That was true. “Where can he sleep safely?” Benny sub-vocalized.
I saw a zombie cemetery not far from town. The zombies are gone, dissolved into dirt, but there remains an odor that repels. I can bite him so it smells like roses to him. No one will bother him there.
“That should do it,” Benny agreed.
They guided the giant to the zombie cemetery and dismounted, Virtue returning to human form. “You need more rest,” Benny told him. “You did not come here to fight werewolves. Sleep here, and if we do not return by tomorrow morning, return to Gant alone and tell them that the twin cities may be lost.”
Liverwart didn't think to argue. He sniffed the air. “Ugh!”
“That smell will protect you as you sleep,” Benny said. “Virtue will make it nice for you. Hold out your hand to her.”
“Okay.” Liverwart reached down toward the vampire. Like all males, he liked her aspect and her touch.
Virtue bit him on the tip of a finger. He sniffed again. “Roses!” He lay down and slept, smiling.
“Now it's our turn,” Benny said grimly. “We can't reason with these creatures. We'll simply have to kill them. I hate it, but see no alternative.”
“I agree,” Bum said.
“As you know, I can't fight,” Virtue said. “But I will help you in any way I can.” It wasn't just that she was a slight figure of a woman, it was that she had been raised a pacifist, and though intellectually she appreciated the need sometimes for violence, it was not in her to be violent herself. That was part of why he loved her; she was truly nice. If only all the world of Pakk were like her, what a paradise it would be!
“Thank you,” she answered his thought. “But universal pacifism really is not practical. There is need also for those capable of violence, like you.”
“Thank you, I think. Can you use your telepathy to give us some protection?” Benny asked.
“I can't give you physical protection, but maybe I can stop them from seeking you.”
“Do that, then.”
Virtue bit them each lightly in turn, kissing them in the process. Bum was embarrassed but pleased, and of course Benny was used to it. “They will see you, but not try to engage.”
“How is that? They're in attack mode.”
Her gaze flickered to the cemetery. “You both now have the mental aura of dead zombies.”
Dead zombies. Both Benny and Bum laughed. That would do. It sounded like an oxymoron, but actually made sense, because normal zombies were half alive. They smelled even worse when they became completely dead. The two of them had the same protection Liverwart did.
“But it is only an aversion,” Virtue warned them. “When you actually engage, they will ignore the odor and fight you, as they would if attacked by zombies. So don't attack them unless you have to.”
They gripped their weapons and advanced on the nearest house that was under siege by three werewolves. Virtue returned to bat form and flew unobtrusively from tree to tree, observing them without putting herself at risk.
“Okay, one gesture, to make it official,” Benny said. He raised his voice. “Wolves! Cease and desist! Clear out and return where you came from, to live in peace hereafter, and we will let you go.”
A wolf transformed to human form. “You and what army?” he demanded contemptuously.
Just as expected. “Are you declining to depart in peace?”
“As if you needed to ask.” The man returned to wolf form, and he and his two companions charged.
“Did you really think they would leave off just because you asked them?” Bum asked.
“No. I just wanted to give them the chance, in fairness.”
Bum laughed. “Werewolves are known for mayhem rather than fairness.”
Then the three wolves were upon them—and sheared off, snorting. They had whiffed the stench, and thought they were up against zombies. Biting zombies was not only repulsive, it was useless. Then, realizing it was a ruse, they whirled and returned to the attack.
Benny smote the first with his magic club. The creature collapsed, his skull crushed. The second, undeterred, leaped right over his fallen companion and came at Benny through the air. His snout was driven back into his neck so that it looked as if he were headless with teeth on his chest.
Bum neatly chopped the third wolf's head off so that it fell to one side while the body plowed into the ground on the other side.
The door of the besieged house opened. “You rescued us!” the pretty housewife exclaimed, her fair hair flouncing. “How can we ever thank you?”
“Just stay inside and on guard,” Benny said seriously. “There are more wolves to deal with. It is not yet safe outside.”
