by Nathan Long
“Your second helping of reah, my lady.”
A maid was coming through the door with another platter. She saw us and screamed. The platter clanged on the floor. The guards rushed in.
I groaned. I knew shit would go wrong. I ran toward them, calling back over my shoulder. “Come on, Sai!”
The guards froze, halfway through drawing their swords. Good thing too since I’d forgot again that I wasn’t wearing mine. I grabbed empty air and groaned louder. Too late now. I charged in with my fists like this was a bar fight back home.
The guards stepped back, staring. They were having the same reaction Wen-Jhai had. I went with it. I raised my arms over my head and screamed. I think I might have said, “Booga booga booga.”
It worked. They froze. I hit ’em with a double clothesline, right out of the pro-wrestling play book. Their heads bounced off the floor like basketballs.
But I’d forgot the maid. She was running down the stairs already, screaming bloody murder.
I stripped the guards of their swords and looked around for Sai. He was still back with Wen-Jhai. “Time to go, your lordship.”
Wen-Jhai disagreed. “No, Sai! Stay and fight! Take me from this oaf! Demand a challenge! Avenge me for this indignity.”
There wasn’t much time for discussion. We could hear thundering footsteps and the jingle of armor coming from all over the castle.
I ran back to the balcony doors, handing off a sword to Sai as I went. After lugging around the big Aarurrh blade, these little scimitar thingies felt like Wiffle ball bats. “Come on, Sai. Let’s skedaddle.”
Boots were running in the hall now. Sai was caught in the middle, sick with love, and pole-axed by fear. And when it counted, he did the wrong thing. Not that I blamed him. It made some sense, but, sensitive as he was, he didn’t know women very well.
As he backed toward the balcony, Sai sobbed and threw out a hand to Wen-Jhai. “Beloved! Come away with me. Forget the old ways. Our love is above all this!”
Wen-Jhai recoiled like he’d hit her. “Come away? But... but you must win me! ’Tis the only way!”
Poor sap. In over his head, and not enough sense to stop thrashing and just float. “But did you not say you wished for tradition to be overthrown? For us to love as we would?”
Wen-Jhai was full of sadness and pity. “Only in dreams is that possible, my heart. In the land beyond the moons. Until we rule there we must live here, and we would have no place in Ora if you shamed me so.”
With a roar, guards poured into the room in like an armored avalanche, swords out, arrows aimed.
I wasn’t ready for this. I’d had one half-assed sword lesson from Lhan. Fighting ten guys and dodging arrows at the same time was not my idea of learn-as-you-do.
“Wave goodbye, lover boy.” I grabbed Sai by the back of the harness and leaped ten feet onto the balcony. The guards gaped.
Sai shouted. “Wen-Jhai, my love!”
She stamped her feet. “Sai! Dare you leave? Come back!”
I knocked Sai’s reply out of him along with his breath as I slung him over my shoulder. The guards ran forward, but too late. I hopped onto the stone railing and then across to the next balcony. They saw us duck in the adjacent room and ran back in, shouting to their pals in the hall to cut us off.
I ran across the room, locked the door, then ran right back onto the balcony. I wasn’t going to get lost in those twisty hallways with the whole damn castle after me like some life or death game of Pac-Man. We were on the top floor. The roof was the next stop, and there were plenty of nubby decorations sticking out of the wall.
“Wait here.”
Sai squeaked. “Wait here? But...”
I was already hopping up the wall. Two hand-holds and I was over the low lip and on the flat roof. There was a big barn-sized shack in the middle, an airship tethered on the far side, piles of crates and barrels stacked all over the place, and a row of things that looked like big empty bird cages.
“Hurry, Mistress Jae-En! They’re coming!” I felt a “bang bang bang” through the soles of my boots. They were breaking down the door of the room below me.
I leaned over the lip of the roof and reached down to him. “Jump.” He jumped, but I’d misjudged the distance. It had looked a lot less from down below. Sai didn’t come within a yard of my hand.
“Fuck.” I looked around again. There were coils of rope all around, attached to iron rings set into the roof: tethers for the airships.
I jumped to the nearest one, grabbed an end and ran back to the edge of the roof. Down below Sai was backing away from the balcony door. I heard bumping and scraping from under my feet.
