Demontech: Onslaught

by David Sherman

  “Three of those who were too afraid ran away,” Doli said. “I told them to wait for us in the trees, but they said they were too frightened to stay nearby. They wished us luck, but they are fleeing.”

  Spinner looked through the night toward the north. “I wish them luck as well,” he said slowly. “I’m sure they’ll need it. Now, back around the corner, everyone.”

  When they were all grouped together again behind the stable, he said, “In a moment you’re going to cross the road and hide under the trees. Haft and I have to get weapons for the rest of the men.” He indicated the freed laborers. “We also have to give the people in the inn something more to worry about so they won’t come looking for us before we get away. Fletcher will be in charge while you wait. Now, go!”

  Spinner and Haft raced back to the inn and entered the still deserted dressing room. More men milled about in front of the building than before, and its upper stories were wreathed in flames. They left the outside door open and opened the shutters to let in as much light as possible. As they ran through the room, they each grabbed a cloak.

  Haft said, “Weapons!”

  “Right—and confusion,” Spinner added. Invisible, they headed to the common room, which was deserted. A few men were peering fearfully through the door as though expecting to see the fire dance down the stairs. The snap and crackle of the fire was audible, and embers shot out the stairwell, but no flames had yet licked into the room.

  Spinner and Haft ran to the blades on the wall, which were secured with wire. Spinner unsheathed his belt knife and sliced through the wire. One of the men looking through the entrance saw several swords magically lift themselves from the wall then disappear when Spinner pulled them close to his body. The man in the doorway screamed and pointed, but by the time the other men looked, there was nothing to see. Spinner hurried to another part of the wall and added a longbow to his collection of swords but could find no arrows to go with it. He wrapped the weapons in the cloak Haft gave him.

  “Now for confusion,” Spinner said.

  Haft grinned, then charged at the men looking in through the doorway. He threw a shoulder into the chest of one man and slammed his fist into the face of another. Screaming, the two men tumbled backward into those behind them, who leaped backward, cursing.

  Spinner followed close behind Haft. When he was near enough to the men outside the door, he swung the bundle of weapons like a big club, slamming it into one man, who was tossed into his companions. They all went down in a heap. Spinner and Haft stepped on the downed men as they ran toward the crowd milling in front of the inn.

  Haft thought of the slaves and decided just knocking people down and frightening them wasn’t enough; men who dealt in slaves enraged him. He swung his axe at a slaver, and the fat merchant barely saw the descending blade before it hit him at the base of his neck and clove deep into his chest. Haft yanked the axe free of the falling man, spotted another slaver a few feet away, took two steps, and hacked the man almost in two. He killed two more slavers before men in the crowd realized there was someone unseen in their midst sowing bloody murder. Panic radiated around Haft.

  Meanwhile, Spinner ran about wielding his bundle of weapons. He couldn’t pick his targets as Haft did; his weapon was too unwieldy and he wasn’t bent on vengeance. Even so, as he waded through the crowd, men went down pell-mell in front of him. In moments, all the men still on their feet were in full rout, trying to escape the deadly magicians they couldn’t see. Many armed men flung down their weapons in their flight.

  “Haft!” Spinner shouted when the crowd was scattered.

  “Here,” Haft cried back.

  Spinner looked toward his voice and saw the axe blade dripping gore. “That’s enough,” he said. “Let’s get back to the others.”

  Haft looked ruefully at the fleeing men. He wanted to kill more slavers, but he knew Spinner had made the wiser decision. In the short time they might have left before someone could start to organize a defense, it would be impossible to chase down enough of the fleeing men. “Let’s go,” he said, then followed the sound of Spinner’s footsteps.

  As soon as they were across the road and under the trees, they stroked the thighs of the Lalla Mkouma to return to visibility. Twenty paces inside the forest everybody was waiting for them. They handed out swords to the men.

  “I found you a bow, Fletcher,” Spinner said. “I don’t know if it’s any good though. No arrows.”

