The Dragons of Babel (23 page)

“How about that?” Will said, grinning. “And to think that a couple of months ago I was a nobody!”

“Don't you get cocky, Jack,” Hjördis said. “That's a lot of money. There are plenty who would turn you in for a fraction of that.” She fastened her brassiere over her stomach, then slid it right way around, put her arms through the straps, and shrugged into it. “I'd be tempted myself, if I didn't have obligations to my people.” She wriggled into her dress.

“You shouldn't joke like that.” Will felt inexplicably hurt.

“You think I'm joking? That's enough wealth to buy anybody's way up to the surface.”

“We don't need gold to do that. After we've consolidated the underworld, we can rise up from beneath and seize the neighborhoods above us. Then we'll take the Dread Tower, one level at a time, all the way to the Palace of Leaves.”

“I realize that's Lord Weary's plan,” Hjördis said doubtfully. “But how likely is it, really? I fail to understand why you would buy so completely into a fallen elf-lord's delusions of glory.”

For a second Will did not speak. Then he said, “I have been driven across Fäerie Minor by chance and events, helpless as a leaf in a storm. Well, no more! I needed a cause to devote myself to, one that would give me the opportunity to strike back against my oppressors, and Lord Weary provided me with one. It's as simple as that.”

He returned to the poster. “Innocent citizenry. That would be the Breakneck Boys, you think? Or the drug dealers?” Enough of their soldiers were addicted to various substances that it would be foolish to think that drug trafficking could be stopped. But the dealers were territorial and wellarmed, and prone to sudden violence. Johatsu had been gunned down simply because they'd wandered into the wrong tunnel at the wrong time. So the dealers had been driven upstairs. Those who cared to sell nickel bags of pixie dust or Mason jars of moonshine close by the commonly known exits were tolerated. But when their goods were tainted—when they killed—they were subject to being snatched and hauled below for a trial by the dead user's peers.

There was a polite cough outside the box's entrance. It was Jenny Jumpup. “Sir. Lord Weary's respects, and he say pull your dick out the lady-thane and assemble your raiders. He want his horses.”

T
he clanging began in the distance, regular and unrelenting, the sound of somebody hammering on water pipes with a rock. Beyond and fainter, a second set of clangs joined it. Then a third.

“We been spotted,” Jenny Jumpup said.

“Good.” Will did not slow his pace. “I want them to spot us. I want them to know we're coming. I want them to know that there's nothing they can do to stop us.”

“What's to keep them from slipping through the walls?” Tatterwag asked. “They're haints, after all.”

“Their horses couldn't follow. We'd get them all. And these guys practically worship their horses.” Lord Weary had sent ambassadors to the horse-folk, offering them full membership in his growing empire, immunity from taxation and conscription, a guaranteed supply of food, and other enticements in exchange for a small yearly tribute of horses. His advances had been rejected with haughty scorn, though the horse-folk were the poorest of all who dwelt in darkness, and possessed neither tools nor clothing.

“Then why don't they just saddle up the horses and run? That's what I'd do in their circumstances.”

“They
old
haints,” Jenny Jumpup said. She was a haint herself, and proud of it. Her hair was done up in a cascade of slim braids, tied in the back in a sort of ponytail, and she wore a brace of pistols butt-forward in her belt. “They ancestors left the Shadowlands before fire was brought down from the sky. They can't farm, they got no weapons, and they can't ride horses.”

“So why the fuck do they care if we take them?”

“They're all the horse-folk have.” Will called a brief halt to check the map. A muttered word and its lines glimmered like foxfire. The other raiders gathered about him. They were a good group—in addition to his two lieutenants, he had Radegonde de la Cockaigne, Kokudza, the Starveling, and Little Tommy Redcap. “We're on the bottommost level of tracks—but there are tunnels that delve even deeper, some of them natural and others not.” He led them some fifty yards down the track. A black opening gaped to one side. Cool air sighed out of it. “This was an aqueduct once, nobody knows how long ago. Looks like dwarven work.”

“It older than dwarves,” Jenny Jumpup said scornfully. “My people remember. We built it. And we ain't never been paid for it neither.”

