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Tooth and Nail

Page 18

by Chris Underwood


  “Last I saw you, you were going to try to bring the goblins out of the dark. Build some more links between the mountain and the rest of us.”

  “One step at a time,” he said.

  I took a pull of my beer and leaned back to stare at the ceiling. The cobwebs in the corners were getting out of hand. I made a mental note to get out the duster, then scratched the note out again when I realized I’d probably be in no condition for housework once Holdfast was done with me.

  “I wouldn’t hurry it if I were you,” I said. “Everything’s gone to hell up here. A nice dark hole in the ground sounds pretty good right now.”

  “Early said. Beefcakes versus bloodsuckers, huh?”

  “And none of them know how to chill out. No one’s willing to look weak. No one wants to back down. They’re like a bunch of Klingons.”

  Rodetk narrowed his eyes. “What’s a Klingon?”

  “Star Trek? Never mind. You probably don’t get that in the Mines. Anyway, that’s why I asked the old man to reach out to you. Something came up that you might be able to shed some light on.”

  “Your goblin assassin,” he said.

  I leaned forward, my hand tightening around my beer. “Do you know anything about it? You know who this guy is?”

  “Know?” He shook his head. “I can make a few guesses, though.”

  “I’m so desperate I just tried to interrogate a corpse. I’ll take whatever you can give me.”

  He took another long drink, making me wait. When I was getting ready to knock the beer right out of his hand, he lowered the bottle and gave me a grin.

  “You remember the redcaps, right?”

  “Do I remember the goblins who bathed in the blood of magically-warped human infants in order to serve as Likho’s personal army? The ones who nearly killed us? Yeah. I remember.”

  “No need to be like that,” Rodetk said.

  “I thought they needed the sorcerer’s power to sustain them. After Likho died, I thought the Lord in the Deep had them rounded up.”

  “He did.” Rodetk shrugged. “Most of them.”

  “Hell,” I said. “One slipped through the cracks?”

  Rodetk nodded. “One of the lieutenants. I don’t know his real name, but apparently he went by Tarnask.”

  “Tarnask,” I repeated, trying to translate it and coming up short. My knowledge of the goblin languages were limited mainly to swear words. “Does that mean something?”

  “The Sickle. Or the Shiv, depending on what dialect you go by.”

  I rubbed my wounded shoulder. “Yeah, that scans. Why do these guys never have nice names? The Puppy, maybe. The Warm Slipper. Something like that.”

  “You’ll have to ask him next time you see him.” Rodetk leaned back in his chair. “We did our best to catch him. He just kept slipping through the net.” He pointed his beer bottle at me. “Like you used to, Natiz-Tuk.”

  The Witch in the Shadows. Now that I thought about it, I supposed Tarnask wasn’t the only one with an edgy nickname.

  “He couldn’t work for Likho anymore, obviously,” Rodetk continued, “so Tarnask found other employers. Some of the mobs had use for a hit man, especially with things as unstable as they were. We’re pretty sure we can link at least three mob murders to him.”

  “Wait. With Likho dead, this redcap should’ve been a shadow of his former power.”

  “Oh, I forgot to tell you that part, didn’t I? You remember Likho’s chamber? The one with all the magical shit? Before Lord Khataz could seal it off, someone broke in there.”

  “Tarnask, you mean.”

  “Probably. We never figured out exactly what he took. Wasn’t like we had an inventory sheet to compare against. But it’s safe to say he got his hands on some nasty stuff. Some of the blood they were bathing in, probably, or some modified form of it. Something to sustain his strength. Maybe other stuff as well. Glamours.”

  “Poison,” I said.

  “Wouldn’t surprise me. That sorcerer had all sorts of shit in there. Anyway, the Guard finally started to close in on Tarnask after the third mob murder in as many months. But before we could nab him we lost track of him. Wasn’t until later we realized he’d left the Mines.”

  “Nice of you to warn us. You could have faxed over a Wanted poster or something.”

  He shrugged again. “Maybe, yeah. Wasn’t my call. The higher-ups were just glad to be rid of him.”

