Firebirds Soaring (50 page)

We followed him, unseen, to the last door.

The figure in the niche behind him dwarfed Balarec or Graffin. He made Sigrid look puny and ineffectual. No matter whether or not he was trained, he had the raw power to overwhelm any of the heroes. He was all muscle and sinew, except for the hooves and razor-sharp horns. His fists were clenched, and his bull-nostrils were wide open and snorting with anger.

It was the first time I had seen a Taur, or smelled the mix of sweat, frustration, and anger that clings to them their whole lives.

 

The Eminence closed the door behind us, and I heard the lock snap into place.

“A Taur?” Gaanz whispered to me. “The Eminence has a pet Taur?”

“Not a pet. Charmed, is my guess. I wonder how much Pax it takes to keep him on a leash.” I looked around. “And when the charm wears off, the Eminence is going to let him loose in the hall, isn’t he?”

“You’re completely fear driven,” Gaanz sneered at me.

“Your nerves are whipped up by all the muck you’ve taken. This lot would like nothing better than to pick up a sword and challenge a Taur. . . .”

He trailed off as we looked around. There were, of course, no weapons, just as the innkeeper had warned us.

I went cold. “Blood God protect us, he’s planning a full Grendel.”

Gaanz said, “We have to warn someone. Quickly.”

I hissed, “What did you inhale, you deranged berserker? We need to leave this place, quickly.”

“No.” Gaanz took a deep, frightened breath. “We need to go into the hall.”

He stepped forward, toward the last unlocked door, and he entered the Hall of Heroes.

What could I do? I followed him.

The Eminence locked the door behind us. The Taur was outside, for now.

I looked over the sweaty, muttering crowd that was waiting for the Pre-Eminence to come speak to them. “We need to find Balarec, fast. He’s the only one who will listen.” I could feel the MisSpeak nibbling at my mind like a small carnivore.

“Absolutely,” Gaanz said quickly. He was on tiptoe, looking from table to table and bench to bench.

We lost precious time as we ran through the hall, past men and women who were already impatient and didn’t much like nearly having their ale spilled.

And my head was filling with a terrible clarity that told me I didn’t have much time to say anything to anyone.

Suddenly there was Balarec, walking past. I grabbed his arm. “Ball. Air. Axe. Ohh, shift.”

Thank god we only took Misspeak in shifts. I grabbed Gaanz’s arm. “Hue tale hem.”

Gaanz looked stricken. “Eye fraught hit wads
bye
turd.”

Balarec looked back and forth between us, unable to comprehend us and too polite to give us each the smack we deserved.

 

The hall door behind us slammed into the wall, its handle chipping stone free. The Taur, loose at last, raised its arms and roared.

Whatever he’d been given, it wasn’t Pax.

The warriors around us shouted to each other, running back and forth uselessly. But there were no weapons in the hall, not so much as a short sword.

Gaanz stared around the hall, then desperately at me.

His face lit up and he reached inside his shirt.

He pulled out a small pouch.

He loosened the drawstrings and buried his face in it.

When he came up for air, his eyes were wild and his teeth were clenched.

He flung the open pouch in my face. A cascade of powder struck my nostrils—

And I threw back my head and howled, my heart pounding and brain full of Warre.

Together we charged the Taur, shouting the whole time. He looked down at us in confusion. I seriously do not believe he had ever been attacked by anything as small as us before.

Gaanz dove at the Taur, striking him in the chest and bouncing off harmlessly. I followed immediately, bouncing harmlessly off Gaanz.

The Taur shook his great head from side to side, staring from one of us to the other—probably wondering which one to kill first, and how painful it should be.

Gaanz reached into his pants—a horrible and insulting gesture; the Taur widened his eyes—and pulled out a flask, throwing it immediately into the Taur’s face. The monster bellowed at us, but sounded rabid, furious, and strangely pleased with itself.

Gaanz gestured to me. “Bye thyme!”

It made a deranged sense. I grabbed at one of my hidden packets and threw powder on him, then grabbed another.

By turns the Taur changed moods. MisSpeak made no initial change, of course. Eventually it changed his roar to another, different roar, which seemed to piss him off mightily.

He waved his arms, snatching at us. Sooner or later, he would make contact, and our potions and charms would make no difference at all.

A voice behind us shouted, “’Way!” We fell to either side as Balarec, carrying a bench, smashed it into the Taur’s chest.

The Taur fell backward, but he was more startled than hurt. He rose up, beckoning toward his chest, angry and unafraid.

Balarec said, “Charge again. We have to hold him.”

Perhaps it was the drugs. For me it must have been. Gaanz was now fully committed.

We launched the bench into the Taur’s chest. He collapsed again, but he laughed at us and stood, looking back and forth as he picked a victim to charge at.

“Gods’ damn ’way!” a voice bellowed behind us.

I pushed Balarec sideways. Gaanz and I fell over as Graffin, Sigrid, and four other large angry warriors launched past us with a table in their arms.

The impact threw the Taur against a wall. The heroes carrying the table followed through. There was a crash and a series of crunches, and the broken Taur slid down the wall and crumpled inertly on the floor.

Balarec waited half an instant before snatching up the bench and ramming his way out of the hall. A moment later he was tossing in weapons, and the Hall of Heroes was invincible again.

 

 

 

III

Well, we found out the Truth. Too bad it was no use to anyone.

We were out in front of the inn, unarmed, and we had no potions, lotions, or charms left. We were becoming disagreeably sober. We desperately wanted to leave, but a number of people wanted to say good-bye to us.

The Eminence was not one of them. He looked at us sideways, with a sideways-frowning mouth, and I knew he was weighing how to kill us, not whether. The sooner we were out of this city, the better.