“Jenny,” Tatterwag said. “Give it a rest.”

A train went by and they turned their backs to it. When their eyes had adjusted to the dark once more, they walked some distance into the aqueduct. Will got out the map again. “If everything's gone according to plan, our other troops will be in position
here
and
here,”
he said. “That leaves only one way out—right through us. They'll stampede the herd in hopes of trampling us under.”

Little Tommy Redcap chuckled nastily. “I'll rip the horses' legs off if they try.”

“You were all chosen because you know how to ride,” Will said. “Now space yourselves out and let's see if you can climb.”

They swiftly scaled the walls. This was a new skill for Will, but one he had picked up easily. There was a narrow ledge just below the vaulted ceiling. The raiders took up positions there, some on one side and some on the other. All save Jenny Jumpup and the Starveling, who swarmed up the ceiling and drove in pitons so they could hang face downward, like bats, waiting.

After a long silence, Kokudza growled, “I don't get it. Horses. Caverns. Call me crazy, but I see a basic conflict here.”

“The horses used to be wild,” Will said. “Back before Nimrod laid the foundations of Babel, they fed upon the grassy slopes of Ararat. Lord Weary told me he read a paper on this once. Scientists speculate that some of their number would venture into natural caverns to feed upon mosses and lichens. This would have been tens of thousands of years ago, minimum. Something happened, an earthquake maybe, that trapped a small breeding population in the caverns. They adapted to the darkness. You couldn't say they thrived,
exactly—there can't be more than a hundred of' em all told. But they're still here. Albino-pale, short-haired, and high-strung. They won't be easy to catch.”

Tatterwag patted his bandolier. “You know what I recommend.” Now that the Empire of Night was a going concern, they had money enough, extorted from transit workers and the like, to buy materials that had never previously been available underground. Will had been the first to keep a string of magnesium flares with him always, and a pair of welder's goggles in a breast pocket. Tatterwag, who was not only his second-in-command but a notorious suck-up as well, had followed suit. There was no better indicator of how far and fast Will's star had risen.

Will shook his head. “Flares won't work on these horses.” “Why not?”

“They're blind,” he said. “Now be quiet.”

A
fter a while the clanging stopped. That meant the horses would be coming soon. Sometime after that, Will was almost certain that he heard a gentle murmuring noise like the rumor of rain in the distance. It was less a sound than wistful thought. But it was there. Maybe.

“Do not take the lead horse,” a ghost of a voice murmured. It was the Whisperer.

“Why shouldn't I?” Will asked, every bit as quietly. “Surely the leader will be fastest and most desirable.”

“Not so. It will be fast but callow. The wiser horses hold back and let the young stallions, their heroes, take the foremost with its attendant risks. They are expendable. The queen mare, however, will be found at the very center of the herd and it is she you want. Fleetest of all is she and cleverest as well, sure-footed on wet surfaces, cautious on dry, and alert to danger even when all seems safest.”

Far down the tunnel, a gentle luminescence bloomed,
faint as the internal glow of the ocean on a moonless night. There was a soft sound, as of many animals breathing deeply in the distance.

“Here they come,” Tatterwag said.

Like sea foam, the horses filled the tunnel. Shadowy figures ran among them, as swiftly as the beasts themselves. These were the oldhaints, the horse-folk, running naked as the day they were born. Even at a distance, they could be sensed, for with them came fear. Though they could not plant or build or light a fire, the old powers were theirs still, and they were able to generate terror and use it as a weapon. Thus it was that they herded their horses. Thus it was that they fought, using the great brutes' bodies against their enemies.

“Oh, baby!” Jenny Jumpup moaned. “I gone get me a young stud. I gone wrap my legs around him and never let go. I gone squeeze him so tight he rear up and scream.”

“You're making me horny, Jen,” Kokudza said. They all laughed softly.

Then the herd was upon them.

The noise of hooves, near-silent a moment before, rose up like thunder. The horses filled the aqueduct like ocean waters surging. One by one, the raiders dropped down upon them, like ripe fruit falling from the trees.