  I thought it over. Rodetk’s guess certainly seemed to fit. The glamoured assassin that had nearly killed me was no ordinary goblin. He was faster, stronger. I could believe it was a redcap.

  “So this Tarnask left the Mines,” I said. “Came to Lost Falls. Continued to offer up his services as a hit man. Someone took him up on the offer. And now he’s tangled in this mess along with us.”

  “That’d be my guess,” Rodetk said.

  “He must have a lair somewhere. Some place he can bathe in his stolen blood.”

  “Any clues?”

  “Not one,” I said. “I think I broke his arm when we fought. I was feeling pretty pleased about myself for that. Now, not so much. If redcaps work like I think they do, those blood baths are rejuvenating. The bastard might already be back to full function.”

  “You think he’ll attack again?”

  “Maybe not. Maybe he’ll decide he’s had enough. Maybe he’ll go find a new gig somewhere else.”

  “You don’t sound very confident,” Rodetk said.

  “I’m not.” I sighed. “At least I have a pretty good idea what we’re up against, anyway. Thanks.”

  He made a gesture like it was nothing. “If you find him and don’t know what to do with him, gimme a call. I’ll take him off your hands. Dead or alive.”

  “The vampires might want a piece as well.”

  He shrugged. “Cut him in half. That oughta please everyone.”

  I went to take another sip of my beer and found the bottle empty. I considered getting another one, but decided I couldn’t stomach it.

  Across the table from me, Rodetk reclined with one arm slung over the chair back. His eyes roamed around my home, resting for a moment on my piano. I realized that I’d never actually let him into my cabin before.

  “The old man told me you have a fight scheduled,” Rodetk said after several seconds of silence.

  I nodded. “What else did he tell you?”

  A crooked grin spread across the goblin’s face. “That you’re an idiot.”

  “Yeah, I think he mentioned something about that.”

  “He’s proud of you, you know.”

  “Used to be, maybe.”

  Rodetk shook his head. “He still is. I mean, he’s pretty mad. But he knows why you’re doing it.”

  “I doubt it. Hell, I don’t even know why I’m doing it.”

  “I think you do.” He looked at me. “So what’s your plan?”

  “What plan?”

  He looked at me like I was an idiot. “Your plan to win. I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but those ogres are pretty big. You’re going to need a plan.”

  “I just need to get in close. Hit him hard. Don’t get hit back. If he gets one good hit on me, that’ll be all she wrote.”

  Rodetk frowned. “That’s it? That’s your plan?”

  “So far.”

  “That’s not much of a plan.”

  “I haven’t had much time to work out the details,” I said.

  “Well, I’d start thinking about it if I were you. For starters, you need to figure out how you’re going to get the bastard on the ground.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If you let him stay on his feet, you’re going to get crushed. If you get him to the ground, you’ve got a chance. What are you fighting with? Knives?”

  “My truncheon.”

  Rodetk frowned for a second, then got out of his chair, lifted his leg, and planted one of his feet on the table. He grabbed his empty beer bottle by the neck and made a swinging motion toward the inner side of hi
s ankle. “Hit him here, like this. Just below the knobbly bit. Hard as you can. Ogres have weak ankles. Too much weight up top. Get him there, he’ll come tumbling down. And if he doesn’t, break the other ankle too.”

  I stared at the goblin. “How do you know that?”

  He grinned. “Goblins have long memories. The storykeepers make sure of that. If we ever need to go to war with ogres, we won’t let ourselves be caught unprepared.”

  “Why would you need to go to war with the ogres?”

  “Us goblins haven’t always had the best time,” he said. “We’re small. We’re industrious. We can strip a mountain of its ore faster than you can take a shit. Sometimes other creatures—bigger creatures—think they can make use of us. Think they can enslave us. A few ogres tried that once.” His grin widened. “When they’re lying in the dirt, though, we don’t look so small to them anymore.”

  While I was still trying to think of an appropriate response, Rodetk returned his foot to the floor and put his empty beer bottle on the table.

  “Time for me to get back,” he said. “Thanks for the beer. Beats the moonshine I normally drink, that’s for sure.”

