Jack Chalker - Twilight at the Well of Souls

The cabin, a huge log affair with chimney on the back, looked peaceful enough. Inside, if previous users hadn’t depleted the supplies, would be bales of grain, cooking pots and utensils, and even a few cords of wood, stocked regularly by Dillian service patrols.

“No smoke,” Asam noted. “Looks like we’re in luck.” Still, he frowned, and when she started to go forward he stopped her. She glanced around and saw that the others in the party had spread out on the flat-sculpted, snow-covered outcrop and were slowly reach-big for their bows.

“What’s the matter?” she whispered, more puzzled than nervous.

He gestured with his head. “Over there. About three or four meters beyond the cabin, right at the edge.”

She stared in the indicated direction. Something dark there, she thought. No, not dark— It was hard to see in the cloudy, late-afternoon light, particularly through snow goggles she’d donned almost immediately upon their reaching the snow area, for her blue eyes provided little natural protection against snow blindness.

Cautiously, she lifted up the goggles to get a better look. Red—crimson, a red strain in the snow, very near—no, actually at the edge. And the marks of something having been dragged.

“It could be an accident,” she said softly. “Or the remains of some hunter’s kill.”

“It could, ” he agreed, but now his bow was cocked. “Can you handle a weapon? I forgot to ask.”

“About the only thing I might be decent with would be a sword,” she sighed, a little disconsolate at the idea.

“Why not?” he shrugged, and reached back into his pack. He pulled out a scabbard—not a puny, plain sort of thing but a monstrous scabbard covered with strange, ornate designs. It was clearly a broadsword of some kind, the hilt solid, firm, and yet also ornately sculpted with the shapes of creatures she couldn’t guess the true form of. He handed it to her. “Everything comes in handy sooner or later,” was his only explanation.

She strapped it around her waist, the place where the humanoid part of her met the equine, and pulled out the blade. It had good balance and feel to it and seemed so perfect she found she could cut a swath with one hand. But for serious business, like skull-cracking, two hands would be best.

“Colonel?” Jodl, one of the aides, whispered. Asam nodded, and the other centaur crept slowly forward, crossbow at the ready, eyes on the cabin door itself.

All had shed their packs; in a fight, baggage would unbalance them. The advance man was light and cautious, but made no attempt at concealment. He was, after all, over two and a half meters tall and more than three long and weighed in around seven hundred kilograms, hardly the sort of being who could make a surreptitious entry.

“Who do you think it is?” she whispered to Asam. “One of your old enemies?”

He shrugged, never taking his eyes off the door. A second man started out, keeping distance and interval. They were going to approach the cabin from all sides and make sure that only one would be attacked first —if attacker there were. “Could be anybody,” he told her softly. “Hired assassins, freebooters, criminals, Dillian or foreign. Hard to say.”

It startled her slightly to consider Dillians as criminals or killers. They were a rough but likable and levelheaded lot. But there must be some bad ones, she realized. There always are.

They were fanned out now on all sides of the cabin, keeping at least ten meters from the cabin door. They didn’t worry too much about any other place of attack; the rocky ledge gave them a measure of protection from above, the far trail was fairly clear to the eye, and the cabin sat on the edge of a sheer cliff. Thinking of the Dahbi, she considered their disregard of the cliff area a mistake. If this world had creatures that could pop up through solid rock, they had dozens that could cling to the sides of sheer cliffs or, perhaps camouflage themselves into near invisibility. Some of the latter had once almost done her in in the distant past in far-off Glathriel.

The point man had reached the area in question on the far side of the cabin. She stayed in back of the men’s semicircle, feeling helpless and a little irritated that she was not up to this kind of thing. And, for all her own great mass, she was still smaller, yet no more maneuverable, than the males.

Still, she held the rear guard, sword at the ready, and pulled her goggles back down. Her eyes were already beginning to hurt slightly.

“Colonel!” the point man called, his voice echoing slightly off the walls near and far. “Party of three. Hunters. Our people. Pretty messed up. They cut ’em up and then tossed ’em over the cliff. They’re forty, fifty meters down when the slope smooths out.” He didn’t attempt to whisper the word. If the killers were still around, they most certainly knew just where they were by now.

Asam considered, then turned back to Mavra. “Could it have been Gedemondans who did this?”

She shook her head violently. “Not a chance. If they want you dead, they just point a finger and you curl up and die.”

“Didn’t think so,” the Colonel muttered, and turned back to the cabin. “All right, boys, let’s go visitin’.”

They converged, very slowly and carefully, on the cabin until the closest was only a few meters from the front door. It was Mavra who saw that, for the first time, they were twenty or thirty meters out in the open from the rock shelf above. Something was up there, a shadow, a discontinuity…

“Asam!” she screamed. “Above and behind you!”

At that moment the attackers leaped off their high perches and fell toward them. There were more than a dozen of them, some armed with pikes, some with crossbows, others with swords.

They were bats—no, apes, of some kind, with bat’s wings—or— Whatever they were, they were small, agile, they could fly, had blazing eyes and sharp teeth, and wore some kind of dull coppery uniform.

But they were not flying down; rather, they made a controlled plunge, like skydivers, but with some maneuverability, and they were uttering singularly alien screeches that sounded like high-pitched bagpipes trying to yodel.

Two with crossbows loosed their bolts while still falling, but they missed their target and plowed into the snow; Jodl and one other who were at an angle to the fall whirled and raised their crossbows. From a firm standing position, they didn’t miss. The force of the Dillian bolts was so strong that the two struck almost seemed suddenly to fly backward, then hit the wall and start forward again, limp.

By the time this happened, though, the others were upon them, two leaping directly on Asam. They were small but extremely powerful; one fell right for his head and torso, the other for his hindquarters. The Colonel reared and twisted, flinging the one off his behind, then, dropping his own bow, he grabbed the other creature by its wicked, extended claws and heaved him against the rock wall with tremendous force.

Before Mavra knew what was happening, one was coming right at her. She waited, then thrust herself outward, both hands on the sword hilt.

The thing impaled itself on the sword and spurted thick red blood, but it was not dead; somehow, awful hate in its distorted, terribly ugly face, its right arm raised the sharp spear in its hand while its body weight on the broadsword forced Mavra down with it to the ground. She had only a split-second to decide what to do. Falling, off-balance, there was only one thing she could do: she accelerated the fall and rolled; the spear came at her, tearing through her thick fur coat, and she felt a stabbing pain in her left side.

Too mad to pay any attention to it, she got up with as much speed as possible and saw that the thing, still impaled on the sword, twitched and gibbered. A wave of utter fury swept over her and she reared up on her hind legs and came down, forelegs with their heavy steel shoes crashing into the thing again and again and again.