"You sound like you admire the guy," Boday noted sourly.
"A professional soldier's admiration for a great strategic general, that's all," the mercenary assured her. "I'm just beginning to wonder how we can ever hope to get through the forces inevitably massed around Tishbaal hub."
Dorion looked back at the hostile, ugly valley with its monstrous plants. "Even more immediate, I'm beginning to wonder how the hell we get across this valley."
"We don't. Not with what we've got. But you can see where it begins and ends. I'd say we make an early camp here now and get some rest. Tomorrow we'll have to blaze our own trail around. It shouldn't be too hard the people and animals of that village would have had to do the same. At least we know now why they have such a flimsy force at their rear and why the town would want to put themselves between the hub border and this valley rather than exposed behind it. At least I doubt if we'll have to worry tonight about guarding front and rear."
Boday looked back at the scarred valley and then at the peaceful and empty road. "Boday feels as if she is a horseshoe," she muttered, "with the smith's hammer behind and the anvil ahead."
6
The Armies of the Winds
CHARLEY AWOKE SUDDENLY from a sound sleep and sat up, puzzled. It was still quite dark, and she was very tired, yet something had forced her awake even as the others, including the light-sleeping Halagar, slumbered on.
That was odd, too, she thought suddenly. There is Halagar right there and yet I'm me, I'm all here.
"Many men coining. You must wake and warn others," came a strange and eerie English-speaking voice in her head that seemed composed more of hisses and growls than human speech.
"What? Who?" she said softly aloud, startled.
"Hurry! Not much time!" the voice warned urgently.
Suddenly she saw a vision in her head through catlike eyes; an eerie, glowing scene without color or much depth, of creatures that were not quite human, riding animals that were not quite anything, either.
She frowned, puzzled. "Shadowcat? Is that you? You can speak?"
"I hoped to keep that secret, but hurry now! Wake guard, tell him, then wake others!"
She got up and looked around in the darkness. Dorion was supposedly on guard duty but she saw him slumped against a tree, dozing. She crept up to him and bent down near him "Dorion!" she hissed. "Wake up!"
He stirred, then jumped in reflexive panic and almost knocked her down. "Who? Wha?"
"Shadowcat's out there and sees a small army moving this way, not far off," she told him. "You must wake the others!"
"Charley, army" He was instantly on his feet if not quite fully awake. "Halagar! Boday! Trouble!"
Halagar was up and awake in a flash, Boday a bit more slowly and grumpily.
Halagar grabbed his rifle and quickly went over to Dorion. The automatic rifles they'd stolen from the sentries were very handy, but they hadn't a whole lot of ammunition for them
"She can see through the cat," Dorion told him, nodding to Charley. "She says the cat's seeing a lot of armed men coming."
Halagar frowned and looked at Charley as if wondering how such a simple creature could even understand or convey such thoughts, but he was a professional. Such questions were for later, not when danger lurked close at hand. "Pack up what you can and quickly!" he hissed. "Dorion get the horses. The three of you retreat into the woods a safe distance so the horses won't betray you. I'll come for you."
"Yes? And what will you be doing?" Boday asked him.
"I want to see who and what they are, if they are there at all and not one of Dorion's wet dreams. Hurry! And don't worry, I won't be seen. Which way are they coming from?"
"No way to tell, I think," the magician replied. "It's just visions from a cat."
They gathered up what they could and did as instructed. Dorion wasn't sure how far in they should go and wanted to continue a good ways, but Charley was adamant. "Just far enough! We want to be able to find him and him us again! Besides, I want to tune into Shadowcat again."
They stopped perhaps a hundred yards within the woods and Charley sat on the grass, cross-legged, and concentrated while Boday and Dorion held the horses nervously.
