Saber and Shadow

by S. M. Stirling

  “Hmm.” Megan’s reply was an affirmative mumble that showed she wasn’t really listening. “I’m sick of this. This is not my idea of a restful stop on my journey home.”

  “Hah,” Shkai’ra snorted. “You’ll rest when you’re a withered ancient of forty or fifty snows. If we live that long, I’ll join you by the fire!” Megan glanced at her, nodded absently, tossing the pouch they had retrieved from Harriso, when the army’s offer had seemed to be the best.

  “There is only one person that we could possibly give this message to without getting our arms and legs pulled off before having our throats cut.”

  “But she’d turn us into frogs ... or those slimy worms that live under rocks. I don’t want to live the rest of my life catching flies!” Shkai’ra said, only half in jest.

  “Look,” Megan said shortly, dangling the pouch by one string. “This I cannot—understand?—cannot break. The priests, the army faction and the Lowlords have had a good shot at killing us. Every time they lose face, they’ll try harder next time. They have to, from what you tell me.”

  A baffled voice drifted in from the corridor rather plaintively. “Why am I carrying this tray?”

  Megan sat up sharply. “Oh shit, I forgot to cancel the meals!” Shkai’ra, got up and jerked the door open. Her frustration showed plainly by the way she snapped at the servant. “Room four!” She grabbed the tray and slammed the door shut.

  The servant stood looking at the door and then at her hands, counting slowly on the fingers; she looked up and down the corridor, counted again, turned the hand over to count a third time, and finally shrugged and went downstairs.

  Shkai’ra stood a second by the door, then put the tray down and wrenched the cork out of the bottle. “Well, then. The priests won’t stay bought, nor the General-Commander, and we can’t buy the Adderfangs in the first place; we just have to be better than they are for a while.”

  She chuckled again and poured the cups full. “Life won’t be so bad with webbed feet.” She laughed, as she drank the red wine. “I’ll pick out my lilypad. Hard on Ten-Knife; quail are scarce in the swamps.”

  The cat looked up from the bed, then closed his eyes again. He was lying on his back, paws splayed, stomach comfortably rounded. A pink and reminiscent tongue lapped once at his jowls.

  Shkai’ra tore the leg off the barbecued duck. “Not enough alcohol here to slow us down; only one bottle,” she said mildly. Finishing with a comfortable belch, she crossed to her room and returned dragging a chest. Licking grease off her fingers, she flicked the latch open. But this time I’m taking some precautions.”

  She lifted the lid with a toe. Inside, neatly wrapped in waterproof bindings, was a set of Kommanz cavalry armor, the gear worn by horse archer-lancers on the prairies of the Red River Valley: flared helmet with a long nasal, back and breast of four-ply lacquered bisonhide on fiberglass, laminated thigh and arm-guards of the same, greaves and round shield.

  “With all that? The clatter will wake next century’s dead. And if we have to climb ... best cross your warhorse with a cat. Or a fly.”

  Ten-Knife came to nose hopefully at the box, sniffing at the familiar scents of leather and oil and varnish. “Mrrrrffeooow?” he said.

  “No, lazy one, you don’t get to see the countryside from horseback,” Shkai’ra said. To Megan: “I’m quite nimble in this, but you’re right. This is what I wanted, since that sheep-raper stole my shotpistol.”

  She pulled a rosewood case from its clip along one side of the box. Inside was a curving shape of wood and horn and fiberglass, a little over a meter long. The central grip of the bow was hardwood, carved and shaped, with a cutout to allow shafts to pass through the centerline of the weapon. The thick laminated arms ended in offset bronze wheels; the string passed over them, adding pulley and camming action to the power of the draw. Four long arrows snapped into a quickdraw quiver along the grip, and thirty more were in the round leather tube she slung around the small of her back.

  The weapon turned in her hands, dark and shining and lovely, coming alive as she strung it with a complex tool of bronze and bone. From the box, she strapped on the armguards of her armor and slipped a bone ring over her right thumb. Then she drew to the ear, thumb lapped over the cord and hand locked around it.

  “Kill at a thousand paces with this,” she said. “Penetrate armor at half that; the drawstrength is two-thirds my bodyweight. Up close, the shaft will go right through a horse and kill you on the other side.”

