K T Harding - [Hinterland 02]

by K. T. Harding

  Bishop stared up at him. His face hung limp and unresponsive off his bones. All at once, he jumped out of his chair, snatched his hat off the table, and strode out of the room. Dax glanced at Raleigh. “What did I say?”

  “I don’t know,” Raleigh replied. “I thought it was a good suggestion.”

  Dax collapsed on the bed. He tossed his hat on the coverlet. “That’s it. I’m not cut out for this. He’ll send me back. I know he will.”

  Just then, Bishop burst back into the room. He tossed his hat back on the table, but he didn’t sit down in the chair. He paced around the room with his hands on his hips. Every time he caught sight of the Guild headquarters building across the square, he snorted through his nose and turned away.

  “You got it, Dax,” he exclaimed.

  Dax gaped at him. “I do?”

  “You’re darn right. Man, I should have listened to Raleigh a long time ago about bringing you along. That’s exactly what we’re gonna do. We’ll round up a couple dozen dangerous creatures from this city. One of us will stay in this room. At a pre-arranged signal, that person will blow a massive hole in the wall with the rocket launcher. Then the others will herd the creatures into the breach just in time to meet the Guildsmen rushing out.”

  Dax stared up at him. “Really?”

  Raleigh blinked at Bishop. “Really?”

  He let out a guffaw of laughter. “Really.”

  “Where are you going to get the creatures? How are you going to goad them through the breach?”

  Bishop threw up his hands. “Oh, that part will be easy. I know exactly where I’m going to get them, and I know exactly how I’m going to get them inside the building. Once they run in, the Guildsmen won’t have time to notice anything else.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  Bishop laughed out loud. “Don’t you remember? I’m going to track down Yafik’s father. All I have to do is show myself to him, and he’ll attack me. He’ll get all his hammaslahti friends to come with him, and I’ll lead them here. When you blow the wall apart, they’ll rush in and…. there you go.”

  “You’re….” Raleigh stammered, “you’re going to use yourself as bait? What if they catch you?”

  He threw himself into a chair. “It will be my job to make sure they don’t catch me. They’ll come. I’ll just have to work out with Yafik how to do it.”

  “What will I do?” Dax whispered.

  Bishop chuckled at him again. “You’ll do the thinking. With ideas like that, you should be in charge.”

  Dax looked at Raleigh again, but she couldn’t help him. Bishop was serious. That was the best idea anybody had for weeks. She wandered over to the bed and sat down on it. In all the planning and preparation for attacking the Guild building, she never really let herself imagine how they would go about it. Now Dax came out with a plan that might actually work.

  She ran through the sequence of events. She never saw this hammaslahti in the flesh, and she didn’t want to. She didn’t even want them fighting the Guildsmen for her. She didn’t want them anywhere near her.

  If they got her into the Guild building, though, she might as well go along with this. One glance at Dax and Bishop showed her they thought the same thing. Bishop didn’t like the idea of using hammaslahti as the diversion, either.

  How did he plan to accomplish it? Raleigh could think of only one way. He had to get Yafik’s father and his cronies gunning after him. Bishop had to infuriate them somehow. How? By interfering with Yafik, of course.

  Bishop would shove it in in his spiky face that he was talking to Yafik, feeding Yafik, helping Yafik, maybe even giving Yafik some money. The father would fly into a rage and come after Bishop. Nothing could be simpler.

  Raleigh lost track of how long she and Bishop and Dax stood there staring at each other. Each ran over the plan in his or her mind. Each worked out the potential pitfalls, which were many, and the potential disadvantages, which were legion.

  In the end, Bishop kicked back his chair. “Come on. Let’s get something to eat.”

  Raleigh got up. “When do you plan to attack?”

  “The best time to get Yafik and his people involved will be tomorrow afternoon. We’ll do it then.”

  Chapter 25

  Raleigh woke up alone the next morning. She didn’t want to think about where Bishop was. His side of the bed was cold, so he must have been gone a long time. She got dressed, but she didn’t want to look out the window at the square. The Guild building stared back at her from over there.

