Demontech: Onslaught

by David Sherman

  Spinner put out a hand and shook his head. “That’s the same wolf. I think he’s trying to tell us he’s on our side.” He stood, took his fingers off the trigger of his crossbow and walked into the clearing. It seemed to him that the wolf behaved more like a very well-trained hunting dog than any wild animal he’d ever seen. It must be sorcery, he thought. But good sorcery or bad?

  He stopped two paces from the wolf. “You’re not an ordinary wolf, are you?” He made a show of pointing his crossbow down and to the side. The wolf sat on its haunches. Spinner watched it closely; if he wasn’t prepared, the wolf could easily be at his throat before he had time to react. Instead of leaping, the animal flopped onto its side then rolled onto its back with its legs splayed: it was indisputably male. Its tongue lolled out of its mouth, and its remarkably intelligent eyes looked directly into Spinner’s.

  Spinner stared back. Finally he said, “No wild wolf would look a man in the eye the way you do. No wild wolf would feel secure with a man looking him in the eye. To a wild wolf, when you look in the eye it means you’re about to attack. Right?”

  The wolf said, “Ulgh!” and swished its tail from side to side on the ground.

  Moving slowly, Spinner halved his distance to the wolf, lowered himself to one knee and stretched out a hand to rub the wolf’s belly. “And no wild wolf would expose its belly to a man either.”

  The wolf arched his back to press its belly into Spinner’s hand and growled softly, almost a purr.

  Spinner thumped the animal once on the chest and stood up. “All right, fellow, you can travel with us.”

  “Ulgh!” the wolf said, and spun to his feet. His tongue lapped Spinner’s hand.

  “But if you’re going to travel with us, we have to know your name.”

  “Ulgh!” the wolf said, and bobbed his head up and down.

  Spinner blinked at the so-human nod. “What’s your name?”

  “Ulgh!”

  “Wolf? Is that your name?”

  The wolf dipped his head to the side and seemed to shrug his shoulders.

  Spinner briefly considered the wolf’s response, wondering if he was supposed to play a guessing game, then asked, “It’s not your name but it’s close enough?”

  The wolf seemed to shrug again and let out a low whine.

  “We will call you Wolf until we know your real name. Will you answer to Wolf?”

  The wolf lowered his head and whined again, then bobbed his head in what could only be a nod.

  Spinner looked oddly at the wolf for a brief moment; he was certain it understood everything he said. “All right,” he said, “Wolf you are. What can you tell me of who you are, of how you came to be here?”

  The wolf’s head twisted from side to side, his shoulders writhed, he lifted a paw. A series of growls, barks, and moans came from his mouth. Clearly, the wolf was trying to answer his questions. Of course, Spinner didn’t understand a word.

  “We will talk more later, Wolf, when we figure out how. But now I have to tell the others that you are with us.” He looked at the vultures, which were still in the trees, looking longingly at the bodies they had been driven from. “Stay here, Wolf,” Spinner said, just as he would command a dog at home. “Guard the bodies.”

  “Ulgh!” The wolf remained sitting while Spinner returned to the trees. As soon as Spinner was out of the clearing, the wolf looked at the treetops and barked at the vultures to make them keep their distance. A few of the birds cawed defiantly back at him and stretched their wings menacingly, but none dropped back into the clearing.

  Haft was on his feet staring into the clearing when Spinner reached him. “He didn’t attack you,” he squeaked. “He rolled over and let you rub his belly!” His voice rose to a yet higher pitch. “He acted just like a farm dog does when you go out to slop the hogs!”

  “Well, the first farm dogs were descended from hunters’ dogs, and the first hunters’ dogs were tamed wolves.” He put a hand on Haft’s shoulder. “He wants to be friends, and we need all the friends we can get. Besides, he can scout for us in ways we can’t scout for ourselves.” Spinner walked into the forest, back to where the others waited. “His name is Wolf,” he called back over his shoulder.

  Haft turned to watch the clearing, and to keep a wary eye on the wolf. “His name is Wolf?” he said aloud. “I think Spinner’s been ashore too long.”

