Covenant's End (4 page)

On the other hand, it was still a sizeable tree, taking a sizeable fall. Already bleeding from a score of tiny lacerations and abrasions, Widdershins tumbled madly—head not only over heels, but also under, beside, and even cattycorner to them—thrown from the trunk by the impact. Only a desperate surge of power from Olgun allowed her to snag the nearby branches as she flew by, barely keeping herself from crashing through the canopy and breaking on the forest floor.

For roughly a decade or so, she just hung there, arms and legs wrapped tight around the thickest limbs, shuddering and aching over every inch. Wood and leaves crunched nearby as the creature prodded at the canopy with its spear, but the mess made by the falling tree, and the fact that Widdershins had managed to catch herself at a greater height than any normal human could have done, meant the brutal weapon thrust nowhere near her.

Her lungs burned, but she forced herself to take only soft, shallow,
quiet
breaths. Olgun's soothing touch washed over the worst of her cuts and bruises, but she knew she'd be feeling this for a couple of days to come. And still she waited, as the bestial grunts and the scraping spear grew faster and ever more frustrated.

Until, just as she despaired of it ever doing so, the creature offered a final sullen snarl and began climbing the fallen tree like a ramp, determined to find the hidden thief. It leaned sharply forward as it came, spear wrapped tight in one fist.

Which meant it did
not
have both hands available to grip the tree.

“Okay, Olgun. Now'd be a good time to impress me.”

Her skin prickled, as though the air had filled with phantom bees. She felt the energies flowing through her, sensed every imperfection and every subtle sway of the branch beneath her, found her own weight fading as muscles grew unnaturally potent.

She also, beneath it all, felt the fatigue that Olgun struggled to hide, tugging at her bones and her eyelids as though it were her own. She'd asked a lot of him in a very short span of time; if this first attempt failed, the all-but-forgotten god might not have the power for a second.

So, one single chance to avoid a gruesome, agonizing end for both of us. Not something that happens to us just every day.

Only every fourth day, on average. Every third, tops.

Still she waited, bracing herself, letting the creature climb just that little bit higher. A moment more, just a moment, a handful of fluttering, pounding heartbeats…

Shins jerked her feet under her, rose, and lunged.

First the branch to which she'd clung, then the upper reaches of the fallen tree, passed beneath her. They waved, wobbled, threatened to spill her off, to turn an ankle or send her plummeting with every bend or imperfection in the bark. She had to narrow her eyes, raise her hands to ward the worst of the whipping foliage from her face. Agile as she was, as much of her life as she'd spent on tiny ledges or clinging to walls, she could never have managed more than a few steps without Olgun's aid.

The thing howled as it saw her coming, rising as straight and tall as it could on the precarious slope, spear held tight in both hands now, tip rising to meet her charge.

Pinpricks of Olgun's power beneath her boots, as though she left behind a trail of embers, she took two more steps and leapt.

It was impossible, what happened next, even for this incredible partnership of thief and god. Or it would have been, against any other, any human, any
natural
opponent.

But the creature's obscene musculature suggested an inhuman strength, and Shins now proved that theory right. With impeccable balance, she landed on the broad haft
of the spear itself
, and though the weapon bobbed downward at the unexpected weight, the monster kept from dropping it, kept it held close to horizontal.

She had only fractions of a second, but she needed less. Still at a full-out run, she closed half the remaining distance and leapt once more.

Everything slowed, or so it felt. The breeze fell still; the rustling of the leaves grew hushed. She saw the creature tilting back, fighting to keep its eye on her, to bring its spear up behind her in her flight.

Hands reached out, snagging the beast's horn. Her grip secure, Widdershins swung her feet forward, spinning around the horn like a dance partner, the entirety of her weight and her momentum hauling back on the creature's head.

Strong it might be, but it still required solid footing.

The creature rocked, dropped its spear in a mad scrabble for balance—and toppled, wailing, down the slope.

The first fall slammed its back against the trunk, bark and skin both cracking at the impact. The second—as it must have, given the curve of the bole itself—came when the creature slid off the side and plummeted to the earth. The
whump
when it hit was almost tectonic; breath blasted from its lungs, and its single pupil grew wide and unfocused.

