The Nine Page 20

  Perry took an experimental breath. “Seems fine.”

  Stuber took interest in one of the holes that was a few inches south of Perry’s collar bone. “Take a deep breath. Deep as you can.”

  Perry did so.

  Stuber nodded his approval. “No bubbling or hissing. And you feel like you can breathe deep?”

  Perry nodded.

  “Well, good,” Stuber smiled at him. “That means your lung’s not punctured. Probably.”

  Perry groaned. “Why do you always have to put the caveat on the end?”

  Stuber looked at him blankly. “Because I don’t know everything. Shocking as that may seem.” He jerked his head behind him. “Teran, grab the medical kit from my pack.”

  Teran rose and went to his pack and began rummaging through it.

  Whimsby stood up suddenly. Perry and Stuber’s attention shifted to him. He looked at the revolvers in his hands as though he found it fascinating that they were there. “How odd,” he said. Then he spun them in his fingers and they landed into his holsters. He looked up at their stares. “My central processor has completed its diagnostic, and I’ve reviewed my short term memory. Mistress Teran, I apologize for nearly shooting you in the spine. Perry, I apologize for nearly shooting you in the head. Twice.”

  Sagum stood up. “So do you know what happened?”

  “Unknown anomaly,” Whimsby answered, his usual cheery tone returning to him. “I’ve been near to demigod energy shields several times, however, I’ve never been inside of one. It apparently has a bad effect on my circuitry. In the future, Perry, I’ll remain outside your shield, should you need to activate it.”

  Sagum scratched his jawline and uttered a mystified, “Huh.”

  Whimsby patted him on the shoulder. “Don’t fret too much. An odd problem, but a simple solution.”

  Perry eyed the mech. “So…everything’s alright now? You’re…good to go?”

  Whimsby smirked. “By which you mean to ask, am I going to randomly go haywire and try to shoot everyone?”

  Perry shrugged. Yes, that was pretty much what he’d meant.

  Whimsby shook his head. “No. I was attempting to fire on the polymorphs, however, the synchronicity of my ocular sensors and targeting data was getting…hmm…disrupted.” Whimsby strode to Perry. “Would you care for a diagnostic? I can scan your wound, if you’d like.”

  “Uh…” Perry wasn’t sure what a scan entailed. But the bite wound throbbed monstrously, and he was willing to give it a shot. “Sure?”

  Whimsby stared at the shoulder for a moment. Then he jerked his head up. “Interesting findings.”

  Perry felt a little sick. “Like what?”

  “Mostly muscular damage,” Whimsby answered. “That bite mark there, under your clavicle, appears to have impacted your first intercostal nerve. You may have nerve damage. Difficult to diagnose that from a scan. Regardless, once the pain recedes, you’ll experience numbing of your left arm and it might be somewhat difficult to move for the next few days. Also, there appears to be some foreign matter in the bite wounds—bacteria from the polymorph’s mouth. You’ll want a strong round of antibiotics.”

  Perry felt a flush creeping up his scalp and he blinked away a wave of faintness.

  Stuber took him by his good shoulder. “You alright there, Shortstack?”

  “Mm-hm. I’m good,” Perry croaked. “Teran, you catching all this?”

  Teran returned with the medical kit, nodding. “Yeah. Inter-whatever nerve damage and nasty spit in the wound. Got it.”

  Whimsby bent down and pointed to the various punctures. “Might I suggest that you irrigate all the puncture wounds. You may want to debride this slash on the top of the shoulder blade. A numbing agent applied here and here should eliminate most of the pain. For our purposes, you may consider sealing each wound, as I would be concerned more about infection from them being open than being closed. Anything trapped should be handled by a strong dose of antibiotics.”

  Teran looked up at Whimsby with a quirked eyebrow. “You wanna do it?”

  Whimsby knelt. “No offense intended, Mistress Teran.” He appropriated the medical kit from her. “But it may be faster if I do. And might I also suggest that we not hang out too long in one spot? With so much blood in the air, there’s bound to be other less-than-friendly creatures scenting it out.”