  She went next door and found Dax fully dressed. He sat at the table with his clear eyes trained on that building. He only gave her a quick glance before he went back to studying it.

  “What are you doing there?” she asked. “You can’t figure out how to storm the place by staring at it.”

  He didn’t laugh. “I seem to understand it better. I can’t rest unless I’m looking at it and thinking about the fight.”

  “What have you come up with? Have you had any more brain waves about how we should go about this?”

  He shook his head. “It gets all jumbled up in my mind. I have ideas that I know wouldn’t work. I have ideas that are just wild daydreams. You wouldn’t believe half the stuff I think, but it’s all right over there, in that building. Nothing makes sense to me but going over there, even when I know what’s going to happen.”

  She watched his face from across the room. Those words came out of his deepest being. His past spoke to him. It told him how to conduct a fight like this. She would give anything to see inside his mind, to see the images he had about who he was and what he was capable of. Only then would she know what he was.

  Was he a shapeshifter like his mother? Was he some species of monster like the hammaslahti? Was he a tiny bird like the one she saw at the mussel farm? She would never know, but one thing was certain. He was all warrior. His heart and soul belonged on the battlefield. He would never rest until he got there.

  He lapsed into silence, and she didn’t disturb him. She got him to Hinterland. Now his instincts took over. No amount of training could compare with that. He had to let himself go, to let his hybrid nature take over and inform him what to do.

  She never doubted his ability in battle. He would rise to it. He would come into his own. He would become the thing Bishop hid from him all these years.

  Bishop came back around noon—at least, it was noon in Pernrith. Raleigh could never understand how time in one place related to time in another. Morning in the village could be dusk in the city. What time it was back home, she could only imagine.

  Raleigh had to chasten herself for even thinking that. Home did not exist. Only Hinterland existed. As long as she faced a battle to the death against unstoppable forces, she had to concentrate all her power and attention on that. She had no home. She had no family but the men fighting on her right and her left. She knew nothing but war.

  Raleigh jumped off the bed when Bishop returned. “Where have you been?”

  He caught his breath and dumped a pile of weapons on the bed. “I’ve been talking to Yafik.”

  “What did he say? When can you bring the hammaslahti?”

  “His father gets together with his friends for a game every afternoon at three o’clock.” He pointed out the window. “I’ll bring them around that corner there. Raleigh, you’ll stay here and fire the rocket launcher. You’ll blow down that wall, and I’ll lead the hammaslahti into the building.” He spread the map on the table. “Dax, you’ll wait over here. As soon as you hear the commotion, you rush through that door there. You’ll see some black curtains here. Get inside as fast as you can and find the twen.”

  “How will I know what to look for?” Dax asked. “I never even heard of the twen.”

  “Just get in there. Raleigh, as soon as you fire the rocket, get over to that entrance, too. You can both look for the twen. If you find it, get out of the building as fast as you can. Get back to the zeppelin and bea
t it back to the house. Don’t wait around for me.”

  Raleigh swallowed hard. “If you lead the hammaslahti into the building, the Guildsmen will attack you, too. How are you going to get away?”

  He tried to grin, but it turned into a grimace instead. “You leave that to me. I can handle a few Guildsmen.”

  “What are you going to do to bait the hammaslahti?” she asked. “How will you get them to follow you?”

  “That’s easy. I’ll just walk in on their game and start insulting them. They all have explosive tempers. They’ll come after me, and the faster I run, the madder they’ll get.” Hysterical laughter broke out of him. “Getting them into the building is the easy part.”

  Raleigh caught Dax glancing at her. “All right. We’ll do it. What do you want to do between now and three o’clock?”

  He sorted out the weapons he brought and unpacked the loaf of bread to get out the rest. He handed out as many weapons as each person could reasonably carry. “I got some more grenades. I have just enough time to program them for Dax. Then we should be as ready as we’re ever going to be.”