“Mistress Jane!”
“Here. Grab on.”
I dropped about ten feet of rope down to the balcony.
Sai grabbed. I hauled. Just in time. The balcony doors slammed open. The first guy out the door missed Sai’s ankles by a gnat’s ass. The guards shouted and leaped. A couple fired off arrows, but they whiffed past, straight up. I yanked Sai over the wall and we both fell backwards in a heap.
Sai rolled off of me and sat up. “Close, Mistress, very close.” He looked around. “What now?”
Good question. I’d been so focused on getting away from the guards that I hadn’t actually thought about where being on the roof would get me. Where it got me was treed.
I chewed myself out good. I’d always laughed at the idiots in movies who run for the roof when the badguys are after them, and here I’d done it myself. Stupid.
I glanced at Sai. He was looking at me with total trust. I guess I’d got him out of enough scrapes that he thought I had an endless supply of escapes in my back pocket. I was afraid I might have to disappoint him this time. “I... I’m working on it.”
I peeked over the edge of the roof for a look at the courtyard. An arrow zipped up past my ear. Two guards were still on the balcony, and worse, two more were climbing the wall with crossbows on their backs. The rest had to be circling around. Time was running out.
I pulled my head back and stood, looking around at the outer walls. With a running start I could jump me and Sai to an outer wall, loop the rope around one of those whatever-you-call-ems—man, I should have paid more attention in history class—the square stone teeth between the gaps they shoot arrows out of. Battlements? Anyway I could hang a rope around one and rappel down into... the camp that surrounded the castle, where we’d be chopped to pieces by the entire navy. Okay, no, that wouldn’t work.
I scanned the roof again. “Can we take the airship?”
Sai suddenly looked worried. I wasn’t coming across with the goods. “Er... a ship of that size requires a crew of ten, mistress.”
“Wonderful.” Two strikes and I didn’t see anything else to swing at. It sucked, but going back into the castle was my only option. “Where would they put a stairway up here?”
Sai pointed to the little barn. “Inside the skelsha roost, perhaps. But...”
I had no idea what a skelsha roost was, but if there were stairs in there we were going. “All right, let’s go.”
Sai’s eyebrows went up in the middle. “But, Mistress...”
I grabbed his wrist and ran for the barn, dragging him behind me like a mom at an airport running to catch a plane.
Halfway there guards started pouring out of it, and these guys were ninety percent bow-men.
“Fuck!” I skidded to a stop. Sai bounced off me and collapsed. I jerked him up. “Back to the wall.”
No dice. The guys who had been climbing the wall while I was sitting there with my thumb up my keister were on the roof now.
They fired.
The guards from the barn fired.
I tackled Sai into a jumble of cargo. Crossbow bolts thudded into crates and barrels.
We were fucked. In thirty seconds the crossbowmen would circle around our cover and turn us into porcupines. There was no way out, unless I could fly over the walls like goddamn Peter Pan. I kicked at another one of the coils of rope in f
rustration.
I froze. There was a way, but it was suicide stupid—a ninety-nine percent chance of instant death. On the other hand, just sitting here was a one hundred percent chance. One percent wasn’t much, but I’d take it. I’d rather do anything than just stand around like a cow in a slaughterhouse waiting for the sledgehammer to hit. I chopped through the knot that tied the rope to the iron ring.
Sai looked up. “You have a plan, Mistress?”
I was too busy to answer. I worked the rope into a lasso. I’d always done well in the biker rodeos, roping beer kegs from my fat-boy, picking playing cards off the ground at thirty miles an hour. I’d never had any real-world use for that shit before. There’s a first time for everything.
I could hear the crossbowmen running wide left and right. I spent a precious second getting my bearings. Which side faced the camp? Which side faced the town?
“Mistress, please.”
The lasso was ready. “Get on my back and hold tight.”
“But...”
“Just shut up and trust me.”
He was a good boy. He slung his arms around my neck without another word.
The first crossbowmen were just clearing the crates and drawing a bead as I looped the rope coil over one arm and got into a crouch.
They fired.
I jumped. High. I wanted my first move to throw them off. It worked. Bolts went everywhere, but nowhere near me.
I hit the roof running and went flat out, ten feet a stride, straight for the city-side edge.