"Yes, I see them!" Charley told the others. "Shadowcat's up in a tree or something, looking down at them. Big, ugly sorts. Hideous in some ways. No hair, it all looks like bone. Sort of diamond-shaped bony heads out of which eyes peer kind of like, well, maybe a turtle or something. Just slits for noses, and the mouth looks more like a short beak. Bony plates down their backs, too. Mean-looking mothers. Riding what look like baby dinosaurs or something, with the same kind of bony plates and heads."
"They sound too big to be of this world," Dorion noted.
"Well, they got like machine guns or something- All of 'em," Charley reported. "Jeez! It's like a small army!" To Shadowcat she shot the thought, "Why didn't you ever tell me you could communicate?"
"Quiet!" came the eerie-sounding reply in her head. "I have enough problems just keeping balance. People do too much talk, say nothing."
"Listen!" Boday hissed. "You can hear them even this far back!" The horses stirred a bit, getting an unnerving scent and strange sounds in the darkness.
They were past in a few minutes, the sounds slowly vanishing in the night, and things were suddenly quiet once more.
There was a stirring in the dark forest to their left and guns came up, but Halagar said, "Hold it! Know what you shoot before you fire!" and stepped out.
"What were they?" Dorion asked him.
"Galoshans," he replied. "About fifty of them, all heavily armed with weapons of a kind I've never seen before, although I can imagine what they can do. They're a particularly unpleasant group and I'm not surprised to see them in this. They live mostly on a mixture of beast's blood and milk, and their skins or whatever are hard as rock. You've got to practically hit them dead on with a bullet in the face to stop them. They're tribal nomads from a world that could stand a lot of improvement. I was once part of a detachment who had to hunt some renegades down. The idea of them with mere rifles, let alone any kind of repeating weapon, is chilling."
"They were heading towards the Tishbaal hub," Dorion noted. "So they're between us and where we want to be."
"Well, there'll be that and worse," Halagar assured them. "Make what camp you can here, just in case they have a rear guard or are only the first wave." He stalked over to Charley and pulled her up roughly by her arm and off to one side, away from the others. He pulled her to him and slapped her face so hard that her head snapped back and the resulting pain that came a few moments later brought tears to her eyes.
"You listen to me," he hissed. "You are mine! If you need to warn anybody again, you wake me up and tell me, understand? You're mine! The next time you forget that or fail to please me, I'll break your damned arms! And you tell neither of them about this, understand? You just tell them you worship me and want to be mine always. And if anybody should ask if I beat you, tell 'em you love it." Then he grabbed her by her hair and almost dragged her back to the camp.
She was shocked by his reaction, and confused. He'd given no orders before that she had to obey on this, and she would have found it next to impossible to tell him in Short Speech what was coming and how she knew it. This was a side of Halagar she'd not seen before and one that frightened her. She began to wonder for the first time just what things would be like if Dorion and Boday weren't around to keep him in check.
"How did the girl know?" he asked Dorion, seemingly calmed down. "How did she tell you with the air she has for brains?"
Dorion sighed, wondering how much to tell, and deciding to tell as little as he could get away with. "Like most of her type she comes from someplace else and she has her own language. I understand the tongue, but few others do. When there's danger she reverts to it, knowing only the Short Speech."
"Hmph! I thought the potions took all that from them."
Clearly Dorion hadn't heard the altercation in the woods
and it was too dark to see any effects. "What's got the bug up your ass?" he wanted to know. "If she couldn't do it, she couldn't have warned us, and we'd have been spotted by their forward scouts. The girl and the cat saved us!"
Halagar did not respond, but stalked off to prepare his own bedding once more.
Charley felt scared and confused. What the hell was going on now? It had been going about as well as she could have hoped, and then this. She needed to put this out of her mind, be Shari again, but Shari, who was almost automatic, wouldn't come. Her face still stung, and when she touched it, it hurt a bit.
"Shadowcat? I need somebody to talk to. Are you there?" "Go sleep, stupid girl?" came the response. "You wanted him, you have him and he have you. You want furry friend to talk to you, next time pick dog."
