Authors: Glen Cook
The three leading airshipmen clumped aboard the smuggler, grumbling. They had decided the splash had been caused by a rock falling off the face of Shroud's Head.
Within minutes the entire complement had boarded. The ship got under way.
XXXI
With Chaz and General Procopio more or less running the show, the welcome planned for Shai Khe was about as subtle and gentle as a sledge hammer.
Chaz was not a man to use a rapier where a battleaxe would do.
But it seemed the battleaxe would not get taken in hand.
It was not that long a wait before shadows began flitting about outside. There was even a moment when one of those solidified into the devil shape of Shai Khe, calmly assessing the house. But the easterner was not to be taken easily. Whether or not he believed Rider dead, he would not abandon caution.
Nothing else happened.
When dawn came the watchers retreated. There was never any doubt of their nearby presence, though. Each few hours Su-Cha assumed Caracene's form and showed himself at a window, casting longing looks toward liberty.
"I wish he'd
do
something!" Chaz growled.
"He is," Preacher rejoined. "He's working on your mind. In a little while he'll have you charging out where he can bang your head all day long."
Chaz scowled but refused the bait. "We're the guys laying in the weeds. What's he waiting for?"
"He smells a rat," the general said. "The man has a nose for danger. The gods alone know how many times he slipped my snares out east."
Su-Cha guessed, "He's waiting for the real Caracene, I'll bet. I'll bet he sent her out of the City, then had to have her brought back to make sure she isn't me."
"So we didn't accomplish anything."
"Sure we did. We bought time for Rider to finish whatever he's doing and get back into the lists here. While we've had Shai Khe tied down accomplishing nothing himself. We got rid of all but a handful of his thugs. If the General's pals have held up their end, we've grabbed off his hideout behind him. When he goes running back ... "
"Yeah? You're forgetting something, runt. If he figures Rider is croaked, the only thing keeping him from popping the cork on Shasesserre is the chance we've still got the woman. Whatever she means to him."
"Yes," Preacher said, peeping out the corner of the window. "We've got some action coming."
They all crowded the window. Below, an oriental horseman galloped toward the house. A pair of City Guardsmen pursued him, bellowing. Their words could not be distinguished, but it seemed they wanted the oriental to desist from his reckless behavior.
All three passed without slowing.
A minute went by.
Men began to appear as if from nowhere. One was Shai Khe himself. They departed at a brisk pace.
"One watcher each, front and back, I would guess," Chaz said. "Get out there and do your stuff, little buddy."
Su-Cha grinned. "Ever notice how I get to be his buddy when he wants me to stick my neck out?" But already he was shifting form, as they had made it up ahead.
They had no trouble with Shai Khe's men, who had not foreseen danger in the guise of a cute little boy. Besides the immediate watchers, the easterner left two sentries along his backtrail. His path led straight to the warehouse Preacher had identified as Shai Khe's current headquarters.
After the last fell, Chaz said, "I've got a feeling Shai Khe isn't going to be surprised we're hot after him."
The General said, "No doubt. But, then, the surprise is at the other end, isn't it?"
At that point they entered the street of Shai Khe's headquarters. And at that moment all hell broke loose inside the warehouse.
They charged the door by which Shai Khe had entered their trap.
XXXII
Rider felt the smuggling craft nudge gently against a wharf. Sounds and odors told him they had docked along Tannery Row on Henchelside. The airshipmen, though tired, quickly made fast and left the ship. Moments later Rider heard the creak of oarlocks.
He popped out of hiding, surprised. And that was a mistake, for a guard had been left aboard. He was turning, drawing breath for a shout. Rider snagged the broken corpse of a single reeve stay block and hurled it. It thunked off the airshipman's forehead. The man went over backward.
Rider crept forth. He peered over the gunwale. Wonder of wonders. The spot of action had gone unnoticed, though the oarsmen in the two boats faced the ship.
Rider slithered to the wharf side and, when he was sure he would not be noticed, left the ship.
A group of urchins audience to everything gave him a hand—then scattered when he scowled.
