Michael Stackpole - Of Limited Loyalty

“Change of plans. Earlier I thought that would be useful, but I can see, now, it is of little use.” Rufus smoothed away the last of the hair on the right side of his head. “From you I need something else. A verification. And, I believe, that will require a demonstration on my part.”

Rufus had closed within forty yards. He crooked his right index finger. The nail had grown out into a proper talon, which he played over the surface of the tablet. He traced one of the glyphs, an angular one, then flicked with the nail. The glyph came up off the tablet, flying up swiftly, then lazily descending like an autumn leaf.

It burned red.

Rufus caught it on his open palm and allowed the color to pool there. He rocked his hand forward and back. The redness congealed into a plum-size ball, shot through with gold lightning. Some of the bolts emerged to link his fingers with a sizzling web, and the ball rose at the heart of it. He flexed his fingers, letting the web slip from them, and the ball hovered, bathing his pallid face with a bloody glow.

“There is, in this world, power unimagined.”

He brushed the ball away as casually as one might swat at dandelion fluff. The ball circled once, caught in the vortex of air his hand had created, then arced up and back toward the meeting house. Owen lost sight of it for a heartbeat, then it exploded beside the door, washing it in a sheet of flame. Before he could open his mouth to shout a warning, flames licked up to the roof.

And despite the sound and light, no one within shouted or screamed, nor made any attempt to escape.

Owen’s mouth hung open. “Are you insane?”

Before Rufus could answer, Nathaniel raised his rifle and dropped his thumb to the firestone. Thunder cracked. At that range, there was no way Nathaniel could miss. Smoke blew back over them, but instead of revealing a dead Steward, they found themselves looking at Rufus rolling the bullet around in his palm, much as he had the glyph.

“As I said, power unimagined. Freezing a bullet in the air, plucking it from where it hovered, that is as nothing.” Rufus idly examined his talons in the fire’s glow. “I wish to understand how you will greet my return.”

Nathaniel levered his reloaded rifle breech closed again. “I can give you another demonstration.”

“Not you, my friend, but all of you.” Rufus raised a hand. “I said a verification.”

Owen’s eyes tightened. “What would you be verifying?”

“I saw what lurked in your cowering friend’s mind. I have visions of Fort Cuivre and Anvil Lake. I know how hard you fight.” The hand fell. “Now I wish to know how you will fight this.”

Bat-winged creatures boiled out of the darkness. Smaller than men, but not by much, more slender and lighter as befitted a flying creature, they streamed in from the sides and down from the gloom. Their tiny eyes burned scarlet, and jagged mother-of-pearl teeth flashed. They bore no weapons save for those teeth and the sharp claws on their feet and hands.

Without thinking Owen thrust his rifle into one’s face and triggered a spell. The bullet blew through the creature’s brains and sent another tumbling back through the air. He clubbed a third with his rifle butt and brained a fourth with the barrel. The steel appeared to do more harm, making its flesh bubble and blister. He shifted it to his left hand and drew his steel tomahawk, laying about him with both as quickly as he could.

Makepeace roared, smashing them with a rifle in one hand and snatching them out of the air with the other. He grabbed one by the throat and its wings closed around his hand, knuckles showing through the grey membrane. Bones crackled and the dead thing fell away, but Makepeace bled from where it had bitten and clawed him.

Kamiskwa’s warclub made short work of the creatures. It seemed as if the weapon had been designed to crush their brittle bones and slice through their wings. One clung to his long braid, so the warrior whipped his head back and flung the beast hard against the workshop doors.

Nathaniel, too, fought as if the devil had opened the gates to Hell and demons had poured forth. Tomahawk and knife flashed. Dark blood splashed through the night. Ebon bodies littered the ground, twitching and grasping, each creature chancing a last scratch or bite.

So many of them to fight. None of them had inflicted a deep wound, but the scratches stung and the bites wept. The woman who had escaped from Piety had not been subject to one swift attack, but to a series of slow and deliberate attacks. Though Owen fought against a horde of the creatures, no single wound could match any of hers, and taken in the aggregate, they had done less damage.

The sheer weight of the assault, however, forced Owen back, foot by foot. He slashed high and low, kicking creatures away, but could not regain lost ground. Wings wrapped his face and shoulders, blinding him. Things bit at his neck and ears. He’d tear them off, gaining a moment to orient himself, and then they would descend again.

Then he tripped, the leather rustling of their wings accompanying his fall. To stay down was to die, but bloody mud gave his feet no purchase. The demons pounced, piling onto his legs, grabbing his arms and spreading them wide.

Behind him, Makepeace had been backed against the workshop. The demons covered him in a living gray coat. Kamiskwa had likewise fallen and had been buried beneath a writhing gray carpet. Nathaniel lay slumped at the base of the workshop wall, his face a mask of blood.

Rufus strode through the carnage and laughed. “So, I see. This will be easier than I imagined. But time to end this now.”

A sudden shriek from above caused the Steward to look up. There, wide-eyed and clearly insane with terror, Ian Rathfield leaped from the workshop loft. He landed on both feet and staggered-Owen thought certain he’d heard a bone break-but it mattered not at all. In his hand, Ian bore the steel chain with which Owen had thought to haul him into the loft, and he whirled it above his head.

The chain’s deadly arc swept demons from the air. The heavy hook on its end dashed out brains. Roaring at the top of his lungs, making a sound no human throat was ever meant to utter, Rathfield drove forward and wrapped the chain around Rufus’ chest. He trapped the left arm there, warping the tablets. And yet, even as his attack crumpled the Steward, Rufus thrust his right hand toward Ian, and a glowing purple sigil flew from his palm.

The arcane symbol struck Ian in the forehead with the force of a hammer, denting his skull. The man dropped into a heap. One of the demons landed before him, wings spread, clawed hands raised high, ready to finish the work the magick had begun.

And behind it, backlit by the burning Temple, a bat-winged leviathan descended from the sky.

16 May 1767 Happy Valley Postsylvania, Mystria

Mugwump snatched the demon up in his mouth and spat it, broken and limp, toward a clump of the creatures covering something on the ground. The demon steamed, the dragon’s saliva already consuming it. The others screeched and pulled back, smeared mucus already burning holes in their wings. The dragon’s tail flicked left and right, snapping demons into clouds of black blood and bone splinters.

Prince Vlad, clinging to the saddle with frostbitten fingers, hunched forward as Mugwump spun. The dragon bit things in half, shaking his head as a terrier might shake a rat, and wetness spattered the Prince. Vlad didn’t really care what it was, since it was warmer than he. He dearly wished they were closer to the fire-at least until he realized it was a building.

Then Mugwump launched himself into the air again, up into a black fog that hid the ground, visibly reducing the burning building to a tiny spark. Right wing went up, left down. Mugwump rolled through the sky, flying after the bat-winged creatures. He hissed savagely, a sound the Prince had heard at Anvil Lake, but this time saliva jetted out in a mist. The demons caught in it curled up and dropped from sight. Vlad marveled, never having suspected the dragon of having such a weapon.