist, and he was flung unceremoniously over Kenntnis’s shoulder. The big man whirled and began running up the hill away from the creeping oily shadows. The jolting run slammed Kenntnis’s shoulder into Richard’s diaphragm, driving the air from his lungs and sending pain lancing through the stitches in his side. The Mosi bundle had been tossed aside, the pillow with the taped-on hair rolling away to come to rest against the side of a building. The sight of that tumbled hair focused all his hopes and fears. If the Old One was here, then the ruse had succeeded and Damon would have gotten Mosi clear.

  Richard was sure of it. He had to be.

  * * *

  Screaming people were racing down the road toward Mosi and her companion. The horse gave a snort of alarm at the approaching crowd. The driver called out in his own language. Some of the men answered him. The man looked terrified and began to turn the horse and wagon.

  “No! What are you doing? I have to go up there!”

  The man ignored her, but the crush of people made the turn almost impossible, and a back wheel lodged on the stone lip at the road’s edge. Mosi couldn’t understand the words, but it sounded like the man was cursing as he jumped down from the wagon. He reached up to try and lift her down, but Mosi slapped his hands away. He shouted at her in his own language and joined the people running down the hill. Mosi, panting, frightened, and near tears, sat frozen for a few moments in the wagon. The horse was starting to plunge, trying to pull free. Mosi grabbed the knife Damon had given her, jumped down, and sawed at the leather traces, all the while keeping up a gentle conversation with the horse.

  “You’re a good boy, aren’t you? You and I are going to ride to battle together. Much better than pulling a cart. If you do this, my na sha dii will take you home and you’ll be my horse.”

  One by one, the traces parted. The gelding’s ears flicked back and forth between her, and then up toward the city. Its nostrils were flaring and Mosi could see why. There was a bad stink in the air. Once the horse was free, Mosi led him over to the stone wall that outlined a parking lot, climbed up, and swung onto the horse bareback. Its back dropped as if he resented the sudden weight, but the horse didn’t try to buck. Gathering up the cut reins, she nudged with her heel and sent the gelding up the hill.

  Chapter

  TWENTY-THREE

  KENNTNIS continued to pound up a series of stone steps. Richard, hanging over the big man’s shoulder, had an excellent view of the rugs that lay on those steps. They were covered with evil eye wards, some incorporated into jewelry, key chains, and various other trinkets. All abandoned now. Grabbing a breath, he yelled, “Mr. Kenntnis! Sir! Please, put me down.”

  They passed between thick walls of red stone and marble blocks. Kenntnis slowed and stumbled to a stop. He lifted Richard off his shoulder and set him gently on his feet. Rubbing his abused diaphragm, Richard turned slowly and surveyed their surroundings. They stood in the center of the high fortress. Flagged paving stones were underfoot, and all around were arched entryways, small rooms and narrow courtyards, and staircases leading to higher and higher walls. At some points, they loomed at least a hundred feet over the central circular courtyard. Richard saw a discarded camera and a scarf clinging to the rough stones. A breeze caught the scarf and sent it billowing high over the walls. This early there obviously hadn’t been many tourists, and the few that had been present had fled.

  Richard ran up one of the sets of stairs and onto two-foot-wide battlements that offered him a view into the Old City. The black tendrils wriggled along the streets and oozed from windows of the wood-and-plaster houses. Walking in the center of the tentacles was Alexander Titchen. Grenier plodded in his wake, mopping at his face with a handkerchief clutched in his real hand. There were eight armed men with them, not that their guns would do them any good. The only sound was an uncanny humming that lifted the hair on the nape of Richard’s neck. Then a new sound intruded. Hoofbeats.

  Frowning, Richard moved to a vantage point just above another gate into the fortress. A skinny gray horse, lather on its neck and a rider clinging to its mane, came scrambling up the steps. The rider’s hair was a pennant of waving black. Richard didn’t need to see the outfit to recognize Mosi. He gave a moan of despair.

  Racing down the stairs, he arrived in the courtyard simultaneously with Mosi and her steed. She gave a sob and flung herself off the horse and into his arms. He hugged her close, her tears dampening his shirt.

  “Mosi, baby, what are you doing here? Oh, God, I thought you were safe.”

  “The bad men were waiting. There was fighting—”

  Anxiety stopped his breath. “Damon? Is Damon all right?”

  “I don’t know. He told me to run. I got between their legs, they couldn’t catch me, and I got in a pipe. They couldn’t fit and I got away.”

  “Why did you come here?”

  “Where else could I go?” she said simply, and the answer had tears stinging his eyes.

  Richard blinked them away and glanced back over his shoulder at Titchen and his monster, then past him to the laboring Grenier. For a brief instant, Richard’s and Grenier’s eyes met. The former preacher looked away. Had that been regret? Grief? Richard wasn’t sure. It didn’t matter. There was so little time left.

  “Come on. Up. We’re going up,” Richard said.

  “My pony?”