  ***

  Mala landed in a tiny clearing amidst trees at the top of a hill. The ground around her shifted and sizzled under the burn of her shield, but she extinguished it a moment after.

  She listened carefully. She’d heard the gunshots when she was five hills over. A rapid smattering, aggressive and sudden and over so quickly it could have only been a fight. A fight with what? Had the praetors already found them? Surely not. She wasn’t positive that the skiffs hadn’t managed to slip by her unseen as she’d been making her way from hill to hill, but it was unlikely. Also, they would probably stop at the crash site of her skiff to investigate it, as it was an identical craft to the one her targets had escaped on.

  No. It couldn’t be the praetors.

  But what, then?

  The wind blew in the wrong direction. It was at her back. She’d heard the rattle of gunfire, but she wouldn’t be able to hear much else with the wind carrying it away.

  And her lines of sight were shrinking. Now in the foothills of these mountains, there weren’t enough tall peaks that gave a commanding view. All she saw were trees.

  She briefly considered doubling back and attempting to commandeer another skiff from the praetors, who were most likely at her crash site. But she had a lead on them, and she wasn’t going to give that up.

  She activated her shield and flew into the air again, coming into something of a controlled hover, though the wind pushed her around and it was difficult to maintain a specific altitude—much more easy to go up or down. She hung there in the air for a moment, scanning around her as best she could, but there was nothing to be seen. She descended back to earth.

  Swearing to herself, she made off again, going with the wind. That was where her quarry were heading. It was her best chance of picking up their trail.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  THE KING AND THE DEVILS

  The group continued on until the light began to fade from the sky.

  Whimsby had led them to a river that flowed out of the mountains, heading to the east, and he chose to follow its northern bank. Their progress was quick in certain parts, and mired by swampy inlets at others. Whimsby struggled most in these areas, his heavy pack planting him in the mud so even with his superior strength he found it difficult to move.

  Perry found himself straggling, taking up the rear guard with Stuber. Whatever Whimsby had stuck into his nerves to block the pain had begun to wear off and his shoulder and chest throbbed along with the beating of his heart. Despite being able to feel the pain, his arm itself seemed numb, by virtue of the pinched nerve, Perry guessed. His fingers and palm prickled like a limb just waking up. He could move his arm, but it was sluggish, and its range of motion was lackluster.

  Teran had taken Perry’s pack ahead of schedule, because the straps would have ground against his open wounds. He didn’t like making her pull his weight, but she insisted, and ultimately, it would probably be best for him to heal faster.

  “How you doing, Shortstack?” Stuber asked him as they walked, side by side. His eyes never ceased to move, to scan, to evaluate his environment.

  Perry’s did the same. There’s nothing like being mauled by a mutated creature to drive home the point that the Crooked Hills were hostile territory.

  “I’m making it,” Perry answered. He gestured ahead. “You don’t have to hang back here with me.”

  “It’s fine,” Stuber said dismissively. “Otherwise I’d have to hear Smegma whining the whole time. Besides, I figure I should keep an eye on you. Make sure you don’t pass out.”

  “Very altruistic of you.”

  “It’s important to take care of your
wounded,” Stuber said. “Back in the legions, they never let us. If you fell on the battlefield, you were simply left for dead. There wasn’t a man among us that didn’t feel the wrongness of that. It’s nice to feel like you’re doing the right thing for a change.”

  Perry eyed the big man for a moment before returning to scanning. “Everyone’s expendable to the demigods.”

  They walked in silence for a ways before Stuber spoke up again, as though his train of thought had looped him back around to the conversation. “Makes a man wonder what they really want.”

  “How’s that?”

  “They have weapons and capabilities beyond any normal man. I have a hard time believing that if they really wanted to be victorious, they wouldn’t use them. But instead they just use us. Humans. And it never seems like anything ever really happens. For hundreds of years, nothing has happened. No significant ground taken. None lost. Just an endless stalemate, despite the fact that the paladins have the power to end it all if they chose.”

