Glen Cook - Sung In Blood

"We wait," Preacher said.

General Procopio was stirring through wreckage left from the recent raid. "What is this thing?" He indicated something that looked like a mummified gorilla head. "Ugly character."

"No telling," Chaz replied. "Jehrke had at least one of everything weird there ever was around here."

Su-Cha scooted past the barbarian. "Don't touch that!" he squeaked.

Procopio jerked away. Startled, Chaz asked, "What's the matter, little buddy?"

"That's nothing Rider or Jehrke ever had. That's a Koh-Rehn. We've been double-shuffled. Those clowns that broke in here left it for us. A little gift. A little nightmare come midnight, while you're all tucked safely into your beds, you think." He squatted beside the ugly head, studying it.

"Relative of yours?" Procopio asked, catching on more quickly than the others.

"In a manner of speaking." After a thoughtful moment, Su-Cha said, "Dirty tricks, eh, Shai Khe?" And after another moment, "We can play that game, too. Listen up, you guys. I've got an idea."

Midnight. A blinding flash lighted the window of Jehrke's laboratory. Tough though the glass there was, it disintegrated, showering the Rock with fragments. Roars and screams ripped out into the night. A man who might have been Ride-Master Jehrke could, for a moment, be seen battling a huge shadow. Then the screaming stopped.

One minute. Two minutes. Three. Two battered men fled the Citadel gate, a semi-conscious woman dragging between them. As they neared the edge of the plaza, the shorter man stumbled. He let go the woman to break his fall. The shawl wrapping the woman's hair and concealing her features fell away.

"Damnit!" Chaz exploded, but softly. "Watch yourself. They find out we've still got her, we lose our chance to pull this out without Rider." He re-wrapped the woman while Preacher muttered weary apologies.

They resumed hurrying through the night, following a circuituous path that in time led them to a new hideout at General Procopio's City house. The general had insisted. He wanted to be in the middle of things, and the Protector himself had proofed the house against sorcerous espionage. He said. Where better to stake out the goat and wait for the lion? he asked.

There were fragile indications to convince Chaz that they were being followed. He allowed himself one merry grin.

Good times and bad, chaos or disorder, there were comings and goings at the Citadel Gate. Day, night, the hour made no matter.

A curtained coach departed twenty minutes after Chaz and Preacher and their charge. Within were Spud, Procopio, and a stack of reports from the sergeant of the guard, who had not permitted a little thing like a raid to cancel his report-taking.

The coach hurried through the night, straight to Procopio's back gate, and so arrived there long before the others did afoot. They were in the darkened study, watching, to confirm the presence or absence of trackers when Chaz and Preacher arrived.

Those two burst in with their burden. "Well?" Chaz boomed as Su-Cha surrendered the Caracene shape and collapsed with a feeble plea for food.

"Two of the bloody beggars," Procopio replied. "One ran away to tell tales. One stayed."

"We ought to sneak out the back way and follow him home to Daddy," Chaz growled.

Spud, trying to spoon-feed Su-Cha in the dark, said, "We already know where to find Daddy."

"What? How?"

"All those reports the sergeant gave me? While you guys were loafing I was reading. There's wheat in amongst all that chaff, and it adds up to another waterfront warehouse. While we were killing time giving you guys a head start, the general called in some favors. As soon as Shai Khe's gang heads out, wherever, they'll hit the place and get Soup, Greystone, the girl, and whoever is guarding them. Then they'll lay for Shai Khe in case he gets lucky or gets away out here."

Chax grunted. It was an eloquent grunt, replete with sarcasm and cynicism. "And it all depends on Rider being somewhere handy, looping snares and nets into the web for when Shai Khe cuts loose, eh? Ingenious."

Preacher quoted something scriptural; predictably cryptic and confused; fierce, fiery, and deifically vengeful. He added, "It's falling together. We have that rat in the middle, between two terriers, and we'll choke him on his own arrogant overconfidence."

Perhaps the word choke occurred to him because of the strangling noises issuing from Su-Cha because Spud kept jabbing too-rapid spoonsful of food into the imp's mouth. Su-Cha finally got his message through. He was recovering. He was ready for the next stage.

They began their wait for the mad enemy.

When the alarms went off there was a tinge of grey in the night beyond the nose of the pirate airship. Men bolted to their weapons. There was panic in the air. The airshipmen's morale was low.

It was not about to improve.

A man appeared outside, hands raised, yelling at them to restrain themselves, that he was on their side, that he had a message, that they were to let him come inside.

They let him in. Not because he insisted but because some of the crew recognized him.

Immediately he began chattering in a clicky tongue Rider recognized but could not follow. His message was received with groans and outrage.

A sleepy crewman leaned out of the airship gondola and demanded, in a language Rider could follow, "What's all the racket?"

One of the others replied, "The Celestial Lord wishes us to put our guests back on the boat and take them back to the city. Right now."

Puzzled, Rider watched preparations being made. When the airshipmen brought their "guests" forth he began to get a glimmer. Whatever had happened in the City, some of his associates had survived to counterattack. Through guile.

Caracene had arrived under loose, indulgent restraint, like a wayward child being shepherded home. She was departing in bonds, hung about with every piece of silver the airshipmen could muster. She went silently, aware that protest was useless and time the sole cure for this indignity.

Rider permitted himself a rare grin. Somehow, Su-Cha had convinced Shai Khe that Caracene might in fact be a certain nimble-witted shape-shifting imp.

The airshipmen hustled their prisoners out of the cave. Before they disappeared, Rider was at work preparing his own unnoticed departure.

A spell of minor scale—the one he had employed to escape the treasury vaults—blinded the staybehinds to his presence. He then turned to Shai Khe's network of protective and detective spells.

He saw instantly that slipping through would be easy. All the hectic in and out of airshipmen, prisoners, and messenger had left the magical artifact in a state of vibrant dissonance. It was a moment's work to confuse his own passage with that of those ahead of him.

A narrow, steep pathway descended the face of Shroud's Head. From a ship on the Bridge it looked like the thin scar that appeared on the faces of all the old king's statues and busts.

Rider reached the head of the path only minutes behind the others. They were just two hundred yards ahead. But he was stumped.

The pathway slanted down to a wooden jetty that would be invisible from the shipping lanes.

Tied up to it was a small smuggler's ship with mast unstepped. From the Bridge it might look like a rock.

Rider's immediate concern was the fact that the pathway appeared to be the only way to reach the ship.

Or was it?

He set his mystic senses roaming.

There were handholds enough for a descent, but that way would be slow. And, shadow spell or no, he would be seen if exposed to enemy eyes that long. However ...

The alternative appeared mad even for a man as remarkable as Rider.

He cast his senses again.

And hesitated not an instant.