Panting a bit, Widdershins huddled farther down the sloped tree, where she and Olgun had barely managed to right themselves before she, too, took a short journey in a bad direction. The fall hadn't killed the thing—she could see that even from here—but then, she hadn't expected it to.

It
did
appear stunned, momentarily, and that would have to do. After it practically shrugged off the flintlock ball, Shins had been unsure if her rapier had even the faintest chance of penetrating its hide.

If the thing would lay still for just a moment, though, it wouldn't have to.

Shins drew her sword, measured the distance between her new perch and the earth, and dubbed it workable. Then she plunged.

The inhuman thing thrashed once only as the steel slid through its lone eye and into the brain beyond.

Knees throbbing from the hard landing, shaking as the last of Olgun's energies faded and his fatigue mixed and mingled with her own, Widdershins straightened. She groaned once, low and quiet, then winced at the squeal of steel on bone as she yanked her weapon free.

“Okay, Olgun,” she began, pressing at the twisted muscles near the small of her back, “what in the name of every god is going—?”

The body
melted
.

Like a snowman in the hot sun, but accelerated, the dead creature dissolved away in less than half a minute. Rivulets of liquid—well, liquid monster—dribbled away in snaking curves. From there it evaporated, forming tiny puffs and walls of mist before vanishing utterly.

Even stranger, however, the corpse very quickly split into two smaller bodies as it faded. Shins clearly saw the melting, dissolving substance form a pair of humanoid shapes, as though one had been standing atop the other in some sort of monstrous costume.

That was rubbish, of course; she'd seen enough, felt enough, to know the creature had been quite solidly real. Still, she clearly and distinctly saw what she saw.

“Olgun? What just happened?”

Confusion and bewilderment formed the bulk of his answer, but Shins could not possibly miss the fear mixed within—or, perhaps most importantly, the nagging sense of familiarity.

“You've seen this before?” she asked incredulously. The only thing she could think of that was even vaguely similar was a spell she'd
experienced last year, allowing two people to share their strength, and even that was a far cry…

But no, Olgun hadn't meant anything that concrete. Finally, sifting through the sensations, she realized it was something about the magic of the creature—its basic nature, yes, but even more so its disappearance—that reminded him of something. It frustrated him more than a little that he couldn't place what it was.

“Come on,” Shins told him, forcing a lightness she didn't feel. “Let's go collect that horse so the poor thing doesn't starve, and find somewhere to bunk down for the night. I want to make Davillon tomorrow, okay?”

Home.
It was a lovely thought, one with which the tiny god firmly agreed. So they moved once more into the woods, each of them pretending not to know precisely what the other was thinking.

They both remembered, all too well, what entities of the supernatural the two of them had encountered in their time. Even if Olgun couldn't quite identify the magics he had sensed, if it was familiar to him at all, it was absolutely, positively nothing they ever wanted to face again.

Rain fell in fat, slow, cold drops, like snow or hail with second thoughts. It drummed on the leaves, drummed on the soil, drummed on Widdershins's sodden hood, until the day sounded as dull and gray as it looked.

“How about we trade?” she asked, tugging on that hood with one hand, the reins with the other. “
You
can wander around getting soaked, trying to figure out if you should be breathing the air or drinking it, and
I'll
ride around nice and dry in
your
head, for a change!”

And then, having gotten more or less the response she anticipated, “Oh, shut up.” She twisted to look back over her shoulder. “You! Tell Olgun to shut up.”

The horse sneezed on her. Olgun howled, laughing until he couldn't breathe—which wasn't really an issue, since he
didn't
breathe, but was still saying quite a bit.

“Perfect. Just wonderful.” Shins gave some thought to wiping the back of her tunic clean, but decided to just let the rain take care of it. “I hope you two will be very happy together.”

Olgun continued to snicker, the horse continued to shiver and snort, and Widdershins continued to grumble as the road rolled on beneath feet and hooves.

Until, finally, the curtain of weather drew back enough to display the last winding stretch of highway and the glistening, rain-drenched walls of Davillon. High above, a tiny fissure in the lowering clouds allowed a single ray of sunlight to shine through, reflecting from the watery sheen to cast the city in a faint golden glow.

Shins, Olgun, and even—so it seemed—the horse stared in sheer incredulity. “You have
got
to be kidding me,” the young woman said finally. “Olgun?”