  It was a thought that most people, at some point in time or another, had entertained. The problem with people, is that when they felt that they had no control over things, they tended to shove the inequities under the rug. Because what were they going to do? Fight back against the demigods? They’d be slaughtered. So they chose instead to rationalize it away.

  “Perhaps,” Perry said, musing on one of those rationalizations. “They don’t want to fight each other. Maybe it’s a code they have, or something. They all descended from the sons of Primus, right? So maybe they just refuse to fight their own blood. We seem willing enough to do it for them.”

  “Perhaps,” Stuber said, in a tone that suggested he didn’t buy it.

  As daylight dwindled, Whimsby led them to a portion of the river that was overhung by rocks. Here the bank was narrow and they had to walk single-file with the rocks on their left, and the river burbling to their right. Their feet sunk deep in the wet sand.

  “So much water here,” Perry said, unable to stop constantly noting the plentitude of natural resources—resources that people in the scorched plains back home would kill to have access to. It forced his mind back to the farming freehold of his youth. How hard everyone had worked to scratch a subsistence from the barren landscape around them.

  But they managed, didn’t they? With solar and wind, and deep wells to draw up precious water from beneath them. They made just enough to keep on living. Never enough to grow. Only enough to survive.

  How easy would it be for the demigods to pipe all this water over to the places near the Glass Flats that needed it the most? Did they simply not care, or was there some important reason for it that Perry couldn’t understand?

  Eventually, Whimsby stopped, looking at the rocks to their left. “Well,” he said happily. “It’s not Praesidium, but I think it’ll do for the night. Yes?”

  The group piled up, squeezing close together in their sodden boots with the river lapping at their ankles.

  It was a cave in the rocks, carved out by eons of high-waters, but the floor of it was a few feet above the surface of the river, and looked dry.

  Stuber nodded. “Not a bad choice, Whimsby. One way in. It’ll bottle neck any hostiles that show up. Protected from the elements. Looks cozy enough for me. As long as there aren’t polymorphs or nekrofages hiding in the back.”

  “Nekrofages?” Whimsby chuckled. “I didn’t take you for a man of fantasy, Stuber.”

  “I have many fantasies,” Stuber answered, stepping up to the sand-covered rock floor of the cave. “Most of them involving beautiful women. But the nekrofages do exist.” He proffered his left forearm for Whimsby’s inspection, where the puckered bite wound was still healing. “One of them gave me this.”

  Whimsby frowned at it. “You sure it was a nekrofage?”

  “Humanoid? Completely fucking insane? Very bitey? Glows green?” Stuber smiled. “Pretty sure it was a nekrofage.”

  “Fascinating,” Whimsby uttered.

  The group of five made camp in the cave as the sky outside turned red-washed, like Perry’s mental images of The Calm. Whimsby explored the rear of the cave with his enhanced eyesight and hearing, and Stuber followed him, because he was the type that wouldn’t sleep on someone else’s word that all was safe. Perry watched Stuber’s weaponlight exploring the darkness. The cave went further back than he’d thought.

  When they’d confirmed that the cave was uninhabited, they moved further into it, so that the world and the sky outside was a small patch of red that simmered in the distance. They chose a plateau of rock, slightly higher than the rest of the cave floor. Further back than that and it got damp, with water trickling in tiny streams.

  “I think we’re far enough back that a light from a fire won’t be too pronounced,” Whimsby observed. “Obviously, I’m not in need of a fire, but if it would provide some comfort to my human compatriots, I’m more than willing to make one.”

  “Please, by all the gods,” Sagum groaned, slipping his pack off. “Make the fucking fire.”

  No one argued. Even Stuber didn’t object, or tease Sagum for wanting the comfort of warmth and light. Perry thought it sounded pretty good himself.

  Whimsby offloaded his cumbersome pack and rummaged around through the various containers Teran had lashed together, coming up with a small tube. He opened it and deposited a small, white cylinder of some powdery substance. “This should burn for roughly eight hours.”

