Courage of falcons Read online

Crispin and Andrew braced themselves and attacked again. Andrew was the stronger and heavier opponent; Crispin was faster and more agile. They lunged and feinted and left chunks of each other's flesh and puddles of their own blood in an expanding circle on the ground. Speed, caution, and the fury of just rage gave Crispin the edge, though, and Andrew's blood poured faster, and his accumulated wounds slowed him more, until finally Crispin toppled him, held his teeth against Andrew's throat, and said, "Beg my mercy."

  "Mercy," Andrew screamed, the sound a dark and horrible travesty of human speech.

  "Louder."

  "MERCY!"

  "LOUDER."

  "MERCY!"

  "You never showed it, you'll never get it." Crispin sank his teeth deeply into Andrew's throat and shook his head hard and felt the satisfying snap of Andrew's spine; his cousin went limp, and while he was paralyzed, before the Karnee curse had a chance to repair damaged flesh and damaged nerves, Crispin gnawed through both of Andrew's jugular arteries and, with a paw badly suited for the task, jammed his dagger through Andrew's ribs and deeply into his heart.

  His heart sang with the triumph of the moment. He lifted his head from the bleeding corpse and, with Andrew's gore dripping from his muzzle, stared around him.

  The faces that stared back at him were hate-filled, crazed, wild.

  They were human true human and he had revealed himself as more than a collaborator with wizards. He had revealed himself as a wizard and as a monster.

  He looked to Anwyn, wondering if he might kill him before he was taken down, but Anwyn was hidden completely within his armor. Pity I didn't sacrifice Andrew, he thought I'd have done more good with his death than he did with his entire life.

  "Kill it!" the mob was screaming.

  "Kill it!"

  He tensed his muscles, crouched, and sprang for Anwyn's head. He felt the catches that held Anwyn's gold mask in place snap, but the mask, caught perhaps on his horns, did not fall free. It stayed in place, and Crispin didn't get another chance. Anwyn's guard attacked him with swords, and when he fled toward the rabble who ringed Galweigh House, they picked up their cudgels and pitchforks and spears and beat him back.

  He felt the first blows land terrible silent explosions that tore his muscles and shattered his bones and ripped the breath from his body. And then one thunderbolt landed at the base of his neck, and after a stunning instant of pain worse than anything he had ever experienced, warmth suffused his body. He felt better.

  He felt... good.

  Sight faded, replaced with comforting darkness, womblike darkness. Sensation faded. He did not feel pain. Did not feel touch. Did not feel anything. He floated in comfort. Smell faded, the stinks of sweat and filth and fear and hatred erased along with the sweet scent of the night air and the distant, haunting whisper of jasmine that was the last scent he could recall. And finally sound faded. The soft throbbing of his slowing heartbeat, soothing as the lulling waves breaking on a beach, washed away the screams and the shouts, the thin, high voice of Ulwe shrieking, "Papa, no! No!," the whisper of the wind, the rattle of palm fronds. And at last, even that soothing, pulsing wash of sound was gone.

  * * *

  "Monsters and traitors," Anwyn shouted, his voice carrying over the cleared ground that surrounded the House. "Two are dead. The rest hide within those walls."

  He pointed up to the parapet, to the little girl who still stared down at the crowd and at the bloody tatters that were all that remained of her father.

  Crispin's brat. His heir. Anwyn wanted her dead.

  Then a woman appeared atop the wall beside the girl and stood staring down at the place where the child pointed. She looked painfully familiar, and after an instant, Anwyn realized why. She was the woman Anwyn had watched fall to her death from the top of the Sabir tower the woman whose body had disappeared without a trace. She was a Galweigh and something more. Karnee. A keeper of enormous magic. A woman who had to die.

  The Galweigh woman covered the child's eyes and pulled her away from the parapet. She, however, glanced down at him for just an instant before disappearing, and in that instant he read cool assessment, and the promise of his own doom.

  He suppressed his shudder. She wouldn't live to keep that promise. He would see to that.

  "The ladders," he shouted. "Get the rest of the monsters!"

  Howling, the rabble he and Andrew had gathered charged back to their ladders and threw them up against the wall at a dozen points. The ladders weren't tall enough to reach the top of the wall, but they were tall enough to get the rope-masters with their grappling hooks into position.

  Ropes sailed over the parapets, and some skittered back again, their hooks finding nothing to hold. But others found purchase. And half a dozen men climbed the undefended walls, and dropped to the other side, and dragged up the rope ladders that the rest of the mob would climb, and anchored them.

  But they had no more than settled the ladders into place when invisible forces picked them up and dropped them back outside the walls, carefully and gently.

  "Keep going," Anwyn screamed, and the mob poured up the walls.

  They, too, were picked up as soon as they were inside the walls and put down outside and unharmed.

  "Faster," Anwyn shouted.

  The mob, finding that it was not hurt by its removal, gathered courage and fueled it with rage, and surged back again, over each of the entry points.

  And finally the invisible forces faltered, and those humans who entered stayed.

