by Andrew Post
“Fine, fine. Forgive me for wanting to have a conversation deeper than hearing about what this one’s little brat’s first words were.”
“Hey!” Kylie-Nae said.
“The Ma’am wants the poor and the not-very-Ma’am-like to go charging at the orcs,” Lodi said. “Problem solved, us wiping each other out.” She rode, looking at the cliff’s edge as if it were a babbling brook, a caterpillar on the sidewalk, not a mile-long fall given one false step. “And like her great-great-great-grandpappy said after he’d scraped the dwarves to the margins of this continent: ‘Ours now.’ She’ll complete the job. The marginalized made demarginalized because we’ve all been pushed clean off the page.”
“Sounds like you include yourself in that,” Anoushka said.
Lodi’s rippling laughter echoed down the mountain. “Of course I do. I’m inclined. Only magick wielder the Ma’am tolerates is the one who’s locked up or has agreed to be stuffed in the Council’s tower—collared, either way. But you’re leading me off topic. Do you ever think, what if the orcs tunneling is some made-up thing that the Ma’am’s doing, like Rupie—fudging facts to make a good story—just on a broader measure? Maybe thrusting a finger over the Mountain and saying, they need killing, is leading us right toward a bunch of greenies sitting around in their huts with Skivvit, harboring no true ill intent toward us nongreenies whatsoever?”
“Me and my squad can assure you the orc means business.”
“Damn right,” Russell said.
“They sure do,” Kylie-Nae grunted, still sore evidently about Lodi calling her daughter a brat.
Cricketsong for a moment, the clip-clop of unshod donkey hooves on the rock.
“Okay,” Lodi started, making Anoushka sigh, “but ever hear the one about how Duke Titch and our queen never got along? Those in the know say they hated each other, something about a dinner party conversation that turned—gasp—to impolite topics while they were having their toasted cream, and the Ma’am swore him off as a brute?”
“Gossip,” Anoushka said. “Nothing more.”
“But, for the sake of argument, let’s say it isn’t. Let’s say they didn’t get along, okay? Let’s say, for the sake of story, they absolutely loathed each other. With that in mind, why would she care if her snot-nosed nephews got their heads opened while building a sand castle? Why use that as the go-get-’em flag and throw her entire realm against Skivvit?”
“They were family,” Kylie-Nae added from behind. “The Duke and the Ma’am maybe didn’t get along, but it doesn’t mean she didn’t like her nephews.”
Lodi rolled her eyes. “Fine, okay. But still, really think about that story: the twerps were playing in the sand and blam, blam? Rings a bit arranged to me. If they wanted it to sound believable, they should’ve said the boys were showing each other their willies or popping the eyes of dead things with sticks.”
Anoushka, despite herself, raised her voice. “I’m begging! Please!”
“Okay, okay,” Lodi said. She added under her breath, “Deepest regrets for my hesitance to blindly swallow everything I get tossed. Here I thought I may’ve been among fellow thinkers, but I guess I was wrong.”
“Lodi! Enough!”
“Okay, okay.”
“Thank you. Gods.”
The prison stood tall ahead.
Flames burned at the crests of the flanking watchtowers, two red eyes. For Anoushka, Lodi’s words took concentration to push aside. Perhaps paranoia was catchy. She remembered a few times they’d received a bounty offer, and once they’d kicked the rock over where their quarry had interred himself, he’d begged and pleaded, howling innocence. Anoushka had heard them out every time but always carried out the writ. Only fools raise questions when the Committee opens its billfold.
“Kill the torches.” With how thin the trees were, no need presenting themselves further.
Any generosity the donkey had rushing up the hill had expired; now, it clopped, taking its time. Gun out, Anoushka approached. She kept her eyes on the watchtowers. The mirror-backed torches lit the ground before the gates in two pools. With luck, Lodi’s magick-aided peek had been accurate: the guards were cycling, and the gate was standing unwatched.
Anoushka heeled her donkey and clopped up to gates, into the twin circles on the ground of the spotlights. She felt like she was on stage. Getting her matchbook out, she kept her ears sharp for the telltale click-clack of rifle bolts above. The fuse caught and quickly began hissing away its length, throwing sparks and acrid smoke. She chucked the powder packet underhand, the hissing charge landing at the feet of the tall wooden doors.