She didn't 'get much if any sleep that night, but in the morning Shadowcat returned and took his accustomed berth on the saddle blanket having refused to say another word to her. She did not revert to Shari at any time then or during the next few days, but she acted as if she had to Halagar, who seemed both rougher and more callous towards her than before. She wondered if this was just his ego at not awakening until a rather noisy force was almost upon them when he'd convinced all of them, even himself, that he was nearly infallible in these situations, or whether that was simply the catalyst for the real Halagar to appear.
Still, as they neared the null border and had to stop and make camp well off any roads or paths, she found herself left alone with Boday as Halagar decided to scout what lay ahead and wanted Dorion's magical eye and experience with him. Boday came over to her and bent down and examined Charley's face.
"Boday thought so," the artist muttered. "The dark skin dye hides the bruising but the eye shows it still. So Halagar beats you, does he? Boday noted the resemblance to her late and unlamented second husband."
Shadowcat crawled out of her perch, stretched, and as if on cue crawled into Charley's lap. Although she wasn't too certain about the cat, if it really was a cat. at this stage, Charley had reasoned that at least the thing was on their side. If not, why warn them at all at the cost of betraying just what intelligence lay behind those feline eyes? She began to stroke the cat, and, thanks to Yobi's spell, her thoughts became audible to Boday.
"I do not mind the beating. In fact, I enjoy it," she said to the artist although those weren't the words she meant to send. That damned slave spell!
"Ah! He commanded you to say that, didn't he? And that you're a masochist, and you love him, and would die for him, and all that crap. Yes?"
"Yes," she responded, at least thankful of Boday's worldliness.
"Ah! My little butterfly, how you are still having your education, even if you do not see all the truths or understand she values, or learn all the lessons! Back in the long ago you were a courtesan, a cultured creature pampered and kept with only the best sent to you and you thought that was what it was all about. The romance of the erotic, yes? But there you were protected from the average by Boday and her procurers. The girls on the street, they must take what comes, and those who are out there are not simply poorer but far stranger. The men who love to beat up women, the mutilators, the fetishists the men who are sick in the head. Anyone who will pay. That is where you would have wound up eventually, as courtesans are prized for being young and even the most pampered grow old too fast. That is why the memory potions or happy drugs are so necessary, hi so many ways, after all this, you are still a child, relishing no responsibility, seeing the world not as the cesspool it really is. but as a playground."
"I've had a choice?" Charley retorted.
Boday shrugged. "Life deals mean cards many times most times. The point was not what you were forced to become or do, the point is that you enjoyed it, relished it, embraced it. Boday should not have made you so beautiful. Boday should have made you walk the streets. Then your brain would have been plotting and planning escapes and working against your lot. You have been a fighter, but only when you had to be, and only so long as the danger was imminent. Then you quit and retreat into this oh, so comfortable shell."
"What can I do? I'm blind and I'm weak and I must obey him. You know how the spell works."
"Indeed. But your blindness isn't just in your eyes, it's in your heart and soul. Do you believe for one minute you would have been given as some kind of payment to Halagar if you had raised even the smallest objection to Dorion? We survived this far without him, and if we survive, it will not be because of him. But, no. You wanted dear, sweet Halagar, Mister Muscles with the perfect cologne and the granite prick. When you begin to think of yourself as an object, a thing, a pretty flower and nothing more, then you start judging everyone else by that as well. Very well, you have his outside but you must take his dark inside with the rest. He is an evil, twisted man. His kind, who choose killing as a career, usually are, and Boday has seen many in her life."
"But he's on our side!"
"So? He is an evil man who is on our side. There are probably countless good men, holy men, on their side. Whose side someone is on only matters when someone is attacking you, but no matter how dangerous the situation, you are rarely under attack. The rest of the time you must co-exist with swine. Not that all men are swine, but the ones who arc attracted to girls like you, or women like me, tend to be. That is why Boday found her darling Susama such a joy and a relief."
Charlie was suddenly struck with a revelation. "You could reverse that potion, couldn't you? A top alchemist could always figure an antidote."
