Guards of Haven: The Adventures of Hawk and Fisher (Hawk & Fisher) (60 page)

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Authors: Simon R. Green

BOOK: Guards of Haven: The Adventures of Hawk and Fisher (Hawk & Fisher)
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Hawk ran towards her, but she seemed to recede into the distance as he ran. He pushed himself harder, but the faster he ran, the further away she seemed to be. Somewhere between the two of them, Barber sobbed with helpless rage as he struggled futilely to touch the Brimstone Boys with his sword. Hawk could vaguely hear Winter shouting something, but all he could think of was Fisher. The stone floor was lapping up around her shoulders. The light was growing dimmer. Sounds echoed strangely. And then something gold and shining flew slowly past him, gleaming richly in the fading light, and landed on the floor between the Brimstone Boys. They looked down at it, and despite himself, Hawk’s gaze was drawn to it too. It was a pocket watch.
He could hear it ticking in the endless quiet. Ticktocking away the seconds, turning past into present into future. The Brimstone Boys raised their awful heads, their grinning mouths stretched wide in soundless screams. Dust fell endlessly through golden light. The floor grew solid again, spitting out Fisher, and the walls rushed in on either side. The ceiling fell back to its previous height. And the Brimstone Boys crumbled into dust and blew away.
Hawk looked around him, and the corridor was just as it had always been. The silver light pushed back the darkness, and the floor was solid and reliable under his feet. Fisher picked up the throwing knife from the floor before her, looked at it for a moment, and then slipped it back into her boot. Barber put away his sword and shook his head slowly, breathing heavily. Hawk turned and looked back at Winter and the sorcerer Storm, who seemed to have completely recovered from his daze. In fact, he was actually smiling quite smugly.
“All right,” said Hawk. “What happened?”
Storm’s smile widened. “It’s all very simple and straightforward, really,” he said airily. “The Brimstone Boys distorted reality wherever they went, but they weren’t very stable. They could play all kinds of tricks with space and probabilities and the laws of reality, but they were still vulnerable to time. The ordered sequence of events was anathema to their existence. It was already eroding away at them; that’s why they looked so ancient. I just speeded the process up a bit, with an augmented timepiece whose reality was a little bit stronger than theirs.”
“What was all that nonsense you were spouting before?” demanded Fisher. “I thought you’d gone off your head.”
“That was the idea,” said Storm smugly. “They didn’t see me as a threat, so they ignored me. Which gave me time to work my magic on the watch. I could have been an actor, you know.”
He stretched out his hand, and the watch flew through the air to nestle snugly in his hand. Storm checked the time, and put the watch back into his pocket.
“Heads up,” said Barber suddenly. “We’ve got company again.”
“Now what?” demanded Hawk, spinning round to face the darkness, and then freezing on the spot as he saw what was watching them from the edge of the silver glow. A human shape, formed of bloody organs and viscera, but no skin, stood trembling on legs of muscle and tendons but no bones. Its naked eyes stared wetly from a flat crimson mess that might once have been its face. It breathed noisily, and they could see its lungs rising and falling in what had once been its chest.
“Johnny Nobody,” said Hawk. “Poor bastard. Are we going to have to kill him too?”
“Hopefully not,” said Winter. “We’re going to be in enough trouble over Who Knows and the Brimstone Boys. With a little luck, we might be able to herd this thing back into its cell. It’s supposed to be strong and quick, but not very bright.”
And then something pounced on Johnny Nobody from behind and smashed it to the floor. Blood spurted through the air as its attacker tore it apart and stuffed the gory chunks into its mouth. The newcomer looked up at the SWAT team, its mouth stretched in a bloody grin as it ate and swallowed chunks of Johnny Nobody’s unnatural flesh. What upset Hawk the most was how ordinary the creature looked. It was a man, dressed in tatters, with wide, staring eyes you only had to meet for a moment to know their owner was utterly insane. Just looking at him made Hawk’s skin crawl. What was left of Johnny Nobody kicked and struggled, unable to die despite its awful wounds, but incapable of breaking its attacker’s hold. The crazy man squatted over the body, ripping out strings of viscera and giggling to himself in between bloody mouthfuls.