He loped into the stench of Tannery Row, headed for King's Bridge, which lay a mile away. Thirty minutes later he was in hiding on the east bank, watching the airshipmen unload their prisoners and make their boats ready for a quick getaway.
They left one guard again.
When the main party was out of sight he moved in. In moments he had the sentry trussed up and the boats adrift. He resumed his shadowing of the airshipmen. He caught up as they entered a warehouse.
He reached into the web and extended his senses, searching for signs of Shai Khe. There were none.
But someone was there. And that someone was not friendly toward the easterner's men. A fight broke out. It was over in seconds, a successful ambush. Rider did not go investigate.
He suspected it would be wiser, tactically, to remain on the outside of events, unseen and unknown.
A wagon rolled up to the door Rider watched. Men from the warehouse loaded it with bound airshipmen, covered them with a tarp. Away the wagon went. A brisk, efficient piece of work.
The tough look of those men gave them away. They were air marines in mufti.
So. The next step was obvious. Wait for Shai Khe to come meet his people in a headquarters he believed to be secure.
There had been some busyness while he was off to Shroud's Head, that was certain. Despite his absence, his associates seemed to have Shai Khe on the run. But Rider had no great confidence in that appearance.
How long before the eastern devil showed himself?
Not long at all.
It started like the row with the airshipmen. But that lasted only fifteen seconds. Then a brilliant flash illuminated the backs of the warehouse's few windows. The tenor of the uproar changed.
Rider was watching through the web.
Shai Khe had used a powerful spell to neutralize and incapacitate the marines, but before he could finish them off, Chaz, Su-Cha, and their gang broke in. The easterner had some bad moments with them. In fact, Chaz and General Procopio got in blows that nearly incapacitated Shai Khe.
Su-Cha used the sorcerer's moments of distraction and disorientation to shove Caracene into hiding and take her place.
Rider nudged the web and added to the confusion by undoing the spells binding the marines. Those gentlemen jumped up with blood in their eyes.
Shai Khe was not whipped yet. Not by a mile and a year. But he was rattled. The unexpected recuperation of the marines decided him to retreat and regroup.
He grabbed Su-Cha/Caracene's hand and took off.
Rider tugged the web just enough to make sure everyone in the warehouse was free and conscious. Them he withdrew and waited.
Shai Khe burst out the warehouse door. Fifty yards down the street he halted, whirled, hurled a vicious spell that undermined the warehouse's foundations. That whole nearer face of the building came down. Shai Khe headed for the river at a brisk walk.
The collapse should have killed all of the easterner's enemies. But Rider aborted that.
He had reached through the web and jammed an interior door. Chaz, the general, the marines and the others had gone galloping toward the far exit before the collapse began.
Rider jogged to a parallel street, then raced to the river. He was sure Shai Khe meant to rendezvous with the airshipmen's boats. Shai Khe did things meticulously, calculatedly. He would know where the boats and ships made landings, for those points would have been pre-selected for his convenience.
Rider was in hiding not twenty yards away from the man he had left bound when the easterner loped into view, casting angry glances behind him. His enemies were closing in again.
He cursed once, softly, when he reached the river's edge and found his man unconscious and his boats gone.
He let go Caracene's hand, used both of his in a complicated series of gestures. The airshipman's bonds fell away. But he would not arise from his dreams.
Shai Khe faced his pursuers.
He seemed to swell in stature, in presence. An aura of great dread grew around him. The bowl of his uplifted left hand began to glow turquoise.
Chaz and the crowd were just thirty yards away. In almost ridiculous unison they stopped, flung themselves around, and scattered.
Shai Khe arced the blue fire after them. It floated through the air, trailing turquoise mists, crackling, leaving a rent in the web that was almost painful to Rider. The easterner either thought Rider out of the game or no longer worried about attracting his attention.
The blue fireball hit the street with an impact that rattled buildings for half a mile. It shattered. Pieces flew about, landing with their own thunderous impacts, fragmented, impacted, fragmented. Some chunks knocked holes in nearby walls. The smaller the chunk, the faster it moved and more dangerous it was. But the smaller pieces turned into mist more quickly, so remained dangerous for only a few seconds.
