“Got it,” said Hawk.
He moved slowly forward, axe held at the ready before him. Fisher moved silently at his side, and Barber brought up the rear. Hawk would rather not have had him there, on the grounds that he didn’t want to be worrying about what Barber was doing when he should be concentrating on getting the job done, but he couldn’t say no. He didn’t want to upset Winter this early in their professional relationship. Or Barber, for that matter. He looked like he knew how to use that sword. Hawk sighed inaudibly and concentrated on the darkening corridor ahead. Some of the lamps had gone out, and Hawk’s gaze darted from shadow to shadow as he approached the bend in the corridor. The continuing silence seemed to grow thicker and more menacing, and Hawk had a growing conviction that someone, or something, was waiting for him just out of sight round the comer.
He eased to a halt, his shoulder pressed against the wall just before the bend, then glanced back at Fisher and Barber. He gestured for them to stay put, took a firm grip on his axe, and then jumped forward to stare down the side corridor into Sorcerers’ Row. It stretched away before him, all gloom and shadow, lit only by half a dozen wall lamps at irregular intervals. The place was deserted, but all the cell doors had been torn out of their frames and lay scattered across the floor. The open cells were dark and silent, and reminded Hawk unpleasantly of the gap left after a tooth has been pulled. He stayed where he was, and gestured for Fisher and Barber to join him. They did so quickly, and Fisher whistled softly.
“We got here too late, Hawk. Whatever happened here is over.”
“We don’t know that yet,” said Hawk. “We’ve still got to check the cells. Fisher, watch my back. Barber, stay put and watch the corridor. Both ends. And let’s all be very careful. I don’t like the feel of this.”
“Blood has been spilled here,” said Barber quietly. “A lot of it. Some of it’s still pretty fresh.”
“I don’t see any blood,” said Fisher.
“I can smell it,” said Barber.
Hawk and Fisher looked at each other briefly, and then moved cautiously towards the first cell. Fisher took one of the lamps from its niche in the wall and held it up to give Hawk more light. He grunted acknowledgment, and glanced down at the solid steel door lying warped and twisted on the floor before him. At first he thought it must have been buckled by some form of intense heat, but there was no trace of any melting or scorching on the metal. The door was a good two inches thick. Hawk didn’t want to think about the kind of strength that could warp that thickness of steel.
There were a few small splashes of blood in the cell doorway, dry and almost black. Hawk eased forward a step at a time, ready for any attack, and then swore softly as the light from Fisher’s lamp filled the cell. The cell’s occupant had been nailed to the far wall with a dozen daggers and left to bleed to death. Given the amount of blood soaking the floor below him, he’d taken a long time to die.
Hawk moved quickly from cell to cell, with Fisher close behind him. Every cell held a dead man. They’d all been killed in different ways, and none of them had died easily. They all wore sorcerer’s black, but their magic hadn’t protected them. Hawk sent Barber back to fetch the rest of the team while he and Fisher dutifully searched the bodies for any sign of life. It didn’t take long. Winter walked slowly down Sorcerers’ Row, frowning, with MacReady at her side. Storm darted from cell to cell, muttering under his breath. Barber sheathed his sword and leaned against the corridor wall with his arms folded. He looked completely relaxed, but Hawk noted that he was still keeping a careful watch on both ends of the corridor. Storm finally finished his inspection and stalked back to report to Winter. Hawk and Fisher joined them.
“What happened here?” said Hawk. “I thought they were supposed to be magic-users. Why didn’t they defend themselves?”
“Their geas wouldn’t let them,” said Storm, bitterly. “They were helpless in their cells when the killers came.”
“Why kill them at all?” said Fisher. “Why should the rioters hate magic-users enough to do something like this to them?”
“There was no hate in this,” said Storm. “This was cold and calculated, every bloody bit of it. It’s a mass sacrifice, a ritual designed to increase magical power. If one sorcerer sacrifices another, he can add the dead man’s magic to his own. And if a sorcerer were to sacrifice all these magic-users, one after another ... he’d have more than enough magic to smash through into Hell Wing, and make a new doorway.”
