The Monk screeched again ahead of them, closer than before.
“How long ago?” Kosar asked a startled sheebok herder. He stood with his herd pulled in tight around him, as if they would offer protection.
“A couple of minutes.” He glanced down at Kosar’s sword, still unsheathed and warm in the thief’s hand. “You’ll need more than that.”
Kosar ran fast to catch up with A’Meer. “It’s close!” he called, but she did not need telling. They skirted around a huge old machine, its tendrils long since fossilized into broken stone spurs that still reached in vain for the sky. On its far side a man was lying on the ground, holding a heap of slippery intestines in his lap. He too was looking to the sky. A small girl was hugging him and shouting. She had her face buried in his neck. People hovered around, not knowing what to do.
“Come on,” A’Meer said quietly over her shoulder, as if afraid that Kosar would stop to help.
Kosar glanced at the man as he ran by and for a second their eyes locked. He looked away quickly. There was nothing that could comfort a man about to die with his daughter’s tears wetting his skin.
The Monk screamed again and was answered by several separate cries. The complex warren of streets and alleys misled the echoes, confused direction, until Kosar was sure that they were surrounded by Red Monks, closing in quickly and ready for the fight. We could die here, he thought. We probably will. A’Meer is terrified of one injured Monk, and now there are several closing in, almost as if they’re herding us.
A’Meer ran fast, and it was not long before Kosar began to feel his age. The summer heat sucked sweat from him, soaking his shirt and trousers and fusing them to his skin. A’Meer seemed not to tire. It was as if she were eighteen, not over a hundred. Another Shantasi mystery, he thought.
They came to a courtyard filled with milling people, and sensing the urgency, a few of them pointed the way. A’Meer ran into the mouth of a small alley, glancing down now and then at the blood spotting the ground, and Kosar followed. They passed a line of wash hung out to dry, and he saw spray patterns of blood across the lower edges. Either the Monk had caught someone here, or its veins were still bursting from slayer venom.
“Not far now,” A’Meer said.
At the next corner Kosar caught sight of the Monk’s red cloak flitting out of sight around a bend in the alley. A machine bridged the path, and several people stood high up, whooping and waving and urging them on. Kosar had been to tumbler fights once or twice, and this small crowd reminded him of that. How much more would they be entertained soon?
Around the bend, the Monk was revealed, loping along on feet and fists like a wild dog. Blood spattered every time it landed on its hands, dripping and spraying from ruptured veins. The toxin should have killed it long before now-it would be bleeding inside too, stomach filling with blood, arteries ripping and demanding more and more of its heart-but it seemed as strong as ever. The madness A’Meer had spoken of was serving the Monk well.
They ran through another square, people shying away from the blood-soaked demon, and into another small street.
“Here!” A’Meer called, and the Monk turned at the sound of her voice.
Kosar stopped. He almost turned around and ran, ready to find himself a hiding place from which he would hear the quick battle to come. Because it would surely be over in seconds. The Monk was an image from Kang Kang, every bad dream, every demonic legend ever told in Noreela; blood-soaked, insane, its skin red with rage where it was not already pasted with its own vital fluids. One eye had burst, yet still it saw, sensed, sent its fury their way through a long-fanged mouth. Its teeth dribbed with saliva, diluting the mess on its chin. Its arms waved, feet pounded at the ground, and it did not slow down for an instant.
The Monk still sought its quarry, and no threat from behind would tear it from its pursuit.
A’Meer plucked a small crossbow from a pocket on her shoulder, brought her arm down and fired in one swift movement. The bolt struck home in the thing’s burst eye socket and it screeched, turning and running faster. The Shantasi reloaded without slowing, fired again, reloaded, fired. Each bolt found its mark-one in the back of the Monk’s head, one at the base of its spine-but the impacts seemed only to pin its cloak tight to its body.
“I’ll take it, you get the boy,” she called.
Kosar wanted to argue, but he knew that she was right. She was the warrior here and he was the thief, used to stealing things and concealing them.
They turned another corner and emerged into a large square, the crowds already apparently disturbed by something… and then Kosar saw them. On the far side of the square, heading for a wide gateway leading into a park, Rafe was running with an old woman. The witch, Hope. Kosar hoped that she lived up to her name.
The Monk screamed then, too loud to be human, too enraged to be sane. The witch and the boy stopped and turned, wide-eyed and terrified of this frenzied thing closing in on them.
The witch reached into her shoulder bag and pulled something out.
A’Meer flicked out with her slideshock and caught the Monk’s ankle, tripping it and pulling herself down into the dust.
“Take them away from here!” A’Meer shouted at Kosar. She was already on her feet, thrusting her arm at the Monk, slicing its cloak and flesh with the slideshock.
Kosar skirted the fight and went to the witch and Rafe, smiling at the boy, hoping that he could ease his own fear as well. The witch’s eyes flickered down to Kosar’s drawn sword and she raised her hand, ready to throw something at him, something green that squirmed and flexed in her palm with sickly, stagnant life.
“No!” Rafe said. “He’s a friend.”
Kosar reached the boy and hugged him tight, an unconscious gesture.
“Shantasi warrior,” the witch said, and the tattoos on her face twitched in surprise.
The Monk was standing again, pure insane determination overcoming the ragged break in its ankle, and it was trying to make its way to Rafe. Between it and Rafe, however, stood A’Meer. She closed in, lashing out with her sword, ducking, parrying, thrusting again, sinking its tip into the Monk’s exposed neck and spinning on her feet. Blood arced from the wound and splashed a sheebok tethered to a stall nearby, setting the creature screaming as secondhand slayer venom burned into its eyes.
The crowds had pulled back to the edges of the square, fascinated with the fight, some of them calling out and cheering as a blow was landed by either side. They had no loyalties, Kosar realized, and no real understanding of what was happening here. They were simply enjoying the spectacle.
“We have to get away from here!” Kosar said.
“That thing’s come for me,” Rafe said. “But who is she?”
“She’s a friend. Rafe, we have to get you away.”
“Aren’t you going to help your friend?” the witch said.
Kosar glanced at the fighting couple. “No. She told me to take Rafe and find safety. She’s trained in this. She’s taken a Monk before.”
The witch’s strange tattooed face showed mocking disbelief. “She can’t be much of a friend if she lies to you like that. And you can’t be much of a friend leaving her alone to die.”
“The boy’s precious-”
“I know that! That’s why he’s coming with me!”
A’Meer shouted behind him and Kosar spun around, afraid of what he would see. The slideshock had wrapped around the Monk’s thigh, and now the Monk was twisting on the spot, blood flying, hauling A’Meer in. She was struggling with the clasps on her wrist and forearm, trying to free herself, when the Monk stopped and lashed out with both swords. She ducked. A trimmed lock of her black air floated on the agitated air. And then she stood quickly, flinging a spiked ball into the Monk’s face. She used the second’s respite to cut the blade of the slideshock and step back out of the Monk’s killing range.
“We have to go now!” Kosar said again. “The Monk called others, and if they converge here everyone will die.”