Upland Outlaws (5 page)

“I will never rest,” Shandie repeated, “until I have won back my impire!”

“Indeed?” The dwarf sneered. “You and what army?” The imperor glanced around. “These good friends will do for a start. Maybe there aren’t very many of them, just a handful, but they’re loyal and they’re good. Are you with me?”

“Gods save the imperor!” the signifer said.

“Gods save the imperor! ” the others echoed, some louder than the rest. The room was so jangled with mixed emotions that Rap could not locate them all-fear and doubt and defiance-but he detected a blaze of anger from the beautiful Eshiala, and that was surprising.

Shandie was looking at Rap. “And you?”

“I have no choice,” Rap said with an approving smile. “Zinixo won’t rest, either-not until he has my guts in a pot and Krasnegar is gravel. Down with the tyrant!”

“Well said! Victory or death!” Shandie shouted.

It was fortunate in a way that he didn’t realize how hopeless his cause was.

“No!” The impress tried to wrestle the child away from her husband. “You must not!”

“My dear!” Shandie turned his back on her, and little Maya awoke with a cry of bewilderment.

“You must not risk our baby! ” She grabbed again, and again he turned. This time she clung to him in an absurd dance. “Eshiala! Be silent!”

“She is more important than your precious throne! “

They were yelling at each other, struggling together, the baby howling between them.

“God of Fools!” the dwarf muttered.

The front door collapsed in screams of rending wood and ruptured hinges. The temple bells were suddenly louder. A torrent of bronze-clad men burst into the house.

“I’ll take them!” Rap said quickly, anxious to avert serious violence. He was still capable of throwing sleep spells. Bronze clashed on chain mail, swords clattered. In a moment the entrance was plugged by heaps of snoring legionaries, so that no more could enter. Mundanes were easy. Grimrix was probing gently at the shielding, seeking the thinnest spot. The courtyard door was about to fail.

Then the shielding shuddered as if it had been kicked by a giant. That was more than mundane assault.

“Move us, Warlock!” Rap said. “Now!”

“Grimrix? “

“Ready!”

The ambience exploded in lightning and thunder.

Countess Eigaze sat down abruptly on the grass, Lord Umpily sprawling headlong beside her. Shandie almost dropped his daughter. The impress staggered backward into Sagorn, and an eruption of military obscenities announced that Signifer Ylo had landed in shrubbery. The ambience rang with echoes of the brute-force power the warlock had used to move them all.

Rap had a brief vision of the whole city spread out below him, wrapped in night and snow. In the distance, the ambience rumbled and flashed as Zinixo’s votaries stormed Sagorn’s house. There seemed to be plenty of them, but Grimrix was holding them off. The strength of the kid! He should have been the warlock, not Raspnex.

This secluded little rooftop garden was not located in the White Palace, as Raspnex had promised. That was typical of dwarves, though. Knowing he would have to sacrifice Grimrix to the other side, he had automatically left a false trail to divert pursuit. It probably wouldn’t work.

High among the turrets of the Red Palace, the courtyard was dense with tropical trees and bushes, occultly preserved from the Hubban climate. The air was hot and muggy and pleasantly earth-scented after the mustiness of Sagorn’s room. At least four sorcerers had been standing by, and now they were pouring power into the shield, patching the hole through which the, fugitives had come. None of them was a troll, so the witch of the west was not present to welcome her unsuspecting guests.

Making shields was noisy work. Knowing his feeble powers would make little difference, Rap did not try to assist, but he felt as if his head were being hammered inside a white-hot furnace. He helped Eigaze to her feet. Ylo emerged from the bushes, cursing and rubbing scrapes on his arms. Everyone seemed to have arrived safely-a superb demonstration of precision sorcery. Most of the mundanes were whimpering, bewildered by darkness and the sudden change of location.

The occult clamor continued. The main shield of the warden’s palace was centuries old and thick enough to deter the Gods Themselves. To cut a hole in it must have taken much time and power, as well as being a highly unlikely thing to do. To plug the gap adequately would take just as much time and power, even if the evildoers let the operation proceed undisturbedwhich they wouldn’t. Busy as he was, Raspnex was also talking to a gangling jotunn at the far side of the lawn, and yet he managed to flash a pebbly grin at Rap in the ambience. “So far so good! “

“Very nice work. Now what? We’ll be under siege in no time. “

“Now we move on!”

