Imperial soldiers crept toward the downed Taken. Local people were fleeing the invaders.
Elmo nudged me. “Whisper,” indicating one of the airborne Taken.
“Where are our guys?” They were nowhere to be seen.
Mule drivers gobbled and pointed.
Some of their gang had reached the ruins before the excitement started.
Elmo said, “We’re exposed here. We need to take cover.” And that was the moment when ill fortune noticed its opportunity.
Whisper sensed me… for the same reason that Blind Emon had: my one-time exposure to the Lady’s Eye.
Meantime, Emon grew inside my head, trying to gain control of my eyes. She knew who I was, now. She could pull on me as strongly as I could read her. She was more powerful here, near the Master.
She riffled through my memories, trying to gain a better handle on a situation for which she and the Master had been preparing for weeks.
Whisper probed. One sniff of Croaker had her convinced that this incident had been crafted by the Company to inconvenience her personally.
I felt both Taken. Blind Emon had a fine read on my emotions. She pilfered random thoughts while depositing disturbing notions. Whisper drifted our way. Meantime men, mules, and that sentinel crow all oozed into concealment. I refused to give up my view completely.
A keg of the sort that had been aboard so many mules flew up out of the ruin. Blind Emon jinked, did something to shift its course and add velocity. Wisps of smoke trailed it. It exploded thirty feet from Whisper. The fireball enveloped her.
Elmo offered up a soft prayer. “Holy shit. That’s gotta hurt.”
Whisper wobbled out, trailing flames. She headed down toward someplace where she would not have to fall any farther.
“It was stupid to come here,” Rusty grumped. “Ain’t our fight.”
Even Robin glowered at that. Still, the man was close to making a point. He told Elmo, “We should get the hell gone while that bitch is cleaning the crap out of her drawers.”
“Right.” Elmo stared past where Whisper had hit hard enough to fling smoking chunks of everything but her fifty yards in a dozen directions. A second keg had sailed out of the ruin.
Blind Emon repeated her manoeuvre, her aim direly precise. A Taken distracted by Whisper’s calamity took a direct hit, but this keg did not explode. It fell, shattered, ignited belatedly, created a foul gray miasma.
The impact did overturn the Taken’s carpet and left that dread entity hanging on desperately with one hand.
My companions were more interested in travel than observing sorcery spectaculars. Rusty poked me with the dull end of a javelin. “What part of we need to get the fuck out of here are you not getting?” He added, sarcastically, “Sir.”
Elmo barked foul agreement from the shredded woods. I moved reluctantly. Our crow friend watched from an oak stump, head cocked.
I felt a sudden urge to put distance between me and what was bound to turn uglier than I could imagine. Emon guaranteed it.
I cannot deliver an account of the evil versus evil sorcery duel of the decade. The desire to see the sun rise again quashed the compulsion to watch. But I do have to report that Emon and the Master engaged in an action they had been preparing for since soon after we invaded their forest.
We clotted up getting out of there, our patrol, mules, gobbling foreigners, local refugees, and the troops and wizards the lieutenant had sent to stir the pot before.
THE MOB KEPT moving, less panicked but jockeying and jostling. Everybody wanted across the bridge. Our wizards tried to nurse information out of the gaunt serfs but they were little help.
The road was about to tilt down into the Rip. There would be no leaving it then. A demand of nature haunted me. I would not last till we crossed the bridge. I flitted into the woods, found a useful log, dropped my trousers, began my business buzzed by flies, plagued by mosquitoes, and watched by a curious crow.
I heard a rustle. I looked down. A rattlesnake looked back, equally surprised. I froze. It coiled but reserved its warning rattle.
The crow made a leap and single flap, took station behind the snake. Its eyes shone oddly golden. One began to glow. The glow expanded into a ball an inch in diameter, a foot, a yard. The rattler decided to take its business elsewhere. It took off at maximum snake speed.
My bowels released, explosively and rankly, as I saw exactly what I dreaded: the Lady in the golden light, sweetly beautiful, the most alluring, lovely evil ever. She had not aged a moment in a decade.
The air all round whispered, “There you are. I was afraid I’d lost you. Come home.”
Gods! Temptation, Lady is thy name! Suddenly, treason seemed entirely reasonable. I forgot most of what made me me, including recollections of suffering in the Tower. She infiltrated channels into my soul already chafed by Blind Emon, scraping up informational residue left by Emon while she explored.
The Lady was not pleased.
She abandoned me suddenly, no explanation, leaving me convinced that she regretted not being able to linger.
I tried pretending that I was not disappointed. It gets harder to fool myself as I get older.
ONE-EYE ASKED, “YOU see a ghost?” He was repairing that ugly hat.
“Worse.” I told him.
The lieutenant arrived before I finished. He had a special assignment for Elmo’s patrol. We had impressed him that much. Goblin got to join us.
Heads together with the boss, Elmo looked less happy by the second. Meantime, the lieutenant’s staff cut mules out of the passing mob. Each carried kegs or sacks of coppery beads.
Elmo rejoined us. “Great news. We’ve been entrusted with cutting the bridge once everybody gets across. And you get to help, Goblin.”
That little wizard’s toad face twisted up nasty. He had come around just to check on how we were. Elmo thumped him atop the head before he started bitching. “And we get to do it in the dark, using those kegs that go boom when sorcerers toss them around.”
One-Eye got all positive, told Goblin, “There’ll be plenty of moonlight later.” He grinned wickedly.
“Dey’s still light now, some,” Whittle noted.
“Yeah. I can still see my wife if I squint,” Rusty countered, waving his hand in front of his face.
“We got to do it so let’s get doing,” Elmo said. “No farting around. Whisper’s gang shows before we’re done, the lieutenant blows it with us still out there.”
A true motivator, our Elmo.
He said, “Robin, you head back up to that last straight stretch and keep a lookout. Somebody comes, you get your ass down here fast.”
The complaining commenced.
“Did somebody declare this a democracy?”
One-Eye grumbled, “You can rob a soldier of his choices but you can’t take his right to bitch.”
Goblin giggled.
Elmo told Robin, “Grab your gear and get. And be careful.”
Rusty started getting his stuff together, too.
Elmo shook his head, pointed at the bridge.
SO THERE WE were, clambering through the trestlework, operating on guesses based on what we thought we had gotten from the mule people, plus what we saw happen between Blind Emon and the Taken. If it went the lieutenant’s way he would look like an improv genius. If not, he could become the fabled Commander Dumbass.
It did not start well.
Rusty fell. He survived only because Elmo had bullied him into wearing a rope safety harness. I dropped a keg, almost fell trying to save it. It rattled around in the rocks below, never breaking up. A keg Goblin was wrestling came apart. Its contents caught fire, sparked by his gear clanking together. For a while we were enveloped by ghastly sulfurous smoke.