“I got him,” he grunted. “You lead the way.”
He grabbed the toymaker and threw him over his shoulder. While not as massive as Poole, Heinryk was a big fellow and he carried Chappett with ease. The toymaker started to protest, but a swift punch in the ribs from the old watchman silenced him.
The four of us hurried up Candlewalk Lane at a much better pace, while Nocce still limped inexorably after us. We were gaining ground but she had the advantage of being apparently tireless.
The lantern the Watchmen carried was the only light source on this part of the street, so Nocce disappeared into the blackness behind us as we drew ahead. Not being able to see her wasn’t all that reassuring.
I dropped back to jog along beside the Captain. Maybe I could still persuade him to see sense and leave this to me.
“Look,” I began, “just leave me and the toymaker in Kingshead Square and go get reinforcements. There’s no reason for you to be involved further in this. There are some real bad things going on here. Chappett claimed he saw a giant tarantula in an alleyway right before I drug him into that plaza. If Talanturos is involved in this, and I think he is, then you might want to put as much distance between yourself and this situation as possible.”
“That’s very noble of you,” Drayton panted, “but you know, if you wouldn’t take things into your own hands the way you do, we wouldn’t be in situations like this.”
He was blaming me?
“Excuse me?” I shot back, “If you would listen to me once in a while instead of ordering me around, I wouldn’t have to take matters into my own hands. May I remind you that it was me ‘taking matters into my own hands’ that let you even know there was a giant spider stomping around on the rooftops a couple of months ago… the one you didn’t believe in because you didn’t listen!”
“I also seem to remember what happened after you took matters into your own hands,” the Captain gasped, “and risked burning down the Imperial Market Bridge. I seem to remember running for our lives from a murderous, indestructible monster… kind of like we’re doing right now! Is this going to be a recurrent theme with you?”
At this point, we were interrupted by Heinryk, who had slowed down so he would fall even with us.
“You know,” the grizzled veteran grunted softly under his load, “it sure would be nice to think that our pursuer was being forced to slow down and check alleyways to make sure we hadn’t ducked down one to elude her…but she ain’t doing that. You know why? Because she can hear you two back here, arguing like an old married couple from three blocks away.”
He shifted the toymaker on his shoulder and hurried on.
Chastened, the Captain and I followed.
Up ahead, the blackness lightened into soft gloom.
We were almost there.
Chapter Ten
“Nature chose toward vengeance as a virtue in the human heart. It is one of the blacker virtues, but a virtue nonetheless. Thus I find it preferable to kill a man if I find I need to do him injury. I do not wish to waste my life worrying about virtuous men.” —Ruthven Estradian, current occupant of the Emerald Throne.
We stumbled into the dimly lit murk of Kingshead Square.
The tilted, fifteen foot tall bronze head of King Hazred stared at us with a menacing scowl from its position in the center of the plaza.
One of the last of the old kings of Khrem, King Hazred decided to build a monument to himself. It had been intended to be a monument to match the size of his ego, and the size of many of the other great statues that looked down on the city from their hilltops. He had died when the pieces were in the slow process of being transported from their various points of storage to be assembled, and the project died with him. Now parts of King Hazred littered the city, creating some rather interesting landmarks in some places, and rather disturbing ones in others.
It would have helped if he had clothed the thing in something more than a crown.
“Okay, we’re here,” the Captain gasped, hands on his knees. “Now what?”
A swift look around the square revealed we were alone. There was no sign of the ghost. Dammit! We didn’t have much time. Nocce would be closing the distance as we stopped here and recuperated. I staggered over to where Heinryk had dumped the toymaker and grabbed him by the collar.
“Where did you pick up Lia?” I shouted. “Where?”
“Right here,” he panted, trying to get his breath back from the rough ride on Heinryk’s shoulder. “She was standing right here, by the head. It was her usual place.”
He didn’t seem to have any fight left in him. I think he had finally reached the point where he didn’t care anymore.
“Now what?” Poole echoed the Captain.
“Now we keep running,” I replied. “My idea didn’t work, so let’s get out of here and get some help.”
I thought I had this thing figured out, but evidently I had still missed something.
“There are ten more Watchmen further down the lane, holding the intersection where Candlewalk Lane crosses Ten Temple Street,” the Captain forced out between heaving breaths. “We’ll get to them and hope that’s enough to stop this thing chasing us. Let’s move on”
This time, Poole hefted the toymaker to his shoulder and we started down the lane where it exited the square behind the giant head. The run had already started taking its toll on us, and Ten Temple Street was still a good ways ahead.
Unfortunately, we weren’t destined to make it near that far.
We came to a place where Candlewalk Lane went through a large archway and passed through what had once been an old outer wall of Khrem. It featured a barred portcullis that could be lowered to cut off one section of the city from another in times of dire emergency. For some inexplicable reason, somebody had lowered it.
We were trapped.
“Back to the square,” the Captain managed to force out as he gulped air. “If we can beat her back to the square, we can take one of those side alleys out of there.”
We turned and started back toward the square, only to come to a halt.
