Thick as Thieves (24 page)

Just two soldiers. They would put up a fight, but it was important to dispatch the wizards first.

“Them?” Vorgell asked again, right beside him. The only reason Madd didn’t jump out of his skin was that he’d expected him to be there.

“Yes.” A sack dropped out of nowhere to land at his feet. Food? For the love of the moon… but then he saw the sack move and realized that Vorgell had just left him the basilisk. “Petal? You’re giving me Petal? What am I—”

The riders were almost on them. The edge of an unseen cloak brushed Madd’s cheek as Vorgell darted away. Cursing under breath, he laid a hand on the thrashing sack. “Cause me any trouble and I’ll boil you,” he muttered. Not that the sack listened.

Taking up the ends of the vines he’d laid in preparation, Madd whispered a spell that bound them to moonlight and his will. His Gran had used the spell to create bowers of flowering vines and fruits. He would use it to create something else. The vines in his hands softly glowed then trembled. As the horses passed, the vines rose and snaked about their tired legs. Madd grinned. He’d tied the vines well… but they wouldn’t be able to hold terrified horses for long.

He drew his long knife as the horses bugled and men tumbled. An unseen force—Vorgell in his cloak of shadows—plucked at least one man from the saddle. A black-cloaked wizard, his wand flying uselessly from his startled hands, fell to the ground in a gurgle of blood, his throat slashed. Madd leapt for Gillja, who tumbled from her rearing horse. He helped lift her from the dirt and dragged her away from stomping hooves.

Propping her back on her feet, he hissed into her ear, “Run! To the woods!”

Madd watched her flee toward the trees then turned back to the fight. Three riderless horses, having broken free of the vines, raced toward safety, disappearing down the road. One soldier was dead not far from the slain wizard, but the other soldier was still armed and mounted, slashing at a sword and arm—and grinning blond head—that appeared to have no body. More ominously, the remaining wizard was still astride his now unencumbered horse.

Weezu might be an incompetent wizard but he appeared to know how to ride.

Two enemies… and two of them. Vorgell would say their odds were looking good. Except that Weezu’s voice lifted above the chaos, chanting over the wand he held out in his hands. The darkness around the mounted wizard was already congealing into a small but ghoulish fiend. A huge green head appeared, all red glowing eyes and a pair of clawed limbs. Just their luck. Weezu the Unlikely had unleashed Snodrat. Which meant Weezu could now command enough malice to….

“Fiend, vanquish all shadows!” Weezu cried in his high-pitched voice.

And there stood Vorgell, fully visible. The fiend could have found him anyway, but now so could everyone else. The soldier battled his horse, which had startled at the appearance of the fiend and now reared and plunged in terror. With the barbarian in all his battle glory commanding the attention of the soldier, the wizard, and the fiend, Madd seized his chance. He ran toward Weezu and plunged his knife deep into the mounted wizard’s scrawny thigh, the blade biting deep. As the wizard screamed, Madd jumped for the wand. He grabbed on to the long yellowed bone and wrenched it from Weezu’s startled grasp.

“Fiend! Vortex of fire!” Weezu ordered.

Idiot. Without a wand, Snodrat was masterless and wouldn’t deliver a vortex of fire or anything else. Madd ducked under the plunging horse and ran toward Vorgell. Even masterless, a fiend was a terrible enemy. They were barely corporeal and didn’t bleed. There was no fighting the thing… but at least while Madd held the wand, Weezu couldn’t use black art.

“Break the wand, Vorgell!” he cried, throwing the thighbone on the ground near where Snodrat and Vorgell were locked in battle. “Use the fucking mace!”

Vorgell grappled the fiend with one hand and reached for the weapon with the other. He yanked the mace free from his belt, and with a mighty swing, he tossed it toward Madd. The mace landed heavily in the dirt at Madd’s feet. Madd dove to grab it only to have to yank his hand back from an iron-shod hoof. No! Weezu the wizard had regained control of his horse. It was all Madd could do to clamber back as Weezu sought to trample him and crush his bones. He had to get that mace!

