by David Weber
"No less than half an hour, and possibly longer," Cherdahn said. "We dare not rush the death, or the binding may not take. And each Greater Servant is different. It may take somewhat longer to generate sufficient pain to satisfy this one's need."
"So we need to keep Wencit and the Bloody Hand busy for at least half an hour."
"You say that like you think it will be easy, Tremala," Rethak objected. "That's Wencit of Rūm out there."
"Yes, it is. And I know exactly what his record is, Rethak. But do you have a better suggestion?"
"But-"
"I'm not going back to Kontovar to tell Her I decided to run away rather than face him," the sorceress said flatly. "Wencit's combat magic can only kill us, you know."
Rethak's jaw worked for a moment. Then he jerked a nod.
"In that case," Tremala said, "let's go make our visitors welcome."
* * *
Trayn Aldarfro's eyes opened in the Stygian darkness of his tiny cell.
It didn't make any difference, of course, so he closed them again, wishing he could close all of his other senses as readily. His cramped kennel lay deep in the bowels of the hillside violated by Sharnā's temple, and he could sense the mental auras of dozens of other captives all about him. Most were obviously children; all were starkly terrified.
Someone was sobbing in despair and horror. Someone else-someone whose ordeal had pushed him over the edge of sanity-was talking to himself, or perhaps calling to a son or daughter he knew he would never see again. His long, rambling sentences were interspersed with bouts of screaming laughter, or howls of rage, and someone else was pleading with him to be quiet, to stop, even though the person behind that voice had to know her pleas were futile. And layered throughout those sounds, counterpointing all of them, were the moans and whimpers of children trapped in a waking nightmare and the handful of adults seeking uselessly to comfort them.
The despair and hopelessness crushing down upon Trayn in that darkness had driven him to the point of mindlessness. Driven him to the very brink of a mage's final retreat into the mental shutdown which would lead inevitably to the body's death, as well. Yet even there, in that black pit of horror, the training which made him what he was-and some inner spark, whatever it was that made him who he was-had refused to allow him to escape. Had demanded that he stay, do what he could if even the tiniest opportunity should present itself. He'd come to accept that escape was as impossible as Tremala had suggested, but even as he'd accepted that, a grim, focused determination to strike back at least once before the end had filled the innermost recesses of his soul.
Now, though, he sensed something even worse. Sensed the stirring of an even greater malevolence, an even greater evil. He sat up, the chains on his ankles clanking, and his face went bleak and hard in the blackness as he heard something else-heard the voice of a young woman, sobbing, pleading, fighting as she was dragged from her tiny cell. She couldn't possibly have sensed what he had, yet she seemed to know anyway.
Trayn could hear her, feel her, as she was dragged down the corridor outside the closed door of his own cell, and he knew where she was bound. He knew what sort of death awaited a sacrifice to Sharnā, knew what the unspeakable appetite behind the malevolence he'd sensed wanted from her. And he knew no one could possibly save her from it.
His eyes burned with that knowledge. Then his jaw clenched, and he bent forward, pressing his hands to his temples, summoning all the power within him and focusing it through the training he had already received. He reached out, reached through that darkness and stone, until his questing mental fingers touched the surface of the doomed young woman's mind.
She was even younger than he'd thought, not yet eighteen, he judged. And in that moment when their minds touched, he knew she had already seen the deaths of her parents, her brothers, a sister. Knew she understood precisely what was about to happen to her, as well, and felt her hopeless terror beating like the wings of a dying bird against the iron bars of the inescapable cage about her.
She sensed him, too, though not as clearly as he sensed her, and he held out his mental hand to her. He took her hand in his, clasping it, offering the only comfort he could, and felt her grip close with desperate strength and gratitude upon his. There were no words between them. Trayn's major talent was not telepathy, and she had no mage talent at all. Yet if there were no words, there was a promise, and Trayn went with her as she was dragged down that passageway of dark stone towards the agonizing death awaiting her.
