Demontech: Onslaught (41 page)

Haft shook his head and chewed his lip but said nothing. Silent and Fletcher looked grim and didn’t speak. The magician appeared not to have understood her question.

Spinner shook his head and said, “I don’t know.”

“Find them,” Alyline demanded. She directed the stallion toward a ravine a hundred paces from the burned farmhouse.

Wolf ran to block her way—his nose had told him what was in the ravine. He growled at the stallion, which bucked and kicked out at the wolf, then continued on its way. Wolf whined at Alyline, then turned his head and barked sharply at Spinner before running to reach the ravine before she did.

Spinner swore, urging the gelding into a canter. Reaching the lip of the ravine before Alyline, he stopped next to Wolf and turned his face from the sight that greeted his eyes.

Alyline reached the ravine and sat for a long moment looking into it. The rest of the group followed more slowly. When they all reached it, she said harshly, “Bury them,” and turned away. Doli and Zweepee followed her.

The men sat quietly for a moment, looking anywhere but at each other or what awaited them in the bottom of the ravine. Five bodies lay there, their limbs aclutter and torsos twisted. All were female. All were naked. Bruises showed that they had been used hard before they were mutilated and murdered. Scavengers had been at them.

“Let’s see if there are shovels,” Spinner said at length. He turned the gelding away and headed for the ruins of the farmhouse. Haft went with him. They found a pick head and the blades of two shovels; the handles had burned away. Back at the ravine, they quickly cut and trimmed new handles and fit them to the digging blades. The handles weren’t very good, but they only had to last long enough to dig the one hole. The men had no stomach for the job. They quickly dug a pit to dump the bodies into.

“Reverently,” Alyline snapped when Spinner and Fletcher picked up the first body.

They avoided farms after that.

At first and last light each day, Xundoe dispatched a messenger to find out what was happening elsewhere, but none of the flying demons returned, nor did messengers from elsewhere come to him.

Xundoe worried over the failure of his imbaluris to communicate, and his manner became more dejected every time a messenger did not return. He was sure the failure was neither the fault of the imbaluris nor of the instructions he gave them, but he feared the outlanders might think it was.

He did not discuss with them the possibility that no Zobran magicians remained free to control messenger demons; that the Jokapcul had captured them all.

On what turned out to be the second to last day of their journey south, the smoke they saw filling the sky caused them to advance more cautiously; the enemy had to be somewhere close to their front. It seemed the prisoner had been right about Zobra City being besieged.

The next day they crouched under the trees atop a high bluff overlooking Zobra City. The smoke had diminished; the fire that caused it was nearly burned out—it came from the harbor, where the ships that were in port and unable to escape through the blockade of Jokapcul coast-huggers were burned to the waterline. They were too far away to see any details of the people they saw moving about the city, but the banners rising above it, and above the military encampments around the city, told them what they needed to know—Zobra City was in the hands of the enemy.

“We must go overland to the east coast,” Alyline said. She was no longer golden. That day her clothing was a dull, dark green. A sturdy leather girdle hugged her hips. Her hair was dirty.

The men looked to the east. Somewhere in that direction, they hoped, lay safety. But it looked like the Jokapcul were conquering new lands at a faster pace than they were fleeing.

“What will we do if we run into more of them along the way?” Doli asked from her usual position near Spinner.

“We fight,” Spinner said.

Haft gripped the haft of his axe and hammered its head on the ground.

Fletcher and Silent nodded agreement.

Xundoe again considered the array of demons he had found in the Jokapcul magician’s kit and wondered how long they would last if they had to fight along their way.

“We have no choice,” Zweepee said, moving close to her husband and hugging him.

Wolf raised his head and sniffed loudly, seeking the safest way to go.

“We’ve wasted enough time here,” Spinner said. He stood and followed Wolf. The others trailed behind.

“We need more horses,” Fletcher said. No one responded. The only way they would get more horses was by taking them from Jokapcul cavalry, and none of them was certain they would win the fight.

A week later they were a hundred miles east and to the north of Zobra City. They had the extra horses they needed. Xundoe had a new magic kit with more demons and demon food, including demons he didn’t know what to make of. And their party of nine had grown to two score. They had to make another decision—should they attempt to enter the Princedons in hope of finding a ship home? Or should they brave the Low Desert and head directly for the east coast of Nunimar?

The named types of “demons” in this novel come from a variety of mythologies and folklores. While I tried to keep the core of their traditional characters, I changed them unmercifully to meet the needs of the story. The unnamed demon types, I simply made up.

By David Sherman

Fiction

The Night Fighters

KNIVES IN THE NIGHT

MAIN FORCE ASSAULT

OUT OF THE FIRE

A ROCK AND A HARD PLACE

A NGHU NIGHT FALLS

CHARLIE DON’T LIVE HERE ANYMORE

THERE I WAS: THE WAR OF CORPORAL HENRY J. MORRIS, USMC

THE SQUAD

A Del Rey
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Book

Published by The Ballantine Publishing Group

Copyright © 2002 by David Sherman

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by The Ballantine Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

Del Rey is a registered trademark and the Del Rey colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

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ISBN 0-345-44374-8

v1.0

Onslaught

David Sherman

OEB

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