The War of the Lance t2-3

by Margaret Weis

  Mara stared upward, her mouth hanging open. A gnome device had actually worked as it was supposed to. But now how was she going to get out?

  She examined the lever on the wall and tried to trace its relationship to the trap door. She could see a slack rope that disappeared into a hole in the tunnel ceiling, and she noted a rod leading from the lever up to a cantilever, but she couldn't understand how it would work.

  The alarm noises stopped abruptly. Standback or someone else had found a way to shut them off or, more likely, had accidentally silenced them. Mara had seen enough of the gnomes to hope that there were no casualties.

  Her ears adjusted to the sudden near-silence; she heard the soft hum (and drip) of ventilation devices somewhere, and the restless motion of invisible flying pests, and something else: a rustling, back in the side tunnels.

  Feet moving — a scraping sound, not quite boots and not quite barefoot. The clink of metal on metal. It sounded definitely ungnomelike. At that point, it occurred to Mara that something had set off Standback's alarms. A real thief… Mara hid in a niche in the wall.

  A shadowy figure came into view, wearing a helmet with a dragon crest.

  "These must be the weapons the knights spoke of. Quick!" he hissed, "While the gnome is gone. Take what looks useful and leave."

  It was a draconian! Two draconians! "What about the girl we followed here?" The other draconian asked.

  Mara's heart sank. She heard again in her mind Kalend saying,

  They'll camp around us and wait for something to break — reinforcements, or better weapons…

  The captain shrugged. "She's served her purpose. If you see her, kill her, and don't waste time."

  Mara pressed against the tunnel wall, hidden by the shadows of cable and hanging hardware.

  Four other draconians marched out of the narrow side tunnel into the hall. They were all carrying huge, cruel weapons. Their wings filled the tunnel. They had clawed hands and horrid sharp fangs. One of them started right for her. Mara the Brave couldn't help herself. She whimpered.

  The draconians heard her. One lashed forward with a spear. Panicked, Mara dropped flat. The spear nearly parted her hair. Another draconian hissed and slashed sideways with his sword. She leapt up, dodged the sword, backing farther away. A mace raked her shoulder.

  She began running, heading for escape out the skylight. I should stop them! she thought frantically, but a cold voice in her mind said, "Face it. You're not a warrior, not even a thief. You're only a very stupid little girl."

  She bounced from wall to wall randomly to dodge more thrown weapons, stumbling over a pile of canisters. She paused. The top one had a label; in the middle of the polysyllables, Mara recognized the common word for PEST. She picked the canister up and tucked it under her arm. If it was the new batch of pesticide, she could dump it over herself and it would make her invisible. She began opening it, then stopped.

  If it was the old batch, it might kill her.

  But then, she could throw it back at the approaching draconians and kill them. She tugged at the top again.

  Or she might make them invisible. She had a brief vision of herself surrounded by invisible draconians. She tossed the canister aside and kept running.

  The draconians were close behind her when she reached the skylight. She leapt for the opening lever, pulling it down with her full weight. It groaned as it moved… and lowered a cantilevered weight, which tugged a guy rope, which spun a flywheel, which rotated an axis, which turned a worm gear, which wound up the pull rope…

  Which broke. The whole system coasted to a stop, the end of the rope flapping uselessly.

  "It would be nice," Mara muttered between clenched teeth, "if just once, a gnome invention worked reliably." And that gave Mara the idea.

  She grabbed the dangling rope, swung up on it, pumping her legs vigorously. Kicking off the ceiling, she spun around and swung back over the heads of the astonished draconians. One of them raised a spear, but not quickly enough; it barely scratched her.

  Mara let go of the rope, landing well behind the confused draconians, and dashed back the way she had come. But she had to make certain they followed her. At the bend in the tunnel, she scooped up a handful of decaying spare parts from old mechanisms and skimmed them off the tunnel walls and ceiling into the draconians. A rusted bolt caught the captain on his reptilian snout.

  The captain howled. "After her! Kill her!"

  "Quickly, or slowly?" A subordinate asked.

  "Quickly," he hissed. A hex nut clanged off his helmet. "But not too quickly."

