Guards of Haven: The Adventures of Hawk and Fisher (Hawk & Fisher) (6 page)
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Authors: Simon R. Green
BOOK: Guards of Haven: The Adventures of Hawk and Fisher (Hawk & Fisher)
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“By the time anyone gets here, Fenris will have his new face and we’ll have lost him.”
Fisher scowled. “Given the alternatives, I say let him go. It’s not as if he was a murderer or something. Hell, Haven’s full of spies. What’s one more or less going to make any difference?”
“No,” said Hawk firmly. “We can’t let him go. It would be bad for our reputation. People would think we’d got soft, and take advantage.”
Fisher shook her head. “There has to be an easier way to make a living. All right, let’s go in after him. No point in sneaking around. Grimm’s bound to have the place covered with security spells to warn of intruders. So, crash straight in and trust to the suppressor stone to protect us. Right?”
“Sounds good to me,” said Hawk. “Let’s do it.”
He handed Fisher the suppressor stone, and she muttered the activating phrase. The stone glowed fiercely in her hand like a miniature star. They started up the exterior stairway, Hawk in the lead, axe at the ready. The stairs creaked loudly.
Great,
thought Hawk,
Just great.
They hurried up the steps to the door at the top of the stairway. Hawk listened carefully, his ear pressed against the wood, but he couldn’t hear anything. He tried the door handle and it turned stiffly in his grasp. He eased the door open an inch, and then stepped back. He glanced at Fisher for reassurance, and found she was doing the same to him. He smiled briefly. They both counted to three under their breath, kicked the door in and burst into the room beyond, weapons at the ready.
Great,
thought Hawk,
Just great.
They hurried up the steps to the door at the top of the stairway. Hawk listened carefully, his ear pressed against the wood, but he couldn’t hear anything. He tried the door handle and it turned stiffly in his grasp. He eased the door open an inch, and then stepped back. He glanced at Fisher for reassurance, and found she was doing the same to him. He smiled briefly. They both counted to three under their breath, kicked the door in and burst into the room beyond, weapons at the ready.
The sorcerer Grimm was escorting a robed and hooded figure to a door at the far end of the room. He spun round and glared at the intruders, and then pushed the hooded figure towards the far door. The Guards started forward, but the figure was out the door and gone before they got anywhere near him. Which left them facing the sorcerer. Grimm was a huge, broad-chested man dressed in sorcerer’s black, with a thick beard and an impressive mane of jet-black hair. He was smiling unpleasantly, like a vulture about to feed on a dead man’s eyes.
“You’re under arrest, in the name of the Guard!” said Hawk resolutely, and then flung himself to one side as Grimm snatched a ball of fire out of thin air and threw it at him. The fireball hit a chair and incinerated it. Fisher threw a knife while the sorcerer was distracted, and it sank deep into Grimm’s arm. He cursed briefly, pulled the knife out, and threw it aside. Hawk and Fisher charged across the room towards him. The sorcerer drew himself up and spoke a Word of Power. The suppressor stone flared up, cancelling out his magic. Hawk and Fisher hit the sorcerer together, throwing him to the floor. There was a short, confused struggle, and then Fisher clubbed him unconscious with the hilt of her sword. Grimm went limp, and Hawk and Fisher rolled off him. They sat together, backs against the wall, and waited for their breathing to get back to normal.
“Well, at least we’ve got something to show for the chase,” said Hawk.
“Yeah,” said Fisher. “Pity about Fenris, though. We were that close to getting him....”
“Forget it,” said Hawk. “He’s long gone by now, with a new face and build, the crafty bastard. We’ll have to start over from scratch.”
“Right. Our superiors are not going to be pleased with us.”
They sat in silence for a while.
“There isn’t a reward on Grimm, by any chance, is there?” said Hawk hopefully.
“No chance. There’s never been any real evidence against him. Still, he’s dropped himself right in it this time. Aiding and abetting a fugitive, resisting arrest, assaulting the Guard ...”
“Right,” said Hawk. “Once he wakes up, he’s going to have some very leading questions to answer.”
“Assuming he hasn’t got concussion, and lost his memory.”