  “They won’t hurt him.” Richard hoped he was right. The child was barely holding hysterics at bay. If she saw this horse die … “They’re after us.”

  The moment the words were uttered, he realized that probably hadn’t been the most comforting thing he could say, but maybe it was the right thing. The decision, the action, he had been trying to avoid now seemed inevitable. But could he do it?

  Grabbing Kenntnis by the shoulder, Richard propelled him toward a set of stairs. He put Mosi in front of him. “Keep Mr. Kenntnis … the Sky Warrior moving, okay?” S
he gave a tense nod and laid her hands against the small of Kenntnis’s back and started shoving. They climbed onto the first set of lower battlements. A quarter way around the circle was another set of stairs heading up to the next level. Richard pushed them all into a run toward those stairs. The arrival of the men and the creature in the courtyard was too much for the horse. It snorted in terror and bolted through a gate.

  “Richard, it really is time to call it quits.” Titchen was calling from the center of the courtyard, head craned back looking up at them. “Just give us the child and Mr. Kenntnis. We’ll deal gently with them, and we’ll make it quick for you. You have my word on it.”

  Richard drove them up the next set of stairs. “That’s very kind of you, Mr. Titchen, but I’m going to decline.”

  The Old One’s tentacles boiled up out of the courtyard, reaching for them. Titchen grated out something in a language Richard had heard only a couple of times before, out of Rhiana, Grenier, and Cross. It was guttural, harsh, and utterly inhuman; it also sounded oddly pleading. The oily black tentacles retreated to roil and writhe in the bowl of the courtyard. The guards, up to their waists in the darkness, were shaking, darting wild-eyed glances at the horror all around them.

  The trio had reached the uppermost wall. Two feet wide, and no railing, but a person could boost himself up and almost circle the entire fortress on the top of the walls. Richard lifted Mosi onto the wall. She looked down and swayed for an instant. He caught the back of her shirt.

  “Don’t look down,” he ordered. He climbed up and stretched out a hand to Kenntnis. The big man joined them on the narrow walkway.

  “Where are we going?” Mosi asked.

  “There.” He pointed at the part of the wall that was at the tallest edge of the cliff.

  They moved toward it, their pace a careful shuffle. Heights had never bothered Richard, perhaps because of years of gymnastics and the times he’d climbed masts on sailboats. Mosi was doing well, but Richard kept a hand on her shoulder as a precaution. From this highest vantage point, Ankara was spread out before them. He gazed out on the slender minaret of a mosque and the red-tiled roofs of the Old City, many topped with satellite dishes. In the city center, skyscrapers were wreathed in smoke, and on a distant sister cliff was another fortress with gleaming cell towers planted around it like silver spears. An odd juxtaposition of ancient technology and modern technology, and below them, writhing and billowing, the antithesis of human creativity and invention—an avatar of raw passion untempered by reason. On the hills across the bowl valley that held Ankara, a shantytown burned. Screams ripped the smoky air as people huddled in the houses below reacted to the presence of the Old One.

  Richard was scared, regretting bad decisions he’d made, wishing he could see Pamela and Amelia and Joseph and Jeannette and Sam and Damon, especially Damon, one last time, but the Old One’s mind-numbing horror couldn’t touch him or Mosi because they were paladins, empty of all magic, beyond its power to beguile or terrorize. It could not freeze him or keep him from his final task.

  Titchen started up the stairs. The creature squeezed and compressed itself into a shape vaguely reminiscent of a human form if a human body were made of squirming snakes. Deep within the dark tendrils there were hints of mucus-filled eyes, thousands of them. Was it one creature or a multitude of small ones? Did it matter? It and its human servant were coming.

  Kenntnis reached the most distant point of the fort and stopped, blocked by a stone wall. They stood in a line, Richard, Mosi, and Kenntnis, and looked down at a sheer thousand-foot drop to the valley floor. On the other side, a hundred-foot fall to the paving stones of the courtyard, visible again. Only the long fall would be a guarantee of death. Once again, Richard’s and Grenier’s eyes met. The fat man’s mouth worked, and then he called, “Richard, don’t.”

  Richard wrapped his arms around Mosi, took a breath. She tensed in his arms as she realized what he was contemplating.

  Titchen also seemed to realize Richard’s intention. He stopped his advance and held out his hands in a placating manner. “Okay, okay, let’s all just stop a minute. No need for this. And really, you’re going to kill that little girl? Everything I’ve heard tells me you’re not that kind of man.”

  Mosi looked up at him with an expression that held fear and doubt. “Na sha dii?”

  The betrayal in her voice broke his resolve. Protector. You promised to be her protector. Richard slumped. “I’m sorry, Mosi, I failed you.”

  “Don’t give me to them!”

  “I can’t hurt you either.”

  “Use the sword. Make everything all right!” Tears blurred the words.

  Never had he felt more useless. An utter failure. He forced words past the lump in his throat. “I can’t, baby, I lost the sword.”

  She stared at him in confusion and said, “The Sky Warrior has it.”