  They dashed after her again, weapons ready, their terrible jaws open. Mara fled, but made sure that they saw which way she turned. They chased her confidently; after all, what did they have to fear from a single unarmed human child?

  The draconians came on her suddenly, around a comer. She was apparently helpless with fear.

  The draconian captain leered at her and barked unnecessarily, "Now you die."

  "If you must!" she said more coolly than she felt. "But be quick."

  The draconian eyed her with resentment, tinged with admiration. "Don't we frighten you?"

  "You? Never." Mara pointed to the floor. "That thing frightens me. I can bear anything," she said earnestly, "but the Flying Deathaxe."

  At a gesture from his captain, the lead draconian picked it up. "This thing?" he said, laughing, incredulously.

  Mara shrank away. "Don't pull that cord. Please. Put it down — "

  The captain smiled at her, revealing an amazing quantity of pointed teeth. "Of course, I'll put it down." He set it on the ground in front of her with a low bow. As he straightened up, with one swift motion he pulled the starting cord, setting the propellers in motion. He watched, chuckling evilly.

  The propellers spun and, unbelievably, the Deathaxe rose into the air. As it cleared the floor, the razor-sharp axe blade swung back and forth with a loud shearing noise. It hovered, hesitated, then began slowly spinning in a circle. Mara watched, open-mouthed, as the axe blade sliced through a boom extending from the tunnel wall. Now the axe was moving faster, and the circle was widening as well. Mara took a nervous step backward.

  The Deathaxe hit the roof and bounced off. The blade sliced through the helmet and head of a draconian soldier without slowing down. The soldier turned to stone and toppled.

  The captain uttered a command, succinct even for draconian field orders: "Run!"

  Mara obeyed. So did the other draconians. The axe gashed the wall where she had been standing a moment before, spun back on itself, and cut one of the draconian soldiers in the chest before careening upward to strike the ceiling and spin back down.

  The wounded draconian, shouting in panic, crashed head-on into one of his companions. Both sank to the tunnel floor, unconscious but not dead. The remaining two sprinted after Mara, just ahead of the whining, humming Deathaxe.

  Mara wouldn't have thought that the heavy draconians could run that fast, but then she surprised herself with her own speed. Once, in a crazy rebound off a hanging pulley, the Deathaxe spun into the floor in front of her and shot straight up at her. She fell backward, rolled between the legs of the startled draconian soldier behind her, and leapt to one side. The Deathaxe cut off his head. Turning to stone, it thudded to the floor where she had been. The draconian captain behind her screeched with frustration. The Deathaxe, now behind him, spun back toward both of them, and they were off again.

  Perversely, the axe continued after them, instead of backtracking or taking wrong tunnels. Mara wondered if that was a side-function of Standback's sensors. She also wondered how long she and the draconian captain could keep up their pace; she was naturally faster, but he had more endurance. If she should tire or fall… She grit her teeth and kept dodging and running.

  After what seemed like days, Mara thought that the axe might be slowing down. A minute more and she was positive; it was losing forward momentum and spinning more slowly. Finally, with a creak from its handle and a flutter of
propellers, the Deathaxe crashed to the tunnel floor. Mara and the draconian, wheezing, collapsed — a spear's length apart — just beyond it.

  The draconian recovered first. He rose unsteadily and searched for the sword. He had dropped it when he fell. The weapon was now lying within Mara's reach.

  Mara staggered to her feet, picked up the heavy sword and nearly overbalanced. The draconian laughed at her and moved forward to recover it and kill her.

  Mara heard an uneasy rustling on the tunnel ceiling above her, though she could see nothing. She swung the sword against the tunnel wall and banged it, shouting.

  The air was suddenly filled with a terrible chittering and the sound of hundreds of wings. The draconian, disconcerted, waved his arms in the air. Mara steadied the sword, gathering her strength.

  The draconian opened his mouth and snapped at the noises in the empty air; there was a tiny shriek, which cut off abruptly. Mara, feeling sick, took a deep breath and lunged with the sword.

  It was far too heavy for her, but she managed to catch the draconian captain just below the kneecap. He roared, driving away all the flyers. Mara let go of the sword and backed off.