  “Thank you,” Fletcher said. “I can always make what I need.” He bent the bow to test its flex and nodded. He seemed satisfied.

  “Now we have to free the people in the barn,” Spinner said. “We’ll go through the trees to a spot closer to the barn where you’ll wait for us again.” He paused while Doli and Fletcher translated. “Freeing the people in the barn should only take a few moments.” He looked back at the clearing. Small knots of men were beginning to gather, looking back toward the inn, but most of the men had run out of sight. There were a half dozen men-at-arms in front of the slave barn. They looked like they didn’t want to be there.

  “Let’s go!” Spinner and Haft led their group parallel to the road and through the forest until they were near the east side of the glade.

  Spinner tried to drape a silken cloak over the Golden Girl’s shoulders; she stepped away from his touch and shrugged from under the cloak before he let go of it. He was surprised, but didn’t have time to wonder about her actions. He dropped the cloak at her feet.

  “Everyone wait here,” he told the group, then turned to Fletcher. “I want you to come with us,” he said. “Assign one of the other men to take charge until we return.” He waited a moment while Fletcher did that, then he, Haft, and Fletcher ran across the road to the barn.

  Six torches stuck into the ground illuminated the guards without allowing them to see very far into the night; the only direction they could see anyone approaching from was the inn, where a man would be silhouetted against the flames that raged through the building. Spinner, Haft, and Fletcher stopped in shadows from which they could see the front of the barn.

  “Do you know them?” Spinner asked.

  Fletcher nodded. “Master Yoel’s men. He hires only the worst. Most of them have been cashiered from one army or another. He feeds them well and lets them have the women for free. He never makes them pay any gambling debts they owe him. He has their loyalty.”

  “Do they know you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you friendly with any of them?”

  Fletcher spat.

  “Then here’s what we’ll do.”

  “Yo, guards!” Fletcher said as he stepped into the circle of torchlight.

  The guards started at his words and hefted their swords. They relaxed when they saw who it was, but still held their weapons at the ready. They looked past Fletcher into the shadows.

  “What do you do here, laborer?” one of them asked. “Why aren’t you putting out the fire?”

  “Have you seen Master Yoel?” another asked.

  “Is it true, Master Yoel wore a demon anklet and tried to run away?” a third asked.

  “I still think we should run while we can,” one mumbled.

  Fletcher didn’t answer their questions. He walked briskly toward the guards, showing his empty hands. The scabbard belt was draped awkwardly over his shoulders, with the scabbard hanging down his back and the hilt of the sword behind his head.

  “Stop there!” the first guard snapped, lifting his sword threateningly. “Answer our questions! Why are you here where you don’t belong? Where is Master Yoel? What is happening out there?” He took a menacing step toward Fletcher, then a grunt behind him made him spin around. What he saw froze him for an instant.

  One of the other guards was on the ground, his head rolling several feet away. An axe hovered in midair above the corpse. A second guard was crumpling from an unseen blow. The axe swung at the third man, but the guard who’d challenged Fletcher never saw it land; as soon as the man’s back wa
s turned, Fletcher drew his sword and ran the guard straight through, the point of the sword appearing briefly in the man’s chest. The guard collapsed as another man fell to Haft’s axe. Spinner’s staff took still another, and Fletcher killed the last guard before either of the invisible men could reach him.

  Fletcher stood over the man’s body, grinning down at the corpse. “I’ve wanted to do that for a long time,” he said.

  Haft clapped him on the shoulder. “I understand. Now, let’s take their weapons.” In a moment they had more swords and scabbards slung over their shoulders and as many more knives in their belts.

  When Haft stepped up to the barn door, only his axehead was visible.

  “Let them see us,” Spinner said. They stroked the thighs of the Lalla Mkouma.

  Haft didn’t bother examining the barn door to see how it was secured, he simply flailed away at it with his axe. It shattered in three blows. They stepped inside and recoiled from the stench before calling out to the people inside. “Does anyone in here speak Frangerian? Ewsarcan? Apianghian? Skragish?” They ran through the litany of languages they had among them. Some voices answered in those languages, more of those inside simply whimpered.