Anoushka snapped the reins, but the stubborn donkey stayed put. They were still close enough to hear the rapidly shortening fuse’s hiss. “Go,” she whisper-shouted. “Go.”
Striking her in the back with the force rivaling a Flesh Hammer slap, Anoushka was pitched off the donkey. Now it ran, shrieking as it stumbled into the brush at the edge of the road. Something in the murk caught it, unseen. With the stomach-turning sound of flesh tearing and a gush of blood hitting dead leaves, the donkey’s cries quickly ended. Yellow eyes dared Anoushka to come and try to take its dinner.
With her ears ringing so severely, Anoushka couldn’t hear the gobs firing—but she certainly saw the rocks in the road hopping about as bullets came raining.
Forgetting whatever had eaten her donkey, she got to her feet. Kylie-Nae, Russell, and Lodi came rushing past, firing—dull pops, to her ears—taking out gobs who’d come to the watchtower’s railing. One was flung back, his jaw taken off. Another was spun, spraying gore as he twirled. Kylie-Nae’s aim had remained true.
Together they charged in, six-guns blazing.
A courtyard: empty prisoner carts, a row of pillories.
Around its fringe on high crenellations, more gobs rushed out, cocking rifles. Anoushka stumbled after the others as they jumped off their animals to use the barred prisoner carts for cover. The donkeys bolted. Markus’s horse, shot in the neck, reared and hoofed at the air before tumbling over. Anoushka dragged Markus, screaming, with her behind cover.
As they’d planned, the second bomb was Russell’s responsibility. Out into direct fire, he charged on short legs toward the inner gate. He threw the hissing powder bag. Thunder. The doors shattered wide.
“Go!”
Some hearing returned to Anoushka. But when she peered down the sights of the mammoth-killer and fired, all sound was chased from her ears again. With a kick that nearly made the gun fly over her shoulder, it forced her to take her time between shots.
She fired again, and a gob dropped from the wall, splatting on the courtyard’s black stone. She stared at the ruin she’d made.
There it was. That red thrill. The same she didn’t like to admit she craved and missed so much.
“Come on,” she heard through the watery thrum in her ears. The others were heading in, Kylie-Nae at the lead.
The gobs on the parapets noticed their visitors had made it inside and began filing through small doors and splits in the stone along the upper walkways to continue the chase. They cheered and laughed. Although neutrality was something they’d declared Ages ago, perhaps it’d been merely a way to bait fights to where they’d have advantage.
Alarms were cranked, screaming ululating peals. Pushing through the bomb smoke, the prison’s keepers swelled in from small doors on either side of the main hall. The gunfire started anew. Large kettles kept warm for just such occasions were tipped, gushing a slow, bubbling column of liquefied lead to the floor below. Kylie-Nae caught a splash across her forearm. Trying to slap the sizzling lead away, she burned one hand and then the other trying to rid herself of the clinging, burning liquid. As she struggled and screamed, Russell pulled her out of the way as the next kettle was tipped, splashing the spot where she’d just been standing. She filled her scorched hands with her dropped gun and skinned her thumb ratcheting back the hammer. Lips peeled, she screamed and fired and fired and fired, running deeper into the
fray, leaving black smoke behind her and sending vibrant cusses ahead.
Behind Anoushka, Markus was tripping over goblin corpses, trying to get back out of the gates. She grabbed his silk sleeve, pulling him stumbling after her, a trail of ink bottles and pens behind him.
Bullets and crossbow bolts sparked off the walls and pillars while they wove through, trying to find their way to the next chamber. From metal catwalks linking the hall’s ribbed arches above, boulders of bunched razor wire were cast down. Momentarily knocked flat, Russell stood, his shoulder looking like he’d been swatted by a bear. “Rotters.” He cocked, fired, sparking the ceiling as the gobs, giggling, ducked back into cover.
Swallowing an elixir and thrusting her hands up, Lodi made the catwalks into griddles—cooking the gobs upon them where they stood. Ashes and cindered meat rained in flakes.
“Door, there,” Kylie-Nae shouted and charged.
It didn’t matter where it might lead; anyplace was better than here.
