Fisher attacked her Dark Man head on, and the two of them stamped and lunged, their swords clashing and flying apart almost too quickly for the eye to follow. Rowan obviously didn’t know much about swordsmanship, but with the Dark Man’s strength and reflexes she didn’t have to. All she had to do was keep up her attack and wait for Fisher’s strength to run out. They both knew it wouldn’t take long. Fisher was already exhausted from the long day, and the Dark Man was fresh and tireless. Fisher held her ground, as much out of pride as anything, but she was beginning to have a bad feeling about this fight.
Tomb faced Rowan squarely. Her face was blank and empty, but her muscles occasionally jumped and twitched in sympathy with the Dark Men.
“Rowan, you’ve got to stop this. Get out of here while you can.”
“Not now, Tomb. I’m busy.”
“Hawk and Fisher are Guards, experienced fighters. They’ll win, in the end. And as long as they’ve got the suppressor stone, your magic can’t hurt them.”
“There are ways round the suppressor stones. I have more magic than you think.”
“I won’t let you hurt them, Rowan.”
Life came suddenly to Rowan’s eyes, and she fixed him with an unwavering stare. “Don’t interfere, Tomb. It wouldn’t be healthy.”
“Your magic’s no match for mine, and you know it. There’s still time to stop this nonsense, Rowan. We could leave here now, together, and use the Dark Men and our magic to cover our trail. We could leave Haven, start again somewhere else. No one could ever have to know about all this.”
“Yes,” said Rowan slowly. “I could do that.” She stepped toward him, took hold of his chin, and pulled his face close to hers. “You’d give up everything, to be with me?”
“Of course,” said Tomb. “I love you, Rowan.”
“I know.”
She thrust her dagger into Tomb’s gut, twisted it once, and them jerked it sharply upwards. Tomb’s hands clutched at her shoulders, closed tight, and then released her as he fell clumsily to the floor. His eyes were still open, staring reproachfully at the ceiling. Rowan turned her back on him and slipped the dagger back into its concealed sheath on her arm.
Meanwhile, Hawk had got his second wind. He’d got more than a little annoyed at being beaten by a slab of muscle with no skills, and the anger had given him new strength. He brought his axe across to hold the Dark Man’s sword locked in position, and the two of them stood toe to toe, glaring into each other’s faces. Without looking away, Hawk stamped down hard on the Dark Man’s instep, and felt, as much as heard, bones break in the Dark Man’s foot. Pain flared across the homunculus’s face, and his sword arm wavered. Hawk spat in his eye, and the Dark Man fell back instinctively. Hawk took advantage of the opening to knee his opponent solidly in the groin. The Dark Man froze, his sword dropping as Rowan’s mind tried frantically to deal with so many pains at once, and Hawk swung his axe in a vicious lateral sweep. The heavy blade cut through the Dark Man’s throat, almost severing the head from the body. He fell heavily to the floor, twitched uncertainly, and then lay still in a growing pool of his own blood.
Fisher suddenly broke away from her opponent and sprinted across the room toward Rowan. The mystic opened her mouth to begin a spell, but Fisher was already there, her sword point at Rowan’s throat. The Dark Man froze where he was.
“Drop his sword, Rowan. Or I swear I’ll kill you now and to hell with a fair trial.”
Rowan glared at her. Fisher increased the pressure of her sword. A thin trickle of blood ran down the mystic’s neck as the sword point broke her skin. Hawk stepped in behind the hesitating Dark Man and buried his axe in the back of the creature’s skull. The Dark Man crashed to the floor. Some of the strength seemed to go out of Rowan, and her shoulders slumped. Hawk pulled his axe free and wiped it on the Dark Man’s clothes. He looked to see Fisher was all right, and nodded, satisfied.
“I trust there are no more surprises in store, Rowan? Isobel, keep an eye on her. I’ll take a look at Tomb and Buchan.”
He knelt beside the sorcerer, and winced at the awful wound. Rowan had all but gutted him. Blood had pooled around Tomb and soaked his robes, but incredibly he was still breathing, shallowly. His eyes moved slightly to meet Hawk’s gaze.
“Lie still,” said Hawk quickly. “We’ll get you a doctor.”