Even as Rap caught the thought, the makeshift shield shuddered and buckled. It held, though. The escape had been detected, naturally, and the battle was now joined, builders versus destroyers.

“So we are refugees within the White Palace?” Shandie demanded. He was still holding little Maya, shouting over her cries and peering through the darkness.

“The Red Palace,” Rap said. “And how safe are we here?”

“Not very. “

Of course neither the imperor nor any of his mundane companions could sense the test of strength going on overhead, or the ominous tremors in the shield. Beyond it, city and impire slept on, unaware of the war that had begun-a war that might end very shortly.

A moment later, though, the tops of the trees exploded into flame, illuminating the night and the falling snow. They must have long ago grown right through the shielding, although obviously not out of their occult local climate. An eerie golden glow played over faces and flowers and shrubbery and reflected off the thickly drifted roofs behind them. The mundanes cried out at the spectacle.

“This way!” the dwarf boomed, scurrying off on busy legs. The fugitives surged obediently after him, some faster than others. Shandie was burdened by a struggling, hysterical two-yearold, and Rap threw a hasty sleep spell over the child. He checked on the older folk, and they seemed to be coping. Ionfeu had an arm around his wife. Umpily and Sagorn were both beaming at this opportunity to snoop inside the Red Palace.

The air was rank with eye-nipping smoke from the burning trees. The shielding sagged abruptly, then ballooned upward as the defenders threw power into it. Then it buckled again.

Raspnex had stopped at a low, circular parapet. The refugees gathered around and stared down into what seemed to be a bottomless dry well. The warlock cackled. “What sort of a back door would you expect from a dwarf?”

“I don’t believe I can see the ladder,” Lady Eigaze said. “Ladder? You mean imps need ladders? You, faun-you want to throw or catch?”

“I’d rather catch,” Rap said. Throwing might require compulsion, and that would give him an attack of scruples. He sat on the stonework and swung his legs over. He could detect shielding a few stories below his boots, but not the bottom of the shaft.

The warlock’s occult image was leering at him. “It’s twice as deep as you can see. Two layers of shielding. You can drop free until you’re through the second. “

“You’re dropping some free advice, are you?” There was a proverb about gifts from dwarves. Rap pushed off and let himself go. He wouldn’t give Raspnex the satisfaction of seeing him use sorcery to slow his fall. He hurtled into the dark. Masonry flashed by his nose at breathtaking speed. His doublet pulled up and tried to choke him, and his cloak cracked to and fro like a whip overhead. The shielding seemed to rush up at him and he was through it and there was the next layer and that was gone and there was rock right below.

He hauled on the reins and slammed to a halt with his feet only fingerlengths above the floor. Ugh!-he had almost lost his insides. He let himself down until his boots were on the floor, somewhat surprised that it was not paved with flattened predecessors. Then he reeled through the doorway, clearing a landing place for the next fugitive. He gave himself a large jolt of calming spell, bringing his heart out of its hysterics and buttressing his quivering knees. He was standing at the start of a very long, very narrow tunnel. Extremely long-he could barely detect an end to it, and he had no idea how far away that end was.

He flashed a light to tell Raspnex he was ready.

He hoped his reflexes would prove fast enough. He could barely see the glimmer of fire at the top of the shaft, and the shielding blocked his farsight.

Seconds passed, then something blocked the light overhead and Ylo was there. Rap caught him in time, but he impacted harder than Rap intended, grunting as the weight of the breastplate descended on his shoulders. He toppled forward, enveloped in a flurry of wolfskin. Rap steadied him and pulled him out of the shaft.

Grinning, the signifer fumbled to adjust his cloak and hood. “That was invigorating!” he said with approval. Obviously the warlock had applied a calming spell. “Where in the Name of Evil am I?” Eerie echoes crawled away into the distance.

“Sorry!” Rap said, and created light. “Now get out of the way! “

Ylo squeezed past him, leaving him ready for the next arrival. The tunnel would be single file, barely wide enough for a dwarf’s shoulders and a tight fit for a troll-and Rap snatched old Count Ionfeu out of the air. This game required strict attention.