"No, it is a good one, but love potions are very simple, realty. To counter it you need only take an overriding potion that redirects the fixation to something neutral and harmless. More commonly, and with fewer side effects, one just finds a good magician and uses magic to overpower and neutralize the potion. That is what some of my friends and associates did back in Mashtopoi a few weeks after I took it, when they recognized the symptoms."
"You mean you haven't been under a love potion all this time?"
Boday laughed. "Darling, Boday has had nine husbands, and the only one who was any good died of heart failure after a night of passion. The rest were rich or intelligent or sometimes handsome but they were rich, intelligent, or handsome scum. Boday murdered three of them herself, although if the facts were fully known and she was not such an expert at alchemy, she would still have been freed. Those weeks with the potion, she realized that she did not, never had, needed a husband—she needed a wife. Boday had to live a long time and fight the world before she learned why she was so miserable and what she really needed, and the difference between love and lust."
"And you gave all that up—voluntarily? For this?"
"Well, not for this, my little darling, but she gave it up, yes. To tell you the truth, Boday was at a creative dead end and no longer expanding inside as an artist. It was all too easy. No offense, my little creation, but Boday was trapped in the comfortable but sterile world of the purely commercial artist and in serious danger of becoming a hack. It all had become so boring. This—the challenge, the adventure, the dangers, the horrors- this has energized her. If she survives she will become the greatest artist of her age! If not, well, she will have died for love and for her art. But you, little butterfly you will have lived and died for nothing. Not love, not art, not for a cause, or friendship, or even ambition. Royalty and sorcerers are born to their destinies; the rest of us must carve out our own with courage and will, or we will not matter at all. You have given up your ego and your dreams, and, frankly, the only difference of late between Shari and Charley is that Charley has a better vocabulary. I…"
Boday suddenly jumped up, her rifle swinging around to cover in one motion, but it was only Halagar and Dorion returning. Shadowcat looked up, climbed off Charley's lap, and went back to the bedroll.
Dorion was breathing so hard that it sounded as if he was going to drop dead any second; Halagar had barely a whisker out of place. "We've got it!" said the mercenary triumphantly.
"Got what?"
Boday responded.
"This," he replied, bringing a small pendant and chain from his shirt pocket. The stone hanging from it was undistinguished and ugly; it looked like a pebble picked up from the side of the road.
"You stole a rock?"
"Uh-uh. Better. Had to kill for this one, but it was worth it. I got the idea when those Galoshans trooped by the other night. There were two Akhbreed with them, riding those big lumbering beasts of theirs like natives, dressed in black uniforms with unfamiliar insignia. Of course there were Akhbreed involved on the other side, from Klittichom and the Storm Bitch to the men who worked the hubs for them! I had to wonder after seeing the remnants of that massacre, how could they tell their Akhbreed from the rest of us? Most of those colonials can't even tell us apart. That's why I wanted Dorion along. I was certain it had to be some kind of spell or charm."
Dorion was still breathing hard and sweating like mad, but with a few interruptions for coughing spells, he managed to join in.
"Yeah, that's it. A real simple thing and they all wear them, colonials and Akhbreed traitors and mercenaries alike. I know it doesn't look like much, but it doesn't have to. It's a generic spell but fairly complicated, so they can be mass-produced but not easily neutralized. Anybody wearing one instantly knows friend from foe."
Boday frowned. "So how does this help us?"
"Don't you see?" Halagar responded. "It's just a stone on a chain. Almost anything will do. We got two courtesy of a couple of very careless guards who will be careless no longer. We got rid of the bodies, I doubt if they will be easily discovered. But with these on, Dorion and I can ride right through that line and encampment and be recognized as friends. I'm a known mercenary, so even if somebody recognizes me, it's not hard to believe I'm working for them now, and they've got dozens of Third Rankers down there, so Dorion won't even be noticed."
Changewinds 03 - War of the Maelstrom Page 17
