Demontech: Onslaught (25 page)

“
Spinner!
Where are you?” Haft screamed.

“Where did you go?” Spinner’s voice replied from where he vanished.

Haft realized the voluptuous creature on his shoulder was twirling her robe around him. Air was moving around him like a tiny whirlwind.

“I’m right here. Can’t you see me?”

“No. I hear you, but I can’t see anything where your voice is.” Spinner reached out tentatively to where Haft’s voice came from and felt a rapidly moving stream of air. He pushed his hand past the resistance and felt Haft’s chest.

“By the gods,” he swore. “These creatures make us invisible.

“Naw kretue!”
the thing on his shoulder tinkled into his ear.
“Lalla Mkouma! M’likmoo! Oo nizzem.”

“How do we make them stop?” There was an edge of panic to Haft’s voice.

“Rubbum egg,”
the Lalla Mkouma on his left shoulder piped into his ear.

“What?” Rubber egg?

“Rubbum egg,”
she repeated.
“Gimmum han.”

Cautiously, not sure of what the creature meant, Haft shifted the axe to his left hand and raised his right to his shoulder. Tiny hands gripped his finger, pulling with more strength than he would have expected so tiny a creature to possess. When his fingertips reached what must have been the thigh of the Lalla Mkouma, she said,
“Rubbum.”

Despite feeling that there was something distinctly wrong about caressing the leg of the tiny woman, Haft gently rubbed her thigh. The Lalla Mkouma giggled into his ear and her robe settled out of its spin.

“I can see you!” Spinner exclaimed.

“Rub her thigh! That makes them stop.”

Spinner did as Haft said. He reappeared.

More doors were open by that time, and more men looked out. Most of them saw the fire and cried an alarm. The few who saw Spinner and Haft reappear said rapid prayers and followed the panicked exodus of those already in the corridor. “We’ll need another one of these little ladies for the Golden Girl,” Spinner said.

As though invited, another of the miniature women climbed onto each of them and snuggled against the free side of their necks.

“Now we have a better chance of getting the key,” Spinner said grimly, but his eyes rolled uncertainly toward the female forms on his shoulders. “Make us invisible again?” he asked.

The woman on his left shoulder giggled and spun her robe. The two men vanished.

They ran through the growing crowd of men struggling to the stairway in the far corner of the third floor. The only other way down was to jump from the windows. They pushed and shoved and yanked running men out of their way. The crowd panicked more as men were pushed aside by invisible beings. Some of the fleeing men ducked into rooms to get out of the way of the phantoms who were knocking them about. Several fought their way to windows, concluding that the dangers of a drop of more than twenty feet was better than being mauled by phantoms or getting crushed by the panic in the corridor.

None of the men rushing to leave the second floor had seen flames, and none of them had seen a ghostly fight or been shoved by phantoms; their flight was less panicky though equally confused. Spinner and Haft pushed against the flow of men toward the stairs leading down to the common room then ran around the outside of the second floor to reach the slavemaster’s quarters.

Behind them, someone was trying to bring order to the chaos and organize a fire brigade to combat the flames.

Four men-at-arms stood outside the open door to the slavemaster’s quarters. Spinner stopped. He heard Haft continue to move toward them and held out an arm to stop him; the guards weren’t looking down the corridors, but at a green, dimly glowing ball that hovered in midair at waist height before them. He also noticed a few shimmers and glints of light in the air at throat and ankle level between them and the guards.

Spinner pulled Haft back far enough around the corner for them to talk without being heard by the guards. In a few words he described the shimmering wires he’d seen. Haft thought the glints were probably from wires stretched across the corridor. Neither had a guess about the glowing ball.

“It might be a counterspell to the power of the Lalla Mkouma,” Spinner said. “Remember, right before the soldiers appeared in front of us, the voice that demanded to know who we were? The slavemaster must also be a magician. He knew exactly where we were and told his men. Otherwise they wouldn’t have been able to come at us the way they did. He probably knows the Lalla Mkouma are protecting us.”