“Oh, of course,” she said, evidently disconcerted. “You are too noble.” Then she caught a whiff of zombie, and hastily obliged.
She gives you too much credit for noble abstinence, Virtue's thought came. She didn't know your wife was watching.
“I wasn't tempted anyway,” Benny muttered. “I didn't even notice how pretty she was, or how her full blouse was missing buttons.”
She laughed mentally, knowing he was teasing her back.
They moved on to the next house, and the next, dispatching the wolves they encountered, lifting the sieges.
Then they came to the downtown area. The citizens had formed a cordon, piling furniture, bricks and bodies in the streets and defending them with rocks, spears and bows. They were obviously not practiced warriors, but desperation made them effective, and the invaders were balked. The end, however, seemed inevitable, because this was not merely werewolves; a Kudgel contingent was in charge.
Until Benny and Bum came on the scene. “Ghaaa!” they shouted together, and charged the back of the Kudgel line, whirling their deadly swords. In moments a half dozen Kudgels were dead on the pavement, and a similar number of wolves.
This disconcerted the Kudgels, and their line broke. The Elim defenders cheered, seeing rescue at hand.
Then the Kudgel command took hold. They formed a new line, in a circle around the two, closing in. There were too many, too closely packed, to take out readily with the swords.
But they didn't know what they were up against. Benny and Bum switched to clubs. Bum had muscle and Benny had magic. They stood back to back and swept their clubs forward, bashing heads wholesale. Soon the closing circle was a ring of bodies.
Meanwhile the townsmen, freed from the immediate pressure of the siege, rebounded, and were advancing against the invaders. It was a melee. Benny and Bum kept fighting, careful not to bash any humans, following where the battle led. They were winning!
But also tiring. There just seemed to be more and more wolves and Kudgels swarming in. They found themselves hemmed in, surrounded by bodies piled like sandbags, with others still coming on.
The zombie aura is fading. I'm coming in. It was Virtue in bat form.
Benny held up his hand. She landed on it and bit it. She hopped to Bum and bit him too. Then she flew away, just before the Kudgel archers were able to orient on her. The archers had not been able to focus on Benny and Bum, because they were so thickly beset by wolves and Kudgels and in constant motion, but a figure in the sky was another matter.
“What is this?” Bum asked, feeling the effect of the new bite.
“It's the berserker bite. We'd better separate, lest in our ferocity we harm each other.”
“Got it.”
They sprang apart and re-entered the fray with doubled ferocity, laying waste the entire contingent. The Kudgels kept coming, and kept dying. Benny only hoped there would not be so many that they outlasted the hour of berserker power.
A Kudgel and a werewolf came at him together, high and low, carefully coordinating. They knew what they were doing; they were a team. Even as a berserker he could not avoid both at once.
Magic, do your thing! he thought, hoping this ploy would work. If it didn't, he was dead.
He smashed the club down on the wolf's head, crushing it. At the same t
ime the Kudgel's sword swung at his neck. The pair was willing to sacrifice one of them in order to take out this enemy. They had probably tried it before, and won without the sacrifice.
The sword swished through without contact as the neck briefly ghosted. Ready for this, Benny swung his club directly from the wolf's head to the Kudgel's knee. There was a crack as it splintered the bone. The Kudgel dropped, screaming, yet still wielding his sword; he was a real fighter. But he was out of position, and Benny's next swing took out his head.
Then, suddenly, it was over. Bodies were mounded everywhere, and the townsmen were mopping up the last of the invaders. They had won.
But when Benny found Bum, he was on the ground and near death. One of the Kudgel/werewolf teams had gotten him. Both of them were dead, but in their sacrifice they had chopped off Bum's head quills and stabbed him in the chest.
Virtue flew in and gave him a healing bite, but it wasn't enough. He had already lost too much blood. He would still die within hours.
“Fetch Liverwart,” Benny told her.
