Ilbei Spadebreaker and the Harpy's Wild (31 page)

Realizing Jasper wasn’t moving, Ilbei tackled him and drove him across the space, the two of them crashing against the wall near Meggins. Something burned along the back of Ilbei’s thighs as they slammed into the cold rock. Bits of gravel rained down into the pool right after. When he righted himself, he reached back and felt the line of the cuts that ran across the back of his legs, deep enough to bleed, but no worse than that.

The cave down which the fireball roared glowed orange for a short time, dimming with each passing heartbeat, and then it was gone. Darkness followed the glare for a moment as their eyes adjusted once more to the faint blue glow.

“Did you get him?” Kaige had to ask, anxiousness giving volume to his voice.

Verity’s laughter was his answer.

Chapter 24

“G
orgon’s stone,” Ilbei swore as Verity taunted them from the darkness downstream. Ilbei stared across the scant distance of the pool, Kaige staring back hopefully and Mags lying there with her legs dangling in the pool, stirred some by the movement of water. If she wasn’t dead yet, she would be from hypothermia soon enough. They needed to get clear and to a dry place where Jasper could read the longer healing spell on her. She couldn’t afford for them to let Verity keep them under siege.

“I saw him,” Jasper whispered. “He’s eighty spans down, against the right side, where the cave bends.”

“I don’t remember it bendin much,” Ilbei said. “Not enough fer cover anyway. How’d the fireball miss?”

“I shot it down the middle, like you said. We should have done it along the floor. He dropped down and pressed against the wall. It went right over him.”

“Well, can ya get him with the other one?”

“Not without targeting him directly, which means I need to get out there and actually see him before I cast. There’s no other way. Anything else is guessing at last known location.”

“Well, we can’t do that. Might as well throw ya in a direwolf den wearin a pair of bacon underpants,” Ilbei said.

“Why would I be wearing underclothing made from bacon? That’s hardly likely. I can’t imagine anyone making such a thing, much less wearing it.”

“It’s just a saying, Jasper,” Meggins said.

“Oh,” Jasper replied. “Yes, I keep forgetting. The underclothing made from bacon is the humorous element
because
no one would do that, and therefore it would excite the direwolves terribly.” He actually grinned.

“Ya picked a strange time to find a sense of humor,” Ilbei observed. “Now both of ya, help me think.”

“Come on, Spadebreaker,” Verity called. “If that was the best you’ve got, then we all know how this is going to end. I really see no point in prolonging it. I’m not even in the water and my feet are cold. You all ought to be getting pretty uncomfortable in there.”

Ilbei ignored him. He looked to Kaige, who sat watching him think, the big man’s expression suggesting he had absolute confidence that Ilbei would think of something. Mags lying beside him troubled Ilbei, though. A trickle of blood had begun to run off the shelf, the droplets falling into the water and turning purple in the blue light. That was both promising and not.

That’s when Ilbei realized the fungus was giving Verity the advantage over them. He cursed himself for being so slow to realize it. He reached down into the water, where his own wounds were dripping purplish whorls that stretched and flowed away, and pulled off a chunk of fungus. He broke it up into smaller pieces like crumbling bread and threw them into the water, where they bobbed and turned and slowly floated away. Ilbei grinned.

“Kaige, get yer cloak,” he ordered, whispering. Kaige didn’t hesitate or ask why. He was only a moment in getting it out of his pack, then held it up for Ilbei to see. Ilbei made a motion with his hands, indicating that Kaige should wad it up and throw it to him, which he did.

“Toss me that,” Ilbei said then, pointing to Mags’ staff. Kaige scooted around the water’s edge and retrieved it, then threw it to Ilbei as well. He did appear curious as to what Ilbei was about, but he had sense enough not to ask.

Ilbei turned to Meggins and Jasper, whispering as low as he could to still be heard over the water splashing down. “I’m goin to make a curtain with these,” he said. “It will be nearly wide enough to cover the entrance there. Meggins and Kaige can hold it up from either side, safe as can be. Then Jasper, you and me is gonna knock all this fungus loose and send it downstream. He can’t shoot what he can’t see.”