Our time had run out…Nocce had arrived. She had come to a stop only about forty feet away from us.
But this time she wasn’t alone.
She stood illuminated, not by the lantern that Heinryk carried, but the one in the hand of the figure that faced her, standing directly between her and us. The figure shrouded by a large shawl decorated with crescent moons.
The ghost had made its appearance, after all.
“Is that her?” the Captain puffed. “Is that Maddy?”
He leaned on me, and I almost stumbled to the ground. I was out of breath myself and he outweighed me by a good amount.
“No, Captain,” I panted as I fought to keep my balance and support him too, “that’s not just Maddy. Somehow, it’s all of them. I know it doesn’t make sense, and I’ve never read of any other spirit like this, but that’s all five of them. It’s just that Maddy’s shawl is its most recognizable feature, so everybody assumed it had to be her.”
I originally intended on finding a way to give the toymaker to the specter, but apparently it had designs of its own. It had chosen to face our pursuer instead.
Nocce studied the motionless figure in front of her.
She stared at it for a moment, and then with a contemptuous snarl, stepped forward and threw one of those powerful roundhouse punches. That turned out to be not nearly as effective as it had been against me. Her fist passed through the apparition without any effect, causing Nocce to stumble and almost fall. She staggered, managed to recover, and straightened to face the specter again.
She glared at the ghost in silent fury, then stepped up to it once more.
“No, Nocce!” the toymaker cried. “Stay away from it!”
Too late.
This time it was “Maddy” that moved.
The phantom raised its scarred hand, formed it like a spear, and plunged it directly into Nocce’s chest. It vanished into the woman without resistance.
The toymaker cried out, and I think even a couple of us gasped in surprise.
For a long second, Nocce simply stared down at the hand that disappeared into her torso…
…and then she began to scream.
It started out as a woman’s scream. High and shrill, it sounded no different than the multitude of other cries that I have heard on these streets at night. But then it started climbing in volume and scale. Higher and higher it went, becoming inhuman. And still it grew louder.
All of us covered our ears, wondering if the sound would stop before our eardrums burst. The strange wail penetrated our skulls and shivered down our spines.
Then, just as I thought I would fall to my knees from the pain, there occurred what could only be described as an explosion of silence, and the strange shrieking stopped.
We uncovered our ears and looked up to see a lone, pale figure staggering around in the light of our lantern.
The ghost was gone, but what remained behind was not Nocce…at least, not the Nocce that stood there a second ago.
This was a life-size marionette without strings, built out of wood and painted white. Its face was lacquered on, its eyes lifeless and flat, and its mouth a simple hinged affair like a voice throwers puppet. The automaton stood, swaying in the darkness, as if it no longer had any volition of its own.
“Noooooo….” the toymaker wailed. “Nocceeee…”
I slapped him as hard as I could.
“It’s a doll!” I screamed at him. “It’s not alive! Not like Camber, or Maddy, or any of the others you killed so you could have your little toy! It doesn’t feel anything! It doesn’t have any hopes or dreams that die with it! Damn you!”
Poole caught my wrist just as I grabbed the knife in my belt. I had finally reached that place. I wanted my blade in that bastard’s chest with all my heart and soul. And I wanted it in there deep. I struggled with all my might in a futile effort to break free, but the watchman wouldn’t let go.
The toymaker stared up at me with an unrecognizable expression on his face. He watched me struggle with Poole for a second, and looked over at the swaying white figure. Then he barked out something in a foreign tongue.
Right then, I realized we were still in trouble.
I had never encountered the language before, but I knew “Kill them all” when I heard it.
The doll stopped swaying and started limping straight toward us. It made a clacking and rasping noise as it moved, dragging its damaged leg behind it.
The Captain and the two Watchmen drew their weapons and rose to meet it.
“Mr. Cargill,” the Captain said as he prepared to close with the thing, “I would take it as a real favor if you would refrain from killing that man until we are done with this monstrosity. However, you are free to do what it takes to see he doesn’t run away.”
With that, he turned and faced the approaching monster doll.
Poole drove in from the side, swinging his truncheon in a large swing. The doll blocked the blow with one of its forearms. It made a loud cracking noise, but the arm didn’t break. It floored Poole with a backhand to the head. The Captain came in with his shortsword, weaving, and then drove it point first at its face. It stuck right between the eyes, but to no effect. It reached out and grabbed the Captain by the shoulder.
He cried out in pain at the strength of its grip.
It had obviously lost a lot of power when the ghost reduced it to its current state, but it still remained hellishly strong. Drayton stabbed at its face, while the thing sought to bring its other hand to bear on him. That’s when Heinryk came in low and landed a powerful swing of his truncheon on the dolls knee.
There was a different type of cracking sound and the doll staggered. Unfortunately, Heinryk got caught in his low position when it lashed back out with its free hand and slapped him back against the portcullis the toymaker and I were huddled against.
He hit the gate hard, and slumped to the ground clutching his ribs. The Captain now found himself in deep trouble, struggling with the doll alone.
But Heinryk’s maneuver had given me an idea.