“No point,” said Tomb, his voice little more than a whisper. “I’m a sorcerer. I know how bad the wound is. I take it you beat the Dark Men?”
“Sure,” said Hawk. “We beat them.”
“Is Rowan all right? You didn’t hurt her?”
“She’s fine.”
“Good.” Tomb closed his eyes. Hawk said the sorcerer’s name a few times, but he didn’t respond. The man’s breathing was so shallow that Hawk was sure each breath would be the last, but somehow Tomb held on. Hawk moved over to Buchan. He was unconscious, but breathing strongly. His wounds looked nasty, but not immediately dangerous. Hawk got to his feet and moved over to join Fisher. She’d taken the sword point away from Rowan’s throat but held the sword ready, just in case.
“Tomb’s dying,” said Hawk. “Buchan is badly injured. They were your colleagues, Rowan. Your friends. They cared about you. Doesa’t that mean anything to you?”
Rowan smiled briefly, but there was no humour there, only a weary disdain. “I never wanted their friendship. All I ever wanted was to be left alone. Nobody ever really cares for anyone else; they just pretend to, to get what they want from you. They don’t fool me. I look out for myself. And you needn’t look at me like that. I’m no different from anyone else; it’s just that I have the guts to be honest about it.
“You can’t hold me, you know. There are more Dark Men, scattered all over Haven. Bode had been creating them for years, selling his potions to subsidize his experiments. He had a horror of dying, you see. He thought he could live forever, through his doubles. But I put a stop to that. I had a better use for them. I still do. You can’t stop me. The magic in your suppressor stone is fading, even as we speak. Soon it’ll be cold and silent, and I’ll leave this defective body behind and live again as a Dark Man. I will have my revenge on the Street of Gods, and there’s nothing you can do to prevent it.”
“Maybe they can’t,” said a calm, deep voice. “But I can.”
They all turned, startled, to look at the doorway. A Dark Man stood there smiling, dressed in a cheap grey robe and looking somehow ... different. He wasn’t in the least muscular, being instead slender almost to the point of malnutrition, and his face held none of the anger that was a permanent part of Rowan’s expression whatever body she was wearing. Hawk looked quickly at Rowan, but she seemed just as surprised as he was. Hawk looked back at the Dark Man. If she wasn’t controlling the body, then who...?
“It can’t be,” said Fisher. “It can’t be
him.”
“It is,” said Hawk. “It has to be. That’s Bode.”
The sorcerer smiled at them all, and bowed politely. “At your service, Captain.”
“You’re dead,” said Rowan harshly. “I killed you. I watched you die.”
“I’m afraid not,” said Bode, stepping coolly into the drawing room. “Though you did have a damn good try. Perhaps I should explain. It’s a very interesting story, and there’s no one else I can tell it to. Besides, I’ve been starved for company for the past few days. I’ve been watching you all ever since my death, but I couldn’t afford to be recognized. So I stayed in the shadows and waited for the right moment.
“I’m afraid you made a simple but understandable mistake, Rowan, my dear. When you surprised me at my home with the Exorcist Stone, you didn’t encounter the real me; just one of my duplicates. I hadn’t lived in my own body for months. I kept that somewhere safe, and lived in a series of homunculi. My experiments had become rather dangerous, you see, and I didn’t want to subject my real body to unnecessary risks. So, when you activated the Exorcist Stone in my house after our little disagreement, you destroyed all the spells I’d set up, including the one that kept my spirit in the duplicate body. The Stone threw me out of the homunculus and back into my own body. All you killed was an empty husk.
“You’d probably have worked it out for yourself, if you’d had time to study my papers, but luckily my Dark Man watchdog returned from the errand I’d sent him on, and you left in something of a hurry, rather than risk being discovered. The watchdog was a rather crude prototype, and unfortunately given to insane rages, but he had his uses. You’ve really caused me a great deal of difficulty, Rowan. Once the Guard discovered the nature of my researches, I had no choice but to stay dead while I tracked you down. Establishing a new identity and starting over is going to be very difficult. Not to mention expensive. And all because of your obsession with the Street of Gods. I should never have listened to you in the first place. But ... I needed the money. That’s always been my problem.