One by one the mundanes appeared, only seconds apart. Soon Ylo had vanished into the distance at the head of the line. They were all quite relaxed, chattering about the interesting experience. Little Maya was awake and laughing, demanding that her father do that again. Lord Umpily was not quite as heavy as he looked, Countess Eigaze even heavier. Sagorn made a very undignified arrival in his voluminous robe, but he was too engrossed in events to care.

And then came Raspnex, smirking evilly. “You didn’t miss any, I see. “

Flashes at the top of the shaft showed that the battle was raging more fiercely than ever, so obviously the four votaries were being left behind to cover the warlock’s departure. Dwarves hated to part with anything, and Raspnex’s ruthless sacrifice of his forces showed how desperate the situation was.

The mundanes’ voices were becoming louder and shriller as the calming spells wore off.

“Quiet!” the warlock roared, and the deep bellow rolled away along the tunnel, leaving a twittering silence. “I’ll shift you in fours. Move out of the way as soon as you arrive!”

Ylo, Ionfeu, Eigaze, and Eshiala all vanished from the head of the line. The tunnel curved, Rap noted, and was heavily shielded. It must lie far belowground.

“Is this new?” he asked quietly. “Dwarf work?”

“Dwarf work, certainly, but not new.”

“Then Zinixo-“

“But it doesn’t end where he thinks it does,” Raspnex chortled. “It changed course recently.”

Shandie and his daughter disappeared, Umpily and Hardgraa, also.

The witch of the west must have approved this alteration to her palace. It could have been done any time in the years since Zinixo had been driven out, but the devious thinking was not trollish. Dwarves made good accomplices in a jailbreak, Rap decided.

Then power enveloped him. With Sagorn, Acopulo, and Raspnex himself, he was translated to the far end of the tunnel, and a rocky, underground chamber.

Here was troll work-massive stone walls and a high corbeled ceiling. Under a ghostly blue light of no visible source, the fugitives were standing around the walls, shocked now into silence. A flight of stone stairs spiraled up to the roof in the center of the chamber. It seemed to have no purpose whatsoever, but Rap detected a break in the shielding there and guessed that the next move was going to be tricky. The paving was wet, the air chill. Water was dripping somewhere.

A woman in dark, heavy work clothes had joined the group. She was taller than anyone present except Sagorn, and the whitegold hair bound on the crown of her head made her seem even taller. As impish women tended to stoutness in middle age, jotunn women were inclined to become scraggy. This one was neither old nor young. Her bare shins and feet showed that she was a sailor; her rawboned form was powerful, almost masculine, and yet she was still handsome enough to catch a man’s eye. She would be capable of blacking it, too.

She had identified him, the royal faun. She nodded respectfully. He returned the nod, noting the shimmer of the loyalty spell on her. He wondered if she knew how her fellow votaries were being so callously squandered this night.

” Jarga, ” Raspnex said, half to her and half as an introduction to Rap. “Everything well?”

Her grim features softened in affection. “Well, master. “

“Test it once more. “

Without a word, Jarga elbowed Hardgraa aside like a cotton drape and marched over to the stairs. Her head vanished before it reached the roof. The rest of her followed, with her big, horny feet being the last to go. Several of the mundanes moaned.

Rap was impressed, though. “Beautiful work, again! ” he said to Raspnex. There had been hardly a shimmer in the ambience. “Yours?”

The dwarf shook his big head. “Grunth herself. ” He sighed. “Grimrix would have done it even better. I’m going to miss that kid. “

Faint tremors of power were filtering down through the gap in the shielding, so at least one of the struggles was still in progress. Almost certainly Grimrix would have been overcome by now, so he would be fighting on the other side, as fanatically loyal to Zinixo as he had been to Raspnex. Perhaps he was already using his might against the defenders at the palace. And when that fell, the Covin would gain four sorcerers more.

A moment later, Jarga reappeared down the magic staircase. “All clear,” she said aloud. There was a sprinkle of fresh snow on her broad shoulders.

“Come on then, all of you,” the dwarf rumbled. He looked weary. They all did.

Jarga ascended again, with the dwarf rolling after her. Rap waved the others on. Again Ylo led the mundanes, so perhaps he regarded himself as the most expendable. He vanished systematically, from wolf’s head to sandals. Hardgraa followed him.