I remembered the exploded diagrams in those sketches by the toymaker. It was just a matter of me being insane enough to leave the relative safety of the portcullis, abandon the toymaker to his own devices, and risk jumping into the fight with an animated killer doll.
My old instincts were telling me this presented a golden opportunity to stab the toymaker and then make a run for it, leaving the Watchmen to fight the monster. I am not a fighter by nature. A thief who hung around and fought when a job went sour generally became a dead thief.
At the same time I considered that option I saw the doll drive the Captain to his knees with its fierce grip, and draw its fist back for a mighty blow with the other hand. He was dead if somebody didn’t do something immediately.
I knew I had finally lost my mind when I drew my knife and headed toward it.
It paused with its arm cocked and tried to track me, but it couldn’t do that and hold on to the Captain too. That allowed me to run around the two of them as fast as I could and dive onto the thing’s back. I wrapped my legs around its hard torso as I drove the point of my knife down into the hole where its neck met its trunk.
That caught its attention.
It used its free hand to try to reach back and grab me. I ducked as low as I could to avoid it while driving the point of the knife further down alongside its neck, into the torso. Then my grip almost failed in panicked shock when the doll’s head spun around and looked me directly in the face.
It managed to grab my arm by the bicep in a grip that threatened to break bone, and started pulling me over its shoulder. Fortunately, that was about the time that Poole staggered to his feet, shook his head and charged.
The big watchman hit us from behind, picking us up and driving all three of us into the portcullis.
“Aw hells,” Heinryk remarked resignedly as we all landed right on top of him. We collapsed in a pile of flailing limbs and weapons. But now I knew what we needed to do.
“Use your knives and go for its joints,” I yelled. “That’s its weak spot!”
From that point on, it was just a matter of time.
The doll might have still been strong, but off its feet it had no leverage, and the Watchmen were strong too. It turned into brutal work, and knives slipped several times to cut allies…not to mention the bone jarring blows the doll still occasionally managed to land in those tight quarters.
But after what seemed an hour on the ground, the doll lay in pieces and we were tangled in an exhausted pile.
With me on the bottom, of course.
I was so tired and sore, I thought I would never move again—even if I did manage to get these other lummoxes off of me. On the other hand, there wasn’t enough weight on me that I couldn’t breathe and those cobblestones felt real comfortable at the moment. Maybe people would let me lay there a day or two. It surely wouldn’t be as painful as moving.
I had just started to wriggle into a more comfortable position when I heard Poole’s voice over the sound of blood rushing in my ears.
“Uhhh, Captainnnnnn,” he said urgently, “I think we have an even bigger problem.”
Now what?
I struggled to get out from under Heinryk, and twisted myself around to where I could see down the way that Poole was looking. The tone of his voice suggested he saw something that didn’t make him happy. Once I had managed to contort myself around, the source of his alarm became immediately clear.
The ghost had returned.
All five of them.
They were lined across the street, cutting off all routes of escape.
They were still sorting out whatever they had managed to take back of themselves from Nocce. They all looked alike, with the crescent mooned shawls and the scarred hands, but differences in height and build were already starting to appear as well. They were finding themselves. It would just be a matter of time.
They were going
to be alright.
But at the moment they were still unified by one more thought, one desire they still shared—and he huddled in a terrified crouch against the portcullis, trying to stay as far away as possible from the five silent figures awaiting him out in the street.
“It’s okay, Poole,” I groaned. “They’re not here for us.”
“Oh good, I’ve already had my scary female encounter for the evening.”
“Hey, Chappett,” Heinryk gasped, still clutching his ribs, “your date is here. Why don’t you get up off your pitiful ass and go out and meet them. It ain’t nice to keep the ladies waiting.”
Sounded like a plan to me.
I struggled to my feet and staggered over to the toymaker.
Grabbing him by the thumb shackles and the hair at the back of his head, I drug him to his feet. Then with an effort that dropped me back to my butt, I slung him out onto the cobblestones between us and the silent specters.
“Mr. Cargill,” the Captain panted while still on his knees, “what are you doing?” He still clutched his shoulder in pain, weaving drunkenly on his knees.
“Justice, Captain,” I responded. “And let’s not get into some debate over justice versus revenge. He deserves this, and you know it.”
That’s when the temperature started to fall.
As cold as it was starting to get, I knew the cold where the toymaker knelt would be far worse. He had already started trembling, and I could see him struggling to move. I remembered how that felt but I didn’t feel a damned bit sorry for him.
“Please,” he pleaded, “somebody help me. Oh Gods, its cold! It hurts!”
He didn’t know what cold was yet, but he would soon be finding out. Before long, he would lose the ability to talk at all.
The Captain struggled to his feet, still clutching his shoulder. He studied the silent figures for moment, then looked over at the shivering wretch on the cobblestones. I could tell his shoulder hurt him badly and it cost him a lot to stand.
“Mr. Cargill is right,” he said sadly. “You do deserve this. For everything you did to them, you deserve worse. But you know what? They deserve better.”
The Ways of Khrem Page 23
