Queen of Demons (53 page)

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Authors: David Drake

BOOK: Queen of Demons
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What Cashel saw was Aria holding an oar like a club and Cozro picking himself up from the sand. It wasn't
hard to figure back to what had gone on during the time Cashel couldn't see his two companions.
Cashel's
one
companion. Cozro had just become a problem Cashel was going to solve very shortly. “Cozro!” he bellowed across the water. “Touch her again and I won't leave enough of you for the fish to finish!”
Cozro turned to look at Cashel. They were less than two hundred paces apart, but the water separating them was deeper than a man was tall. Cashel could swim, more or less, but if he tried to swim this distance he had a much better chance of winding up on the bottom of the inlet than he did of reaching Aria in time to be of service.
It was several times as far to the princess around the curving shoreline as it was across the water. Cashel started running.
Cozro shook his head to clear it. Blood dripped from the pressure cut over his left temple. If he'd heard Cashel, he'd ignored the threat. He started after Aria again, his arms spread wide.
Because Cashel intended to go out clamming in the inlet later, he hadn't dragged the dinghy up the beach after he and Aria returned from rowing practice. Instead of running as Cashel expected her to do, or fighting as a man might have done, Aria leaped into the little boat and flipped away the mooring line.
Cashel saw at once that she was right. Cozro wasn't fast, but he was a lot stronger than the princess. If she ran inland, the island's vegetation would tangle her before she'd gotten twenty steps. Cozro was between her and Cashel, and running the other way down the beach would take Aria to the giant nest at the tip of the cape with nowhere to go but into the water.
Cozro roared angrily and stumped into the sea after the dinghy. Aria teetered in the stern as she pushed the boat deeper into the inlet, using the oar like a barge pole. Cozro could swim: his third splashing breaststroke brought him almost close enough to grab the gunwale.
Aria whacked his head again with the oar. Cashel, using
the staff for balance as he ran—he ran better than he swam, but it still wasn't a talent he was known for—shouted in triumph.
If the princess had known to use the oar's edge like a wooden sword, she might have put Cozro down for good. As it was, a swat with the flat didn't do the captain serious damage but it did convince him there was no future in trying to climb aboard the dinghy. Cozro scrambled out of the water again.
“I'm coming, Princess!” Cashel cried with what breath he had left over from running through soft sand. He really hoped Cozro would try to fight him. Otherwise Cashel was going to have a moral problem about what to do with a man who'd proved he was too dangerous to live with on the same small island.
Cashel's first guess was that the captain was going back to shore to get a pole to fend off Aria's swipes. Aria must have thought the same thing, because she settled both oars in the rowlocks and clumsily stroked farther out. If she got beyond the jaws of the inlet, she might not be strong enough to get back … .
Cozro continued to run up the beach. Cashel wondered if there wasn't something in the captain's punch that ate his brain away. Cozro might be able to finish his business with Aria before Cashel caught him, but he couldn't expect to escape except possibly by rowing an empty dinghy out into an empty sea. That was an end as final as facing Cashel, and a good deal more unpleasantly slow.
Cashel had his stride, now. He wasn't fast, but he could keep going as long as he had to. Aria had found her rhythm too and was pulling with both arms together. Cashel tried to imagine what the princess would be like if she'd been born a fisherman's daughter in Barca's Hamlet. He couldn't get his mind around the thought. It was too much like imagining the sun rising in the west.
Zahag chattered enthusiastically, watching events from high in the strangler fig. Cashel knew the ape couldn't either swim or run well enough to reach Cozro before
Cashel did, but it gnawed him that it wouldn't even have occurred to Zahag to try. Zahag would probably say that the tribe's females were the chief ape's business, not his.
Cozro ran off the tip of land into the sea. Well, if the captain wanted to drown himself that was just fine with—
The dinghy grounded. The shock tipped Aria backward into the bow. Her legs waved in the air for a moment before she could clamber onto the thwart again. Cozro shouted in triumph. He was well out from the shore, but the water was only ankle-deep.
Cashel stopped. Pounding over the sand didn't help him think, and he knew he had to grasp what was going on before he could do anything about it.
Though it was simply enough, really. Aria got out of the boat and tugged at it without success. She was standing on a firm surface just beneath the water. Cozro was certainly drunk and possibly mad, but he was a sailor. He'd noticed, as Cashel had not, that there was a bar between the jaws of the inlet. Even the shallow dinghy would ground on it when the tide was low.
The princess turned and splashed toward the shore where Cashel had been working. Cozro was gaining on her. Cashel had gotten almost to the base of the inlet, about as far away as he could be. If he'd just stayed where he was …
Cashel didn't even sigh as he started back. He'd made a mistake and not for the first time. He'd do what he could, even though he could see that he wouldn't get to Aria in time for anything but revenge.
Which he would take.
Zahag started to shriek pulsingly like a wagon wheel spinning on its hub while a smith tries to balance it. The ape clung to the fig's woody stems with both hands and thumped his feet up and down on lower strands, setting the whole tall lattice to vibrate. He was staring out to sea.
“Help Aria!” Cashel bawled. If Zahag put himself between Cozro and the girl, he could hold the captain off until Cashel arrived to finish matters.
If
; but Zahag wasn't human and he surely didn't think like Cashel. He continued to call, letting go with one long arm so that he could point out to sea.
The princess was fifty feet from shore; Cozro was twenty feet behind her and gaining. She looked over her shoulder and froze where she was. Cozro shouted, “
Now
you'll learn, you little tease!”
Cashel thought Aria had panicked when she saw how close her pursuer was. He shouted, “What are you—”
His attention was so wholly focused on Cozro and the princess that he didn't see the long toothed heads coming in from the sea until the captain did. Cozro turned screaming. He splashed three steps back toward the dinghy before the monsters reached him.
