Glen Cook - Sung In Blood

Emerald cursed his men for idiots, cursed himself for being saddled with them, cursed the orders that brought him to Shasesserre. He redeployed. Two men with gladiatorial-style nets moved to the fore.

Chaz was not given to suicidal heroics. He retreated.

The net men knew their stuff. They feinted, pressed, feinted, tried to tangle Chaz's legs and blade. Their comrades threw brickbats. One especially savage throw glanced off Chaz's shin and succeeded in distracting him.

Net in high, brushed aside. But the net low tangled his right ankle. Down he went. The pack leaped forward. Chaz bellowed and roared, punched, kicked, and bit. He littered that alley with howling villains. But all the while Emerald danced in and out, whapping his hard northern head with the captured sap.

Chaz gave up to the darkness.

Soup wakened to a world throbbing and fogged. At one moment it seemed he was in a darkened coliseum, its walls so distant they were invisible, the lamps starry pinpricks miles away. The next moment it all rushed in. He was near crushed by gaudy eastern furnishings impossible to enumerate. His limited attention focused on a single detail, a slim, golden-skinned woman of incredible beauty, who paced before a wallhanging embroidered with eastern fantasies.

She was a little thing, and young, but no child. She moved with an animal litheness that set Soup's brain more aspin.

She said something softly.

A muffled male voice replied. Soup could not distinguish individual words. But it seemed a voice he should know.

The woman glanced at the prisoners. She had the most remarkable eyes Soup had ever seen. Big, green, they were eyes to swallow a man's soul. She was a trap to break a heart of stone!

She faced left. "There is no point complaining. Emerald is not here. And no change in plan can be made before the Master arrives."

The male voice became more strident but no more clear. Soup wished for a glimpse of the speaker.

The woman replied, "Your desires are of consequence only insofar as they complement those of the Master."

More male talk, angry. Threatening.

The woman smiled. She pointed. "Do you wish to join them? Or to do the Master's bidding?"

The complaints subsided.

All this while Soup's world shrank and swelled and rolled on its belly and back. Now darkness returned.

Later the veil parted again. A large, fluffy cat was nosing around his face. It would not go away.

A different male voice grumbled something in an eastern tongue. Many feet tramped. Men grunted. A body flopped down nearby. A gnarly man bent over it, forced something small and brown between slack lips.

Chaz!

Another of the group taken. What was going on?

The woman said, "Emerald, our friend doesn't like the way we're doing this. We're not moving fast enough to suit him."

The gnarly man spat. "I came here with twelve men, as you asked, friend. I have five dead and two with broken bones already. You were not honest with us. I think, when the Master arrives, you will answer for that."

The unknown man responded with fear in his muffled voice.

The woman said, "Your plan is sound. It will be pursued. We will isolate the Protector's son from his friends, then handle him. Then we will eliminate others who would resist us. That will not be difficult once the Master arrives."

The Master. The Master, Soup thought. Who is that?

Emerald said, "I suggest you obtain local helpers. I cannot keep losing men."

There was a stir. Someone came to where Soup, Preacher, and Chaz lay. He wore a heavy papermache mask pierced by two narrow eyeslits. The man in the mask laughed. "For this I will hire an army. I must have them all."

Soup again thought he sensed something familiar.

"Go recruit, then," Emerald said.

The man in the mask went away.

Emerald and the golden-skinned woman murmured to one another. Soup's universe remained unstable. And now his head hurt terribly. Preacher, he noted, showed signs of recovering too.

Chaz, though, was out for the count.

Then he went down into the darkness again.

He wakened to: "The Master comes!" The golden-skinned woman's breath caught in her throat. A

fetching effect, he thought ... The dizzies caught and spun him around.

He was not sure what he saw next was not part of a drug dream. A hideous little man no bigger than Su-Cha, with a large normal head, stood peering down at him. His coloring and dress were oriental. His hands were folded before him. His fingers were encased in golden shields meant to protect nails grown many inches long.

The dwarf radiated malevolence.

The Master.

The golden-skinned woman lay face down behind him, abasing herself. Of Emerald there was no sign.

Emerald was stalking the remainder of Rider's men.

His manpower depleted, he had opted for cunning. He posted his men, then sought out Spud, Greystone, and Su-Cha. Speaking Shasesserren brokenly, bowing, he blocked their path. "Is told you fella seek holy joe fella Pleacher, so? Is bounty find same?"

"Maybe," Spud said. "Depends."

"You come see belong you fella friend Preacher, longside double." Emerald hurried away.

The three followed. "A remarkable physical specimen," Greystone said, scholarly curiosity piqued.

Spud grumbled, "There's an accent behind that pidgin that 1 know from somewhere. Can't get my hooks on it."

Grinning, prancing ahead, back to the gnarly man, Su-Cha said, "We've found our man. This is the guy Rider's old man marked."

Spud and Greystone halted. "You mean? ... "

"Yes indeed." Su-Cha's little round face went hard.

"You fella come?"

"By all means," Greystone replied. "By all means."

"Ambush of some kind," Spud decided.

"Somebody's going to ambush somebody," Su-Cha chirped.

But they were not prepared when it happened, as, passing a tavern, they were set upon by five gnarly men with nets and ropes. It was no fight at all. Greystone and Spud were netted, tied, and dragged into an alley almost before bystanders were aware something was happening.

Su-Cha was another matter. The gnarly men could not keep a net on a creature able to discorporate and reintegrate elsewhere. But they produced fetishes of holly and garlic and a rope of silver. They surrounded him with the rope. He could not escape their closing circle. The holly and garlic prevented him getting close enough to strike back.

Grinning, Emerald tossed a net into which silver thread had been plaited.

The last of Rider's associates was caught.

"Better this time," Emerald said. "Let's deliver them. Then we try the tough one."

"These guys were tough enough," one man protested.

"We'll have help after this. Shut up and come on. People are getting nosey."

Rider followed the glowing footprints to a grand mansion on the Balajka Hill, Shasesserre's wealthiest section. He faced a decision. The tracks went in, but then came out again. Continue following them? Or investigate the house?

That was supposed to be empty.

Jehrke had known all Shasesserre's leading men, so his son knew them too. This mansion belonged to one Vlazos, currently posted to the western army for his year in five of public service.

Someone had usurped the place in his absence.

Rider decided he would come back later. He continued tracking the man who had had his father murdered.

He was two hundred yards away when a rushing coach nearly overran him. He rose angrily. Such drivers had no place in Shasesserre of the overcrowded streets. The coach turned in through the gate to the Vlazos mansion.

Rider intuited the arrival of an important conspirator. Perhaps one more important than the man he tracked. He turned back.

The Vlazos grounds were surrounded by a fifteen-foot wall. Rider made sure no one was in sight, swarmed up using cracks between stones for foot and hand holds. He peeped over the top, saw nothing remarkable, hoisted himself, dropped lightly to the manicured turf inside. He reached the side of the house only moments after the front door closed behind the newcomer.