Hearing Vorgell bellow, Madd turned to see Snodrat’s ugly head bobbing and thrashing in the big man’s grasp. Amazingly, Vorgell was holding the thing at bay. But for how long?

All at once he felt something loop around his neck and recognized the rasp of rope. His breath cut short when the garrote snapped tight. Scrabbling at the rope with his fingers, he staggered hard against the broad ribs of a horse and looked up into Weezu’s little eyes.

“Not so fast, witch,” the wizard gloated. “I see you brought the barbarian. He’ll make Snodrat a fine feast, and you get to watch while you die.”

The world grew tight and small… and then Weezu turned gray.

Really gray… gray from his fingernails to his lips and even the whites of his beady, no-longer-brown eyes.

Madd grasped the rope and pulled hard until it came free from the wizard’s hardening hand. He tumbled backward to land on his ass in the road. As he gaped up, he saw that the horse was gray too. Gray and now just as motionless as the wizard. And there on the ground but a few feet away—staring up at the horse and rider, hissing while she pranced on four stiff little legs, crest bristling and looking furious—was Petal.

“Not me!” he croaked, coughing as the loosened rope fell away. Propelled by panic, Madd ripped open the clasp of his cloak and flung it over the little basilisk. With relief, he scooped her up in his hands. The crazy creature was going to get stomped on or hurt. Or turn them all to stone. Rolling over, he spied Vorgell still locked in battle with the fiend, but now fallen to his knees. A blur of movement interrupted, a woman with golden hair flying in the moonlight.

“Maddog!”

She wanted to help? She had gotten rid of the allophane band and untied her bonds. Madd thrust the thrashing thing wrapped in his cloak into her hands. “Hold this! And don’t open it!”

Ignoring the startled woman, he ran and grabbed the handle of the mace. Somewhere to his right, Snodrat gurgled with pleasure. He knew that sound. Where was the fucking wand? He spied it in the dirt, not far from where Vorgell had sunk to his knees. Raising the mace as high as he was able, Madd aimed at the middle of the bone and drove the spikes down with all his strength.

A loud crack split the night. Snodrat’s high-pitched scream announced the void that opened to reclaim its own. Twisting into a distorted ball of darkness, the fiend vanished, and the moonlit night closed to seal the wound. The vanishing darkness revealed more danger. As though it had emerged from the black void itself, a horse charged forward, the soldier astride it leaning over with sword raised to deliver a blow to the back of Vorgell’s skull.

“Duck!” Madd cried, but before he or the mace in his hands could move—or Vorgell dive to safety—the soldier tottered, the sword slipping from his hand. As the blade fell harmless to the road, the rider toppled from the horse and followed, landing hard. An arrow shuddered in the soldier’s back, ceasing only when he’d drawn his last breath.

Madd stumbled back to Gillja and took a still furiously struggling, cloak-bound Petal from her hands. He nodded his thanks to her smile. But there was no time for questions.

“Well,” said Ibeena, stepping forth in dark rags from the shadows of the trees and into a patch of moonlight. Behind her stood arrayed a gathering of armed witches—and Reannry, who ran straight to her trembling sister’s arms. “It looks like we came just in time.”

Chapter 17

“W
E
HAD
things well in hand.”

Although Ibeena was feeling smug about her part in their adventure, Vorgell refused to give the old witch battle honors. He had only a few bite marks from the fiend he had fought and was not about to admit he could not have kept the monster off much longer. Even Petal, according to Madd, had two kills, if one counted the horse, to the old woman’s none. He had killed three men with his own hands, and if anyone could take credit for the fiend it was Madd. Even Gillja had played a bigger part by healing all their wounds.

The rescued noblewoman was seated on the other side of the room, nearest the fire, which played on her golden hair like sparks of holy Sunfire. She and Reannry were talking quietly. For once, the younger witch girl looked happy and at peace.

They’d found refuge in a riverside hovel outside the walls of Gurgh. The hovel belonged to a woman who fished the filthy waters and sold her wares to Thieves Wart taverns. At least for the night, until the gates of the city opened once more, they would stay off the road. Ibeena had ordered her witches to dispose of the corpses and send their spirits to rest. The greatest problem had been getting rid of the petrified horse and wizard. Tagard’s crew had come in handy for that. They were good at making things disappear.