  Megan padded over and tested the string. “Nice to be able to knock them out farther away. If we see them first.” She turned to the window, easing it open. The warding should keep anyone from looking; it would take a light shining out in darkness to break that. Across the way ...

  “Shkai’ra, the ones with the blowguns are still waiting across the way, I think,” she said.

  The tall woman slung the bow across her back. “Six gets you one they’re still dogging the back, too.”

  “Then how will we get to Yeva?”

  “And you the acrobatic one,” Shkai’ra said, raising a finger until it pointed at the ceiling. “Until we get a few blocks away, then catch a pedicab.”

  Megan snorted lightly. “If you can overcome your fear of heights,” she said.

  Megan moved silently over the hard, slick tile of the roof, faint moonlight melding her dark clothing into a colorless wash. Above, the huge soft stars glowed in a sky of scattered cloud. This was Low Town, the tenements of the poor, smelling of bad drainage and fever and slum. Mingled in among the tenements were the occasional mansions of wealthy kinfasts whose trades fattened on the swarming humanity crowded here; those were well guarded.

  Shkai’ra followed, almost as agile, but with an occasional clatter of boot on baked clay. More heights, and never a big enough lead to get down, she thought. Her face was set; in the Zekz Kommanz, the highest thing was a warrior’s lancepoint, and she did not like the roof road.

  “Is this ... really needful?” she whispered. “I haven’t heard them for a while, and the streets would be much faster.”

  Megan motioned her to silence and poised, her eyes closed. It had rained recently, and the tile was dusty/ damp, smelling of earth. She strained her hearing: a squeak. Cork, squeaking on a wet surface.

  An image flashed into her memory, the Adderfang dropping down onto the window ledge beside her. The cork-soled sandals and the sound of him shifting his weight as he struggled for balance, in the instant before she swept him to his death.

  “No, it isn’t really necessary,” she whispered. “If you don’t mind having them above you.”

  The red-maned head flashed around. Lips skinned back; she sank down beside her comrade. They lay and peered back across the roof, only their eyes and the tops of their heads showing over the ridge.

  Coolly, their gaze swept over acre upon acre of jumbled roof, like a relief map of the mountains, broken here and there by the dimly lighted trench of a road.

  Moonlight and knife-edge shadow flattened the cityscape into a pattern treacherous to the eye. They both waited with the hunter’s patience, taking slow deep breaths, their attention traveling steadily from the farthest to the nearest point in smooth arcs.

  Megan saw the figures a fraction of a second earlier, black-clad, stealing noiseless from one puddle of deep shadow to darker ones. There flashed before her eyes the basement room and the sizzle of her friend’s flesh, and the intense desire to watch them all die shook her. Her hand clenched reflexively, driving nails to grate on the tiles, then loosening to fall to her knife hilt. The shadowy figures vanished, reappeared, flitting.

  The Kommanza laid her hand on Megan’s, where it was drawing forth the knife. “Don’t want to let them get that close,” she mouthed, as Megan’s attention snapped to her; she tapped the bowcase slung across her back. “Let’s fight and run,” she said, defusing the rage shining in the Zak’s eyes. Her words even drew a smile as Megan nodded.

  It would be well to cut the odds a li
ttle, and the pursuers were on their trail anyway. Vindictiveness would make them more careless. I never liked running, Megan thought.

  Shkai’ra squirmed farther down the roof and touched the wheelbow in its leather case, running knowing fingers over the familiar weapon. The pulley wheels at either end responded smoothly to her gentle tug, spinning silently on well-oiled bearings. Shooting from a solid roof would be easy after a galloping horse.

  She drew the one and a half meters of bowstave from its case with a convulsive move that sent her sliding two armlengths down the low-pitched rooftop.

  Swearing softly, she wormed her way back to the roof-tree. Megan was on her back, staring along the long edge of the roof and the broader street that had blocked their way, thinking. “Don’t take too long,” she said.

  “Then tell ’em not to move around,” Shkai’ra answered sardonically, taking a quick look over the ridge. The pursuers were closer now, about two hundred yards. The first had paused on a rooftop, risking exposure for a better chance at spotting the quarry.