  “Come outside,” they said in Frangerian, Ewsarcan, Apianghian, Skragish, and whatever other languages they could manage. “We are taking you to freedom. The slavemaster is dead.”

  “So are many of the slavers who brought you here,” Haft added in each of his languages.

  Slowly at first, then with mounting eagerness, the people began to stumble out.

  “Keep quiet,” Spinner ordered when the prisoners started raising a babel of voices. “Some of the men who brought you here are still about. There aren’t enough of us armed to fight them all off.”

  “Let them come,” someone said. “We will kill them with our bare hands.”

  A low chorus of growls agreed with him.

  “Not now,” Haft told them. “Maybe later you’ll have your chance.”

  The three of them started moving the former slaves, who numbered nearly a hundred, to the road and across it to where the others waited.

  “Fletcher, you’re in charge,” Spinner said when everyone was together and listening. He and Haft handed over the weapons they’d taken from the guards at the barn. “Decide who should have these and distribute them. A dozen armed men should be able to protect everyone for the moment. Now, follow this road until it reaches a main highway. Take the highway to the north. It will lead you to Oskul, the Skragish capital. You can find safety there, and probably a way home as well. Haft and I have other places to go, other things to do. Good speed and fare thee well.” Spinner moved the Lalla Mkouma from his right shoulder to the Golden Girl and pulled her along. He and Haft and the Golden Girl, invisible, raced away, back across the road and into the trees on the glade’s east side. They ignored the cries from behind, the voices of people who wanted their saviors to stay with them, or at least stay long enough to be thanked.

  The Golden Girl struggled in Spinner’s arm. “What do you think you’re doing?” she demanded. “Where are you taking me?”

  “I’ll tell you all shortly,” Spinner said. “Trust me for now.”

  “Why should I trust you?” she replied, but stopped struggling.

  In their haste and movement, they didn’t hear the footsteps behind them.

  THIRD INTERLUDE:

  THE NATURE OF DEMONS

  A Brief Discourse on the Purported

  Nature of Magic and Demons

  by Scholar Munch Mu’sk

  Professor of Far Western Studies

  University of the Great Rift

  (excerpted from The Proceedings of the Association of Anthropological Scholars of Obscure Cultures, Vol. 57, No. 9)

  On several counts, magic is a difficult topic on which to discourse. First, not everybody agrees that magic exists, or if it indeed does exist, how efficacious it is. To further complicate the discussion, those who agree that it does exist disagree most vehemently on the proper form in effecting it. Regardless of their stance on other questions, one thing on which the practitioners of and believers in magic agree is that all magic is in the control of demons. Beyond that sole point, the scholar finds naught but disagreement.

  Nevertheless, a careful study of the literature and skillful interviewing of practitioners and witnesses have taught this scholar a number of things about the arcane arts.

  First: the existence of magic and demons. Over the course of several years, I have undertaken an informal statistical study of belief in magic. There appears to be a distinct correlation between geographic location and belief. For example: Where I live and work, the University of the Rift, belief is so little as to be almost nonexistent; in the Kingdom of Matilda, in the unnamed lands, and in Bostia, belief is high. One might naturally assume that in the environs of the world’s premier university, belief in superstition and other nonsensical ideas would be scarce. Further, one might naturally assume that in more intellectually blighted areas such as the west of Nunimar that superstition and other nonsensical ideas would be more common. If discussing trivial matters such as a belief in men with heads in their chests, the hazards of walking under ladders, etcetera, one would be right. However, when one looks further and discovers that belief in magic and demons is only slightly lower in Skragland than in Bostia, slightly lower in the Princedons than in Skragland, lower yet in the Easterlies than in the Princedons; and that such belief is slightly higher in Apianghia than near the University of the Rift, and slightly higher in Ewsarcan than in Apianghia, a pattern begins to emerge. To wit: There is an inverse correlation between distance from the west coast of Nunimar and belief in magic and demons, and that relationship between depth and strength of belief and distance from the west of Nunimar leads this scholar to suspect that demonkind has a homeland, and that its homeland is somewhere off the coast of Nunimar, most likely in an undiscovered archipelago south or southwest of the Jokapcul Islands, if not in the Jokapcul Islands themselves.