“Dear me, listen to me talk. Rambling on and on, and all of you too polite to interrupt. That’s what comes of being officially dead; you don’t dare talk to anyone for fear of being recognised. So, let me get straight to the point. I want my duplicates back under my control, and I want revenge for all the inconvenience I’ve been put to. So I’m afraid you’re going to have to die, Rowan. It’s the only way. And of course I can’t leave any witnesses.... Well, I’m sure you all understand. Nothing personal, Captain Hawk, Captain Fisher.”
“Blow it out your ear,” said Hawk. “You haven’t enough magic to get past our suppressor stone, and you don’t have the muscles you gave your Dark Men. So you can take your threats and stuff them where the sun doesn’t shine. You’re under arrest for illegal research on homunculi.”
There was a soft, scuffing sound behind Hawk, and he instinctively threw himself to one side. The dead Dark Man’s sword only just missed him, and plunged on to sink deep into Rowan’s side. The force of the blow threw her back against the wall, clutching desperately at the sword. Her face was full of pain and horror, as she stared at the risen dead man, but she couldn’t find the breath to scream. The Dark Man pulled the sword free, lacerating her hands cruelly, and stabbed her neatly through the heart. She sank slowly down the wall, leaving a bloody trail behind her.
Hawk swung his axe and buried it in the Dark Man’s back. The dead body turned slowly to face him, unaffected. Hawk jerked his axe free, and he and Fisher moved quickly to stand back to back. All three Dark Men moved steadily toward them, blood still seeping from their death wounds, their eyes bright and knowing.
“I’d got a lot further in my researches than Rowan ever did,” said Bode easily. “And I learned a lot more on the Street of Gods than I ever passed on to her. I really shouldn’t have let her know as much as I did, but she seemed so keen, so interested ... and it was a long time since I’d been able to talk to anyone about the advances I’d made.... Of course, in the end she decided she wanted it all for herself. Which meant I had to be disposed of. I really should have known ... but then, I never was a very good judge of character.
“Still, she’s dead now. Really dead. One of the things I never taught her was how to keep someone from leaving their body. But I know how. No more Dark Men for you, Rowan, my dear.”
Hawk listened to the man chatter with one ear, while he concentrated on the approaching Dark Men. They moved slowly but surely, and held their swords with a confident grip. They didn’t breathe, and blood no longer ran from their wounds. There was no doubt they were all dead, animated only by the sorcerer’s will. Hawk thought quickly, running the possibilities through his mind. He couldn’t get to the nearest exit, so he’d have to stand and fight. A lich may be unkillable, but it can still be stopped. Disable them by cutting through the arms and legs, or severing the head, and they’d be helpless. Hawk smiled sourly. Sure. As easy as that. But since he had no other choice; when in doubt, be direct.
He jumped forward and swung his axe in a vicious arc at the nearest Dark Man. Its unblinking eyes never wavered, and its sword flashed up to meet the axe. Hawk changed his grip at the last moment and swept the axe under the sword to slam into the dead man’s side. Bones broke and splintered as the heavy axe head punched through the rib cage, throwing the Dark Man off balance. Hawk jerked the axe free and struck savagely at the lich’s neck. It sank to one knee under the impact of the blow, and shuddered as Hawk jerked the axe free again. But another Dark Man was already closing in, and although Hawk stepped quickly back, the lich followed him relentlessly, launching a sustained attack with his sword, which took all of Hawk’s skill to parry. Behind him, he could hear the clash of steel on steel as Fisher took on the remaining Dark Man. On the floor, the first Dark Man was already getting to his feet again.
Fisher muttered the suppressor stone’s activating phrase under her breath again and again, but nothing happened. Either the stone was drained or it wasn’t powerful enough to overcome Bode’s sorcery. She scowled, and launched a furious attack on her Dark Man, trying to fight her way past it to get at Bode, but the lich stood its ground and parried all her blows with inhuman efficiency. Sweat ran down her face, stinging her eyes, and she had to fight to get her breath. It had been a long hard day, and her second wind had come and gone. Even if she’d been fresh and at her peak, the lich would have been hard to beat, and as it was she had to struggle to make it anything like an equal contest. She had no tricks left up her sleeve, or at least none that would work on a dead man, and she was starting to slow down. Slowly the Dark Man moved from defence to offence, and Fisher began to give ground.