  Shkai’ra edged back, far enough that she would be hidden kneeling, and nocked a shaft. She rose, taking a deep breath and emptying her mind. Practiced from birth, the art cut channels in the synapses; all you had to do was get out of the way. She knew the smooth arc of the arrow, the target, the sudden jolt as the two met. The nock of the arrow drew to her ear. The point came up, elevated for the arching shot. There was a rattle and clack as she loosed and the long string of the wheelbow hummed through the pulleys.

  The sound must have carried to the target; he came up from his crouch, head darting this way and that as he sought the unfamiliar sound. He was still seeking a second later when the shaft sliced down vertically out of the night. Sound carried well, here above the muffling walls and streets; they could clearly hear the crunch as the three-bladed hunting head slammed into his neck just inside the collarbone, and the single muffled grunt. That was all, before the body collapsed loosely and slid out of sight along the reverse slope of the distant roof. The Adders were determined to capture them, with Jahlini’s anger to face if they failed. Over that ridge boiled a dozen of them, running openly now that their quarry had revealed itself.

  Shkai’ra’s hands moved with blurring speed; the second shaft pinned an Adder as she leaped from one roof to the next. The massive power of the heavy bow stopped her leap, a focused jump losing direction, turning into a loose tumble three stories to the pavement. The third arrow drilled through the back of a knee as the nightstalkers took cover; the fourth knocked chips of tile into the eyes of an incautious one who had turned to peer from behind a roof ridge.

  “Not bad, at that distance and in darkness, without good footing,” Shkai’ra mused happily. She had never been judged more than a passable archer among her own people; the saber was her favorite weapon.

  “Stop singing your own praises and come on,” Megan hissed, her voice harsh. The knife was a good weapon, but it lacked reach. “I’ve spotted a route that will give us some time.”

  She slid down the roof, caught at an ornament, and landed cat-footed on the high courtyard wall below. The Zak teetered a moment, standing in the slant of the V of obsidian knives laced along the wall’s top, and glanced at Shkai’ra.

  “Come on,” she continued impatiently. The razor flakes of stone were angled to prevent searching hands from climbing over the boundary, not to stop a walker from traveling along it. Carefully, steadily, she paced along it, then halted. Her eyes nicked left. The courtyard gaped, a high building beyond it, joining at right angles to the low corner-block they would climb to from this wall. An agile pursuer might well ... would use that building, and leap to the one she and the Kommanza sought. She looked back at her companion and flashed a single smile before running nimbly along the remainder of the route. She would need a place to rest and concentrate.

  Shkai’ra blinked at the expression on the Zak’s face, shrugged, and dropped to the wall. Her larger feet were more awkward in the narrow slot of footing; one glass blade broke and clattered to the courtyard. She looked down to see a dozen tiny hairy dogs dance out beneath. Their eyes were bright black buttons as they yapped and squealed at the figures above.

  Like noisy mops with legs, Shkai’ra thought. So, the Slinkers should be right behind, drawn by the noise.

  Just then there was a crunch and one of the dogs fed silent, its final yipe astonishing from an animal so small. Slinkers, Shkai’ra thought, concentrating grimly on maintaining her balance. She had never liked the two-stage alarm system favored by Illizbuah’s richer merchants and vicelords. The nails-on-slate squealing of the dogs was bad enough, but the giant weasels gave her a spider-on-skin distaste that had little to do with their deadliness. A tiger was more dangerous, but somehow cleaner; and she would not care to be the slave assigned to the kennels, soundless enchanted whistle or no. It’s wasteful of dogs, she thought. Even if they do order the little fuzzballs in job lots.

  Reaching the roof, she hauled herself up beside Megan, ducking her head to wipe her face on the short sleeve of her tunic.

  “I thought you were in a hurry,” she said in a whisper. “Why delay now?” Her hand went out, then was snatched back as if from live coals. Megan had traced a figure into the tile with the point of her dagger and slashed the palm of her hand. With an emphatic gesture, her bloody hand descended into the rune as a low hum began, a note that shuddered on the edge of hearing, impossibly deep for one so small.

