“What should we do?” Maggie asked.
“I’d feel more comfortable in a nice crowded building,” Orick said. “This is a port. Surely there’s a hostel down at seaside.”
“I’ve decided to stay out of off-world inns,” Maggie whispered. “Every time I go in one, I get into a hell of a lot of trouble.”
“Well, a young girl traveling with a vicious bear to protect her, what kind of trouble could she get into?” Orick reasoned, and he led the way, heading through the broad streets toward the sea.
After a half mile, they entered the business district, where four-story buildings lined the street, each with its own elaborate columned portico. The doors were all locked. By the docks they found an inn where they could see inside broad windows. A cheery fire was set in a large hearth, and the inn was so crowded that many of the patrons stood around drinking and laughing, unable to sit down at a table to eat. Maggie took the door handle and began shaking it, trying to get in, but the door was locked. She rapped it with the butt of her dagger, and a man with a thin face came to the window beside the door, shaking his head, shouting,
“Too dark! Go away!”
“Let us in!” Orick called, but the innkeep turned away. Maggie could tell when a man acted out of fear and when he could not be pushed. She didn’t bother rapping at the door again.
Maggie wandered out into the middle of the street, looking both ways. It seemed safer out there, where no one could creep up on them unawares. It was getting quite dark now, and moths banged softly against some of the more well-lighted windows. A mosquito buzzed at Maggie’s neck, and she slapped it.
“Which way do we go?” Maggie asked. “North or south?” Orick stood sniffing. “Back over the hill,” Orick said. “I can’t taste Gallen’s scent at all. Maybe they’ll come back for us.”
But if Gallen were here on the streets, Maggie figured that she’d spot him half a mile away, and it seemed likely that he’d be coming down the street to find her. Maggie turned up the north road, and Orick followed. A bat swooped in front of them, dipping twice for mosquitoes. Maggie welcomed its presence, figuring that for every mosquito it ate, there was one less mosquito to dine upon her.
Just as the bat swooped in front of them a third time, something enormous fluttered over Maggie’s head—something large enough so that its wingspan could have been no less than fifteen feet. Orick bowled Maggie forward, and as she fell she saw the creature grab the little bat out of the sky with a quick snatching motion of one wing.
Then the dark creature flapped up the road where Maggie and Orick had been heading and landed atop the portico of a building.
Maggie blinked. The creature had the wings of a bat, and a bat’s catlike ears. It looked for all the world like a bat itself, except for its milky golden eyes. It sat on the portico, staring at Maggie and Orick, and gingerly began feeding on the bat it had caught.
Maggie got up off the muddy road, dusted off her hands, then slowly advanced. The creature sniffed the air as she approached. “Niccce night,” it whispered as they neared. “The sstarsss glimmer like firesss in the bowl of heaven.” It glanced up. “And the moonsss cassst their golden light on the earth.”
Something about the way the creature spoke bothered Maggie. There was a threat behind its words, and she felt as if she should answer. The creature tore a wing from the bat, stuffed it in its mouth and began crunching the tiny bones.
Maggie looked up at the sky. There were no moons shining, and she guessed at the coded message the bat-thing had given her. It had said the word “golden,” and immediately it brought to mind the golden color of the dronon’s hive queen that Gallen had killed a couple of weeks before. She stammered, “Yet their light is not so great as that cast by our Golden Queen.”
The creature on the portico looked at her long, stopped tearing apart its prey. Instead, it took the remainder of the body, stuffed it in its mouth, and swallowed the bat in one gulp.
“My brother and sissster, how goesss your hunt tonight?” the creature asked.
“The streets are empty, as you see. We’ve found no one,” Maggie said, praying that she answered correctly. Maggie felt tense to the breaking point. If this creature chose to attack them, there would be no way to escape it. Not with all the doors in town locked against them. She’d have to fight, and she was no great hand with a sword.
“In the harbor liesss a ssship, the third to the north. I sssaw a hatch open, and men inssside were making merry. They think themsselvesss ssecure.”