“Who the hell is that?” asked Fisher softly. “One of the rioters?”
“I don’t think so,” said Winter. “I think we’re looking at the original occupant of Messerschmann’s Portrait.”
“I thought he was supposed to be some kind of monster,” said Hawk.
“Well, isn’t he?” said Winter, and Hawk had no answer. The SWAT leader looked at Barber. “Knock him out, Barber. Maybe our sorcerers can do something to bring his mind back.”
Barber shrugged. “I’ll do what I can, but bringing them in alive isn’t what I do best.”
He advanced slowly on the madman, who looked up sharply and growled at him like an animal. Barber stopped where he was and sheathed his sword. Moving slowly and carefully, he reached inside one of his pockets and brought out a small steel ball, no more than an inch or so in diameter. He hefted it once in his hand, glanced at the madman, and then snapped his arm forward. The steel ball sped through the air and struck the madman right between the eyes. He fell backwards and lay still, without making a sound. Barber walked over to him, checked his pulse, and then bent down beside him to retrieve his steel ball. Johnny Nobody twitched and shuddered, leaking blood and other fluids, and Barber’s lips thinned back from his teeth as he saw the raw wounds slowly knitting themselves together. He moved quickly back to the others, dragging the unconscious madman with him.
“About time we had a little luck,” said Winter. “Johnny Nobody’s in no shape to give us any trouble, and we’ve got ourselves a nice little bonus in the form of our unconscious friend here. At least now we’ll have something to show for our trouble.”
“Winter,” said Fisher slowly, “I think we’ve got another problem.”
There was something in the way she said it that made everyone’s head snap round to see what she was talking about. Thick tendrils of the dirty grey cobwebs had dropped from the ceiling and were wriggling towards Johnny Nobody. The bloody shape struggled feebly, but the grey strands whipped around it and dragged the body slowly away along the floor into the darkness, leaving a trail of blood and other things on the stone floor. Hawk looked at the thick mass of cobwebs covering the walls and ceiling, and made a connection he should have made some time back. He looked at Winter.
“It’s Crawling Jenny, isn’t it? All of it.”
“Took you long enough to work it out,” said Winter. “The rioters must have opened its cell and let it out. Which is probably why we haven’t seen any of them since. According to the reports I saw, Crawling Jenny is carnivorous, and always ravenously hungry.”
“Are you saying this stuff ate all the rioters?” said Fisher, glaring distrustfully at the nearest wall.
“It seems likely. Where else could it have got enough mass to grow like this? I hate to think how big the creature must be in total.”
“Why didn’t you tell us what this stuff was before?” said Hawk. “We’ve been walking through it all unknowing, totally at its mercy. It could have attacked us at any time.”
“No it couldn’t,” said Storm. “I’ve been shielding us. It doesn’t even know we’re here.”
“There wasn’t any point in attacking its outer reaches,” said Winter. “It’d just grow some more. No, I’ve been waiting for something like this to happen. Since Johnny Nobody is undoubtedly heading for the creature’s stomach, all we have to do is follow it. I’m not sure if Crawling Jenny has any vulnerable organs, but if it has, that’s where they’ll be.”
She set off down the corridor without looking back, hurrying to catch up with the dragging sounds ahead. The others exchanged glances and moved quickly after her. Barber carried the unconscious madman over his shoulder in a fireman’s lift. It didn’t seem to slow him down any. Hawk glared suspiciously at the thick mass of cobwebs lining the corridor, but it seemed quiet enough at the moment. Which was just as well, because Hawk had a strong feeling his axe wasn’t going to be much use against a bunch of cobwebs.
They soon caught up with the tendrils dragging the body, and followed at a respectful distance. Storm’s magic kept them unseen and unheard as far as Crawling Jenny was concerned, but no one felt like pushing their luck. Hawk in particular was careful to keep to the center of the corridor, well away from both walls. He found it only too easy to visualize hundreds of tentacles suddenly lashing out from the walls and ceiling, wrapping up victims in helpless bundles and dragging them off to the waiting stomach.