All he could do was shrug those nonexistent shoulders. It wasn't him; it wasn't magic. Just a genuine, if dramatic—well, grossly
melo
dramatic—coincidence of the elements.

“Guess you're not the only god who
thinks
he's got a sense of humor.” She sniffed once, almost haughtily, and resumed her trek—for about a dozen muddy, squelching steps. Then she halted again, squinting through the rain, raising a hand to protect her face from the moisture her hood failed to catch.

Was that…? It was so hard to see—at this distance, only the pool of light she'd just scoffed at made it possible at all—but it certainly looked as though…

“Is it me,” she asked softly, “or is the gate shut?”

The god's power surged, and the landscape seemed to flash by to either side. Her vision supernaturally sharpened, Widdershins could no longer harbor any doubt. The massive doorway into the greatest of Galice's southern cities was well and firmly closed.

Shins couldn't see the sun, of course; hadn't all day. Still and all, she knew her sense of the time couldn't be
too
far off. It was a few hours past noon, still early for the many merchants and shoppers who would stick around after the bulk of the markets had closed down, hoping to finagle special bargains for themselves. And that trade was fed, during all but the winter months, by a steady feed of goods from outside.

Never, in Shins's memory, had the gates been shut before dusk.

Nor was that the only abnormality she noticed, now that she could see. Sentries stood below, in and around the watch-house by the gate; and sentries stood above, patrolling atop the narrow wall. Just as always.

But their numbers were
not
just as always. Shins didn't bother doing a head count, but she figured there were at
least
twice as many
soldiers on duty as she'd have expected; possibly nearer to three times. If the other gates were equally overstaffed, the thief couldn't imagine how the Guard could have enough other people on duty to even
begin
to keep the peace inside.

Then again, the sentinels clearly didn't expect anything remotely resembling “peace,” either inside or out. Shins was accustomed to the traditional armament of the City Guard: a simple rapier and a so-called “bash-bang,” a heavy pistol with a stock of reinforced brass rather than wood, to double as a brutally effective skull-cracker. And she did see those here, yes, but so, too, did she see guards wearing braces or bandoliers of additional, smaller flintlocks. She saw long-barreled muskets and gape-mawed blunderbusses; the wire-wrapped hilts of main-gauches or other secondary blades.

No enemy showed itself on the surrounding field, no damage scored the walls, but the men and women who stood watch appeared to be defending against a full-on siege.

“What do you think?” Shins asked, then shook her head almost before the image of the cyclopean beast faded. “No, I don't think so. I don't see any signs it's gotten anywhere near the city, and the Houses sure as all fungus aren't going to close the gates over a rumor. For pastries' sake, even if that thing or something like it
had
gotten here? My one shot couldn't drop it, but I'm pretty sure a whole fusillade or a cannonball would, yes?

“No, something else is going on here. That thing, or things, on the road was part of it.
Were
part of it? Does language have half-plurals? Anyway, that thing's part of it—too much of a coincidence for it not to be—but there's more.

“Heh. Mystery, confusion, and violence. Must be Davillon.”

Still she stood. Studied. Soaked in the rain.

And then decided to play a hunch.

“Home!” She dropped the bridle and gave the roan a light slap on the haunches. “Home!” she shouted again.

Without a single look back, the horse trotted forward, head hunched against the weather, making for the gate.

The voices of the sentries rang out in challenge, falling quickly into a confused babble as they realized the animal was riderless. Several guardsmen braved the rain, emerging from the shack to examine the peculiar traveler.

And examine it they did. Shins had never observed as thorough a search of entrants to the city—human, animal, or vehicle—as she saw now. They removed the tattered bits of harness, checking carefully beneath. They examined the horse's teeth, its shoes. A short argument erupted, and only when one young sentry shuffled around, sullenly and nervously, to grip the beast's tail did Shins realize where
else
they were searching.

“I am going to turn away, now,” Widdershins announced, as she did just that. “And
you
are going to swear to never, ever, put that image back in my head, or I will find a priest to bless a cabinet and so help me, I will lock you in a drawer.”

She knew full well that Olgun's silence meant only that he was humoring her, but she decided it'd do.

The horse would be fine, if perhaps somewhat mortified. Either they'd find some kin to the owner, if the torn harness gave them enough to go on, or they'd take it for use by the city. Probably the latter. Shins didn't have any particular attachment to the animal, but she was still inordinately proud of having saved it.