  Grimacing, he looked down at his leg. Green blood oozed from the wound. He opened his mouth to shout at her; nothing but snarling and flecks of foam came out.

  Mara dashed away, thinking to herself, "I'll need a new name. Mara the Warlike… Mara, Queen of Battle…" A thrown dagger flashed between her arm and her side. Mara, Queen of Battle, legged it like Mara the Rabbit down the left fork of the tunnel. The draconian lumbered after her, limping painfully.

  Mara dashed into a room. The draconian found her, crouched against the far wall. She stood holding the leg of a splintered chair as a weapon. As the captain came forward, she dropped it and shrank against the wall, her face a mask of terror.

  "I have you," he said slowly, with satisfaction. He limped into the center of the room, smiling -

  Mara tapped the wall lightly with one finger.

  The Thudbaggers activated. The draconian lost his footing. Both his arms were pinned in place by the bags; he couldn't reach the sword he had dropped when the first bag inflated in his face. He poked his head up out of the balloons, and glared helplessly at Mara, who had clambered onto the bags. "You!" he said bitterly, beside himself with rage. "You — "

  "Shut up," said Mara and, pulling off his helmet, knocked him cold.

  She heard the sound of running feet, and then Standback appeared in the door.

  "Are you all right?" He was panting.

  Mara slid off the balloon. "Mara the Bold is always all right."

  "That's good. When I arrived at the top level, I thought that it was a false alarm, and I came back down, and then I saw the dead and knocked-out draconians — " He paused. "You're bleeding."

  She looked at her shoulder in surprise. "Not too badly." She grinned. "I gave better than I got."

  Standback looked at the unconscious captain. "I see that," he said, impressed. "Were they after my weapons?"

  Mara nodded. Standback, looking again at the pinned and unconscious captain, said thoughtfully, "Mount Nevermind isn't at war with draconians. We don't dare kill them, and they're too dangerous to take prisoner. What are we going to do with them?"

  "I've thought about that." Mara paused for effect. "Let them escape."

  Standback goggled at her. "But if they escape, they'll take our weapons or plans for our weapons away with them — "

  "You want them to," she said simply.

  Standback was now a complete rarity in Mount Nevermind or anywhere else: a speechless gnome.

  "Think about it," she went on. "The draconians want the weapons. You need the weapons tested. They're soldiers. Who could better test them?"

  As he still hesitated, she added, "And isn't the theft by real warriors a kind of validation that your weapons are worth testing? You'll be able to tell that to the committee and then ask for the hand of Watchout."

  Standback blinked. "But you're not afraid to let them use these.. terrible weapons against your people?"

  Mara thought about draconian troops setting off the Portapults in the field. "They are indeed terrible weapons," she said, "but letting the draconians have them will only make it a more even battle. It's a matter of honor — something the knights are big on."

  Standback took her hand, pumping it up and down. "Never have I met a warrior of so much integrity — "

  "Oh, I wouldn't say that."

  " — and modest too." He looked back at the unconscious draconian captain. "I'll let them escape with the Portapult, the Flying Deathaxe — "

  "Um, I don't know that they'll want the Deathaxe. Why don't you let them have the Thunderpack, instead?"

  Standback protested. "This is too much. Won't you take anything for yourself?"

  "Sometimes," Mara said nobly, "there's a greater joy in giving." She had a sudden thought. "If you don't mind, I'll just take the little failed dowser." She picked it up.

  "The one that can't even find water? You want it?"

  "Just as a souvenir."

  Standback, tears in his eyes, said, "You're amazing. Nothing but a trinket for yourself, while you give fullscale gnome weapons to your worst enemies."

  Mara, pocketing the jewel-finder, beamed. "Well," she said modestly, "I'm like that."

  The Promised Place

  Dan Parkinson

  Once, very recently, this had been a city. Only days before, there had been a tiered castle on the highest point of the hill. Studded battlements overlooked the lands for miles around. In a walled courtyard, throngs gathered.