XIV
"So let me get this straight," Houghton said. "The two of you-the three, of you, I mean-" he corrected himself, nodding at the huge horse he'd been informed was actually something called a courser (and also a champion of Tomanâk)"-plan to go inside a tunnel none of the rest of us can even see. Have I got that right?"
He and Mashita had climbed up out of Tough Mama to join Wencit. Houghton had been careful to keep his boots well away from the ichor which continued to smoke as it ate its way through the LAV's paint. Aside from that, he'd tried not to think all that much about exactly what the "demons'" reality represented. Unfortunately, the towering, fox-eared Bahzell seemed completely serious . . . which probably meant the gunnery sergeant was going to have to think about them-or, at least, whoever had sent them-very shortly.
That possibility made Houghton very nervous, indeed.
Mashita, on the other hand, seemed all but oblivious to such minor concerns as gigantic, impossibly fast, armor-plated, man-eating, pincer-equipped, cursed creatures out of the darkest pit of Hell. He was too busy drooling over Bahzell's horse-courser, a corner of Houghton's brain corrected mechanically-to pay much attention to anything else, which obviously amused the courser no end.
"Aye, and so we do," Bahzell agreed in response to the Marine's question.
There was something about that earthquake-deep voice of his which made anything he suggested sound reasonable, Houghton reflected. However insane it might actually be.
"And there may be more of these things," the gunnery sergeant jerked his head in a sideways nod at the hideous, mangled bodies draped in front of-and across-his LAV, "waiting for you in there?"
"As to that, I'm thinking there's at least one more," Bahzell said, scratching his chin thoughtfully. "I'm after feeling something a bit . . . odd about this one, though."
"'Odd?'" Houghton snorted. "So all of this-" he waved both arms at the abattoir hillside "- wasn't 'odd' for you people?"
"Actually," Wencit replied with a slight smile, "it's not very far out of the ordinary for a champion of Tomanâk."
"As to that," Bahzell gave the wild wizard a quelling look, then turned back to Houghton, "don't you be listening to him, Ken Houghton. It's dead I'd be, and Walsharno with me, if not for you. And its thankful we both are, as well. Still and all, we've some unfinished business down that hole yonder."
"What sort of business?"
Houghton knew, the instant he opened his mouth, that he shouldn't have asked the question.
"The 'raiders' Walsharno and I have been after following-aye, and the ones Wencit's been after chasing with you-are inside there, and they've at least one entire village's children, not to mention dozens of other folk, with them."
"And you're going in after them," Houghton said flatly.
"Aye." Bahzell's deep, rumbling voice was just as flat, just as hard. "I've no choice, you see. I've already said there's after being at least one more of these beauties down yonder, and so there is. And the only way Demon Breath's church can be after controlling such is by feeding them."
He didn't have to explain what he meant, and Houghton's belly knotted at the implications. Implications which, he knew, he should have already recognized for himself.
"And just how many people-how many soldiers-are they going to have in there with them?" he asked.
"Somewhere in excess of a hundred armsmen," Wencit said. "I can't be positive exactly how many, but that's a minimum number. And then there are at least three wizards, possibly m
ore. Plus the demon, of course."
"Aye," Bahzell agreed. "Still and all, Wencit, they've not bound the demon yet. That's going to be taking them more than a minute or two, I'm thinking. So if it happened we could get in there quick enough, it might just be as we could keep them from ever binding it."
"Somehow," Houghton sighed, "I just knew you were going to say that." He shook his head, then looked at Mashita with a crooked grin. "What d'you say, Jack?"
* * *
It was clear Walsharno didn't think very much of his rider's plans.
Houghton watched Bahzell and the huge stallion standing literally nose-to-nose. The "hradani" (as Wencit had told him Bahzell's branch of the "Races of Man" was known) didn't seem quite so mountainous from a distance, especially when compared to the courser, and Houghton decided he wouldn't have wanted to have anything Walsharno's size as angry with him as the courser stallion obviously was. The gunnery sergeant and Mashita had looked on in amazement as Bahzell healed the bleeding gash down Walsharno's flank and then watched the courser brush his velvet nose affectionately across the hradani's chest afterward. Now, however, Walsharno stamped one dinner-plate-sized rear hoof angrily. A ring of blue fire, like a flash of igniting lighter fluid, swept outward from the point at which that huge hoof struck the ground, and Walsharno's black tail switched furiously, more like some irate tiger's than that of any "horse" Houghton had ever seen.