  (In view of the admission of personal belief in magic and demons implicit in the preceding sentence, this scholar must state here that he personally knows of entirely too many reputable persons, including highly respected scholars and philosophers, who hold such beliefs to be able to discount them as nonsense or superstition. Which is to say, magic and demons very nearly must be real. This scholar, having never personally encountered magic or demons, cannot state categorically that they do exist, but the evidence is so strong that allegations of their existence must be taken seriously.)

  Second: form of control. Traditionally, which is to say according to legend and myth, magic is accomplished by means of arm waving, gestures, chanting in arcane languages, and commands given in such arcane languages. The literature on magic, both scholarly and popular, is heavy with examples of magical practitioners who effect magic through controlling demons by exactly such means. The literature is also filled with examples of magical practitioners who never use such traditional methods. The conflicting examples, roughly equal in proportion, suggest that either (1) the traditional accouterments are not necessary, or (2) that some demons require the gestures and language, and others will perform for humans without them.

  Third: demon types. Careful study demonstrates that demons come in generally two types: intelligent and unintelligent, with many subcategories of each type. There appear to be limited numbers of other demons which are, for the most part, quiescent until called upon and are capable of performing one feat on only one occasion. With few exceptions, each kind of demon can perform one feat of magic—conferring invisibility, starting fires, speeding messages, explosive saliva, etc. Intelligent demons can be enticed to do the bidding of magicians, or indeed, according to numerous accounts, persons who are not even magicians. Intelligent demons have language, of a sort, and can, for the most part, understand human speech, though their own speech is frequently unintelligible to human beings. No one knows why the intelligent demons perform feats of magic for t
heir human masters. Some suspect they do it out of curiosity, others that it is a form of perversion among them, yet others that it gives them an excuse to wreak damage on humans. A fortunately small number of intelligent demons appear to function out of sheer malevolence; payment is negotiated with such demons. Unintelligent demons have no known language, are never enticed, never perform on verbal command, must be imprisoned, and must be coerced to work their magic. Another point on which all sources agree is that demons must be fed. What they are fed appears to depend on the kind of demon, as the literature provides numerous recipes for feeding demons. Intelligent demons that are not fed will simply abandon their human masters; the unintelligent ones will die within their prisons or lose weight until they are able to escape said prison. The unintelligent demons are reputed, sometimes, to cause serious harm to their masters, even death, if they escape their prisons.

  Fourth: the efficaciousness of magic. All demons must be treated properly in order for them to perform their magical feats. Many of the intelligent demons appear to form bonds with their human masters, which bonds are not necessarily strong nor positive. An intelligent demon may, on occasion, change allegiances without warning if its bond is negative. If its bond is momentarily negative—for example, if it hasn’t been fed recently—it might refuse to perform without actually abandoning its master. Or a demon might decide to perform at a level less than optimal. Malevolent demons may arbitrarily decide that negotiated payments for services rendered are insufficient and break their agreements, to the extent of causing severe harm, even death, to their masters. If inadequately imprisoned, unintelligent demons will escape, frequently doing harm to their masters. Ultimately, the efficaciousness of a demon’s magic depends on the appropriateness of its employment.

  In conclusion: It appears to be possible, if not probable, that magic does indeed exist, that it is performed by demons under the (partial?) control of human masters, that the demons have a homeland, and that the frequency of their appearance is inversely related to the distance from that homeland. More study is required to come to firm conclusions, and it is fervently hoped that other scholars, perhaps those with closer affiliation to practitioners of magic, will contribute to the study.