The crossbow guys were well trained. Only half fired when I popped out of my trap. Now the rest fired while the first guys reloaded.
Something hit me on the shoulder hard enough the make me stumble.
“Mistress!”
“Not now.”
No time for conversation. The edge was coming up fast. I gathered my lasso in my left hand, jumped up on the lip of the roof and sprang out as hard as I could. A flock of bolts followed me out into the wide black yonder. The outer wall was about thirty feet out and twenty feet down. I cleared it easy, even with Sai on my back, and sailed out into thin air over the three-hundred foot cliff that dropped straight down to the lights of the city below. Nice view.
Now came the hard part. Twisting in mid-air, I swung the lasso over my head and loosed it toward the battlements. If you think an old unbeliever like me can’t pray, you ain’t seen praying. I spread it around too; Jesus, his mom, Buddha, Mohammed, Krishna, the Seven. Yeah, them too. Something I’ve learned from traveling all over—never dis the local gods.
Maybe prayer works. My lasso looped over a big stone block neat as you please, and held tight as we dropped below the top of the wall. I noticed Sai was screaming and wondered how long he’d been at it.
We were arcing down toward the wall pretty quick. I let out as much of the rope as I dared, hoping to get down below the smooth walls to the cliff face where there were some handholds, before somebody upstairs got smart and cut the rope.
Sai’s weight on my back made my landing a little harder than I liked. I landed feet first, flexing my knees like they taught us in Ranger rappelling class, but even in Waar’s gravity my legs weren’t strong enough. Not even close. They folded like a tent, and I hit the wall in sections, knees... elbows... tits... forehead. The world blinked white and fuzzy. When it snapped back, the rope was slithering through my fingers. I clamped down and left a ten-foot-long skin skid mark on the rope as the friction of stopping turned my palms to sushi. At least we stopped.
Sai had a choke hold on me that would have knocked out Hulk Hogan and there was only fifteen feet of rope left below us. I turned to tell him to let go and came nose to razor-sharp nose with a crossbow bolt sticking out of my shoulder piece. Blood was running out from under the armor. So that’s what that knock had been. At least my arm was still working. Sai, on the other hand, was killing me.
“Sai. Sai, ease up. I can’t...”
He let up a little and I sucked in a breath.
Sai whimpered. “Thank the Seven. Safe.”
The rope went slack. We dropped like a stone. The bastards up top had done what I was afraid of and chopped it through. Fortunately we were already on the cliff face. Okay, maybe fortunately is too strong a word. I felt like a ball bouncing through a pachinko machine, but after a terrifying second I managed a one-arm grab that sprained two fingers and almost pulled my arm out of its socket. Then the rest of the rope fell on my head. Wile E. Coyote doesn’t have days this bad.
I pulled myself to a better position and caught my breath, feeling for broken ribs. I glared over my shoulder at Sai. “Never say things like that! Never say ‘thank god, we’re safe!’ You tempt fate like that, it’s guaranteed to walk over and shit in your salad.”
Sai didn’t hear me. He was totally frozen in fear. Fine. At least he wasn’t talking. I started down the cliff as fast as I could. The last thing I wanted was to find Kedac’s welcome wagon waiting for us at the bottom.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
DISGUISED!
Lhan gave us the silent treatment when we got back, but that didn’t stop him from getting out his bandages and funny-smelling pots of goo and going to work on us. Silent was okay with me. I wasn’t much in the mood for talking. I hurt so bad in so many places I didn’t know which one to cry about. I had road rash and bruises on my forehead, elbows and knees from slamming into the cliff. All my muscles on my left side were wrenched from my one-hand save, and my hands were so raw I couldn’t take off my own armor, which meant I hadn’t been able to see what the crossbow bolt had done to my shoulder. And what was it all for?
Far as I could see Sai had nearly got us killed hoping to hear that Wen-Jhai didn’t want him anymore so he could get out of his fight with Kedac. And then he wimped out and ran when he found out that she still loved him after all. At least he felt the same way himself.
“I have ruined everything! Wen-Jhai despises me now. She professed her love as fully and sweetly as the poets of old, and when she asked me to avenge her and claim that love, I... I asked her to run away with me, like a thief instead of a Dhan.” He flung out his arms. “Oh, Lhan, bind not these wounds. Let me bleed to death as I deserve.”