  The Adders were coming across the diagonal with frightening speed, like human spiders, each hand and foot placed with finicky delicacy. Their final leap down from the higher building was a marvel of fluid authority. So much so, that for a moment Shkai’ra too seemed to see a carven ledge where their grasping fingers reached.

  Unfortunately for the assassins, there was no ledge. They were close enough for the women to see a paired expression of disbelief on their faces, mouths straining under the black masks. The confident skill of their movements turned to a frenzied scrabbling for nonexistent finger holds as they fell into the Slinker pack below.

  The third scrambled on the tiles, flailing to shed momentum before it carried her over the edge of the courtyard. Alert brown muzzles and bright red eyes followed with disappointment as she teetered on the eave, then catwalked back over the roof ridge.

  Shkai’ra looked down, to see a long shadow disengage from the pack and run with humping swiftness back toward the kennel. The moonlight was treacherous, but the Kommanza was fairly certain there was a leg in the creature’s mouth. “Hunger’s the best sauce,” she murmured, and turned to the Zak. “Useful trick. Now, I think, they will be annoyed.”

  The remark passed unheard. Megan’s breath slowed, and her eyes focused again. The hum spiraled up into silence; she jerked at her hand, and it came free of the tile with a slight hesitation, as if stuck to the clay. Yet there was no sign of a wound on her hand or mark on the roof....

  “Hmmm?” she said, and gestured vaguely behind her in the direction of the New City market square. “That’s the way, from here.”

  The Zak looked down into the courtyard. Chitterings and ripping sounds told of a quarrel over the Adderfangs, and all the dogs were silent, even the last, as it moved in a straight line across the flagstones, desperate speed in its leg-blurring scamper. The form that undulated smoothly behind it gave every appearance of leisurely disinterest as it gained.

  Chapter XXI

  Kilometers of roofs later, Megan dropped from the limb of a chestnut tree onto the creaking shingles of a tall building. She wiped bark from her hands; they crouched, looking back along their track from the vantage of the fourth-story height.

  Shkai’ra rubbed gingerly at one buttock. “Hope the Glitch-damned thing wasn’t poisoned,” she said.

  “Don’t worry,” Megan replied. “That was streets ago; you would have stiffened and fallen if it was.” Her casual tone hid her worry. She paused and touched one raw-scraped cheek, wincing. “Dogsucking offspring of darkness, but I feel as
if I’ve been beaten all over with a club!” She paused again, an expression of disgust creeping over her features. “What on earth is that stink?”

  “Zaik knows. Burning sugar, maybe?” Shkai’ra’s eyes scanned backward. “Those last three are persistent, considering how we’ve whittled them down this night; if we could only be sure of enough lead, we could take to the streets and outrun them—”

  She froze. Slowly, her head turned to face Megan’s. They sank down on the rough, splintery surface of the shingles. Even over the cloying thick sweetness in the air, they could smell the dusty, sharp odor of dry rot.

  “Three?” Shkai’ra said.

  “Then why are we running?” Megan replied.

  Shkai’ra raised herself on one elbow, until her eyes were just level with the rooftree. “It’s taking them a long time,” she whispered.

  Behind them a power windmill turned idly, disengaged, its eggbeater blades a figure-eight curve against the bright southern stars. Shkai’ra’s eyes narrowed in thought.

  A Knife burst up through the thin sun-warped shingles, exactly in the spot her throat had been a moment before. At full extension the point of the blade kissed the skin under her chin, enough to start a tiny trickle of blood. The black-clad arm withdrew, too swiftly for her to seize and break it.

  She sprang erect; her saber snapped out and down through the papery squares of cedar below her. No result; they must have had a quick escape planned. Arrows would be useless.

  “Come on, down and in,” she called, turning and half running, half sliding toward the eaves of the low-pitched roof. “There’ll be an opening under the roof. We can’t let them get out into the darkness.”

  The Zak followed feather-light and soundless where Shkai’ra’s boots brought muffled crunching. The overhang of the roof was slight, and beneath it louvered vents gave out into the night. There was light from within; belike the owners of this place kept that and a night-watcher on hand. Neither would have accomplished much against an Adderfang.