  “Take another one. Take the lot.”

  He shook his head. “You might need them once you’ve fought your ogre.”

  I got up and walked him to the door. “Sure you don’t want to come watch? You could shout encouragement. I’ll need it.”

  “Nah. I hate blood sports.” He paused at the door and turned back to me. “You remember what I said. Inside of the ankle, as hard as you can.”

  I nodded. “I’ll remember.”

  We stared at each other a moment longer. Without a word, the goblin stuck out his hand.

  I looked down at his outstretched hand, hesitating. Then I reached out and grasped his palm.

  He squeezed hard, big yellow eyes locked with mine. He gave me a nod.

  And then he released my hand and slipped through the door. The darkness swallowed him almost instantly.

  I closed the door and turned back toward my empty living room. A heavy silence lay over the place. I almost wished the Dealer would show up, just so I’d have someone else to talk to.

  I waited a few seconds, half-expecting him to wander out of the bathroom or pop up from behind the couch. But the cabin remained stubbornly empty.

  I sighed. Alone, tired, and out of ideas, I went to bed.

  26

  I’ve had some bad nights’ sleep in my time. Nights spent curled up on a stone floor in the dark of the Mines, one eye open in case I was discovered by the goblins I was systematically hunting down. Nights spent in pain as I recovered from lacerations and broken bones.

  And of course, nights where I just couldn’t stop thinking about the things I’d seen, the things I’d experienced: being buried alive, still bleeding from the two bullets that had been fired into my stomach and chest; the scrambling of endless rats crawling across my face; the horror of watching Lilian become a monster, a living corpse with nothing in her heart but hate for the living.

  This night was as bad as any of them. I tossed and turned for hours on end, unable to get comfortable. Every time I started to drift off I would start awake again, my heart hammering.

  At first, it was my guilt about what had happened to Rachel that haunted me. I couldn’t get her scream out of my head, or the sight of her there on the bed, pale and barely alive. I still didn’t know if she would survive the night.

  After a while, though, my thoughts turned to more selfish concerns. The way I’d left things with Early. The fact that I was still hiding so much from Lilian.

  Most of all I thought of the duel. I was no stranger to a fight, but this was different. Most of the time, when I fought, it was a desperate, sudden thing. It wasn’t something scheduled days in advance. I didn’t usually have time to think about all the ways it could end in my death.

  It was around 5 a.m. when I finally drifted off. I woke suddenly three hours later, the sun shining through a crack in my curtains to catch me right in the eyes.

  Once I was awake, I knew I wouldn’t be getting back to sleep anytime soon. Groaning, I pulled myself out of bed. After a shower and some breakfast, I was as awake as I was ever going to be.

  I got to work.

  I spent most of the morning preparing defensive charms to add to my coat. I already had plenty of charms and fetishes sewn into the lining, but many of them were old or aimed to provide protection against magic, rather than physical harm. The ones I was designing now would be short-lived and not particularly potent—there wasn’t much that a charm could do to ward off a heavy blow struck with intent. They might make the difference between a broken spine and a broken rib, though, and I was going to have to take every edge I could.

  Charms like this would lose their power within minutes of the fight’s start, so if I wanted to rely on them, I’d have to win quickly. They weren’t cheap to produce, either. I used the last of my cockatrice-skin parchment in the process. If I survived this ordeal, I was going to have to get Lockhart to compensate me.

  When I’d scrawled the last of the written charms, I sealed them with wax and pinned them to the outside of my coat. It would leave me looking a little like a homeless guy wrapped in newspaper, but it wasn’t my fashion sense that would save me.

  I was growing tired again by the time I’d finished the charms. Charms were subtle enough that that they didn’t require an awful lot of inner strength to bring to life, but preparing so many at once on so little sleep was sapping my strength. If I wasn’t careful, I wasn’t going to have any energy left for the actual duel.

  I took a break for lunch and checked my phone. No messages from Lockhart, and nothing from Early either. No one wanted anything to do with me. I scrolled to Nolan’s name in my contacts and hovered over the call button for a few seconds. I wanted to find out if Rachel was okay. I wanted to know if the vampires and ogres had been keeping to their ceasefire.