  Now the bereaved vengeance-seekers poured in faster. Over the walls. Into the inner sanctum and onto the grounds of Galweigh House. Anwyn Sabir followed them in and rallied them and aimed them at the House itself. But they hadn't been fast enough. The House's invisible guards had bought just enough time, for as the mob neared its objective, the few inhabitants of Galweigh House escaped. The mob watched as the first rays of morning light caught the envelope of the airible as it slipped silently out of reach, motors off, buffeted by the dawn breeze.

  Anwyn screamed with rage, and swore, and tossed his head as an angry bull would.

  And the mask that hid his monstrosity from the mob he led fell to the ground. The dim light of new dawn displayed his naked, horned, scaled, fanged face to the mob that had just been deprived of its prey.

  He heard the indrawn breath. He saw the shock in the eyes. He looked around for an avenue of escape, but there was no such thing.

  The mob, hungry for blood and deprived of their rightful targets, turned on him.

  He fought well, at least for a while.

  And then the House's ghostly guardians received the night's final gift.

  Chapter 39

  The last strands of darkness still clung to the Long Comfort when a dozen shadowed forms slipped through the alley door. The innkeeper Shrubber came upon them as he carried wood into the common room always an early riser, he'd been preparing the hearthfire for the new day.

  One of the men slit his throat before he could cry out, and when he had finished thrashing, shoved his body into the hearth, piling the wood before it to hide it from immediate discovery. No one else stumbled upon the invaders, and they made their way quietly up the stairs to the guest rooms, and unerringly to the room occupied by Ry, Yanth, and Jaim.

  "Knives out," one of the men said. "When they're dead, strip the bodies and take everything of value in the room. It has to look like a robbery."

  That was the only sound any of them made, but it was enough for Ry.

  Always a light sleeper, now near Shift and sensitive to changes in sound and smell, he was on his feet and had his sword in hand before either Yanth or Jaim could wake. He kicked their beds and snarled, "Up, quick, or we're all dead," and lunged forward, hearing them scrambling for weapons behind him.

  When the attackers burst through the door, expecting to find three sleeping men, the first found a ready blade and death; the next, a madman who fought in the narrow space like a fiend possessed.

  And by the time the weig
ht of the attackers had pushed Ry into the room, both Yanth and Jaim stood with him.

  They fought without words, the only sounds the scuffle of boots and bare feet on the plank floors, the clangs of sword on dagger and sword on sword, the thuds of flesh, the cries of pain.

  And then one of the attackers won through Jaim's guard, his blade spearing between ribs and into heart and lung and out again with a hiss, and Jaim screamed once and folded double and dropped to the floor while his killer ripped the blade from him and turned and snarled, "For Captain Draclas!"

  "For Captain Draclas!" the other attackers yelled.

  "Ian Draclas is my brother!" Ry bellowed. "Truce! Truce! We fight on the same side!"

  Yanth shouted, "They've killed Jaim no truce!"

  But the attackers had backed off, and Ry caught Yanth's wrist in his hand. They stood sweating and panting in the small room, with Jaim and two attackers dead on the floor in pools of their own blood, strangers staring at each other with expressions of bewilderment on their faces.

  Below, someone started screaming, and the attackers said, "Run! Out the back, before the guards are called."

  Yanth pulled his wrist free with a snarl and said, "I want them dead."

  Ry was swinging his pack over his shoulder and wiping the blood from his blade onto the mattress where he had so recently lain. "Run with them, or we'll be charged with these deaths. We have no friends here and no one to speak for us; we'll be hanged."

  Yanth's face went hard and cold. "What of Jaim?"

  Ry knelt and quickly felt for any sign of life in Jaim's body. The pulse was gone, the eyes half-open stared sightless and unblinking, the flesh had bleached a bloodless, ghostly white. He clenched a fist and fought back tears. "His body will stay with these others. His spirit will forgive us, I hope."

  Yanth swore, then grabbed his own pack and fled down the hall with Ry, following the attackers. Through blurry eyes, Ry saw faces peering at them through the cracks of almost-closed doors.

  They pounded down the stairs three steps at a time, leaped from the middle step on the last course to thud into the hallways, found Kelje and the kitchen wench crouched over the body of Boscott Shrubber, which they appeared to have dragged out of the fireplace and then Ry and Yanth were out the door and running through the mud that sucked at their bare feet and pulled at their breeches.

  Ry regretted the loss of his boots, but not as much as he would have the loss of his freedom. He and Yanth overtook the slower Keshi Scarred first, then caught up with and overtook the running humans. All of them reached the Peregrine's trollop-painted longboat together, and jumped in, and cast it off. Ry and Yanth took oars with the others and began pulling toward the ship with all their strength.

  As they rowed, one of the attackers picked up where Ry had left off. "You're Ian Draclas's brother?"

  "Half-brother."

  "Then why in the hells-all have you consigned your soul to Rrru-eeth?"

  "I serve Ian's interests."

  "You serve that traitorous bitch," the speaker said. "With my own ears, I heard you swear your loyalty to her. We all did."

  "I swore my loyalty to the true captain of the Peregrine. The true captain is my brother."

  "Who is dead because of her."