Eventually, the tendrils dragged the body into a dark opening in the wall. Winter gestured quickly for everyone to stay where they were. Barber lowered the unconscious madman to the floor, and stretched easily. He wasn’t even breathing hard. Winter moved slowly forward to peer into the opening, and the others moved quietly in behind her, careful not to crowd each other so that they could still retreat in a hurry if they had to. The silver light from the corridor shone brightly behind them, and Hawk’s lip curled in disgust at the sight ahead. The narrow stone cell was filled with a soft, pulsating mass of mold and fungi studded with lidless, staring eyes that burned with a horrid awareness. Sheets of gauzy cobwebs anchored the mass to the walls and ceiling, and frayed away in questing tendrils. As the team watched, two of the tendrils dropped Johnny Nobody’s writhing body onto the central mass, and a dozen snapping mouths opened, crammed with grinding yellow teeth. They tore the body apart and consumed it in a matter of seconds.
“Damn,” said Winter. “We’ve lost another one.”
“So much for Johnny Nobody,” said Barber quietly. “Poor Johnny, we hardly knew you.”
“I don’t know about you,” said Hawk quietly to Winter, “but it seems to me that swords and axes aren’t going to be much use against something like that. You could hack at it for hours and still not know if you’d hit anything vital.”
“Agreed,” said Winter. “Luckily, we should still have one incendiary left.” She looked at Barber, who nodded quickly, and produced another of the glowing stones from his pouch. Winter nodded, and looked back at the slowly pulsating mass before her. “When you’re ready, Barber, throw the incendiary into one of those mouths. As soon as the damned thing’s swallowed it, everyone turn and run like a fury. I’m not sure what effect an incendiary will have on a creature like that, but I don’t think we should hang around to find out. And Barber—don’t miss. Or you’re fired.”
He grinned, murmured the activating Word, and tossed the glowing stone into one of the snapping mouths. It went in easily, and Crawling Jenny swallowed the incendiary reflexively. The SWAT team turned as one and bolted back down the corridor, Barber pausing just long enough to sling the unconscious madman over his shoulder again. A muffled explosion went off behind them, like a roll of faraway thunder, quickly drowned out by a deafening keening that filled the narrow corridor as the creature screamed with all its many mouths. A blast of intense heat caught up with the running figures and passed them by. Hawk flinched instinctively, but Storm’s magic protected them.
Rivulets of flame ran along the walls and ceiling, hungrily consuming the thick cobwebs. Burning tendrils thrust out of the furry mass and lashed blindly at the running SWAT team. Hawk and Fisher cut fiercely at the tendrils, slicing through them easily. Burning lengths of cobwebs fell to the corridor floor, writhing and twisting as the flames consumed them. Charred and darkened masses of cobwebs fell limply from the wall and ceiling as a thick choking smoke filled the corridor. Storm suddenly stumbled to a halt, and the others piled up around him.
“What is it?” yelled Hawk, struggling to be heard over the screaming creature and the roaring of the flames.
“The exit’s just ahead,” yelled Storm, “but something’s got there before us.”
“What do you mean, ‘something’?” Hawk hefted his axe and peered through the thickening smoke but couldn’t see anything. The flames pressed closer.
Storm’s hands clenched into fists. Stray magic sputtered on the air before him. “Them. They’ve found us. The Pale Men.”
They came out of the darkness and into the light, shifting forms that hovered on the edge of meaning and recognition. Smoke drifted around and through them, like ghostly ectoplasm. Hawk slowly lowered his axe as it grew too heavy for him. His vision grayed in and out, and the roar and heat of the fire seemed far away and unimportant. The world rolled back upon itself, back into yesterday and beyond.
Memories surged through him, of all the people he’d been, some so strange to him now he hardly recognized them. Some smiled sadly at what he’d become, while others pointed accusing fingers or turned their heads away. His mind began to drift apart, fragmenting into forgotten dreams and hopes and might-have-beens. He screamed soundlessly, a long, wordless howl of denial, and his thoughts slowly began to clear. He was who he was because of all the people he’d been, and even if he didn’t always like that person very much, he knew he couldn’t go back. He’d paid too high a price for the lessons he’d learned to turn his back on them now. He concentrated on his memories, hugging them to him jealously, and the ghosts of his past faded away and were gone. He was Hawk, and no one was going to take that away from him. Not even himself.

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