Virtue flew off. Benny faced the townsmen. “You can handle it from here, can't you?”
“We can,” a man agreed. “Thanks to you and the orc and the bat. We never saw the like before. There will not be much prejudice against orcs or bats, here, after this.” The others nodded agreement.
“You do have to know the good ones from the bad ones,” Benny said. “The same goes for giants. This one is ours.” He gestured to Liverwart, who was now striding in, the bat on his shoulder. “Take him to the clerics in Galver Dorn,” he said as the giant arrived.
The giant picked up the orc. Virtue gave Benny one more bite, this one for endurance. Then Liverwart strode rapidly away, and Benny ran beside him.
They made it to Galver Dorn by evening. The troops there had succeeded in beating off the Kudgels, but there had been severe losses and there were many injured and wounded people to care for. Their resources were spread thin, their medicines almost exhausted; there was little they could do for Bum. Worse, there was bad news.
“We have word the Kudgels are attacking Gant, and it is not going well,” the Captain of the Guard, now the Duke, told him. “You are needed back there.”
“We can't leave Bum here to die,” Virtue protested.
The Captain shrugged. “We understand your distress; we share it. We simply are unable to do more.”
They had to make a quick decision. Benny made it. “Liverwart, can you travel well enough in the night?”
“Can,” the giant agreed.
“Then go back alone to support your friends. Virtue and I will stay here until Bum is stable enough to be left. Then we'll rejoin you in Gant.”
“Will,” Liverwart agreed. He set off immediately.
Now Virtue tended to Bum, biting him lightly to ease the pain and enable him to sleep. Benny relaxed, letting his body recover from the exertions of combat and running between towns. He felt depleted, for good reason.
A girl approached them. “Please—my father is in bad pain. Can you bite him too?”
“I can,” Virtue said. There was no other answer she could give. Other women took note.
Before long Virtue had bitten a dozen injured men, and they were sleeping painlessly. Benny slept himself, knowing that she would rejoin him when she could.
In the morning, Bum had turned the corner. He would survive, but he would not be fully recovered for several more days.
“We will see to him,” a woman told Virtue. “We have news from Elim, how he fought for them. We also appreciate what you have done for us. He will be safe here.” Indeed, a buxom girl was holding the orc's head against her bosom as she spoon fed him gruel. Bum looked about as comfortable as a badly injured man could be.
“Then we must go,” Benny said. He was feeling better after his night's rest.
Virtue kissed him, changed to bat form, bit him, and perched on his shoulder. They were on their way at inhuman speed.
Chapter 17
Gant was in shambles. Dead Kudgel warriors and village militia lay everywhere. Benny was shocked to see that some of the Kudgels were human, dwarf, and elf converts, a few of whom had lived in Gant and the surrounding area.
“How can they betray their own people?” he asked, appalled.
“It may not have been voluntary,” Virtue said. “The Kudgels could have threatened their families, and spared them only if they joined their cause. Just as I joined yours.”
Benny had no reply. His folk had slaughtered her folk, and only her commitment to him had saved her life. This was indeed how the real world operated, at times, ugly as it was. It just looked different when the enemy did it. Yet she had forgiven him.
“I always knew it wasn't your choice,” she said, reading his mind. “You were innocent.”
“Not anymore,” he said, thinking of the killing he had done so recently.
“Neither am I. I helped you do your violence. We both have had to do what we had to do.”
She was so supportive. “Oh, Virtue! Without you I'd be nothing at all.”
“I need you as much as you need me.”
He wanted to pause in place and madly kiss her, but this was hardly the occasion, with bodies all around. Damn.
Mentally, she thought, and he felt the phantom pressure of her lips on his.
It would do.
Then they came upon Liverwart. The giant was sitting on the ground, injured, but not seriously. He was crying and holding the dead body of Nap, the halfling bard and poet who so often had serenaded the customers at the inn.