"You won't be fitting, if that tunnel's after closing down," Bahzell said in a voice which mingled sternness, reason, frustration, and at least a little anger of its own. "Aye, and, come to that, who's to be watching our backs if you're inside there, too?"
He folded his arms emphatically and paused, as if listening to a voice only he could hear, then shook his head.
"No," he said. Again, his foxlike-ears cocked as if listening. "I'm not liking it a bit more than you," he said then, his voice marginally gentler, "and well you know it. But we've no time at all, at all, to be standing here, arguing."
The stallion glowered at him for another moment, and then his head sagged and his tail drooped. He leaned forward, resting his jaw on the hradani's shoulder, and Bahzell closed his eyes and reached up to caress his companion's ears as he pressed the side of his own head against Walsharno's neck. Then he stood back, gave the stallion a crisp nod, and turned to Wencit, Houghton, and Mashita.
"If it's still minded you are to be going, then we'd best be on our way," he said briskly.
He turned and headed towards the hole in the hillside without another word or a single backward glance, and the others followed.
Wencit had already warned Houghton that Bahzell was considerably more sophisticated than he chose to sound, and the gunnery sergeant had been pleased to discover the wizard was right. Bahzell obviously came from a pretechnical culture-or, at least, one whose technology was very different from that of Houghton's home world-but he clearly understood the nuts and bolts of this sort of operation. His briefing on exactly what he could see inside the hill (which was obviously more than even Wencit could) had been terse and concise, and Houghton had no doubt that it had also been entirely accurate. The hradani was also mentally flexible enough to be more than willing to incorporate Houghton and Mashita's capabilities into his battle plan. For that matter, he'd proven flexible enough to let Houghton explain how best to incorporate those capabilities.
They stopped, standing in the windy night-upwind, thankfully, from the stench of the dead demons-with the gunnery sergeant between Wencit and Bahzell. The hradani looked down at Houghton from his towering height and cocked his head.
"I'm thinking you're the one as knows just how best to be doing this," he said, and Houghton nodded, then glanced at Wencit.
"Ready?" he asked, and the wizard nodded back. "Let's do it, then," the Marine said.
This time, Wencit didn't even nod. He simply raised his right hand and frowned slightly, his eyes fixed on the opening in the hillside which Houghton still couldn't see at all . . . and which even the wizard could see only because Bahzell had told him exactly where to look. Then a globe of witchfire glowed silently into existence in his cupped palm, flowing into it like water emerging from thin air. It floated there, flaring and flickering gently, like the wizard's uncanny eyes, and grew. It seemed to happen slowly, gradually, yet Houghton couldn't have breathed more than twice before it had completely filled Wencit's hand and wrapped the wizard's wrist and forearm in tendrils of flowing light. And then, Wencit's hand flicked forward in an oddly elegant, almost gentle throwing motion.
The ball of witchfire arced through the night and disappeared into what still looked to Houghton for all the world like a solid piece of hillside. Nothing at all seemed to happen, but then Wencit made a satisfied sound.
"That was a very good idea, Gunnery Sergeant," he said. "They didn't like it a bit."
"I thought they wouldn't," Houghton replied grimly. Then he drew a deep breath, reminded himself that he was in a universe where magic actually worked, and stepped straight forward into the solid hillside.
He'd never found out where Diego Santander had acquired the MM-1 grenade launcher, nor had he asked. Tough Mama's gunner was an inspired scrounger, and for all Houghton knew, Diego had won the damn thing in a card game with one of the SpecOps guys he hung around with. If that were the case, Houghton probably should have seen about getting it back to the unit it actually belonged to, but the gunnery sergeant had been much too happy to see it to worry about any petty concerns where legal ownership was concerned.