Only when they slid onto the bar did Cashel realize that the creatures were birds—or their forefathers had been birds, at any rate. Their belly feathers were creamy, while those of their upper surfaces were slate gray speckled with white. The only traces of wings were tiny stubs that stuck out as the birds reared upward.
Tip to tail, the creatures were twenty feet long, and each toothy orange beak measured a yard by itself.
Cozro bawled in terror and raised his arms to cover his face. The Sister only knew what he thought that would accomplish. The birds struck simultaneously. They grabbed Cozro at the knees and shoulders, then jerked apart, shaking their heads like a pair of hens struggling over a worm. Blood splattered the foam.
After a time, Cozro stopped screaming.
Cashel continued to run along the shore. He understood now why Aria had stopped where she was. She stayed still and the captain was moving: the birds landed on Cozro like black on coal.
A smart girl, smart and quick-witted besides. Nobody was going to call Cashel either of those things, but he knew his job didn't mean hiding in the bushes while the princess was stuck out there in the water, as plain as a boil on your bum.
Cashel reached the strangler fig, twenty paces or so from where Aria would come to dry land when she next could move. Zahag had dropped to the ground and was hunching like a fur-covered rock. His bulging eyes stared at what was happening in the inlet. Cashel paused also, breathing through his open mouth and leaning forward slightly so that his diaphragm could expand his chest more easily.
The birds had just about finished with Cozro. They rose, chest to chest, hissing like water on hot rocks as they both tried to gobble down the last tidbit. Their feet were huge and orange. Scales projected from both sides of their toes in place of the skin webs that helped the geese of Barca's Hamlet swim.
One of the great birds overbalanced the other with a sly twist of the neck, a maneuver that Cashel, a wrestler, could well appreciate. Both birds slipped sideways with a great splash, but the one who'd thrown the other swallowed Cozro's leg as they fell. Fragments of the shattered dinghy flew out from under the squirming bodies.
Simultaneously and in apparent good humor, the birds flopped into the deeper water of the inlet and swam to the opposite shore where their nest stood. They slid along with their heads and long necks raised, making contented hissing sounds.
Aria began to crawl toward land. Behind her, the wreckage of the boat floated in water whose bloodstains were being quickly diluted. A small fish leaped with a bit of something in its mouth.
Cashel started toward the point where she'd arrive, moving stealthily so he wouldn't draw the birds' attention to this side of the inlet. Zahag mewled as he crept along at Cashel's side, more afraid to be alone than he was afraid to move.
The birds slid up on the beach beside their looted nest. Their cries of rage were like nothing Cashel had ever heard: high-pitched, penetrating, and louder than should come from anything alive. They dipped their heads into
the pillaged mass of leaves and seaweed, lifting out each remaining egg for examination. The beaks that had ripped Cozro to bloody fragments were mother-gentle with the softly gleaming ovoids.
Aria reached the shore. Her mouth was open and her eyes stared. She was terrified, but not too terrified to think and even act. Cashel felt a surge of warmth toward a girl he hadn't imagined he'd ever like, let alone respect.
Cashel held out his free hand to her. Tags of skin dangled from her oar-scraped palms, though the saltwater had sluiced away the blood.
A bird hooted. Aria turned her head and screamed. Both the huge creatures dived into the water with sinuous grace.
Cashel swung the princess behind him; there wasn't time to be dainty about it. “Stay close but don't get in my way!” he said. “Zahag, you too!”
His wrists set the quarterstaff spinning. The brass endwraps blurred into a gleaming, golden circle as the staff speeded up with each twist.
If there'd been one bird, and if Aria and Zahag stayed squarely behind him, Cashel thought there might have been a chance. He'd seen what the beaks could do. The teeth were like a seawolf's and the very length of the gape meant it clopped shut like the door of a fortress slamming.
One bird alone, though, would have run into a barrier of spinning firwood every time it tried to peck through to the delectable flesh beyond. The birds each weighed as much as a dozen plow oxen. One
could
squirm on through despite Cashel's defense—but there'd have been pain for it on the way, and maybe a broken beak besides. They would have had a chance, Cashel and those he defended.
Two birds working together as this pair had proved they could, well, it would be over in moments. Aria and the ape would be gone in two snaps, and the birds would quarrel over Cashel's fragments at only slightly greater length.
Blue light crackled in the circle of spinning brass. Cashel felt the world around him starting to fade. He
thought Aria was saying something, but he couldn't be sure.
The birds had crossed the inlet beneath the surface. Now they lurched up from the water. Their beaks were open and their pink tongues vibrated, but Cashel didn't hear their hissing cries. His quarterstaff was a disk of sizzling blue fire, roaring and popping and filling the world. He could see figures on the other side of it, but the giant birds thinned into shadows.
The disk was an open pit before Cashel. He fell through it; Zahag and the princess were tumbling after him.
Cashel lay in the dust of King Folquin's palace on Pandah. “Guards! Guards!” someone screamed. Cashel felt his vision blurring.
Zahag was gibbering, Aria wailing for the Mistress God, and King Folquin kept shouting for his guards. A woman with Dalopan tattoos bent and stared into Cashel's face. He recognized her from the crowd of petitioners the morning he and Zahag had been flung out of this world into the first of the places they'd trudged through before this return. Now the Dalopan was wearing a robe of silk brocade embroidered in silver thread with astrological symbols.
The woman straightened. “Stand back!” she said. “I have need of this one for my art!”
The blackness of utter exhaustion spread over Cashel like the surface of the sea.
 
 
Something in the forest canopy went
ka-ka-ka-ka
as Sharina and Unarc passed below. She didn't bother to look up. She knew by now that she wouldn't be able to see anything; and anyway, she didn't have the energy to spare for sightseeing.

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