The Pre-Eminence insisted on shaking hands with us, saying that we would always be in the forefront of the fight against Skandia. The Eminence eyed us coldly from a distance, saluting. How I wanted to salute him, in my own way! But it wasn’t safe.

As we turned away from them, someone grabbed our shoulders in a way that had nearly made me scream before, but that I now recognized.

Graffin said, “You boys were all right back there. I thought your training story was dung, but I was wrong.”

He grabbed us both in his arms and squeezed until shoulder dislocation was a possibility.

Then he said huskily, “Thank Savage Henry for me. Band of brothers,” and walked away wiping his eyes.

Gaanz whispered, “I hope there isn’t going to be much of this.”

My eyes went wide watching Sigrid grab his shoulder, spin him around, and grab him with her other hand.

She picked Gaanz up and held him off the floor, kissing him until I thought she would suck his lungs inside out.

Then she set him down, smiling. “If I see you across the water, we might have a night together.”

He stared after her.

I hissed, “You are
not
risking your life to find out whether ‘if’ is ‘when.’”

“I’m not.” But he said it tragically, and I was deeply grateful that he was only slightly sober. A fully sober man would have been doomed to follow her.

Behind us, Balarec said, “You’ve met Sigrid again.”

I said, “What the Eminences wanted all worked, didn’t it? She’s committed to going overseas, and so are a lot of the others.”

Balarec reached into his pockets.

We stared at the key and the pouches.

“The key is to the Hall of Heroes,” Balarec said tiredly. “The pouches are Warre and Pax, respectively. I pulled them from the pockets of the Eminence, when he embraced me for stopping the Taur.”

Gaanz snatched the pouch of Pax and lowered his nose and mouth in it, inhaling vigorously. “Oh, yes. That’s Pax.” He was visibly relaxed.

“He was dosing the Taur,” I said.

“I can’t prove it.” Balarec looked around the streets, where pumped-up heroes, survivors of an attack they were told was from Skandia, were babbling about future carnage. “But I know he did it.”

I said, “Then you can stop all this.”

He looked at me for a moment, than at the volunteers and zealots all around him.

Then he smiled sadly. “After what happened here today, there will be galleys, and funds for smithies and crossbows and arquebuses, and men and women clamoring to serve across the Five Seas.”

“But we’ve proved that’s a bloodstained farce,” Gaanz said plaintively. He raised his arm and put his hand on Balarec’s shoulder. “As your senior guide, I advise you to tell everyone to stay home. Or you’ll buy them a drink if they get back.”

He smiled and shrugged. Gaanz’s arm fell off him. We waited.

Finally he said, “I’m going with them.”

I gaped at him. “Mad God.” We looked at him the way he had looked at the Taur.

He blushed. Actually blushed, like a child learning a truth or receiving a kiss. He looked away from our eyes as he said, “Mad God, maybe, but I’m going with them.” He spread his hands. “They’re risking their lives. Maybe they believe in a lie, but they believe, and they’re my brothers and sisters in arms.” Balarec looked at us earnestly. “Don’t you think, if they are risking their lives for nothing, I need to be there to make sure as few of them as possible die in vain?”

“I don’t,” Gaanz said. He held out his hand. “You do.”

Balarec shook it. “You did today, and thank you. You may not know yourselves as well as you think.”

I shook my head. “If Kalchys hangs on the likes of us, this country is doomed.”

He laughed. “You know, I would have said that myself about your kind two days ago. Then yesterday I met you.” He shook my hand and waved almost shyly. “Gods watch over you.”

“And you,” I said, but it was too late. He was moving from man to woman to man, making sure they were all right.

He had been taken aside his whole life, a ropelike arm thrown around his shoulder, and been whispered to by corrupt old men with smirking eyes and the gift of putting one quasi-true word after another, until their sentences conveyed a falsehood they had never spoken.

And now the scales had fallen from his eyes, but he was still sailing over the Five Seas to risk his life for something foolish and wasteful, and he was willing to do it even while he was sober. We were crazy and useless and full of dying substances, and we had no purpose at all, and no words that would convince him not to go.

 

The heroes, a number of them saluting us, left in convoys, warwagons, and flatbed platforms over spiked wheels. We stood together in the desert and watched them roll off while we looked at the nearby ornate buildings and the far desiccated horizon.

The Most High had ordered us to engage in a Search for the Truth. We had found out:

And unless we could convince some seriously innocent rube who ran a magic shop to let us replace our diminished supplies on credit, the trip back to the university was going to be long, sweaty, and unpleasant.

 

NICK O’DONOHOE
is the author of a number of novels, including the Crossroads trilogy, about a very unusual veterinary practice:
The Magic and the Healing, Under the Healing Sign
, and
The Healing of Crossroads
. He has published dozens of short stories, many of them part of the Dragonlance world.

Nick lives in Rhode Island and works as a writer within half a mile of a church tower that was prominent in an H. P. Lovecraft story.

This story was inspired by a love of Hunter S. Thompson’s
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
—in part because I loved Thompson’s knife-edge, acid prose, and in part because I wondered how a pair of gonzo mages in a fantasy world might misuse magic for recreation.

BONECHEWER’S LEGACY

R
atha, clan leader of the feline Named, lay on her side in the last rays of the setting sun. Fall had come to clan ground, stripping leaves from the trees and blowing the guard-fires’ haze across the sky. From the nearby wood-land trail, she heard movement. She yawned, stretched out her forepaws, and began a quiet purr. On Ratha’s back, her treeling, Ratharee, woke and groomed herself in a flurry, then curled her ringed tail around Ratha’s neck.