  He gaped at her, and then shadows came writhing out of a carved face on the mountain side of the wall, grasping for them. Mosi screamed. Richard spun and began feverishly patting down Kenntnis.

  “No! Inside!” Mosi slipped past him and looked up into Kenntnis’s eyes. “Yá Ahiga, it is time to fight.”

  She drove her hand into his torso. There was that flash of light similar to what had happened in Pamukkale. The shadows shied back. Mosi was holding the hilt. Richard was behind her and knew they were out of time. Wrapping his arms around her, he laid his hands over hers, and they drew the sword together. The musical chord was deafening, and the overtones vibrated in his chest. Richard pulled the sword from her grasp and spun to face the Old One. His heel caught on the rough surface of the wall, and he lost his balance. Arms pinwheeling, he tried to keep himself from going over the edge. Mosi shrieked, grabbed his coat, and steadied him. The shadows were retreating. Richard leaped after them, lunged, and fell to one knee as he stretched as far as he could reach. The tip of the sword sheared through a tendril.

  A monstrous, discordant sound, part scream, part wet bubbling, echoed off the stone walls, and the infernal stink that seemed to always accompany the death of an Old One had Richard gagging, his eyes streaming. Titchen began to retreat, then turned and ran along the wall. Richard ran after him. He yelled back over his shoulder, “Mosi, you and Kenntnis find some cover. Go! Go!”

  Titchen looked back in panic, and his foot caught on the rough stone. He staggered but had no ally to pull him back. With a wail that became a glissando scream, he went off the wall. Unfortunately, as far as Richard was concerned, they were no longer at the highest point of the fortress. It was a mere sixty or so feet. Titchen crashed on the steps leading up to the fortress, his body rolling across a souvenir-covered rug. He lay, a crumpled form, surrounded by the unblinking blue eyes of the wards.

  Grenier suddenly emerged from beneath the gate at a waddling run. He lumbered past Titchen and spared him not a glance. Rage exploded in Richard’s chest, but he had armed men to worry about. Grenier’s turn was coming.

  Dropping to one knee, Richard sheathed the sword and jammed the hilt into his pocket. He then pulled out a flash-bang grenade, removed the pin, and tossed it down among the milling guards. Covering his ears, he looked away so as not to be blinded. The grenade went off with a chest-pounding bang. There were screams from the guards. Richard pulled the Browning from his shoulder rig as a bullet skipped and whined off the stone near him.

  He aimed and double-tapped at the guard with the drawn gun. The roar of the pistol damped whatever hearing he had left, but he was pleased to see the bullets take the man in the chest. The guard collapsed.

  “Throw down your weapons,” Richard yelled, and wondered if the remaining men could even hear him. Certainly the four who were crawling feebly across the flagstone were deafened.

  Five down, three to go, he thought. Richard risked a glance. Mosi had gotten herself and Kenntnis down a level and were huddled in one of the small rooms out of the line of fire. Richard was exposed on the battlement, but he also held the high ground. It was literally li
ke shooting targets in a barrel as he drew down on another guard, who seemed to be reaching for his sidearm. His aim was a bit off on this one, and it took the man in the low belly rather than the chest. The final two guards threw down their weapons and put their hands behind their heads.

  The timing was going to be tight, but Richard needed to incapacitate the prisoners, and handcuffs were not an option. Keeping his pistol leveled on the guards, Richard pulled the hilt out of his pocket and leaped down the steps. He got within a blade’s length of the men, dropped the pistol, and drew the sword.

  One of the men tried to be a hero, lunged for Richard, and managed to run himself onto the point of the sword. It wasn’t a deep wound, and the touch of the sword had its usual effect of sending him into violent convulsions. Richard spun and slapped the flat of the blade against the only guard still standing. He went down. Then for good measure Richard touched the men still trying to recover from the flash-bang. He moved to the men he had wounded and discovered that one man was dead. Thirty-two. The man with the belly wound would need a doctor and soon if he wasn’t going to be number thirty-three. Richard touched him with the sword, swept up his pistol, and headed for the gate through which Grenier had fled.

  Richard imagined the feel as his fist buried itself in that pendulous belly, planned the blow to a jowled cheek, pictured teeth breaking and blood pouring over the multiple chins. Envisioned Grenier prostrate on the cobbles while he kicked the living shit out of him. Each image sent his rage spiraling higher. He was through the gate and drew level with Titchen’s broken body. The man was moaning, piteous, animal-like sounds of suffering. Richard contemptuously drew the edge of the sword across Titchen’s chest, cutting through material and leaving a shallow, bloody line across his skin. The convulsions took him, and Titchen screamed in agony.

  The sound was like a blow, chilling Richard, and his rage faded to bitter ash. Who was he to inflict such pain? What was he becoming? Then he remembered the child. Huddled, frightened, and now—because of Richard’s single-minded fury—abandoned. Grenier didn’t matter. Vengeance didn’t matter. Mosi mattered.