“Wait a minute,” said Hawk. “All the sorcerers in this prison were held here, on Sorcerers’ Row, and none of them are missing. There’s a dead body in every cell.”
“Someone must have smuggled a sorcerer in, disguised as a prisoner,” said Winter. “Probably bribed a guard to look the other way. This riot was carefully planned, people, right down to the last detail.”
Fisher frowned. “So someone could have already entered Hell Wing and let the creatures out?”
“I don’t know,” said Storm. “Maybe. I can tell there’s a new dimensional doorway close at hand, now I know what I’m looking for, but I can’t tell if anyone’s been through it recently.”
“Great,” said Fisher. “Just what this case needed, more complications.” She looked at Winter. “All right, leader, what are we going to do?”
“Go into Hell Wing, and see what’s happened,” said Winter evenly. “Our orders were to do whatever is necessary to prevent the inmates of Hell Wing from breaking out. Nothing has happened to change that.”
“Except we now face a rogue sorcerer and an unknown number of rioters as well as whatever’s locked up in there,” said Hawk. “I didn’t like the odds when we started, and I like them even less now. I can’t do suicide missions.”
“Right,” said Fisher.
Winter looked at them both steadily. “As long as you’re a part of the SWAT team, you’ll do whatever I require you to do. If that isn’t acceptable, you can leave any time.”
Hawk smiled coldly. “We’ll stay. For now.”
“That isn’t good enough, Captain.”
“It’s all you’re going to get.”
Fisher pushed in between Hawk and Winter, and glared at them both impartially. “If you two have quite finished flexing your muscles at each other, may I remind you we’ve still got a job to do? You can butt heads later, on your own time.”
Winter nodded stiffly. “Your partner is right, Captain Hawk; we can continue this later. I take it I can rely on your cooperation for the remainder of this mission?”
“Sure,” said Hawk. “I can be professional when I have to be.”
“Good.” Winter took a deep, steadying breath and let it out slowly. “The situation isn’t necessarily as bad as it sounds. I think we have to assume some of the rioters have entered Hell Wing, presumably to release the inmates in the hope that they’d add to the general chaos. But if the fools have managed to break any of the geases and some of the creatures are loose, I think we can also safely assume that those rioters are now dead. Which means we’re free to concentrate on recapturing those creatures that have broken loose.”
“Just how powerful are these ... creatures?” asked Fisher.
“Very,” said Storm shortly. “Personally, I think we should just seal off the entire Wing, and forget how to find it.”
“Those are not our orders,” said Winter. “They have a right to a fair trial.”
Storm sniffed. “That’s not why our Lords and masters want these things kept alive. Creatures of Power like these could prove very useful as weapons, just in case the Peace Treaty doesn’t work out after all....”
“That’s none of our business, Storm!”
“Wait a minute,” said Hawk. “Are you saying we’re supposed to take these things alive?”
“If at all possible, yes,” said Winter. “Do you have a problem with that?”
“This case gets better by the minute,” growled Hawk. “Look, before we go any further, I want a full briefing on these Creatures of P
ower. What exactly are we going to be facing in Hell Wing?”
“To start with, there’s the Pale Men,” said Winter steadily. “They’re not real, but that just makes them more dangerous. They can take on the aspect of people you used to be but no longer are. The longer they hold the contact, the more real they become, while you fade into a ghost, a fancy, a might-have-been. Sorcerers create Pale Men from old love letters, blood spilled in anger, an engagement ring from a marriage that failed, or a baby’s shoes bought for a child that was never born. Any unfinished emotion that can still be tapped. Be wary of them. They’re very good at finding chinks in your emotional armour that you never knew you had.”
“How many of them are there?” said Fisher.
“We don’t know. It tends to vary. We don’t know why. Then there’s Johnny Nobody. We think he used to be human, perhaps a sorcerer who lost a duel. Now he’s just a human shape, consisting of guts and muscle and blood held together by surface tension. He has no skin and no bones, but he still stands upright. He screams a lot, but he never speaks. When we caught him, he was killing people for their skin and bones. Apparently he can use them to replace what he lost, for a time, but his body keeps rejecting them, so he has to keep searching for more.”
“I’m surprised he hasn’t killed himself,” said Fisher.