Through the smoke and gunfire, Anoushka pushed Markus ahead of her down the claustrophobic passage that would hopefully lead them away from the bedlam. The hall was built for gob dimensions—barely wider than Anoushka’s shoulders. At its far end, a labyrinth spread before them. The floor felt greased under their boots. The stonework shone as if waxed. Anoushka turned in a circle, skidding, unsure, sweating, aiming into the shifting shadows—laughter coming from everywhere matched with storming footfalls.
Kylie-Nae took down a torch from the wall, but the dark seemed almost viscous, eating the firelight.
“Which way?” Russell’s voice returned in distorted intervals—so much dark, so many paths.
Anoushka wheeled about. From behind, the gobs could fit two abreast in the narrow passageway. Before they could spill free, she jumped in front of the opening and loosed into the dark. She downed five. One at the back, spared, cast down his gun and presented filthy hands, fishlike eyes wide with terror.
“Please! No!”
Anoushka reached her barrel over the corpses between them. “Peter Elloch. Where’s he being kept?”
The gob’s terror deepened. “What you want him free for?”
“None of your concern. Where’s his cell?”
“Will you let me live?”
“Keep stalling and find out.”
The threat had made an ugliness surface in him. “Snowie bitch. Comin’ in here as if you own the place. You want him, well, you can be his new cell mate and it’ll be me payin’ you nightly visits—”
A clap of thunder and his gangly form added itself to the heap. Holstering, Anoushka wiped the backspray from her cheek. “We’re gonna have to look,” she shouted past the keening alarms.
A small door banged open up the hall. “There!” The gobs stormed out of the dark, firing, laughing, and cheering.
“Run!” Russell shouted.
Chased in a new direction, the four fired over their shoulders, felling some of their pursuers, thinning the mob but not nearly enough. Again, Anoushka had to pull Markus along. She shoved him ahead of her, around a corner, and fired back at the gobs. One down, the few following close behind tripped, causing the mob to part around their stumbled brethren. One couldn’t resist and stopped to tear away the fallen gob’s ear and chew it down as he followed.
It was impossible to lose them in a place only they knew. Dragging Markus along with his hands clamped over his head, Anoushka followed Kylie-Nae’s torch bobbing in the gloom. Deeper and deeper in. Farther, offshoots, staircases, doorways large and small, each splitting this way and that, left, right, up, down. They swung about corners, another, followed by another, rushed stairs up, down. After what felt like miles of darkness, Anoushka cocked her mammoth-killer and peeked over her shoulder. The gobs were no longer following.
Hushed, panting, she said, “Let’s stop a minute; I think they lost us.”
They stopped, everyone panting. Anoushka asked Lodi, “Can’t you use your mirror thing or something to find him?”
“Depends,” the wizardess said, her breaths rattling as if her lungs were packed with dead leaves. “You want me to have a stroke?”
Markus, hugging his ink-stained satchel to his chest, shivered and whimpered, jumping at each weird shadow the torch made on the walls. “I want to go home. I want to go home.”
“Quiet,” Russell said.
Their voices rang in this place. Undoubtedly the gobs’ ears were more attuned to deciphering resonations back to their true source.
“I say we call it,” Kylie-Nae said. She winced, passing the torch to Russell to carry—some of the yellow hemispheres swelling on her hands had popped. “We’re never gonna fucking find him.”
“No,” Anoushka said. “We need him.”
“We’re already this deep,” Russell said, turning with the torch high overhead to squint into the dark. “Be damned pointless to turn tail now. He can’t be too far.”
Kylie-Nae said, “He was only rear guard . . .”
“No,” Anoushka said. “We need him.”
“Babe. We’re trying to spring the one jerk who probably belongs here the most.” She paused to close her eyes—it was obvious she wanted to press a hand to her burned arm but knew it’d probably make it hurt more and resisted. “And for what? Some stupid story? I say we cut and run while we still can and . . . uh, Markus? What’re you doing?”
Anoushka turned.
At the edge of the flickering torchlight, the bard’s assistant shook a compact four-barrel revolver in his quivering hands. “Mister LeFevre said . . . he said . . . you might try something like this.” He couldn’t look them in the eyes. “And he told me . . . he told me I wasn’t to allow it, unless . . . unless I don’t come back with my life.”