“Wait,” the Whisperer said. “Wait… wait… not yet…” And then, when Will could wait no longer, he spotted the queen mare in the center of the herd, running as quickly as any but clearly not expending herself, holding something extra in reserve. “Now!”

Will leaped.

Briefly, he flew. Then, one incredible second later, he
slammed
onto the back of the mare. He grabbed wildly for her neck and scrabbled to keep his legs on either side of her back.

The queen mare rose up, pawing the air. Will's legs were flung clear, and he was almost thrown. But he clung to her
neck, and by the time her forefeet were back on the ground, had managed to get his own legs back in place.

She ran.

Once, twice, she slammed into the horses running to either side of her. Each time, one of Will's legs was crushed briefly between the great beasts. But the impact was not quite enough to numb them, and Will was determined that he would not be stopped by mere pain. He hung on determinedly.

Then the queen mare had broken free of the herd and was running ahead of them all.

Riding low on her back, concentrating on keeping from falling, Will began to sing the charm he had been taught:

“Your neck is high and straight,

Your head shrewd with intelligence,

Your belly short, your back full,

Your proud chest hard with muscles…”

His mount swung her head around and tried to bite him, but he grabbed her mane high on the back of her skull with both hands and was able to keep her teeth from closing on his flesh. And then the charm took hold and she no longer tried to throw him, though she continued to run in a full-out panic.

They were alone now, separated from the herd and galloping wildly down who-knew-which lightless tunnel. Though she was blind, somehow the queen mare knew where the walls were and did not run into them. Somehow she never stumbled. Whatever senses she employed in the absence of sight, they were keen and shrewd, and equal to the task. Will understood now, as he had not before, why Lord Weary so desperately wanted these steeds. Will's motorcycle was of only limited utility belowground; it could not be ridden along the ties of the train tracks, nor could it leap over a sudden gap in the floor of a tunnel if Will did not spot it in time. This
beast could travel swiftly anywhere. It could traverse the distance between settlements in a fraction of the time a pedestrian could.

“Joy of princes, throne of warriors,

Hoof-fierce treasure of the rich,

Eternal comfort to the restless…”

There were hundreds of lines to this charm, and if Will were to skip even one, it would not work. He had labored hard to memorize them all. Now, as he neared the final stanzas, Will felt the thoughts of the queen mare like a silvery brook flowing alongside his own. They were coming together now, moving as one, muscle upon muscle, thought on thought, a breath away from being a single shared essence in two bodies.

“
Riding seems easy to he who rests indoors

But courageous to he who travels the high-roads

On the back of a sturdy horse.”

She was breathing hard now. Horses could only run at a full gallop for brief periods of time, though those who did not know them imagined them continuing thus for hours on end. The queen mare was winded—Will could feel a sympathetic pain in his own chest—and if she did not stop soon and walk it off, her great heart would burst within her.

This was the moment of crisis. Will had to convince her that accepting him as a rider was preferable to death.

Laying his cheek alongside her neck, still singing, he closed his eyes and entered her thoughts. There was neither color nor light in the queen mare's world, but her sensorium was wider and more varied than his own, for she was possessed of a dozen fractional senses. Riding her mind, he felt the coolness coming off of the walls, and the dampness
or dryness of the ground before them. Tiny electrical charges lying dormant in the conduits and steel catwalks that flashed past tickled faintly against his awareness. Variant densities in the air slowed or sped sounds passing through it. Smells arrived in his nostrils with the precise location of their origins. Braids of scent and sound and feel wound together to give him a perfect picture of his surroundings.

Now Will thought back to the farmlands outside his old village, and recalled the dusty green smell of their fields and the way that in late afternoon the sun turned the seeded tops of the grasses into living gold. He pictured the cold, crystalline waters of a stream running swiftly through a tunnel of greenery and exploding under the hooves of his borrowed mount. He called up the flickering flight of butterflies among the wildflowers in a sudden clearing, and then an orchard with gnarled old apple trees and humble-bees droning tipsily among the half-fermented windfalls. This was something the queen mare had never experienced, nor ever could. But the desire for it was in her blood and her bones. It was written into her genes.