  “Fletcher, take the women around,” Spinner said after reporting what he’d seen and what had happened at the clearing.

  Fletcher nodded and headed his horse around the clearing. Alyline handed the reins of the gelding to Doli, then dismounted and gave the stallion’s reins to Zweepee. Spinner ignored her as he returned to the clearing; trying to tell the Golden Girl not to come was a waste of breath.

  By the time Spinner got back to the clearing, Haft had already scouted around it.

  “These were Palace Guards,” he told Spinner. “This time they saw the Jokapcul first. It seems they got the better of it for a while, then something happened. I don’t know for sure, but it looks like another troop of Jokapcul came on the scene, and the Guards tried to run away. The Jokapcul pursued them and the battle turned.” He pointed at the two bodies half hidden in the shadows at the far side of the clearing. “That’s the way they went—the same way we’re going.” While he spoke, he was glancing warily at the wolf. The wolf ignored Haft and kept watch on the vultures, so they wouldn’t return to eating the bodies. It seemed to Spinner the wolf was deliberately ignoring Haft so as not to seem threatening.

  The men ignored Alyline as she roamed the battlefield. She gave the wolf one glance when she entered the clearing, then ignored him. Haft quickly busied himself gathering arrows for Fletcher, while Spinner studied the scene to learn more of what had happened.

  The tunics on many of the dead bore the red rose over the heart that identified them as Zobran. But where the warders had worn tunics of mottled green, the tunics on these soldiers was the white of the Guards, probably the best-trained soldiers in the Zobran army. Spinner wondered what the Palace Guard was doing so far from Zobra City. So far as Spinner knew, the Guard never left the capital except to provide security for the prince or his family in their travels. He looked, but found no evidence that a royal personage had traveled with the dead Guards. One thing he knew for certain: the Guards had acquitted themselves well against the Jokapcul. As Haft had said, nearly half of the bodies in the clearing wore the metal-plated leathers of the Jokapcul cavalry. And the fight had continued; no one had the chance to mutilate the Zobran dead or to police the weapons and possessions of the dead.

  Alyline frequently stooped to pluck something from the ground, squatted to take something from a corpse. When she came near the wolf, she absently reached out to scratch him behind the ear. Then she kept going, peering at everything on the ground. As she did, the wolf sniffed her intimately from behind. Alyline jumped, spun around and glared threateningly at the wolf, her hand raised to slap him. Clearly she wasn’t thinking of him as a dangerous animal, a killer; to her he was just another presumptuous male taking unwarranted liberty with her person.

  Wolf ducked his head and looked away. Keeping his head turned to the side, he rolled his eyes to look innocently up at her.

  Alyline’s hand stopped in mid-swing. She stared hard at Wolf. She recognized in the wolf’s eyes a level of intelligence she’d only seen in humans before. “You know exactly what you did, don’t you?” she said quietly. “I allow no male to touch me without my say. Not even Spinner, who thinks I owe him that. It goes also for your nose.” She looked into Wolf’s eyes and wondered about the intelligence she saw in them. “Are you ensorcelled, Wolf? Did you somehow cross a sorcerer? Were you changed for that offense?”

  Wolf looked down, shook his head. He emitted a series of whines and low growls.

  Alyline gazed into his eyes and wondered if his look meant what it did if a man looked that way—something had happened, but not a sorcerer’s curse. Her look softened. “Take no liber
ties with me, Wolf,” she said with less threat, “and we can be friends.”

  Wolf raised his head and, still sitting, scuttled around until he was facing her. He raised a paw and, tongue lolling, cocked his head as though to say, “Friends.”

  The Golden Girl looked at him a moment longer, then she took his paw in her hand and shook it. “For now, Wolf. For so long as you behave.”

  “Ulgh!” He took his paw from her hand and sat erect and alert. “Ulgh!” he said again, and licked her hand as though sealing the bargain.

  Alyline nodded at him, then returned to her search.

  Wolf watched her walk away, then lowered his head. His chest shook with rapid puffs of breath and his mouth stretched wide. He seemed to be laughing silently. Had a man acted thus, anyone could be forgiven for thinking that he thought he’d put one over the woman.