  Below the battlements, spreading down toward the fields, had been a raucous, bustling city — inns and dwellings, shops and markets, public houses, smithies, barns and lofts, weavers' stalls and tanneries, music and noise and life.

  Chaldis had been a city. But the dragonarmies of the Dark Queen had come and the city was a city no more. Where battlements had stood was smashed and blackened rubble, and all beneath was scorched, twisted ruin. Of Chaldis, nothing was left. Only the road it had defended was yet intact, and its surface showed the tracks and treads of armies just passed. The people who had been here were gone now — some fleeing, some dead, some led off as slaves. Where there had been herds now were only scorched pastures, and where crops had grown now were ruined fields.

  Stillness lived here now. A somber stillness — shadows and silence, broken only by the weeping of the wind.

  Yet in the stillness, something lurked. And in the shadows, small shadows moved.

  Muffled voices, among the rubble: "What kind place this? Ever'thing a real mess." 'Talls been here. Somebody clobber 'em, I guess." "This all fresh scorch." "Forget scorch! Look for somethin' to eat."

  And another sound, from somewhere in the lead, "Sh!" A thump and a clatter.

  "Sh!" "Somebody fall down."

  "Sh!"

  "Somebody say, 'Sh.' Better hush up."

  Another thump and several clatters.

  "Wha' happen?"

  "Somebody bump into somebody else. All fall down."

  "Sssh!!"

  "What?"

  "Shut up an' keep quiet!"

  "Oh. Okay."

  Abruptly hushed, the shadows moved on, small figures in a ragged line, wending among fallen stone and burned timbers, making their cautious way through the rubble that once had been a city. For several minutes, they proceeded in silence, then the whispers and muted chatter began again as the effect of exercised authority wore off.

  "Wanna stop an' dig? Might be nice stuff under these gravels."

  "Forget dig. Need food first. Look for somethin' make stew."

  "Like what?"

  "Who knows. Mos' anything make stew."

  "Hey! Here somethin'… nope, never mind. Just a dead Tall."

  "Rats."

  "What?"

  "Oughtta be rats here. Rats okay for stew."

  "Keep lookin'."

  "Ow! Get off a my foot!"

 
Thump. Clatter.

  "Sh!"

  "Somebody fall down again."

  "Sh!

  They were travelers. They had been travelers since long before any of them could remember, which was not very long unless the thing to remember was truly worth remembering: traveling generally was not. It was just something they did, something they had always done, something their parents and their ancestors had done. Few of them had any idea why they traveled, or why their travels — more often than not — tended to be westward.

  For the few among them who might occasionally wonder about such things, the answer was simple and extremely vague. They traveled because they were in search of the Promised Place.

  Where was the Promised Place? Nobody had the slightest idea.

  Why did they seek the Promised Place? No one really knew that, either. Someone, a long time ago — some Highbulp, probably, since it was usually the Highbulp who initiated unfathomable ventures — had gotten the notion that there was a Promised Place, to the west, and it was their destiny to find it. That had been generations back — an unthinkable time to people who usually recognized only two days other than today: yesterday and tomorrow. But once the pilgrimage was begun, it just kept going.

  That was the nature of the Aghar — the people most others called gully dwarves. One of their strongest driving forces was simple inertia.

  The size and shape of the group changed constantly as they made their way through the ruins of the city, tending upward toward its center. Here and there, now and then, by ones and threes and fives, various among them lost interest in following along and took off on side expeditions, searching and gawking, usually rejoining the main group somewhere farther along.

  There was no way to know whether all of them came back. None among them had any real idea of how many of them there were, except that there were more than two — a lot more than two. Maybe fifty times two, though such concepts were beyond even the wisest of them. Numbers greater than two were seldom considered worth worrying about.

  Gradually, the stragglers converged upon the higher levels of the ruined city. Here the fallen building stones were more massive — huge, smoke-darkened blocks that lay aslant against one another, creating tunnels and gullies roofed by shattered rubble. Here they found more dead things — humans and animals, corpses mutilated, stripped and burned, the brutal residue of battle. They crept around these at a distance, their eyes wide with dread. Something fearful had happened here, and the pall of it hung in the silent air of the place like a tangible fear.