Dragon Ultimate (37 page)

Mirk slid away into the dark soon after the sun had set. Lagdalen and the others waited with the horses, for he wanted no distractions. The great fire had died down considerably, and though other fires were lit, the darkness was considerably stronger than before.

"Be ready to mount and ride in an instant," said Beruyn.

"You think he must fail?" Lagdalen replied softly, not wanting Giles to hear.

Beruyn merely shrugged and looked away.

"The Great One has gone," she said. "It will not be as rigorous a place now. Trust me, I've seen these things before."

Beruyn's face filled with disbelief. What did a young lady of the Tower of Guard know about Baguti war camps?

"Just be ready to ride. It's our only hope. The Baguti will kill us very slowly when they capture us."

Out in the darkness, Mirk moved with his characteristic stealthy lope. In less than an hour he was over the rise and moving down toward the camp of the Lord Lapsor. The dying great fire threw a red light over the camp, which was yet in turmoil.

The Baguti had circled back from the Gan, looking for loot. Once their first terrified lurch for the steppes was out of their systems, they remembered the fat pickings in those tents. The Padmasan men were already taking their share, where they dared. A smaller group among them, who had worked for the Lord Lapsor before and knew how inadvisable it was to steal from him, maintained a stout guard on the tents that held the Lord's own baggage. The Lord's main tent was guarded by the Lord's own creatures. The Padmasans left them well alone.

In the main tent there were a half dozen Neild, strange little creatures with huge goggle eyes and turtle heads. They held to their daily schedule. After dusk, the Lord would work on his experiments. When he tired he would retire to the divan for a rest. Later he would drink elixir and awaken to his full power. They waited for an hour, but the Lord had not appeared. Usually this meant he was not coming at all. With their quick, skillful hands, the Neild dismantled the experimental setup on the main table. After putting away the tools and instruments, they took down the experiments in their cages and covered them with black cloth before placing them on small carts and trundling them over to the side of the tent. Lessis was always stacked above the girl with the blue boils, who simply begged for death. Next to her was the boy's head that had been grafted on the body of a medium-sized monkey. The boy was insane and sang constantly in nonsense syllables.

Outside, in the darkness, Mirk drifted through the camp. His well-worn clothing, dark wool trousers, leather coat and hat, were much the same as that of the Padmasan mercenaries. Once he was past the sentries he managed to merge quite unnoticed among the figures moving between the tents.

The fire's red light gave the scene an eldritch cast, with dark figures silhouetted every so often against the fire. Smoke drifted up. Padmasan guards at the entrance to the tent eyed him briefly and he moved on.

He glanced down the side alley between the tents. There was no guard visible. He slipped between the row of tents and came out on a wider alley at the rear. Several tall wagons were parked behind the big pavilion tent.

Giles had indicated that the Lady was in the back part of the tent.

Mirk noticed odd-looking, two-legged creatures working around the back entrance, moving some crates down from a wagon and into the tent. These would be Neild. Mirk had seen them before in the catacombs beneath the Magnate Wexenne's grand house in Aubinas. Standing guard were a pair of enormous bewkmen. Even at thirty paces Mirk could tell what they were. There was something in the stiff-shouldered stance and oddly shaped heads that was instantly recognizable.

He turned back to the space along the side of the tent, which had no visible guards. He slipped into the gap between the pavilion and the next tent, a space about fifteen feet wide. Dodging tent pegs and ropes, he moved halfway down and took stock. There might be some kind of invisible alarm, but there seemed no other choice. He would simply have to move quickly once he was inside. With a prayer to the Great Mother he pulled out one of his razor-sharp knives and cut his way in with a single swift motion.

Inside was a realm of fantastic shapes throwing sharp shadows from a hanging lantern. A bust of the Lord Lapsor, twice life-size, stood on a plinth by the lantern. A tall table carried an array of cartographer's globes. A telescope ten feet long was standing on its mount.

Mirk sensed something moving toward him, and he slid into shadow. There must have been an alarm spell. Mirk glimpsed a powerful body as it rounded the far end of the rows of cages. It had the mass of a lion and the body shape of a baboon. Mirk had one of his killing knives in his hand, but kept inside his coat to prevent any chance of a gleam on the steel. He squeezed back into the space behind a tall wooden crate.

The thing prowled past without seeing Mirk, master of the shadows. It was blue-skinned and had orange eyes, tail twitching stiffly about as it sniffed along the side of the tent wall. It stopped precisely at the place he'd cut through. It inspected the cut, then turned and began to taste the air with a long pink tongue.

Mirk chewed his lip. There was no alternative. He would have to kill the thing, somehow.

Stealthily, he climbed a stack of solidly built crates and studied the layout of the tent. There was a massive table, thirty feet by eight, that dominated the center of the tent. Behind it was a thronelike chair and a rack of books, three shelves stuffed with leather-bound tomes. A pile of message scrolls was laid out on a platter on the table.

He watched the Neild completing their routine tasks. They were feeding the experimental animals in the cages. He caught sight of the demon, pacing down the far side of the tent, its orange eyes glowing like twin lamps.

Mirk slid down off the crates.

The demon prowled on, searching for the intruder that it sensed somewhere in the tent The tent wall was pierced, the ground stank of a man in man boots. The demon was trained to rip such men to pieces and devour them. There were far too many who thought they could beat the odds and break into the Lord's tent and steal some great sorcerous secret that would make them wealthy beyond avarice. Such stupidity had to be rewarded, and Waakzaam thought it was every time he returned and found the demon gnawing down on the bones of some wretched, would-be-thief.

Waakzaam kept the accoutrements of such fools; their swords, bows, knives, hats, even their sandals, and over the months of the campaign had collected a chestful of treasures. The demon had proved most satisfactory as a tent guardian.