  Alyline joined Spinner and Haft a few minutes later. Her arms were filled. She said, “Let’s leave this place. Leave these dead to whatever peace they can find.”

  Haft didn’t look at her. His eyes swept the scene, took in the near two score bodies, skipped over Wolf, who was still keeping the vultures away, and then he stalked off, circling around the corpses in their path.

  Spinner grunted and followed Haft. He understood the value, even the need, of searching the dead for usable items, but he felt uncomfortable about it. And he didn’t want his image of the Golden Girl to be sullied by seeing her carrying off booty from someone else’s battle. He absently snapped his fingers, signaling the wolf to follow. Wolf waited until the humans had disappeared into the trees before he stood and left the bodies to the carrion eaters.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-TWO

  The others waited for them a hundred paces beyond the clearing.

  “We can see where they went just by following the dead,” Fletcher said. He spat to the side. “It looks like they kept fighting for a long time.”

  Spinner and Haft looked through the forest. It seemed there was a body every forty paces or so leading from the clearing. The bodies weren’t spread out as though the soldiers were killed in a wide-ranging battle; instead they lay in a line so straight a surveyor could have sighted a line along the bodies. Spinner and Haft somberly looked at the line for a moment, imagining how the fight must have gone. Their reverie was interrupted by the Golden Girl.

  “Look at what I got,” she said, and dropped the bundle she was carrying. From it she took a scabbarded sword. The belt was too big for her, so she slung it around her right shoulder and across her body so its hilt hung on her left side, just below her breast. She picked up another sword belt, one that also held a scabbarded dagger, and offered them to Doli. Doli turned her head away and didn’t take the weapons.

  “At least take a knife,” the Golden Girl snapped. She picked up a belt that held only a dagger in a sheath, and hung it from the pommel of Doli’s saddle. Then she offered the sword belt to Zweepee, who took it. From the way Zweepee touched the dagger, it seemed she thought she could use it.

  Alyline then offered swords to Spinner and Haft. Haft spat and took a step away from her. Spinner shook his head and said, “I have my quarterstaff. I’m better with it than with a sword.”

  “Have it your way,” she said. “But sometimes a blade is better than a stick.”

  Knowing she was right, Spinner hesitated for a moment. Then he took the sword and lashed it onto his saddle. He wasn’t concerned about Haft not taking a sword; there were few occasions that a sword could be used where an axe couldn’t.

  Alyline squatted next to her pile to root through it. She withdrew several pouches, opened one and emptied the contents into her palm. Her hand filled with silver and copper coins. She looked up at them and said half defiantly, “Someday we will need money. The men I took these from will never need money again.”

  Fletcher nodded slowly. “You’re right,” he said. He held out a hand, and she gave him several of the pouches, which he suspended from his belt. She distributed the remaining pouches equally among them. No one was reluctant to take them.

  One by one, but quickly, Alyline picked up the garments and pieces of cloth she had gathered and looked closely at each, front and back. Some she cast aside, the rest she made into a neat roll, with the money pouches she’d kept for herself in the middle. She tied the roll together with a length of twine.

  While she did that, Spinner gave the arrows he’d collected to Fletcher. He examined them carefully, felt the edges of their steel heads, sighted along their shafts, looked closely at how their heads and fletching were attached. “These are good,” he said when his inspection was finished. As many of the arrows as would fit, he put into his quiver with the stone-headed arrows he had made earlier. The rest he tied into a bundle with a leather thong and hung it from his saddle’s pommel.

  Spinner looked around to make sure everyone was ready. He looked into the forest and saw Wolf loping in a circle around them, looking outward as though watching for anyone who might be approaching. “Let’s go,” he said when he saw all were ready.

  “Best idea I’ve heard all day,” Haft muttered.

  Alyline glared at Spinner when he reached the stallion before she did and mounted it, but she didn’t say anything. She tied her roll of clothing and cloth behind the cantle of the gelding’s saddle and mounted it.