  Stuber propped his pack against the cave wall and leaned back on it, gesturing to Perry. “Go ahead, Perry. Light it up.”

  Perry grimaced. “You really want an energy blast in here? Last time I did that in a tunnel, it caused a cave in.”

  Whimsby waggled a small, silver device in the air. “I’m more than capable of lighting it, Perry.”

  Stuber waved Whimsby off. “Perry can do it. Go ahead, Halfbreed. Show us what you got.”

  Perry sighed, gripping his longstaff in his one good hand. “I dunno, Stuber. We don’t have a lot of these things and—”

  “All the more reason to practice,” Stuber said. “Time and practice, Shortstack. Time and practice.”

  Perry grunted, then pointed the longstaff down at the white cylinder. The longstaff hummed as he dipped into the red. Gently.

  “Whimsby,” Teran murmured. “You may want to step back.”

  Whimsby took a step backwards, watching Perry curiously.

  Ease into it, Perry told himself. Control it.

  He felt his consciousness as though it were in the back of his longstaff, and sliding slowly down it. It was a very strange sensation, compared to the suddenness with which he usually blasted the energy out—all of his mind releasing at once, like an explosion.

  But he’d felt it before. And failed.

  Easy. Easy.

  To Perry’s surprise, he watched the muzzle of the longstaff begin to glow. His eyes went wide. “Oh. That’s never happened before.”

  “Be quiet and concentrate,” Stuber gruffed at him.

  Perry kept feeding his mind down the length of the longstaff, just bits and pieces, portioning himself out, but not allowing it to release. The glow at the end of his longstaff turned into a green ball of light. It swirled and crackled, and Perry almost lost it, almost shot it off. The more it grew, the more difficult it was to control. It seemed to want to blast away.

  Perry found himself pulling back now. Reigning his mind back in, and yet the ball of energy continued to grow. For a moment, his nerves jangled about inside of him, nearly yanking him out of The Calm, but he took a breath and let it out slow and continued to hold his mind under his own control while the energy ball built, and built, until it was nearly two feet in diameter.

  The edges of the energy ball touched the white cylinder and it burst into flame.

  Perry’s eyes danced in the firelight, a smile coming to his lips. Which immediately vanished. The ball was still growing. “Shit. What do I do now?”

  Stuber shrugged. “Don’t ask me. I don�
��t know how you work that thing.”

  “What am I supposed to do with it?” Perry found himself fixated on it, willing it to stop growing, but now it was about three feet across. “I can’t just fire it off in here!”

  Stuber backed away from the growing orb. “Just, uh, suck it back in or something.”

  “It’s not a spit ball, Stuber!”

  “Well, I don’t know!” Stuber said, shimmying sideways now. “But definitely don’t fire it off.”

  Perry felt the energy of it, pulsing, irate, destructive. More powerful than any bolt of energy he’d produced out of the longstaff in a single go. If it flew out of the muzzle of his weapon, Perry was pretty sure it would disintegrate them all.

  Calm. Be calm. Don’t let the fear take control.

  Perry had to be the one in control.

  Just go backwards, he thought. You put yourself into the staff, now take yourself back out of it!

  Involuntarily, Perry found himself sucking air through pursed lips, as though it really was a spitball, despite what he’d said. He pulled on it, strained at it, like a powerful beast on the end of a leash…

  And then he felt it flowing backwards, those pieces of himself coming all the way back through the longstaff, and back into him. Reincorporating with him. It was the oddest sensation. But it was working. The ball of energy was shrinking now, faster than it had grown.

  And then it blipped out.

  Four people and one mech, standing around a small, hotly-burning cylinder.

  “Whoof,” Perry let out all the air he’d sucked in. “Did you see that?”

  Stuber clapped his hands together a few times and settled back into the spot he’d vacated to escape the growing orb. “Good job, Perry. See? You just suck it back in.”

  “That’s not exactly what happened,” Perry said, but didn’t add that it wasn’t too far from the truth. Occasionally, you just had to deny Stuber so that he didn’t get too full of himself.