Meggins’ head bobbed up and down, realizing what Ilbei had planned. But Jasper didn’t look pleased. “He can still shoot through it. And he’ll see our feet in the water until it’s all gone.”

“We’ll stay up along the edge here, and we’ll use Kaige’s sword to get the stuff at the bottom.”

“Then what?”

“Then we wait fer it to float down there where he is. You watch it till it gets to him, and then ya blow his gods-be-damned head off with that last fireball of yers.”

Meggins’ teeth reflected blue light from the curve of his smile. “Genius, Sarge. The ruddy bastard will never know what hit him.”

“I don’t think we’ll be able to scrape the whole pool clean, clinging to the edge and working it with the point of a sword,” Jasper said. “He’s still going to have something to shoot at. And I can’t read the spell without seeing him the entire time to target him. And I also can’t do it stooped over peeking through the crack in your curtain either. Targeting fireballs isn’t like lobbing snowballs or dirt clods at your friends, you know?”

“When was the last time you were in a snowball fight?” Meggins asked.

Both Jasper and Ilbei glared at him. “That’s a right pointless thing to ask,” Ilbei said.

“I just never saw Jasper as the snowball-fighting kind. And dirt clods, well, that’s a whole different level of commitment. That’s all I’m saying.”

Ilbei was going to rebuke Meggins for it, but surprisingly, Jasper agreed. “You’re correct. But I have observed both orders of conflict from afar, and often enough the children would glance out from behind trees or over snow fortifications, then duck back. Then, when they felt the timing was adequate, they’d expose themselves long enough to throw toward where their enemies were when last they looked. It’s a well-established strategy for both types of combat, and I hardly think one needs to have participated in either to recognize the analogous suitability for our predicament.”

Meggins, for once, appeared at a loss for words. Ilbei, however, stayed on point. “Fine,” he said. “So if’n ya can’t cast a fireball without watchin him the whole while, what can ya cast snowball like?”

“Nothing,” Jasper said. “I already told you what spells I have. The lightning works just like the fireball for targeting, and we’re lucky to even have it as an option, because most lightning works by touch, and only the very advanced sorts have range like this one has, albeit not a great range. And, excepting the teleports, which I’ve already said are also minimum range, I simply have nothing else that counts for ranged combat at all.”

Ilbei stared into the water. He pushed a chunk of fungus off the wall with his boot heel and watched it float downstream. He knew the floating fungus idea was a good one, despite Jasper’s objections, but it was worthless if they couldn’t target Verity properly. He thought about having Jasper cast the fireball as an opening move to give Meggins a shot with his bow, but a shortbow wasn’t much use at eighty spans, especially in a low-ceilinged cave. They needed a finishing move. Mags needed a finishing move. Soon.

“How far ya say that teleport will get me?” Ilbei asked, leaning in close and nearly whispering in his ear.

“Fifty spans,” Jasper replied.

“Can ya cast that like throwin snowballs?”

“I suppose. But I have to know where you want to go.”

“I want to go right there where I can put a pick blade in Verity’s head.”

“He’s too far away. And he may have moved.”

Ilbei stared into the water again.

“Well, we can float the fungus like I said, and ya can peek round after it till ya see where he is. Once it gets close, ya send me over there near as ya can, and I’ll let him have it.”

“What if he sees you first?”

“Wait till the fungus gets right up to him, then.”

“I think that’s a reckless plan,” Jasper said. Meggins agreed with the mage.

“Have ya got a better one?” Ilbei asked. “Any of ya?”

Nobody did.

“Then let’s get to it. That young lady there don’t have all day fer us to be gassin on. Jasper, get that spell out, and if’n ya teleport me into the wall or lose me somehow in the demon realms, I swear to Mercy, my ghost will come back and haunt ya to fartin fer all yer days. Won’t be a soul will sit with ya till you’re dead and gone. Ya hear me?”

Jasper recoiled from Ilbei’s threat, and he spent a moment working through all of its content, extracting what Ilbei meant from what was “just a saying.”