Maggie forced a smile. The creature’s intentions were clear. It expected Orick and Maggie to prey upon those men, in the same way that it preyed upon the bat.
“Thank you,” Orick said, touching Maggie’s hip with his snout, turning toward the harbor. She could hear the tautness in his voice. “Come,” he whispered to Maggie. She could tell that he was frightened, that like her, Orick only wanted to get out of there.
We’re in this deeper than I’d imagined, Maggie realized. They’d come to this world seeking the Inhuman, and if she guessed right, the Inhuman had found them—in a matter of hours.
Maggie forced herself to turn, follow Orick on legs that felt as unresponsive as wood.
The bat began whistling, an odd, meandering tune that sounded more like some code than music. Maggie silently prayed that no one was listening, for she felt sure that if other creatures like this one were near, they would attack. She slipped Gallen’s dagger from its sheath. Sometimes, when things had been slow in the inn back home, she had sat in the kitchen with John Mahoney, throwing knives into a target on the wall, above the bread table. John had always insisted that it was a skill that could come in handy someday. Maggie was fairly accurate at a distance of thirty or forty feet, but this creature was more like sixty feet away. Still, it was her only chance.
She hefted the knife half a moment, testing its balance, then whirled and threw high, fearing that the knife was heavier than she was used to. The knife sailed through the air, and the batlike creature jumped. The heavy knife glanced off the creature’s face, and it squealed and fell from the portico, flapping its wings as it tried to fly.
In half a moment Orick was there, leaping atop the creature with all of his weight. She heard the sickening snick of bones cracking when Orick landed, and Orick took the creature’s head in his jaws before it could cry out. Orick swung his mighty head back and forth, decapitating the creature. He slapped the dead body and lunged away in disgust, then changed his mind and pounced on it again.
“Enough, enough! It’s dead!” Maggie cried.
Orick looked at her and roared, choking out strangled sounds, shivering violently. “Come-come away from here,” Maggie said, and she turned. They hurried north, up the broad avenue, away from the bloody mess behind them, running from the horror of it rather than searching for Gallen.
Somewhere in the air high above and behind them, Maggie heard a shrill whistle, as if from a seaman’s pipe-but the sound moved toward them. She glanced back, and in the light of three small, swiftly rising moons saw a huge bat-shape flapping toward them.
In a moment it was overhead, and it landed on a tall building before them, out of throwing distance. It held something shiny in its mouth, and the shrill whistle came again.
Maggie froze, turned to head back down the street, but three men were rushing up the street behind them-if men you could call them. Two were large men in dark robes-too large to be human, but a third hairy man with a misshapen head was hunched low on the ground, running on its knuckles.
Maggie glanced forward, saw another huge brute rush into the street ahead of her.
“This way!” Orick growled, gingerly nipping Maggie’s arm in his teeth to guide her. They ran to the nearest shop, and Orick charged the door full force. The door splintered and broke into pieces, but Orick had hit his head against a metal cross beam that held. The poor bear was knocked unconscious, and he lay there like a sack of flour.
Maggie glanced both ways up the street, saw th
e four men closing the distance rapidly. She climbed past Orick. Orick lay on the ground in a tumble of splintered wood. He was groaning, and looked up at her weakly, squinting, then his head sagged to the ground.
Maggie turned and brandished her sword, weaving the weapon forward. She’d seen how much damage it could do. It could rip through a human body as easily as slicing melons. From inside the shop, the streets seemed washed in moonlight.
The great hulk reached the building first, stood gazing in the doorway, looking down at Orick, who was still unconscious. In seconds, the others stood outside the building, panting. One of the men smiled, said easily, “What do you think you’re doing? Running? What do you fear?”
“Not you,” Maggie said, brandishing the sword.
One hulk held a club. He went to a huge window of the shop where bowls and urns were displayed, and began shattering the glass, widening his access to Maggie. “Was that your handiwork down the street?” the first man said, a worried expression on his brow. “That poor scout. Not much left of him now.” Maggie glanced at the broken panes in the window. One piece thrust upward like a tooth. Absently, the hulk outside kicked it, breaking it off.