  They set out single file, with Spinner leading the way and Fletcher bringing up the rear. Except for Wolf. He began by scouting ahead, then sometimes ranged from side to side to make sure no one came at them undetected from the flank. Often he was out of sight, but from time to time he stood in their path, looking toward them, as though to make sure they knew he was still covering their front. Spinner hoped he was right in thinking the animal wanted to help them. He thought it unlikely the wolf was leading them into an ambush, especially as he himself pointed the way each time Wolf waited for them, and the wolf always went in the direction he pointed. Not even Haft objected to the animal’s presence ahead of them.

  Spinner nodded toward Wolf during one of his brief appearances. “It looks like we have the flankers you wanted,” he said to Haft.

  Haft snorted and glared threateningly at Wolf, but didn’t say anything. As little as he liked the idea of a wolf accompanying the small party, it did seem that the beast was aiding them.

  At no time did Spinner make a conscious decision to follow the trail of bodies, and neither had Wolf made that decision for him. But in fact they were following the line of bodies. When Spinner reflected on it, he decided it must be because he wanted to link up with surviving Guards he hoped were somewhere up ahead. There could be safety in numbers, he told himself, and maybe they could get accurate information from the Guards on what lay ahead. But if he had thought more carefully about that, he would have known that soldiers in the field are always the last to know anything about the disposition of the enemy.

  After a time the line of bodies thinned out, but it remained surveyor-straight. For a time it disappeared altogether. Then there were only footprints and spots of blood to follow.

  Little more than an hour later they drew near the few surviving Zobra Guards, who were encamped at the side of a stream. They came into sight just as the Guards were attacked by more Jokapcul. Wolf was waiting for them, hunkered down, out of sight of the battle that was beginning.

  The company of Zobran Guards had started its patrol three days before, one hundred men and one magician strong. Along the way they had encountered and nearly beaten a Jokapcul company, but were driven off with heavy casualties when another Jokapcul company stumbled upon the fight. The two Jokapcul companies, one at less than half strength, the other not as seriously injured, harried the Guards during their flight, inflicting more casualties. The Zobrans inflicted casualties of their own and finally managed to break off from that pursuit, only to run into a half squadron of Jokapcul cavalry. In that skirmish as well, they gave as well as they got, and those Guards who were still standing were able to get away without pursuit when the survivin
g Jokapcul cavalry retreated. When the Guardsmen reached the stream, they stopped to rest and bind their injuries. A small Jokapcul patrol stumbled across them while half of the Zobrans were engaged in ministering to the other half. The Jokapcul patrol was small enough that the Zobrans were able to defeat them, but only seven Zobran Guards and the magician were left by the time they did. Three of those Zobrans bore wounds that were painful but not incapacitating; two more were too badly wounded to continue their retreat; and those able to travel were too few to carry the badly wounded very far. So they moved a hundred paces downstream, and hoped the relief force their magician had called for would arrive before more Jokapcul found them.

  The magician hadn’t been of much use in the company’s fights; some palace bureaucrat had decided the patrols were strong enough that the magician only needed to communicate, so he carried only a few imbaluris and a handheld demon spitter. The last Jokapcul patrol had a magician with it, one foolish enough to expose himself to a bowman. The Zobran magician was examining the Jokapcul magician’s magic kit, a chest the size and rough dimensions of a coffin, when they were attacked by a full hundred-man company. Good soldiers all, the two whole men stood ready, as did the three walking wounded. One of the badly wounded men struggled to his feet and held his sword and shield at the ready. The magician grabbed the first item he recognized. “Phoenix egg!” he shouted as he threw.

  There was a clap of thunder as the phoenix egg burst open in the midst of the Jokapcul formation and the freed bird snapped its wings wide, the fire of its feathers spreading and eating through the leather armor, weapons, and flesh alike. A dozen died in seconds. The injured who didn’t fall to the ground crying out in their death agonies dropped their weapons and ran away screaming from the intense pain of the hellfire from the phoenix. But more than eighty of the enemy survived to charge the Guards. The magician fired his demon spitter into their mass until the demon popped out of it and demanded to be fed. The magician ignored the demon’s demands and frantically searched in the kit for something else to use.