While the blue show ran, Shai Khe gathered his fallen henchman under one arm and Caracene under the other. With effortless ease. He raced toward the river, each step a longer one than the last. He did not stop because water lay in his way.
Water flew as if from huge hammerblows each time one of his feet hit. Rider was reminded of a skipping stone flying in reverse. Shai Khe's last bound to Henchelside was fifty yards long.
The easterner headed for the smuggler. And that pushed Rider into a tight moral bind.
The man he had left unconscious could ruin everything. He had but to tell his story. If Shai Khe was not totally suspicious already, finding his bridges burned before him.
Rider considered alternatives and discarded them. Each was self-defeating, requiring the expenditure of so much sorcerous energy that Shai Khe would be alerted anyway. The choices were two. Let Shai Khe be warned. Or work a small magic and close a man's mouth forever.
There was no choice, really. Shai Khe was a shadow intent on poisoning millions of lives. He could not be allowed to escape just to avoid taking the life of his minion.
Necessity made the thing no more pleasant.
Rider reached through the web and, as Shai Khe bounded aboard the smuggler, snapped a blood vessel in the airshipman's brain, behind the bruise left by the thrown block.
XXXIII
Shai Khe's feet hit the deck of the ship. He cursed, dropped his burden. A glance told him his man was dead. He whirled, began arcing a fireworks show toward the east bank.
Su-Cha decided it was time he absented himself from the sorcerer's company. To go on meant ever-increasing danger. And it was unlikely that Shai Khe would ever be less attentive than he was at the moment.
His intent was to slip over the side behind Shai Khe, hit the water, become a porpoise, and swim as if sharks were after him.
Rider saw Su-Cha begin to move, guessed his approximate intent.
He would never make it. A sorcerer of Shai Khe's attainments never became so angry or so distracted he failed to notice the movement of people around him.
Rider cooked up a little golden firework of his own.
This quite needless bombardment, which threatened to demolish the district, hinted that the easterner was fishing for a reaction anyway.
Su-Cha was not expendable. Neither were the people of the district.
Rider stepped out and delivered his apple-sized golden ball in one smooth motion. It streaked across the river. Halfway over it looked as if it would miss the smuggler by fifteen feet. Three quarters of the way over it began to slide to the right. In the last fifty feet it jumped.
It impacted upon the ship. Light flared. Timbers flew. A third of the smuggler burst into flames.
Mocking laughter and a volley of blue fireworks were Shai Khe's responses. He had won the roll, drawing Rider out.
Rider noted that Su-Cha was in the water.
He plucked another golden ball out of his left hand and hurled it. This one streaked straight toward Shai Khe. Another followed an instant later. Then another. The first died a hundred yards from the blazing ship, the second fifty. The third almost reached the easterner.
Shai Khe grabbed his surviving airshipman and bounded away, in leaps as long as those -he had taken when he crossed the river. He trailed wicked laughter.
Rider's golden balls pursued him, through every twist and turn of his flight through Henchelside.
"Wondered when you were going to turn up," Chaz said, coming to stand beside Rider and glare at the burning ship.
"You played too long a bet," Rider admonished gently. "You'd all have been dead if I hadn't."
"I know." The barbarian was not the least chagrined as he added, "We didn't expect you. Glad you showed, though."
Others began leaving cover. Even a few residents began looking out to see if the storm had passed.
General Procopio lumbered up. "Good show! Eh? What? Got the beggar on the run. What next?"
"First we dig the woman out of the warehouse," Rider said.
Chaz gaped. "But ... The sorcerer. He carried her off with him."
Rider chuckled. "That was Su-Cha again. He ought to be turning up any second, hungry enough to eat one of us." He was talking to the barbarian's back.
"And after Chaz saves Caracene? What then?" Greystone asked. The scholar looked exhausted, physically and emotionally.
"Then we loaf down to our yards and take a short airship ride." He peered across the river. Shai Khe was no longer visible, but his progress could be traced by the fireworks he tossed off as he went.