Now the blue demon pulled up short. It smelled the man. It whirled and glared down the passage between the crates. There! The man was visible for a moment and then he disappeared. The demon sprang in pursuit. At the spot where the man had been standing it caught the scent once more and followed it around a crate, then between two more and caught sight of the man ducking into the dark interior of a large crate that was open on one side.

The demon moved stealthily across the intervening space toward the entrance. The man did not carry a spear, and this made the demon abandon inhibitions. It moved inside with a bold step and found the big crate had been half-filled with small crates. The man was at the far end, the demon sprang forward, but the man slid away in the narrow space between crates. The demon could not reach him. It rocked the smaller crates around in its fury, but now it had lost all track of the prey.

Something heavy landed on the demon's back, legs gripped its body. It gave a scream of rage and turned its head while reaching round with its right arm.

The big head turned to bring its teeth to bear. As the shoulder dipped, Mirk got a knee up on its shoulder blade and drove his razor-sharp dirk into its left eye and right through its brain.

It crashed to the floor instantly and writhed briefly before stiffening in death. Mirk pulled himself to his feet from where he'd fallen. He withdrew his knife and wiped the ill-smelling blood of the thing on its chest. It was awesomely well muscled; he could never have fought the thing for a moment. It would have torn him limb from limb.

Fortunately, there were more ways than one to skin just about anything he thought as he pushed himself to his feet and moved away from the scene. The sound of that little scuffle would have been heard; the bewkmen might come at any time. Mirk faded toward the sidewall of the tent, but there was no immediate sign of the guards.

Perhaps they did not want to come upon the demon in the process of devouring an intruder. Encouraged, he moved toward the tiers of nearby cages.

The Neild had heard the commotion, and some of them had stopped work, craning their heads in the direction of the stacked crates. Mirk slipped quietly away from the crates, around the telescope, and came up behind the row of cages.

There was no black cloth on the backs of the cages and Mirk saw more horror in those dark recesses than he would have ever dreamt possible. He averted his eyes most of the time and sent up prayers to the Mother that he be allowed to be the one to finish the tyranny of this most horrid monster.

There was a cage on the second tier, just up head, where a voice babbled endlessly in nonsense syllables. A cage below had a girl, bound at wrist and knee. She writhed and sobbed in some agony that he could not understand in the near darkness.

Above her he saw a slight figure slumped against the side of a small cage. He knew who it was at once.

"Lady, can you hear me?" he whispered.

She jumped, almost knocking her cage over and momentarily startling the monkey boy, who screamed and jumped up and down in his cage.

"Lady?"

"Mirk?"

"Yes. I need to know how your cage is locked."

"Large key, kept on a ring. I don't know where it is kept, but I suspect it will be on the desk area of the table, where the scrolls are piled up."

"No magic?"

"Not that I can detect."

"I will be back."

Mirk slipped away back down along the row of cages at the rear of the tent.

He found that the Neild were clumped together down by the crates, jabbering excitedly over the body of the fallen demon.

He reached the huge table set five feet off the ground. The chair was equally massive. Books were jammed into a heavy bookcase nearby. There was a set of drawers and the pile of scrolls on a platter. On the table were a long delicate knife, a slab of glass, and a pile of fresh scrolls. There was also a hefty key ring.

He gathered this up and ducked back to the cages. As far as he could tell he had not been seen. The Neild remained in animated conversation over by the crate where the demon lay.

Out of the twenty keys on the chain he found the one for Lessis's cage on the fourth attempt. He pulled the door open and cut the Lady's restraints, for she was still bound at the wrists.

She climbed out, and almost fell getting down except that he caught her and set her down gently. She wobbled for a moment.

"Excuse me, Mirk, I've not been on my feet much just lately."

"Lady, shall I carry you?"

"No, I don't think it's gone quite that far. Just give me a moment to get my legs back."

Lessis sagged against the bars, and then heard the tormented moaning coming from within. She pushed herself upright again with a shiver of unease. This poor child was in constant agony.

"Mirk, I want you to open this cage and kill the girl. Be careful not to touch her, she is infected with a horrible disease."

Mirk swallowed and then set about trying the keys. The fifth try opened the cage. The girl looked at him with insane hope in her eyes, and begged for death in some Baguti tongue.

Mirk closed his eyes with a prayer and drove home the blade.

He backed out, took the Lady's arm and pulled her after him to the sidewall of the tent. His knife cut through the canvas, and they clambered through and hurried down the alley of ropes and tent pegs.

Lessis stumbled a lot at first, but gradually got a grip on things. Out on the rear alley, a wagon was in motion toward them, riders were trotting by on the far side. Baguti out for plunder. Mirk ignored them.

"Can you run?"

"I don't know. Maybe not."

"Can you keep walking?"

"Yes."

"All right, then we're going to just walk out of here. Things are pretty much in chaos without His Lordship around to keep the lid on."

"As good a plan as any, Mirk. And thank you for coming back for me. I told you not to, and you disobeyed, but I'm very thankful nonetheless."

"I would never leave you in his hands, Lady."

A month had passed since the battle at the crossings. The legion force at Fort Kenor had been built up to the point where the fort had had to be expanded considerably.

The 109th had been separated from the 145th, who had new dragonboys at last, and were now quartered in a row of new tents set up in the west ward that had been enclosed with stockade and towers.

Bazil was with the other dragons, noisily clanging shield and sword on the practice ground. Relkin worked on various elements of their kit that Cuzo had deemed insufficiently shining and virtuous. He was polishing the brass buttons of his jacket, which had been criticized along with his cap badge and the buckles from his new, official Legion boots.