CHAPTER 15
CALIBAN’S FIRST THOUGHT was that he wasn’t dead, and that this was somewhat surprising.
His eyes were open. He had fallen on his side, and his hands were still bound. His throat ached, but the demon-rune was flat on the ground in front of him.
Did I do that? I don’t think I did that…
And Slate, who had just dropped through the smokehole and landed on the old shaman, staggered to her feet.
She had a sword in her hands. His sword. It was amazing she hadn’t cut herself in half falling on it. The scabbard was slung across her back and looked about to strangle her. Her hair fell in a wild tangle across her face. Blood welled from a dozen sluggish punctures across her breast and shoulder.
She set her feet, raised the naked sword in both hands, and sneezed.
Sweet god, she fell on the thing’s antlers. She must have dropped onto it and broke the trance—
The stag-man, who was still standing behind Brenner and Caliban, roared and leapt forward at the intruder. She staggered back and raised the sword in both hands. The point got maybe a foot off the ground.
Caliban heard himself shouting denials in a voice shattered by the rune’s hands. “No! Slate, no, look out—no!”
She can’t possibly fight with that sword, she can barely lift the thing, he’ll kill her, oh god—
Slate, apparently agreeing with him, threw the sword at the stag’s legs and dove out of the way.
When someone throws a broadsword under your feet, you have to stop. The other options aren’t worth considering. The sword didn’t do any damage, but the rune had to pull up in mid-stride to avoid it and that gave Slate enough time to get out of the way.
“Get him, Slate!” shouted Brenner from somewhere near the floor.
“Shut up, Brenner! Slate, run!”
Slate ignored them both, flipped one of Brenner’s knives into her hand, and paused. He wasn’t sure if it was a taunt or a moment of weakness. He could see her shaking, but that could have been blood loss or adrenaline or both.
There was blood trickling down her left arm in thin skeins.
“Slate—”
“Shut up, Caliban!” she snarled.
The stag-man charged.
Slate dived out of the way again, and the stag discovered too late that she had been standing directly in front of the shaman. He tried to change direction to avoid trampling the old doe, and ran directly into Caliban instead.
Ooof…
The stag-man went down in a welter of flailing limbs. The knight felt hooves drum against his ribs.
She did that deliberately. I wonder if she’s hoping we’ll kill each other.
The stag tried to rise. A hoof scraped down Caliban’s back, leaving a welt.
I’ve got to keep him down. I’ve got to help. He tried to roll on top of one of the stag’s legs.
It scolded like a jay, an incongruous sound, and struck out with the knife. A hot line went across his thigh. Caliban hissed.
Slate stepped in, her face as cool and detached as a woman doing long division. She caught the stag’s antlers in one hand, hauled its head back, and jammed Brenner’s knife into its throat, up to the hilt.
Blood fountained out. Caliban’s armor was awash in it. If they lived through this, his chainmail would take hours to clean.
The creature thrashed atop him and died.
Slate stepped back, nodded, and cracked her knuckles.
It occurred to Caliban that he had been nattering about his oath to protect the weak to a woman who had apparently just tracked them through the woods, found their weapons, climbed up the outside of the hut carrying said weapons, dropped fifteen feet through a hole in the ceiling onto a shaman, saving his life and possibly his soul in the process, and then proceeded to fight and dispatch a stag-man twice her size.
My god. I am an arrogant jackass.
Slate rolled the rune sideways off him, pulled the knife free, and sawed through his ropes. By the time he managed to sit up and get the blood back into his hands, she’d also freed Brenner.
“And now—” Slate said, turning, and then, “God’s balls!”
All around the perimeter of the room, the rune were rising to their feet.
“I didn’t see all them from up there,” said Slate, turning in a slow circle. Then she sneezed.
Caliban got to his feet, feeling his wrists and ankles screaming. His feet were coming back to life and felt like they were on fire. He looked around, found his sword and picked it up.
Slate sneezed again and wiped at her nose, never taking her eyes off the circle of rune. Caliban limped to her side, and looked up at the deer-people in despair.
There had to be two dozen of them. Even if his legs weren’t about to buckle, even if his throat didn’t feel as if it were full of shards of glass, even if Slate weren’t bleeding and if half of the rune were too groggy to fight, there was just no way.
The deer were advancing toward the pit.
“It was a good rescue,” he rasped, lifting his sword.
“Pity it didn’t work,” she muttered, and sneezed again.
The rune were moving slowly. He groped in a pocket and found a handkerchief. Slate took it with a choking laugh.