“Markus, honey,” Kylie-Nae said, “could you maybe not point it at us, please?”
“We . . . We need to find Peter Elloch.” Markus struggled to thumb back the tiny gun’s hammer. “Or I’m . . . I’m supposed to . . . to—”
“Ye daft little shite, stop before ye kill somebody,” Russell boomed.
Markus flinched—and Anoushka snatched the gun out of the boy’s hands.
Markus backed away. “I’m sorry,” he said, tears running off his chin. “I’m sorry. I was only trying to do what I was told . . .” Crying and stumbling, he slipped when he turned to run. He was at the corner, still pleading for forgiveness, blubbering and caterwauling—when the gobs burst from the dark.
“There you are,” one screamed in delight.
They stampeded over Markus—only momentarily focusing their barrage of shooting before leaving a crushed and bullet-riddled wreck behind.
Anoushka shouted for the others to run. They didn’t need the order.
Another bend, another turn—bullets buzzed over their heads, sparked off the grease-slicked floor. Russell tossed the torch aside—they were blind. The gobs’ laughter came from all around. Beside, ahead, behind.
An orange square hung in the distance. A doorway. While it may’ve been leading to yet another wrong turn or dead end, anything would be better than this maze.
“Go,” Anoushka bellowed. A bullet struck her calf, throwing her leg out ahead of her. She fell, hard.
Kylie-Nae and Russell dragged her to her feet. The pain ripped through Anoushka, but the glowing orange square, that doorway, the potential promise of getting away that hung there in the dark before them, kept her running. As they neared, warmth splashed across her face and neck. The stink of smoke and rot, but a path nonetheless.
She was slowing them down and shook Kylie-Nae and Russell away. “Go,” Anoushka yelled, hobbling. “Just go!”
They rushed through the opening, the heat nearly making her dizzy once in its heart. Anoushka noticed above the doorway a portcullis of sorts. Likely a security measure for mitigating riots. Once every one of hers had passed under, Lodi threw the lever. The spiked door screeched down, pinning to the floor a set of the gobs that’d almost made it through. Those surviving on the other side
continued shooting through the gaps in the serrated bars until they saw they’d been bested.
A dozen skinny ashen arms dragged flintlocks and six-guns back into the darkness. Their mad laughter and aimless gunfire slid away—still enjoying this, the challenge. It must’ve been some time since they’d hosted company that didn’t arrive in chains, the fun sort of visitors.
Anoushka bent to clutch her leg. Blood trickled out the bottom of her pant leg, filling her boot, in an unbroken dribble. But while it hurt—oh, it hurt—it didn’t feel like it’d hit bone. She knew how that felt.
Careful of her scorched arm, Kylie-Nae tore the sleeve off her own shirt and knelt to tie it around. “That okay? Too tight?”
“It’s good,” Anoushka managed through gritted teeth. “But what about you?”
Kylie-Nae followed Anoushka’s gaze to her own bubbling arm. As she worked to knot the plaid strip of fabric around her leg, Kylie-Nae’s scorched hands split between the fingers and over the knuckles. “Let’s just find him,” she said, pain edging her voice. “And get the fuck out of here.”
“No argument here,” Russell put in. Blood ran from his shredded shoulder to drip steadily from his elbow; to him, not a concern.
“Which one is our hero’s, you suppose?” Lodi said, approaching the railing.
The multifloored cell block was filled with noise. Mostly unintelligible, anxious rabble. Anoushka and her group were the focus of the prisoners in their cells—a million eyes. Those still with their minds screamed to be freed. Those who’d lost them only screeched. And probably would have regardless if these interlopers had arrived or not.
More floors below. Countless cells. A stairwell corkscrewed between the levels, caged in a thick wire mesh. At the bottom of the central shaft, fires burned, the snaggletoothed maw of an open furnace belching a continuous stream of black smoke. Its fuel? Anoushka didn’t dare fathom. High above, the smoke escaped through a tiny square of starlit sky. Miles away but always within sight of each and every cell below.
“Spread out,” she said. It was hard to speak, let alone breathe, in this place; a choking heat, air loaded with ash. “Holler when you find him.”