  After staring at my phone for a minute, I sighed and put it away without calling him. I needed to focus. I couldn’t afford distractions.

  I got to work on some potions next. It was a dangerous business, brewing potions to enhance your own senses and capabilities. There were limits to what a body could handle, and everything had a cost. If I wasn’t careful, a potion designed to sharpen my eyesight might end up blowing out my optic nerves. A tincture to deaden pain might leave me devoid of sensation, or it might wear off halfway through the fight and leave me painfully sensitive to every little cut and scrape.

  I usually steered clear of brewing anything like this for anyone else. It was too hard to judge another person’s limits—especially when not all my customers were human.

  But I had a pretty good grasp of my own tolerances, having tested plenty of my own potions and charms on myself over the years. To fine-tune the magic to my own physiology, I incorporated several of my own bodily fluids into the potions. I pricked my finger and massaged out a few drops of blood to help with the pain deadening potion. For the potion designed to enhance my senses, I pulled out a few ear and nose hairs, which did double duty by generating a few tears as well. I caught the tears in a vial and added them along with the tiny hairs to one of the two potions bubbling above the heat. And of course, there was nothing better than a dash of urine to tie everything together.

  Other ingredients went into the potions as well: exotic herbs and some preserved body parts from a few unfortunate creatures—some common, others more unusual.

  And then, suddenly, there was nothing to do but wait. The potions settled into a slow simmer above their respective burners. In a couple of hours they’d be ready. I wouldn’t take them until just before the fight—only then would I find out how effective they really were.

  I checked the time. It was a little after three. Still no calls or messages.

  On a whim, I dialed my sister. Hearing her voice on the radio last night had made me realize I hadn’t spent much time with her recently. I couldn’t tell her what wa
s going on, but at least I could say hi, see how she was going.

  The phone rang for so long I thought it was going to go to voicemail. Finally, she picked up.

  “Hey, Ozzy,” Alice said. She sounded distracted. In the background I could hear the squealing of excited children. “What’s up?”

  “Oh, you know. Just wanted to—”

  “Hey!” she shouted. “No! Put that down! Down! Do you have any idea where that’s been?” A child’s manic laughter followed.

  “Everything okay?” I asked.

  “Yeah, it’s just… What did I just say? That’s dirty. Yucky. You understand?” She sighed. “Of course they don’t understand. How much trash do you think a pair of five-year-olds can eat and still survive? Like, literal trash?”

  “Maybe they’re just doing it to screw with you,” I said.

  “I know they’re doing it to screw with me, Ozzy. That’s what makes it so infuriating. Anyway, what did you need?”

  I paused. “Doesn’t matter. It was nothing important. You sound like you’ve got your hands full.”

  “Yeah, I…” There was a soft thud, followed by screaming. “Oh, Jesus Christ,” Alice sighed. “I have to go. They’re fighting over who gets to hold a stick.” She paused. “Are you sure you’re okay, Ozzy?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Yeah. I’m fine. I love you guys.”

  “What?” Alice shouted over the screaming. “I can’t hear you.”

  “Never mind. Go. I’ll call you later.”

  “I can’t hear a word you’re saying. Call me later.”

  I opened my mouth to say goodbye, but there was a click and then she was gone.

  I checked the time again. Five minutes had passed since the last time I checked.

  Maybe I should go for a walk, I thought. Go down to the river. Or I could drive to Teddy’s grave. Spend some time down there, by the bottom of the falls. Seems like the sort of thing to do on what could be your last day on Earth.

  I thought about it a while. I went to the door, opened it, looked out.

  Then I closed the door again and ordered a pizza.

  While I waited for it to come, I went and got my truncheon. I looped the leather strap around my wrist and tested the grip. It was as good as ever. After giving it a couple of test swings, I inspected the runes and words of power engraved along its length. All were intact. The silver head was scuffed and battered, but it could still deliver a hell of a punch. The iron core at the center of the wooden shaft gave it a comforting weight in my hand.

 

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