  He arranged a long row of grenades on the table in front of him and settled down in a chair. He took a device out of his loaf of bread and set it on the table. A circular dial rested on the surface of a black box. Two wires ending in sharp probes trailed to the grenade he wanted to program.

  No matter how closely Raleigh watched him, she couldn’t figure out what he was doing to program them, and now wasn’t the time for a detailed lecture on the subject. She would just have to ask him after they got back home—if they got back home.

  After fiddling with his wires for a few minutes, he called Dax to the table. He told Dax to grip each grenade one by one. “You didn’t do that with mine,” Raleigh pointed out.

  Bishop scooped up the pile and set them in Dax’s hands. “I did it differently back at the lab. Here you go, boy. Do your best not to set them off ahead of time.”

  “Don’t worry, Sir. You can count on me.”

  “I know I can. Of the three of us, you’re probably the best able to handle the Guild.” He pulled out his watch. “Two-thirty. Time to get into position.”

  All three loaded their weapons into every pocket, belt, and tight place they could manage on their bodies. Bishop showed Raleigh how to deploy the rocket, and she set the launcher by the window.

  Bishop set his hat on his head. “All right. I’m off. Go get into position, Dax, and Raleigh, you fire as soon as you see me come around that corner. We’ll be moving fast, so we won’t have much time. I want to hit a cloud of dust, not a solid stone wall. Understand?”

  She nodded, but she couldn’t speak. He nodded at them both once and strode out of the room. No good-bye, no kiss, no quick embrace, no wish for good luck. He just walked away and left her life empty and barren.

  So he planned to barge in on the hammaslahti’s game and start throwing insults around. They could kill him on the spot. He might not have a chance to run away at all. They could kill him in the streets before he got near the Guild building. Then what would she do? Her life wouldn’t be worth spit.

  She shook those ideas out of her head. She knew exactly what she would do then. She would take Dax back to the house, they would pick up the pieces, and they would go on with their lives. End of story.

  Dax gave her a pinched look. He wanted a hug and a kiss good-bye, too. He wanted one last squeeze of her hand and reassurance they were facing this together before he went off to his lonely station.

  She did her best to smile. “You ready?”

  He gulped and nodded, but he couldn’t speak, either. He patted his pockets to check the position of all his weapons. He jerked his chin at her. “I…I guess I’ll see you in a few minutes.”

  She followed him to the door. “Take it easy out there.”

  He ducked through the door. The next minute, she saw him cross the square and turn around the other side of the building. Her heart burned in her chest, and her palms sweated. She hoisted the rocket launcher onto her shoulder and went down on one knee, but her hands shook when she propped its long barrel on the windowsill. She let out a shaky breath and steadied herself to take aim at the wall where Bishop would enter.

  She sighted down the barrel and set her finger on the trigger. She took several long breaths through her nose and blew them out through her pursed lips. The longer she waited, the more steady her hands became. She couldn’t botch this shot. She wouldn’t botch it. Bishop counted on her. She had to hit that wall with her first shot, or the whole mission would fail.

  She waited for what seemed like an eternity. She just started to wonder if Bishop was coming at all when she heard a rumble in the distance. She strained her ear, and it grew louder. The floor vibrated under her knees, and a scorching fear forked through her chest. The hammaslahti were coming. She couldn’t doubt that.

  She trained her eyes on the sight at the end of the barrel and took careful aim at the building wall. Any second now, Bishop would come around the corner. Icy calm took hold. The battle was starting. She never had to think again. Instinct would guide her, and her arms and legs would do what they always did in these situations. They would fight and carry her through. She would come out the other side, alive or dead.

  All at once, a blur nudged her peripheral vision. She didn’t take her eyes off the sight. She didn’t have to. She sensed Bishop in her bones. He was here. She tightened her finger against the trigger and fired.

  The moment the rocket thumped out of the launcher, she dropped it and leapt to her feet. She caught one fleeting glimpse of Bishop running full speed across the square before she whirled away. She thundered down the stairs and set off as fast as her legs could go toward the place where Dax turned the corner.