The twelve-shot, revolver-style weapon weighed over twelve and a half pounds even empty, but Wencit had pointed out that all he really needed was to have both hands free in case they required a spell in a hurry. He'd volunteered to help carry other gear, like extra ammunition and the additional grenades. He'd offered to carry the Marine's rifle, as well, but Houghton hadn't been about to let that get that far away from him. Still, the wizard's offer left him free to worry about the launcher without loading himself down like Arnold Schwarzenegger, and he smiled unpleasantly at the thought of what it could do.
The MM-1 might be bulky, but it was tough, reliable, easy to maintain, and offered a quick, substantial weight of firepower that was especially welcome to vehicle crews who might find themselves compelled to ditch under less than ideal circumstances. (Which, in Houghton's opinion, was a perfect description of his current situation.) True, it used the older, low-velocity forty-millimeter grenades, not the newer versions designed for weapons like the Mk 19 rapid-fire grenade launcher. Still, the fragmentation/shaped charge M443 grenades loaded into half its chambers had a casualty radius of over fifteen feet. The other six chambers were loaded with the technically obsolete M576E1 "multi-projectile" grenade, which was effectively an old-fashioned shrapnel round packed with twenty balls, that was even more lethal, in many respects.
Now Houghton stepped across a threshold he still couldn't see. Despite everything, he'd more than half expected to ram headlong into a solid wall of earth, and he exhaled in relief as he found himself inside a tunnel, instead. He also found himself in total darkness, courtesy of Wencit's spell, which had just extinguished the overhead lights. He'd hoped the wizard might be able to do something of the sort, and his lips peeled back from his teeth in a snarl of satisfaction as the infrared illuminator of his NVG flooded the scene before him with light the unaided eye simply couldn't see. Houghton and Mashita each had their own NVG; Santander had left his aboard Tough Mama, and Houghton had given Bahzell a quick, rough and ready briefing before he handed the gunner's gear over to the hradani. He'd been more than a little surprised by how quickly Bahzell had picked up on what he was saying. In fact, he'd suspected for a few moments that Bahzell hadn't understood at all and simply didn't want to admit it, until Bahzell had repeated his instructions perfectly-almost word for word.
Wencit's right-the big guy ain't no slouch, a corner of Houghton's brain reflected as he raised the launcher. Its maximum range was well over three hundred meters, but he wasn
't going to need anywhere near that much to reach the confused sprawl of bow and crossbow-equipped armsmen who'd just been plunged into darkness. The green-and-gray imagery was as familiar to Houghton as the normal colors of daylight, and he watched pitilessly as at least half a dozen of those armsmen dropped their weapons and fumbled with torches, trying frantically to get them lit.
Not going to have time for that, boys, he thought grimly, and squeezed the trigger.
The launcher coughed and sent the first grenade downrange. It landed directly in the center of a knot of armsmen and the M550 fuse detonated the forty-five-gram bursting charge. The explosion lit the tunnel like a lightning flash, and the sound of the detonation in such a confined space was like a pair of fists, slamming down across both ears. For one brief moment, that was all anyone could hear; then the shrieks of pain, mingled with terrified confusion, began just as Houghton tracked his aiming point to the right and squeezed again. The self-cocking cylinder rotated, the second grenade went sizzling downrange, and fresh screams answered.
None of those armsmen had anticipated anything like it. Even those who could see the muzzle flash of the launcher had no clue what it was, and Houghton moved after each shot, changing position just in case any of those bows or crossbows returned fire.
Not that there was going to be very much time for them to do that; it took him less than twenty seconds to fire all twelve grenades.
* * *
"What in Phrobus' name is that?" the captain of Tremala's armsmen demanded.
He stood at Garsalt's shoulder, staring in shocked disbelief into the depths of the wizard's personal gramerhain. The fist-sized lump of water-clear crystal should have shown a brightly illuminated entry tunnel where forty picked men were waiting, ready to unleash a torrent of arrows and crossbow quarrels as their opponents crossed the threshold and stood blinking stupidly, stunned eyes bat-blind in the unexpected brilliance. But there was no brilliance. Or, rather, not their brilliance.