Vorgell raised his hand and stroked the fine feathers along Petal’s relaxed dorsal crest and smiled when the little basilisk curled her tail around the back of his neck. He liked having her on his shoulder, even if she did have to wear a hood that left only her pretty nose sticking out. All in all, the battle had gone according to plan. Gillja was saved. He and Madd—and Petal—had survived it. Of course, things would have been better if the old witch had not arrived to demand reparations.

“You owe me.” Ibeena squinted above folded hands.

“The cloak failed. The fiend destroyed it. And
we
rescued the woman.” Vorgell wished Madd would speak up and join this negotiation. His friend had a sharper tongue and better wits than he. Unfortunately, Madd had been all but silent since they’d left the forest. He sat beside Vorgell on a wooden bench and mostly stared at the floor whenever he wasn’t glaring at Ibeena.

“Wasn’t your intent to free this one,” she waved airily at Madd, who narrowed his eyes, “from his sex collar? And didn’t you accomplish that thanks to my cloak of shadows? I don’t see him wearing the collar now.”

“He’s well free of it. And I thank you for that. But you can’t have Petal.”

“So? You lay claim to the basilisk?”

“No,” Madd growled, surprising them both. “The basilisk lays claim to
him
. You want the basilisk? Go ahead… take her from him. My money is on the basilisk surviving that encounter.”

From where he stood near the door, Tagard contributed an appreciative chuckle. Ibeena was not amused.

“Why am I not surprised by you, that you would renege on a debt? You’ve always been a taker and a user.” The old woman had been standing. Now she sat down regally on a chair one of her followers provided. She made a gesture to Vorgell. “And this one—”

“Leave him out of it. I made the contract, not him.”

Vorgell wasn’t about to let Madd take the brunt of the woman’s price. “We made it together.”

Madd shot him a glance black with warning. “No, we didn’t. I did. My collar, my contract. And she knows damn well that Petal can’t be separated from you, because there’s no way in hell she can bond with an already bonded basilisk. That’s not what she’s after, not now. So just stay out of it. I can look after myself.” He returned to speaking to Ibeena. “No cloak. No basilisk. So what the fuck do you want? You want gold? I can get gold. Just give me a few weeks.” His gaze sought Tagard. But Tagard was wisely declining to get involved.

“No. I am not leaving here without something.” Ibeena’s lips pursed. “You. I want you to join the Circle of Stones.”

“No.” Madd’s jaw clenched.

“Are you still wounded by what happened when you were a boy? Is that why you would snub us now, rather than take your rightful place?”

“What rightful place? A man has no place in a Circle except to serve the women in it. A man’s role is to work and provide. Let’s have a look at how that might go. I’m a
terrible
provider. If I have gold in my purse, I spend it and never know how I will pay for my next meal. I would rather pass my hours in a tavern than do an honest day’s work. Oh, and haven’t you heard? I don’t sleep with women. I fuck men. One of the requirements of a Circle is that every man in it father a child on at least one of the women. I refuse to do that even once. There is no place in your Circle—in any Circle—for a man like me.”

“Or him?” She jerked her chin at Vorgell, who simply answered her with a smile. Seeing her not get what she wanted made him feel very good indeed.

“I don’t speak for him.”

“But he listens to you. Bah, we don’t want him anyway.” Ibeena pointed her bony finger at Madd. “Join the Circle. Fathering a child is not so difficult. You can do it while drunk, how hard is that?”

“Hard is not something I achieve around women. Ever. Not even drunk.”

Vorgell ached to put a hand on Madd’s shoulder. He knew better. Everything about his young friend right now told him Madd didn’t want companionship or even a signal of support. He just wanted to be left alone.

“Ibeena.”

The voice startled him. Startled them all. Chiding. Soft. Female. Vorgell glanced over to see Gillja and Reannry had left their place by the fire and now stood beside the seated old woman. It was Gillja who continued to speak.