“How could he know where we were?” Haft asked. We didn’t see any watch-sprites, no little houses on the walls.”

“I don’t know how, but he must have known. And he probably knows we have the creatures.”

“Naw kretue!”
an annoyed voice tinkled into his ear.
“Lalla Mkouma!”

“Lalla Mkouma,” Spinner nervously corrected himself, then hurried on. “His men are ready to make us visible when we attack them. So we have to get close enough to stop them before they can activate the counterspell. It looked to me like there are few enough wires between here and there for us to avoid tripping on them if we’re careful.”

“And the slavemaster is supposed to be a master swordsman as well,” Haft said. He was beginning to think the situation through and was becoming cautious. “As soon as we attack his men, he will join in the fight and we’ll lose whatever advantage surprise gives us. So we have to find a way to avoid fighting with him and his men at the same time.”

Spinner looked with admiration at where he was sure Haft was. His companion didn’t usually think things through so clearly. “Do you have another idea?”

“Maybe. Wait here.”

Spinner reached for him but grabbed at air—Haft was already gone. Spinner stayed put. As long as the Lalla Mkouma worked its magic on Haft’s shoulder, he knew he had no way of knowing where to search for him. He listened. He couldn’t hear Haft’s movement, but sounds from farther away indicated that the fire brigade was getting itself better organized.

A moment later Spinner jumped at Haft’s voice near his ear.

“There’s another door open between here and the slavemaster’s room. We can go in there. Maybe his window is still open. If it is, the outside wall is rough enough to give us handholds so we can climb across it to the window. I looked—his shutters are open. We can climb inside and catch him by surprise. By the time his men come in to find out what the noise is about, we should have taken him and the key. We can probably get out without having to fight them.”

Spinner stared at the empty air his friend’s voice came from. “Haft,” he said slowly, “I can’t believe you came up with this idea.”

“What do you mean? It’ll work.”

“I know it will. It’s brilliant. It’s just that you never think like this.”

Haft flushed at the praise, but his voice was calm when he replied, “You always do the thinking, I never have to. This time you didn’t, so I did.”

Spinner grinned. “Maybe I should give you more chances to think. Lead the way.”

Haft put an unseen hand on Spinner’s arm and said, “This way.”

The open door they headed for was the third door before the slavemaster’s room. Along the way they ducked under one throat-high shimmering light and stepped over two at ankle level.

They reached the open door without being noticed and then leaned out the window to examine the wall. The stones weren’t cut true, and the gaps where they joined weren’t filled with mortar.

“That looks easy enough,” Haft whispered.

Spinner wasn’t as sure.

Above, men were shouting as they worked to put out the fire. Below them on the ground, men were scurrying back and forth, doing what little they could to assist in the fight against the fire. Others clustered in small groups between the inn and the slave barn, watching the fire flaring from the windows on the third floor.

Spinner examined the crowd. “I don’t see any of the women who work here,” he murmured.

Haft grunted. He didn’t see any of the women either. “Maybe they’re on the other side of the building.”

Spinner didn’t reply. He turned his face toward the Lalla Mkouma that had first climbed to his shoulder. “Do you understand what we’re going to do?” he asked.

“Yss,”
she replied.
“Ee goam oo.”
She pressed her miniature bosom into his cheek as she leaned around his head to chatter something at the Lalla Mkouma on his other shoulder.

The other chattered back, then clambered to the floor and up onto a small table.
“Ee way’um ere,”
she piped. Seconds later she was joined by one of Haft’s Lalla Mkouma.

“Haft, are you ready?” Spinner asked.

“On my way,” Haft replied. He climbed through the window, probed down with his toes, searching for a hold, and found one quickly. Reaching across with one hand, he found a space between stones where he could get a firm grip. He pulled himself out the rest of the way and let go of the sill. In a few seconds he had shuffled far enough away from the window for Spinner to follow.

In seconds Spinner found himself clinging to the outside wall, high enough up that if he lost his grip and fell he might break a leg when he hit the ground below.