Finally the grizzled old veteran put a hand on Jasper’s forearm, sparing him having to parse it all. “Just don’t botch the job, son. I’m not keen fer teleportin is all.”

“Oh,” Jasper said, obviously relieved. “Yes, of course. Many people are uncomfortable with it, actually. It’s perfectly normal. Transportation Guild Services call what you are suffering Place Shift Anxiety. In the southern duchies, the TGS offices actually allow travelers to imbibe large quantities of intoxicants before teleporting; in South Mark, they use spiced rum in conjunction with a poppy-seed extract from the eastern isle of—”

“I take it back,” Ilbei cut in. “I’m fine. Just do what ya got to do. I’d rather die bein vaporized or put in a wall than suffocate from ya suckin all the air out of the cave. Find the spell. Have it ready and be quick when time comes.” He turned to Meggins. “Squeeze on over past us, and get this here curtain made up so we can break out the fungus and get underway.”

They switched places as carefully as they could, and Meggins went to work. He cut slits along one edge of Kaige’s massive cloak and then threaded Mags’ quarterstaff through them. When he was done, he turned to Ilbei and waited for the go-ahead.

Ilbei in turn looked to Jasper. “Soon as he drops that down, get to clearin off all these along this edge. Work quick, and start from the back. Stay out of the center. I’ll cross and work on that side, then get the middle with Kaige’s sword. Ya ready?”

Jasper looked as if he might throw up, but he nodded that he would do as he was told.

Ilbei gave Meggins the signal to drop the curtain across the opening to Kaige, who was ready to catch the other end. “Keep yer hands out of arrow shot as ya hold it,” he told them. “Includin what he can shoot through the stone.”

Meggins spread the cloak out along the length of the quarterstaff and swung it out to Kaige. Kaige caught it, and the two of them lifted it up. The cloak was long enough that the bottom lay in the water, and the current pulled it downstream a little, which created long, angular openings on either side.

“Shite, didn’t foresee that,” Ilbei said, and just as he said it, an arrow shot through the cloak, coming so quickly it barely moved the cloth. It made a
whisk
sound as it snipped through the heavy wool, a second as it nipped through the waterfall, and then it struck the back wall hard. The arrow and bits of rock fell into the pool.

“I don’t think now’s the time for modesty, Sergeant,” Verity called out. “Or do you and your boys have plans for the dead girl that you don’t want me to watch?”

“Only a twisted sort thinks to say a thing like that,” Ilbei called back. “I look forward to yankin out yer tongue.”

“Yes, I’m looking forward to that, too. Please get on with it. There’s a nice meal planned up at Fall Pools tonight. I was hoping I’d make it, as I’m the one who shot the bear they’re having. Have you ever had bear meat, Sergeant? It’s fantastic. I often wonder why people don’t eat it more often. It’s the fat, you see, same as it is with pigs.”

Another arrow came through the cloak, this one lower and at an angle. It plunged into the water only a half hand from where Jasper crouched.

“Pull it toward ya,” Ilbei hissed at Meggins. “So it touches the wall.”

“That other side will be open even worse,” Meggins said.

“We’ll do this side first.”

Another arrow cut through, splitting the difference between the flight path of the last one and the first.

Ilbei motioned with his head for Jasper to get started breaking off fungus along the edge.

The two of them worked furiously. Ilbei scraped the wall beneath the surface with his boot, then used the head of his pickaxe to clear the walls above and the few that grew overhead.

He tried to step around Jasper to get to the back of the chamber, but the stone was slick where the fungus had been stripped away. He slipped and fell in.

An arrow cut across the side of his neck, though not deep; a cat might have done worse with its claw. Still too close. Ilbei rolled heavily in the water, got his feet under him and dove headlong toward the shelf upon which Mags lay.

Another arrow thudded into the rock at the back of the pool, taking a chunk of Ilbei’s left boot heel as it passed.

He landed heavily on Mags. Her body absorbed the shock some, but he bounced on her and began to roll off, back into the water and the line of sight afforded by the gap in the curtain. Kaige reached out and caught him, the muscles of his long arm and broad shoulders bulging as he hauled Ilbei one-handed onto the sloping edge of the pool beside him.