“Stay back!” Maggie warned. “Move along.” Her hands were sweaty, and she gripped the hilt of the sword more tightly. The sword seemed to hum, reacting to her fear.
The man in the doorway laughed uneasily. “Come with us. A pretty young thing like you, you belong with us.”
“Ah, I’ll bet she’s human,” the hulk said. “She wants nothing to do with us.”
“Is that it?” the smiling man asked. “Are you too good for us? Are you sure? I can show you something beautiful. I have a Word for you. You might like it.” He reached into the pocket of his tunic, and she knew she did not want to see what he brought out.
Orick moaned at her feet, shifting the shattered door as he tried to get up, then he fell down, and Maggie realized that he would not get up, would not be able to come to her aid. And Maggie recalled something Gallen had once told her: when opponents know that the odds are vastly in their favor, they never expect you to leap into battle.
With a shout, Maggie bounded over the windowsill, swinging the sword with all her fury. The blade caught the hulk at the midriff, slicing through his belly. She whirled and let the blade arc into the smiler, slicing him in two before he could get his hand out of his pocket. Suddenly, Maggie was on the sidewalk, dancing past two dead men.
The hairy man on his knuckles shrieked and tried to leap backward, throwing his hands up to protect his face, and Maggie whacked off his hands while slicing open his face, turned to her last foe who shouted, “Ah, damn you!” and leapt backward.
He drew his own sword ringing from its sheath, and from the cornice of the building above them, the batlike creature blasted its shrill whistle three times.
The swordsman didn’t give her a second to think, merely advanced on her, his sword blurring in the moonlight. Maggie was far outmatched in swordsmanship. She stepped back, and in her haste stumbled over the corpse of one of her victims.
The swordsman pressed the attack, swiping maliciously. She managed to parry with her own blade. His sword snapped under the impact, and hers flew from her hand, landed three yards away.
Her attacker jumped at her, landing a foot on her chest, knocking the air from her. For a moment, Maggie’s vision went black from the pain, and she raised her head feebly. Her attacker held his broken sword, its jagged edge lodged in her Adam’s apple.
“Here now, sweet lady,” he panted. “You see, all of your resistance has come to naught. I never wanted to hurt you.” Maggie looked up into his face, and a shock went through her. Though the man was tall, his narrow face was a pale yellow, and he was unnaturally handsome, lustrous, almost as if his face were cast in ceramics. And there was a kindness to his voice. He believed what he said. He didn’t want to hurt her.
He struggled with his free hand to untie a pouch wrapped to his belt, opened the pouch and pulled out something small and silver that glittered in the moonlight. It moved like an insect, a large praying mantis perhaps, but its body was sleeker, longer, and more angular.
“Here is the Word. Let it set you free!”
He put it on her chest, and the creature poised for a moment with one huge claw ready to stab into her chest. Then, carefully checking each direction, it began stalking toward her face.
* * *
Chapter 11
The Bock led Gallen over the hill and into a city market, on a wide street where canvas tarpaulins fixed to poles provided some shelter. Under the tarps, small, tan-colored men and women haggled with customers over the prices of exotic fruits and trays of fishes. The locals wore short colorful tunics that left their legs exposed. On their shoulders they wore hooded half capes made of soft, oiled leather.
The vendors’ stalls smelled strongly of curry, anise, saffron, vanilla, and pepper—salt and spices beyond number. The pair moved past brass potmakers, past coils of hemp, bags of wheat, down toward some docks where they had to pass human guards.
Forty ships had put into port, and the docks were awash with all types of cargo—bales of wool and cotton, silks and hemp. Crates filled with beans and furniture, ingots of brass and steel. The Bock explained that most of the people in the crowd were nonhumans, come to trade from far-off lands.
A batch of red-furred sailors in heavy leather armor were unloading a scow, singing a high nasal song. Gallen looked at them in wonder, feeling that something more was wrong with them than their fur, when he realized that they had no ears.