Suddenly, any remorse Benny might have suffered for the killing of Kudgels dissipated. This was what they were doing when not stopped.
But there was guilt. They had sent the giant home alone, as it were. Had they accompanied him, they might have been able to save Nap.
And we might have gotten killed ourselves, Virtue thought.
They would never know. They were limited to what they could do after the fact.
Benny stood beside Liverwart. “We share your grief,” he said. “But there is another way to look at it. Nap is now in heaven with your family, who are surely welcoming him. He is with the Protector. He will be serenading his friends there.”
The giant looked at him, hope dawning. “You think?”
“He's certainly not in hell.”
Liverwart nodded, appreciating the reasoning.
Virtue bit the giant, temporarily relieving him of much of his grief. “Now you must bury him,” she said. “In the town cemetery.”
He stood, carrying Nap. “Bury with friends,” he agreed, partway cheered.
“We must go to the Fox Den,” Benny said. “That's where Dale should be, defending it.”
“Yes.”
Then he paused. Bide a while.
He glanced at Virtue. “Did you just thought me?”
“No. I heard it too. It felt like the Protector.”
“Why would he tell us to delay?”
“I don't know. But it felt troubled.”
“How could the Protector be troubled? Isn't he all-powerful?”
“It must be complicated. Like a game where there remain no really good moves.”
“Well, far be it from me to go against his wish.” Benny enfolded Virtue, soundly kissing her.
She laughed with her mouth closed by his kiss. I like the way you bide.
But this was curious. What did it matter whether they arrived one moment or another? And why should it be troubling to the Protector?
In due course they resumed motion and followed the trail of dead bodies to the Fox Den. There was Helena sitting on the steps, covered in blood. For a moment Benny thought she was dead, but Virtue reassured him. “She's alive; that's the blood of her enemies on her naked body.”
The Amazon heard her and looked up. “I'm glad you survived. Dale is inside. He's in a bad way. I have to leave him alone.”
What did this mean?
“It's complicated,” Virtue murmu
red.
It must be. Too bad this wasn't a mere game, where life and death were not an issue.
They entered the inn. There was a dead man on the floor. Benny realized in a moment that he was Red Rat Flack, the evil man whose blood had poisoned Virtue. His hood had been removed to reveal his horribly mutilated face. Layers of skin had been peeled off and healed over with crude grafts. What kind of a history had this bad man had?
Dale was sitting under the rainbow gnome fresco, crying. That brought Benny up short. Dale was not normally a man to show much emotion, least of all tears, and they couldn't be for a villain like Flack. What was going on?
“It's painful,” Virtue whispered, and faded back. She of course had no grief for Flack, yet she did not seem relieved by his death.
Dale saw Benny. “I have done wrong. My conversion to the side of good can't fix this.”
“I—I don't understand.” That was the understatement of the day.
“I caught Flack. We fought and I killed him. Then he killed my soul.”
Benny was silent, making too little sense of it to comment.
“As he lay dying,” Dale continued, “Flack revealed himself to me. He is Dak Flack, the only surviving child from the orphans I killed at Alsbury. If I had known who he was, I'd have let him kill me.”
Flack was one of the orphans? Benny's mind groped for sense without getting any good hold on it.
“A few of the orcs who weren't killed by the villagers of Alsbury fled with his dying body, into the western deserts, and were taken in by Kudgels. They healed him, and he plotted with them to take revenge on the world that had let him get hurt.”
“Revenge?”
“It is understandable. I would feel the same in a similar situation.”
Benny thought of his own reaction to the murder of his friends, and had to agree. But the matter remained curious. For one thing, it was clear that however justified Flack's pain was, he had gone on to inflict similar pain on those innocent of any crime with respect to him. Misery had not ennobled him.
“Flack was not the leader of the Kudgels,” Dale continued. “But he told me the real leader was someone very close to me. Then he died before he could say more.” He made as if to pull out handfuls of his own hair. “But that was more than enough to show me how much I wronged him.”
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