Ranks of green bodies circled the pit. The sounds that they made were high-pitched and dangerous, like the screams of hunting hawks.
“I’m sorry I said you were weak.”
“You damn well better be.”
She shoved the handkerchief into a pocket. There were bloody fingerprints across it.
“Everybody back off,” said Brenner behind them, in a voice so cold and brittle that it sounded as if it might shatter, “and I mean it.”
The rune drew back, hissing.
Caliban turned.
Brenner was holding the antlered doe up with one arm around her waist. The other held a knife at her throat. The old shaman’s eyes were rolling, and blood made a red mask over her face. Several tines had snapped off her antlers, perhaps when Slate had slammed her to the floor.
“Brenner, be careful! There’s a demon in there!”
“Well, there’s a whole lot of those bastards out here, so we’re taking our chances.” He brandished the knife at the rune, then set the point back against the shaman’s throat. “Now. Everybody backs off, nice and easy, and my friends and I are going for the door.”
Whether the rune understood what the assassin was saying, or if the gestures were enough, they backed away from the edge of the pit. Caliban boosted himself out of the sunken circle and pulled Slate up after him.
“Take her,” growled Brenner, never taking his eyes off the rune.
“What?”
“Take the hostage!”
His conscience twinged like a bad tooth. Good paladins did not take hostages, particularly not old women.
Brenner must have seen it in his face. “Take the goddamn hostage or you can stay here with the rune!”
Slate gave them both a disgusted look, reached down, and grabbed Brenner’s knife in her good hand. “Set her on the edge,” she ordered, steadying the silent shaman against her body. Antlers poked at her like tree branches, and she turned her face away.
Shamed for more reasons than one, Caliban pulled the doe upright. Brenner leapt up after her, light on his feet despite the long confinement, and took his blade back. The hilt slipped briefly in his fingers.
“You’re bleedin’ pretty good, Slate, darlin’.”
“Yeah, I know. The tattoo wasn’t keen on this idea.”
Both men winced.
The rune were watching them with big, worried eyes.
“Back towards the door,” said Brenner, taking possession of the old shaman again.
They backed.
The noise of a man stepping on a carpet of dead rats in bare feet is “squiickrunch.” Caliban felt that he could have gone his whole life without learning this particular fact.
“Your boots are outside,” said Slate.
Caliban glanced at the demon, but it wasn’t saying anything.
I bet it’s hoping we’ll take it out of here as a hostage.
We might not have much choice.
Of the three of them, Brenner was the only one in any shape to fight if the rune got restive. If they dropped the shaman, the rune might follow, and then what would they do?
At the door to the earth-lodge, Brenner paused. He pointed the knife at the assembled rune. “Stay.”
The leather curtain fell down. The demon still didn’t say anything.
“You think they understood that?”
“Works on dogs.”
They made it to the edge of the village. Slate ducked into a shadow and came out with their boots.
“I’ve got a friend around here somewhere,” she said.
“A friend? What?” Brenner looked up. “Where’d you find a—”
“God’s stripes, lady, you did it!”
Brenner whipped the hostage closer, the knife digging painfully into her throat. The rune uttered a high moan of pain, but did not flinch.
“Stay back!” the assassin ordered.
“Cut it out, Brenner, it’s not one of those deer things! It says it’s a gnole.”
“A gnole, that’s me.” It blinked up at them in the moonlight. “You want to cut that wicked boss rune’s throat, you do it. I’m not gonna stop you.” It spat on the ground. “Probably safer for all of us.”
Caliban, trying not to think about the bits of dead rat still on his feet, shoved his boots on. No socks. The gods only knew what the rune had done with them.
Brenner, in a display of agility unique to assassins, stepped into his boots without taking the knife away from the rune woman’s throat.
“Let’s move.”
They moved.
The rune didn’t follow. None of them emerged from the earth-lodge for as long as it was visible through the trees.
“Why are they letting us go?” Slate asked. The tattoo had stopped gnawing, blessedly, but every time she took a step, a jolt shot up the side of her body that had impacted the deer-creature’s antlers. The holes weren’t deep, but they were oozing steadily, and the pain was making her list sideways.
“I think she told them to,” said Caliban. “There’s a demon in her, and it wants to get out of here.”
“And we’re helping her?”
“If you have a better idea, darlin’, I’m open to suggestions.”
Slate opened her mouth, took another step, felt pain leap from puncture to puncture as if they were stepping stones, and went a bit green.