  "He isn't dead. I rescued him from the Ancients' city in Novtierra not long after Rrru-eeth abandoned him there. He's in Calimekka now, and I intend to get his ship back to him with Rrru-eeth aboard it. He can decide what to do with her once she's in his hands."

  "He did swear loyalty to the true captain," one of the other men said. "Those were his very words: 'I swear loyalty to the true captain.' I thought it was funny at the time, because I knew she wasn't really the captain, but I thought he thought she was."

  One of the Keshi said, "And he knowed the ship was Peregrine, not that damned Jerrpu name bitch-captain give it." The lizard-eyes blinked at Ry slowly, and the lizard tongue flicked in and out, in and out, sampling the air. "He don't taste like he lying."

  Ry thought of Jaim, dead without cause, and he wanted blood in payment for his death. But if he sought his payment from the blood of those who could become his allies, when he needed allies more than anything else, he would be twice a fool. The one who needed to pay for Jaim's death was Rrru-eeth. He wanted her blood for what she'd done to Kait, and now in repayment for Jaim.

  He leaned into his oar. Bitterly, he said, "If you were loyal to Ian, why did you let Rrru-eeth leave him and Kait and Hasmal and your own people behind? Why didn't you fight with the others?"

  "Rrru-eeth caught us by surprise," the man who'd done most of the speaking said. "She sent those she knew were loyal to Ian into the city, supposedly to gather the last few treasures before Ian and Kait and that wizard came back with whatever they'd gone after. A few of her people went with them, and when Ian's men were well away from the ship, Rrru-eeth's ran back, thinking to take the longboats and simply abandon everyone who wouldn't support Rrru-eeth. But Ian's men weren't asleep on their feet. They ran back to the beach, fought for the longboats... and lost." He hung his head. "We'd never made much fuss about our loyalties, and I guess we bitched as much as any about having a skinshifter and a wizard aboard our ship, so she assumed we were hers. We slept through the mutiny we'd been in the city all day, hauling and digging; we were tired...."

  The Keshi who'd spoken before said, "We woke to find we were to sea, with that bitch calling herself captain of the ship, and those of us what supported Captain Draclas outnumbered. So we kept quiet. We waited we-all're good at waiting. We stayed with her to make sure she paid for what she done. Gods say they get revenge for men who don't but we didn't want to trust to no gods. We want to see her hang with our own eyes."

  "Then why isn't she dead already?"

  "She careful," the Keshi said. "She trust nobody, and she got better ears and a better nose than anyone she know when trouble coming long time before it reach her."

  Ry swept his oar forward and dug it into the roughening surface of the water. "I'll see her dead. I swore to that for my own sake, and for Kait and Ian. I wanted to kill her myself for what she did, but she harmed Ian and Kait more than she did me. They deserve to declare her fate Ian most of all, I suppose. When she sails back to Calimekka, I'll see to it she won't leave again."

  "Then we're with you. You have some plan to see her dead?"

  "I have."

  "Then lead." The man at the oar beside his said, "I'll follow you and they follow me. So I speak for all of us."

  The others nodded.

  Ry looked at Yanth.

  "They killed Jaim," he said. "They tried to kill you and me."

  "They're our allies," Ry told him.

  "Then they're our allies." Yanth's face remained cold. "But they aren't our friends, and if someday once Rrru-eeth is dead I have the chance to sink my blade into the heart of that bastard"he nodded toward the man whose blade had killed Jaim "his blood will feed my sword before he knows to draw breath."

  The man Yanth had pointed out shrugged. "Name your time and your place, and I'll be there. I did not kill your friend out of any malice; if I had known you planned to put an end to Rrru-eeth, I would never have fought you at all. And I apologize for my mistake. But if that isn't enough for you and you want to test your metal against mine, I won't argue."

  "It's not enough," Yanth said. "When this first matter is settled, you and I will settle our own score."

  Chapter 40

  The K'hbeth Rhu'ute, once the Peregrine, sailed out of harbor amid a flurry of accusations, demands for crew extradition to shore, and threats against both ship and crew should it ever sail into Heymar's harbor again. Rrru-eeth Y'tallin stood by her people, declaring that she, as a ship's captain both registered and sworn, claimed sovereignty over them and the disposition of justice. She said she would try those accused of murder when they were at sea, and would see that they received the fates they deserved. In the meantime, she wanted the bodies of her three crewmen back so they could have proper burial
at sea.

  It was testament to her ferocity that Jaim's body and those of the other two dead arrived at the dock promptly and were rowed out by townsfolk. Rrru-eeth found out that the woman standing on the dock watching the bodies being brought out was Kelje Shrubber, wife of the man her people were charged with murdering. She bade the burly dockworkers who'd rowed the bodies out wait, and went into her stores and came back with two small leather bags. "See that she gets both of these," Rrru-eeth said. "They are compensation for the loss of her husband and helpmeet, and though I know they are no comfort at a time like this, still they will keep the tax collectors and the estate dividers from her door." She smiled broadly enough that both men could clearly see the points of her teeth and added, "I'll just stand here and watch you, to be sure she gets it all."