Lhan tied off a scrape with a little too much force. “First, Dhan Sai, you do not bleed enough to kill a linfa, thanks entirely to the valor of Mistress Jae-En, I have no doubt. Second, you have only to meet Kedac-Zir as you should, and you will be instantly redeemed in Wen-Jhai’s eyes.”
“But the opportunity has passed! Do not Kedac-Zir and Wen-Jhai leave tomorrow at sunrise on a ship for Ormolu? How can we hope to catch them?”
Lhan smiled wickedly. “Because we too leave tomorrow at sunrise on a ship for Ormolu. A trading caravan has assembled for safety around Kedac-Zir’s naval escort. Anticipating your failure—” he really leaned on that failure, “—I booked passage on one of the merchantmen.”
The sarcasm went right over Sai’s pretty little head. He practically kissed Lhan, he was so grateful. And now that Sai was safely back on the path of honor—and suicide as far as I was concerned—Lhan was all smiles again. Weird people.
Lhan handed me a pot of goo and started unbuckling my armor while I smeared gunk on all my scrapes and cuts. It stung like Ben Gay, but smelled kinda like coleslaw. Ewww. As I moved one of my bikini-straps to get at my ribs, one of Kedac’s coins fell out and clunked on the floor. Lhan looked at it, then at me, eyebrow raised like a question mark.
I blushed, which pissed me off. What did I have to be ashamed of? “Kedac liked my show.”
Lhan’s face tightened. “Oh.”
I dug the second coin out of my other bra cup. “I’ll have to get the third one later.”
Lhan turned white. “The beast.”
Sai didn’t notice any of this. “But how do we reach our ship? Kedac’s men will be watching for us.”
Lan gave me an appologetic look and turned to Sai, Sarcastic. “Forgive me, Sai, for momentarily forgetting your plight. ’Tis true,
Kedac will know it was you by now, and Mistress Jae-En is inconveniently distinctive in appearance. We shall need disguises.”
Sai groaned and flopped back on the bed. “I am thoroughly sick of disguises.”
Lhan shot him a look, but didn’t say anything. I didn’t say anything either, but it took some doing. The words “And I’m thoroughly sick of you,” were knocking mighty hard against my teeth.
Lhan touched the shaft of the bolt that went through my shoulder armor. “Does it pierce the muscle?”
I shook my head. “I don’t think so. It doesn’t catch when I move my arm.”
“Good.” He lifted the shoulder piece off. There was a jab of pain and a gush of blood. The bolt had passed through the armor at a shallow angle and mostly missed me. There was a pencil-size groove in my shoulder. Messy, but not serious.
Lhan started to patch me up.
Sai turned a little green. “Mistress!”
I don’t know why, but that’s where I almost lost it. I mean, there Sai was, feeling sorry for me, and for some reason it made me totally furious. Maybe it was because it had taken him until then to get over himself enough to notice that I was fucked up. Sai kept going. “I beg you to forgive me, Mistress. That my folly has caused you injury is more than I can...”
I put a hand in his face. “Don’t start.”
“But, I...”
“Just don’t.”
I almost walked out the door. Fuck Sai, the self-centered little fuck. All of a sudden I couldn’t stand to be in the same room with him. There had to be someone else on this shit-ass planet who could help me figure out the teleport stones and get my ass home. What the hell did I need him for?
I sighed and let my hand drop. I did need him, dammit. Not just because he could hook me up with a way back to Earth, but now, after what had happened tonight, I needed to stick with him because sooner or later he was going to lead me to Kedac. Things had changed. I had something to do before I went home. I had to kill Kedac.
But, Christ, even that was Sai’s fault. If he hadn’t dragged me into the castle, Kedac wouldn’t have got his greasy paws on me, and I wouldn’t be planning my first premeditated killing. Yeah, I’d killed before—that poor bastard back in Panorama City, One-Eye, that other Aarurrh, but those had been crimes of passion or self-defence. Kedac? That would be straight up cold-blooded murder. Sai had a hell of a lot to answer for, but I couldn’t call him on it. Not if I wanted to get to Kedac.