Hawk groaned. “Don’t. It would be just our luck if we had accidentally scrambled his brains. Come on, let’s have a look round the place while we’re here. Maybe we’ll get lucky and find a clue or something.”
They moved cautiously round Grimm’s quarters, being very careful not to touch anything without checking it out first. Magic-users were often fond of setting booby traps for the unwary. Hawk’s usual method of searching the premises was to trash the place until it looked like a hurricane had hit it, but this room already looked as if someone had beaten him to it. Grimm was one of those people who lived in a permanent mess and liked it that way. His quarters took up the whole of the first floor—a single long room littered with junk and debris of every description.
There were racks of chemicals, glass vials and tubing, pewter mugs and mixing bowls, all scattered over two huge tables. Together with papers and books and what appeared to be the remains of at least three different meals. Hawk tossed aside a discarded shirt and grimaced as he discovered a dead cat, dissected into its component parts and neatly pinned to a display board. Beneath the cat were detailed instructions on how to put the animal back together again. Either Grimm had a really nasty sense of humour, or ... Hawk decided very firmly that he wasn’t going to think about that.
The bed looked as though Grimm had left it exactly as he’d crawled out of it. Fisher peered underneath, just in case, but there was nothing there except dust and a chamber pot. A combination desk and writing table looked more interesting. She eased the drawers open one by one with the tip of her sword, and smiled as she came across a thick sheaf of papers. She ran the suppressor stone over the desk, and then carefully removed the papers, watching all the time in case there was a mechanical booby trap as well. She leafed quickly through the papers, scowling as she tried to make out Grimm’s scratchy handwriting.
Hawk looked into a recessed alcove, and his breath caught in his throat. A dozen different faces lined the wall; skins so skillfully taken and mounted they seemed almost alive. Hawk fought down his disgust and looked them over carefully. They were all unique, no two even remotely alike. Presumably they were models for the faces Grimm could give his customers. He’d better get a Guard sketch artist in to make copies. Fenris might be wearing one of these faces. He moved closer and studied them thoughtfully. Whatever else you could say about Grimm, he knew his stuff. The faces were incredibly lifelike. He reached out a hand to touch one, and then snatched his hand back as the face opened its eyes and looked at him. A grimace of pain moved slowly across the flat features, and the mouth stretched in a soundless scream. The other faces stirred, eyes opening across the wall to fix Hawk with the same unblinking look of agonized despair. Hawk’s stomach lurched as he realized they were all still alive, pinned up and endlessly suffering.
Whatever happened, Hawk swore he’d see Grimm brought to justice for this, at least.
“Isobel, get over here, fast.”
Fisher ran quickly to join him, sword in hand, and stared numbly at the writhing faces on the wall. “My God, Hawk. What kind of bastard ... We’ve got to do something. We can’t leave them like this.”
“No, we can’t. Try the suppressor stone. Maybe it’ll cancel out the magic that’s keeping them alive.”
Fisher nodded, and ran the stone slowly over the staring faces. One by one the eyes closed and did not open again. The life went out of the faces, and soon they were nothing more than empty masks, pinned to a wall. At rest, at last. Fisher touched a few of them tentatively, but they didn’t respond. The skin was soft, but already cooling. Just to be sure, Hawk had her run the suppressor stone over the dissected cat as well.
They took turns examining the papers Fisher had found in Grimm’s desk. They seemed to be records of services Grimm had provided in the past, but no names were ever mentioned, only initials. It was mostly cosmetic sorcery, though some of the more bizarre requests made Hawk blink. There was no accounting for taste. But interesting though the documents were, there was nothing in them to tie Grimm in with the spy Fenris. Or at least, nothing Hawk could recognize. He threw the papers back onto the desk, and looked frustratedly around him.
“We’re not going to find anything here. He’s too careful, too meticulous. Probably keeps the important information locked up in his head.”
So let the Guard sorcerers get it out of him,” said Fisher. “Let them earn their money for a change.”