Among bales of cotton, a dark woman dressed in yellow silks sat upon a palanquin that was at the moment unattended. On a long metal chain she held a pitiable creature, an emaciated girl with greenish skin and sad eyes who squatted naked atop a coil of hemp. There were no other men about to bear the palanquin, and as Gallen looked at the woman, she squatted on her hands, and smiled at him. She moved in an odd manner, scratching her arm with her teeth in a way that was distinctly unlike anything he had seen before, and as she stared at him with glimmering eyes, the look of undisguised lust in her eyes frightened him, for Gallen understood immediately that she did not lust for his flesh, except to eat it.
“What is that?” Gallen asked in disgust, leaping back from the woman.
“That is a Herap,” the Bock answered. “Among her people, ten men are born for every female. Once she mates with a man, she dines on him, if she can.”
Gallen was truly dismayed by all of this, and soon the oddities he noticed among the locals—grotesquely enlarged chests, huge grasping toes, violet skin—all began to meld together in his mind, a seething collage of monstrosities.
A warm shower started, but despite the downpour, the people milled about freely, oblivious to such weather. If it had truly been the Bock’s determination to simplify parade Gallen through the streets, it could have taken Gallen back to Maggie then. But instead the Bock led him resolutely past the marketplace, down toward a district where the buildings began to close in, stone houses flanking the narrow streets, each house with its pillars and portico protruding out so far that they had to walk around them.
“Where are we going?” Gallen asked at last, wiping the rain from his face. “Consider for a moment,” the Bock answered, “but do not speak your guess.” And Gallen knew that they were going to see Ceravanne.
The Bock led Gallen down around the bay, and over a hill, farther up the coast. The city extended on for miles, stretching among the hills, and Gallen realized that they had been only at the very southern tip of it. The sky began to darken, and the streets emptied far too quickly, until few people walked the streets, and those who did glanced about furtively and would duck into alleyways when they saw Gallen and the Bock approaching.
“This part of the city isn’t safe,” Gallen said.
“If you wore weapons or more clothing, this would be a dangerous neighborhood,” the Bock answered. “But obviously you are carrying no money. A half-naked man and
a Bock-no one would bother with us. Besides, are you not a killer?”
“A Lord Protector,” Gallen answered uncomfortably.
“A killer,” the Bock argued, a hint of distaste in his voice.
“And you disapprove?” Gallen asked.
“I am a Bock. We respect all life.”
“You must eat.”
“I have a mouth so that I may speak,” the Bock answered. “Beyond that, I take nourishment from the rain and the soil. I cannot comprehend killing. Life is precious—in all its forms. Unfortunately, not everyone agrees with me. Some peoples are esteemed as less than others. For example, in the wilderness of Babel, there are creatures called the Roamers. Their ancestors were humans, but the desire for enclosure was bred out of them, and they were given hair and great strength and stamina, so that they might thrive in the wilds without shelter. They wear no clothes, and many in Babel think of them as somehow less than human, animals. The Roamers do not have human rights—access to human technology and the human system of justice.”
“That doesn’t seem fair to me,” Gallen said. “Why, back home, every man can have his day in court.”
“But for many subspecies of human,” the Bock countered, “the human system of justice itself is unfair. It requires them to think and act like humans—something they cannot do. And so we cannot hold them to human laws.”
“But what if a nonhuman kills someone else?” Gallen said. “Certainly you can’t just allow that.”
“All beings are held accountable equally,” the Bock answered. “In such cases, our courts hire a champion to hunt down the offender, and slay it.”
And suddenly Gallen knew why he was here. “The Inhuman.…”
The Bock glanced at him sideways, the wide portion of his head swiveling. “Yes. Champions have been sent to Babel to hunt the Inhuman, but they never returned, and still its power spreads. That is why our leaders requested a Lord Protector from off-world, someone licensed to use weapons that we keep restricted here.”
Beyond the Gate (The Golden Queen) (Volume 2) Page 14