“He’s tried, several times,” said Winter. “His curse won’t let him die. Now, if I may continue ... Messerschmann’s Portrait is a magical booby trap left behind by the sorcerer Void when he had to leave Haven in a hurry earlier this year, pursued by half the sorcerers in Magus Court. We still don’t know what he did to upset them, but it must have been pretty extreme. They’re a hard-boiled bunch in Magus Court. Anyway, the Portrait was brought here for safekeeping, and it’s been in Hell Wing ever since. The creature in the Portrait may have been human once, but it sure as hell isn’t now. According to the experts who examined the Portrait, the creature is actually alive, trapped in the Portrait by some powerful magic they don’t fully understand. And it wants out. Apparently, if it locks eyes with you long enough, it can walk out into the world, and you would be trapped in the Portrait. in its place. So don’t get careless around it.”
“You should be safe enough, Hawk,” said Fisher. “It’d have a hard job locking eyes with you.”
Hawk winked his single eye. Winter coughed loudly to get their attention.
“Crawling Jenny is something of an enigma. It’s a living mixture of moss, fungi, and cobwebs, with staring eyes and snapping mouths. It was only five or six feet in diameter when it was first removed from the Street of Gods because it was menacing the tourists. Now it fills most of its cell. If some fool’s let Crawling Jenny loose and it’s been feeding all this time, there’s no telling how big it might be by now.
“The Brimstone Boys are human constructs, neither living nor dead. They smell of dust and sulphur, and their eyes bleed. Their presence distorts reality, and they bring entropy wherever they go. There are only two of them, thank all the Gods, but watch yourselves; they’re dangerous. We lost five Constables and two sorcerers taking them. I don’t want to add to that number.
“And finally, we come to Who Knows. We don’t know what that is. It’s big, very nasty, and completely invisible. And judging by the state of its victims’ bodies, it’s got a hell of a lot of teeth. They caught it with nets, pushed it into its cell on the end of several long poles, and nobody’s gone near it since. It hasn’t been fed for over a month, but it’s still alive—as far as anyone can tell.”
“I’ve just had a great idea,” said Fisher, when Winter finally paused for breath. “Let’s turn around, go back, and swear blind we couldn’t find Hell Wing.”
“I’ll go along with that,” said Barber.
Winter’s mouth twitched. “It’s tempting, I’ll admit, but no. We’re SWAT, and we can handle anything. It says so in our contract. Listen up, people. This is how we’re going to do it. Storm, you open up the gateway and then stand back. Barber, Hawk, and Fisher—you’ll go through first. If you see something and it moves, hit it. Hard. Storm will be right behind you, to provide whatever magical support you need. I’ll bring up the rear. Mac, you stay back here and guard the entrance. I don’t want anyone sneaking up on us from behind.”
“You never let me in on the exciting stuff,” said MacReady.
“Yes,” said Winter. “And aren’t you grateful?”
“Very.”
Winter smiled, and turned back to the others. “Take your places, people. Storm, open the gateway.”
The sorcerer walked a few steps down the corridor and began muttering to himself under his breath. Barber stepped forward to take the point, and Hawk and Fisher moved in on either side of him. Barber glanced at them briefly, and frowned.
“Don’t you people believe in armour? This isn’t some bar brawl we’re walking into.”
“Armour just slows you down,” said Hawk. “The Guard experiments with it from time to time, but it’s never caught on. With the kind of work we do, it’s more important for us to be able to move freely and react quickly. You can’t chase a pickpocket down a crowded street while wearing chain mail. Our cloaks have steel mesh built into them, but that’s it.”
“And you don’t even wear that, most of the time, unless I nag you,” said Fisher.
Hawk shrugged. “Don’t like cloaks. They get in the way while I’m fighting.”
“I’ve always believed in armour,” said Barber, swinging his sword loosely before him. He seemed perfectly relaxed, but his gaze never left Storm. “It doesn’t matter how good you are with a blade, there’s always someone better, or luckier, and that’s when a good set of chain mail comes into its own.”