  She made it halfway across the square before Bishop vanished into a cloud of white powder. The rocket squirreled through the air and hit the Guild building with a deafening explosion. Bishop dove inside.

  At the same instant, the vibrations traveling into Raleigh’s feet changed to an ear-splitting earthquake. The paving stones bounced under her and almost knocked her over. A herd of massive creatures charged around the corner heading for the breach where Bishop disappeared.

  Raleigh’s father owned a book on the exotic animals of Africa and Asia. She used to sit on his lap while he read the details to her and Ethan. The hammaslahti resembled enormous rhinos like the ones pictured in the book. They galloped on tree-trunk legs and tossed their horned heads. They screeched and trumpeted loud enough to wake the dead.

  Dozens of horns covered their skulls, necks, and backs in a solid plate of bone. Spikes stuck out of their foreheads to gouge and tear, and curved tusks jutted from their mouths. Raleigh turned her back on them. She couldn’t look at them without losing her nerve. The hammaslahti were Bishop’s problem. Her job was finding Dax and helping him steal the twen.

  She raced around the building and found the door swinging open. Dax was already inside. Good lad. She ducked through and found herself in a long marble passage lined on all sides with doors. None of them concerned her.

  Bishop’s map flashed before her eyes. She rushed forward until she came to a high foyer. Ebony staircases rose and fell on all four sides. They climbed to the bright skylight far overhead.

  She ran to the nearest railing and looked down. Dust and debris obscured her view of the floor below, but she didn’t need to see what was going on down there. The hammaslahti’s bellowing echoed through the building.

  Guildsmen emerged from every corner. They hurried down the stairs, and their shouts and commands vanished in the din below. Bishop was down there somewhere. Would he ever come out of this building?

  As she looked, a hammaslahti charged across the floor until the dust cloud swallowed it up. She couldn’t wait around any longer. She hit the stairs, but she didn’t bother running down them. She slid down the bannisters one after another. She descended three floors and before she saw the b
ig black curtain surrounding the auditorium.

  She brushed the curtain aside and bumped into Dax’s back standing right in front of her. He didn’t move. She darted around him and looked up. “You okay?”

  He nodded, but he didn’t speak. He stared straight ahead. Raleigh followed his gaze. What she saw would have frozen her in place, too, if she hadn’t been on fire with adrenaline.

  Mountains of strange equipment, machines, crates, books, and devices piled on every side. They all formed a circle around a single table set in the center of the black curtains hiding the place from outside. Raleigh moved toward the table. She couldn’t force her eyes to blink at what she saw.

  A glass square the size of an apple sat alone on the table. Something moved inside, and when she bent close to peer through the glass, she saw the tiniest creature she ever beheld. It looked exactly like the craved figurine Bishop picked up in Soto’s tent back at the market, only it wore no necklace. It swam in water filling the square and blew bubbles out of its mouth while it stared back at her with wide eyes.

  Raleigh picked up the square. This had to be the twen. It was nothing like she expected, but here it was. She couldn’t deny it. She studied it too long while the battle raged outside. She turned around to face Dax and slipped the square under her shirt, inside her breastplate. “Let’s get out of here.”

  He turned away to leave. Raleigh came up behind him when a loud pop sounded over their heads. In a fraction of a second, the whole black circle of curtains dropped out of the sky. They folded onto the floor and left Dax and Raleigh exposed for all the world to see.

  The majestic staircases all around swarmed with hundreds, if not thousands, of Guildsmen. They rushed down the long flights on their way to the battle below. The instant the curtain dropped, nothing remained to hide Dax and Raleigh from them. In front of Raleigh’s eyes, a young Guildsman with sandy brown hair happened to glance over. His eyes met Raleigh’s, and his hand shot out. “Look!”

  All the other Guildsmen saw the intruders. They checked their flight. Several dozen veered off into hidden doorways and reappeared to charge Dax and Raleigh at their own level. Dax snatched Raleigh’s sleeve and tugged. “Come on! We have to get out of here.”