“Stop,” Haft said when he reached the closed shutters of the next window. The shutters were well-constructed and tight; as far as he could reach, he couldn’t find a fingerhold across them. But the sill protruded from beneath the shutters. “I’m going to try to go below the window,” he said, his voice at normal volume. By then the people on the ground were making enough noise to mask any noise he and Spinner made. Haft stretched one leg downward; it was a long stretch before his questing toes found another gap they could slip into and hold his weight. He lowered himself and the protruding sill offered better purchase than the stones had.

“I’m across,” he said when he reached the other side. The stretch down wasn’t as difficult for Spinner because he was taller, but the traverse wasn’t as easy, likewise because he was taller. But he made it to the other side with no more difficulty than Haft had.

The shutters of the next window were open; the sill would give an easy grip and allow them to pass it quickly. But it was one of the rooms the men-at-arms occupied, and a lamp was lit inside, so anyone there might hear them. Haft stopped at the side of the window, shifted his hands and feet, then stuck his head inside the window to look around. There was only one corner of the room he couldn’t see into, but the room looked empty and the door was closed. He could lower himself far enough to cross with his hands on the stone below the sill or he could take the chance that nobody was in the corner he couldn’t see.

He told Spinner what he saw and what he was doing and took the chance. He was across the window faster than he’d covered any other part of the wall. Now it was only a few more feet to the slavemaster’s window.

“Wait here while I look inside,” Haft whispered when Spinner caught up with him.

Haft listened carefully at the corner of the window. Even if nobody was talking or moving about, occupied rooms tended to sound occupied. No one was talking in the slavemaster’s room or moving about, nor could Haft hear any breathing. But the room sounded like someone was in it; his ears didn’t detect the hollow quality of an empty room. He slowly eased himself down the wall to where his fingers could get a purchase on the stone of the wall below the sill, and took another shuffling step to his right so he could look over the sill.

No one lunged at him, no one was even looking in his direction, but what he saw inside the room made him more afraid than he had ever been. Not even the gray tabur or the seven Jokapcul cavalrymen he and a wounded Spinner had faced frightened him as much.

The slavemaster was alone in the room. He wasn’t wearing the nondescript cloak he wore when he went to the slave barn. In its place he wore armor of leather and metal plates similar to the armor worn by the cavalrymen, but more ornate. A finely wrought, ornate sword stood ready to hand. It was longer than the Jokapcul cavalry sword. Another sword, shorter than the saber issued to the Frangerian Marines, was next to it. The shorter sword wasn’t as ornate as the longer one, but it was more suited to swinging in that room. Haft thought if he was armed and armored thus, the slavemaster must truly be the master swordsman the Golden Girl said he was. What unnerved him, however, was something else. The slavemaster was hunched over, talking to a hideous winged demon with red, glowing eyes. The demon was the size of a large owl and had claws bigger than the claws on the biggest eagle Haft had ever seen. And they were both talking Jokapcul.

Haft suddenly wished that Spinner hadn’t noticed the odd anklets on the serving maids, that he hadn’t asked the Golden Girl about them, that she hadn’t told him, that he himself didn’t care about the evil of slavery, that they had simply continued on their journey. Two young Marines, especially two very good and self-confident Marines like them, could go up against a very good swordsman and expect to win. But a sorcerer, or even a high wizard, was entirely too powerful for them to face, and this slavemaster was certainly that.

He was about to move back, to urge Spinner into the open window they’d passed moments before so he could tell him they had to end this quest, to give it up, when an unearthly scream came from the side. He jerked his head in that direction and saw another apparition, one even more frightening, hovering a few yards away: a hoard of bees silently buzzed just beyond Spinner’s other side. They were in a formation, mimicking the shape of a winged demon like the one the slavemaster was talking to.

Abruptly, the bees began buzzing loudly. They swarmed past Spinner, around Haft, and into the open window to the slavemaster and the winged monster. Slavemaster and demon jerked their heads toward the bees. The buzzing of the swarm changed in pitch and tone, then the winged demon looked past it to the window and garbled something. The slavemaster jumped to his feet, the smaller sword in hand, and raced toward the window.