There was a low groan from behind them, and they looked quickly round. At the other end of the room the sorcerer Grimm was rising unsteadily to his feet. He shook his head once to clear it, and then his gaze fell on Hawk and Fisher and his face darkened. He smiled slowly, removed his robe and threw it to one side. Ropes of muscle bulged suddenly across his bare chest and shoulders, pushing out the taut skin. Hawk and Fisher watched transfixed as the sorcerer changed. His body stretched and swelled, impossible muscles crawling over an inhumanly magnified frame. His face trembled, the features shifting grotesquely as his inner rage expressed itself in distorted flesh and bone. His eyes became featureless black pools, and sharp jagged teeth distorted the shape of his mouth. Grimm padded slowly forward, his crooked hands growing razored claws.
“I think we may have a problem here,” said Hawk, taking a firm hold on his axe.
“You always did have a gift for understatement,” said Fisher. “What the hell’s happening to him?”
“From the look of it, I’d say the sorcerer wasn’t averse to sampling his own wares. He’s got to the stage where he can shapechange at will.”
“You know, this strikes me as a good time to get the hell out of here and yell for reinforcements.”
“We can’t. He’s between us and the nearest door. We’re going to have to stop him ourselves.”
“Oh, great. How?”
“I’m thinking!”
Grimm lurched forward, his jaws snapping shut like a steel trap. There was no longer anything human in his face. Hawk and Fisher quickly separated, to attack him from different sides, and each of the sorcerer’s eyes crawled to different positions on his head so that he could watch both Guards at once. Hawk darted in and cut at Grimm with his axe. The heavy steel head sheared through the sorcerer’s waist and out again, but no blood flew. The wound closed immediately, the unnatural flesh flowing seamlessly back together again. Fisher cut at Grimm from the other side, to no better effect. The sorcerer reached for Hawk with a gnarled, clawed hand. Hawk quickly retreated, but the hand just kept coming after him as the arm stretched to an impossible length.
“The stone!” yelled Hawk, backing frantically away. “Try the suppressor stone on him!”
“I’ve already tried that! It doesn’t seem to affect him!”
“Well, keep trying!” Hawk threw himself to one side and the clawing hand dug deep furrows in the wall behind him. He darted behind the writing desk. Grimm demolished it with one blow of a spiked arm. Hawk looked quickly round the room, checking for possible escape routes. Fisher clutched the suppressor stone in her hand, muttering the activating phrase over and over again. The stone suddenly flared with light, bright and dazzling, burning her hand with sudden heat. Fisher threw the stone straight at the sorcerer’s misshapen face. He snatched it out of midair and looked at it curiously. The stone exploded, ripping the sorcerer’s head from his body and shattering every window in the room.
For a long moment there was silence, broken only by soft settling sounds as debris from the explosion pattered to the floor. Hawk and Fisher got slowly to their feet, brushing dust from their clothes. Where the hideous creature had been, lay a headless human body. Hawk shook his head gingerly, trying to shift the ringing in his ears. Fisher put an arm round his shoulders, and they leaned companionably together for a moment.
“We didn’t do too well with this one, did we, Hawk?”
“You could say that. Fenris has escaped, with a new face and body. The one man who could have helped us find him is now dead. And on top of all that, we’ve lost our suppressor stone. Some days you just shouldn’t get out of bed.”
“Well,” said Fisher, “at least this time they can’t blame us for being impulsive.” Hawk looked at her. Fisher gestured at Grimm’s body. “After all, he’s the one who lost his head.”
2
Fenris Gone to Ground
The cleanup squad finally made its appearance, with a meat wagon not far behind. Two Guard Constables chalked a rough outline round the headless body, and made laborious notes about the state of the corpse. The forensic sorcerer waited impatiently for them to finish, already in a foul mood at being dragged from his bed so early in the morning. Hawk and Fisher leant against a wall together, drinking the late sorcerer’s wine and trying to put together some kind of report that wouldn’t get them both busted down to Constable, or beyond.
The two Constables unhurriedly compared notes, and then got out of the way so that the forensic sorcerer could do his stuff. He glared venomously at them, then knelt down by the body and rolled up his sleeves. Hawk and Fisher looked at each other and unanimously decided this might be a good time to get some fresh air. On-the-spot autopsies tended to be thorough, but messy. Hawk drained the last of the wine from the bottle he and Fisher had been passing back and forth, and his lips thinned away from the dregs. It had been a piss-poor vintage, but the sourness suited his mood. No matter what kind of report he and Fisher eventually handed in, he had no doubt they were both in real trouble.
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