So, what next? Shins was fairly certain that any search the guards subjected her to wouldn't be as—invasive—as the horse's. Nevertheless, they were clearly on higher alert, more meticulous about visitors, than she'd ever known them to be, and she wasn't keen on the notion of being interrogated in general, or in trying to explain her professional tools in particular. And that was assuming none of the guards recognized her. Widdershins wasn't precisely one of Davillon's most notorious criminals, but she
was
a known Finder, and she'd lost her only real friend in the Guard when—

No. Don't think of that right now.

Well, there really was only one option. If she wasn't willing to risk the procedure for passing
through
the wall, she'd just have to go
over
it. Not as though it'd be the first time.

“Aw, come on,” she said to Olgun's surge of protest. “What's the worst that could happen?”

When his reply took the form of an image in which Widdershins was blasted clear off the wall by a volley of musket-fire, she merely grumbled something even the god could neither hear nor interpret, and wandered back down the road to wait for nightfall.

Heavily wooded as the region was, the grounds surrounding Davillon were largely flat and empty. What few trees remained all stood alone, or at most tiny copses, providing no hiding spot or significant cover for any attacking force. Not that Davillon had
faced
an attacking force since the nation of Galice was born, but one never knew.

During the day, approaching unobserved was quite impossible, assuming the sentries were semiconscious and had remembered to bring at least one eye with them that morning. At night…well, thanks to whatever had the place on such high alert, it was
barely
possible.

Men and women of the Guard walked the walls, stood by every gate, watching for any sign of movement, any conspicuous shape, in the shadows. Enormous lanterns stood at strategic intervals at both the top and the base of the wall. Contained within a mirrored shell, essentially a vertical bowl, they shed their illumination in only a single direction, a beam rather than an aura. These slowly rotated, sweeping back and forth across the open terrain. The arc of each lantern overlapped with the next, ensuring that no stretch of earth remained in darkness for more than a minute or so. In her younger
thieving years, Shins had heard rumors that the Guard possessed such capability, but the equipment hadn't been used in generations.

Until now.

Of course, those defenses and that system had been designed to detect approaching enemies—plural. A single figure, clad in dark hues to match the gloom, possessed of any real speed and halfway decent luck, could pass between the shifting beams with little difficulty.

“You know,” Shins sub-vocalized as she leaned against the great stone wall, listening to the steps and the voices above, “if they'd just randomize the lights a bit, not run them through those same arcs all the time, they might just…what? No, I don't want them to catch
us
! I meant for, you know,
other
people! Dangerous ones! It's definitely a problem they should fix…
later
.

“Well, yeah,” she continued as fingers and toes found purchase that most people would never have seen, let alone been able to use. Her ascent was swift and silent, not much louder than a caterpillar making the same journey. “I
do
think the laws should only apply to other people. I mean, you know that
I
can be trusted, but we don't know that about anyone else, do we? Frankly, with all I've done for this city, they really should have thought of that themsel—”

Olgun's silent squawk of warning froze her in place, a bit more than halfway. She pressed herself tight to the stone, willing herself to be a lump of rock. Above her, a bit of scraping and slow breath suggested that one of the guards had chosen almost that exact spot to lean against the parapet and stare out into the darkness. He had no cause to glance straight down—but if, by ill chance, he did, there was nothing even Widdershins's skills could do to hide.

Her fingers and calves began to burn, then threatened to shake. She'd intended the various nooks and crannies and imperfections in the stone to support her just long enough to catch hold of the next. Now that she was trying to support her weight at a standstill, those niches weren't nearly as large or as secure as they had been.

“Olgun…”

The tension in her digits eased with the rush of additional strength, but she'd only bought herself moments. She was just about to ask the little god to do something a bit more dramatic—make the guy think he heard something elsewhere, perhaps, or set off a nearby firearm to draw attention—when the problem solved itself. The sentry heaved a phlegmy sigh, hawked up and spit something over the edge—missing Shins by about the distance of a housefly's sneeze—and wandered off to resume his patrol.

“You're getting too old for this,” Shins whispered. Then, at Olgun's protest, “Well,
one
of us clearly is! And it can't be me, because I'm younger than you are!

“What? Don't be silly; of
course
gods age! If you didn't, you'd be too
young
for this, and you're clearly not.”