He broke off as the sorcerer’s voice rose suddenly, and then cut off sharply. The floor lurched and dropped away beneath their feet for a heart-stopping moment before becoming firm again. A huge metal door hung unsupported on the air right in front of them, floating two or three inches off the ground. An eight-foot-tall slab of roughly beaten steel, it gleamed dully in the lamplight, and then, as they watched, it swung slowly open to reveal a featureless, impenetrable darkness. A cold breeze blew steadily from the doorway, carrying vague, blurred sounds from off in the distance. Hawk thought he heard something that might have been screaming, or laughter, but it was gone too quickly for him to identify it.
“Move it,” said Storm tightly. “I don’t know how long I can keep the gateway open. There’s so much stray magic around, it’s distorting my spells.”
“You heard the man,” said Winter. “Go go go!”
Barber stepped through the doorway, and the darkness swallowed him up. Hawk and Fisher followed him in, blades at the ready. The darkness quickly gave way to a vague, sourceless silver glow. Barber, Hawk, and Fisher moved immediately to take up a defensive pattern, looking quickly about them for possible threats. They were standing in a narrow corridor that seemed to stretch away forever. The walls and the low ceiling were both covered with a thick mass of dirty grey cobwebs. The floor was a pale, pockmarked stone, splashed here and there with dark spots of dried blood. There was a brief disturbance in the air behind them as first Storm and then Winter appeared out of nowhere to join them.
“All clear here, Jessica,” said Barber quietly. “No sign of anyone, or anything.”
“If this is Hell Wing, I don’t think much of it,” said Fisher. “Don’t they ever clean up in here?”
“I’m not sure where or what this is,” said Storm. “It doesn’t feel like Hell Wing. The air is charged with magic, but there’s no trace of the standard security spells that ought to be here. Everything... feels wrong.”
“Are you saying you’ve brought us to the wrong place?” asked Hawk dangerously.
“Of course not!” snapped the sorcerer. “This is where Hell Wing used to be. This is what has... replaced Hell Wing. I think we have to assume the creatures have broken loose. All of them.”
Barber cursed softly, and hefted his sword. “I don
’t like this, Jessica. They must have known somebody would be coming. Odds are this place is one big trap, set and primed just for us.”
“Could be,” said Winter. “But let’s not panic just yet, all right? Nothing’s actually threatened us so far. Storm, where does this corridor lead?”
Storm shook his head angrily. “I can’t tell. My Sight’s all but useless here. But there’s something up ahead; I can feel it. I think it’s watching us.”
“Then let’s go find it,” said Winter briskly. “Barber, you have the point. Let’s take this one step at a time, people. And remember, we’re not just looking for the creatures. The rioters who opened the gateway, have got to be here somewhere. And, people, when we find them, I don’t want any heroics. If any of the rioters wants to surrender, that’s fine, but no one’s to take any chances with them. All right; move out. Let’s get the job done.”
They moved off down the corridor, and the darkness retreated before them so that they moved always in the same sourceless silver glow. The thick matted cobwebs that furred the walls and ceiling hung down here and there in grimy streamers that swayed gently on the air, stirred by an unfelt breeze. Noises came and went in the distance, lingering just long enough to chill the blood and disturb the mind. Hawk held his axe before him, his hands clutching the haft so tightly that his knuckles showed white. His instincts were screaming at him to get out while he still could, but he couldn’t just turn tail and run. Not in front of Winter. Besides, she was right; even if this place was a trap, they still had a job to do. He glared at the darkness ahead of them, and then glanced back over his shoulder. The darkness was there too, following the pool of light the team moved in. More and more it seemed to Hawk that they were moving through the body of some immense unnatural beast, as though they’d been swallowed alive and were soon to be digested.
Barber stopped suddenly, and they all piled up behind him, somehow just managing to avoid toppling each other. Barber silently indicated the right-hand wall, and they crowded round to examine it. There was a ragged break in the thick matting of dirty grey cobwebs, revealing a plain wooden door, standing slightly ajar. The wood was scarred and gouged as though by claws, and splashed with dried blood. The heavy iron lock had been smashed, and was half hanging away from the door. Winter gestured for them all to move back, and they did so.
Guards of Haven: The Adventures of Hawk and Fisher (Hawk & Fisher) Page 43
