Gunwitch (37 page)

He rode through the blasted gate of Fort Russell, amazed at the damage that had been done. He had not thought the fort’s supplies included enough powder to do more than a token amount of damage. Rose must have lent some additional power. The Ubasi would not be pleased. They did not want the fort destroyed, only taken. They had plans for the Misi-ziibi and the lands around it. Taking the fort was the first part of those plans. Having to rebuild nearly half the fort …

When Umoya was dead, the big sorcerer could bear the blame for many things.

Behind him, with a dry, swishing sound like men walking through a wheat field ready for harvest, the first of the ithambofis entered the fort. He turned to face them. Empty eye sockets in stripped skulls faced him. Behind the ithambofis, the izidumbus came to a halt, having reached the extent of their orders.

“Go around on the outside of the walls,” he ordered. “Along the cliff. Apprehend,” he added. “Do not kill.” Ithambofis were much more intelligent than izidumbus, but intelligence also meant initiative. He did not want any mistakes. He could not afford mistakes now.

He felt the stinging wind of the bullet as it passed his right ear an instant before he heard the report of the rifle.

He kicked his feet from the stirrups and slid off the back of the horse. He spun and ran for the cover of a piece of the gate still hanging from its hinges. He heard another shot as he ran, but did not see where it hit. He only cared that the bullet had not hit him.

From cover, he looked out and saw two soldiers on the back corner of the fort reloading their rifles. One of them finished reloading and brought the rifle up to shoulder and aimed toward the gate, fired again. One of the izidumbus still within the gate stumbled and fell, then started climbing to its feet again.

Taking his pistol from his belt, Ducoed stepped from behind the broken wood of the gate. He aimed at the second soldier as that man finished loading his rifle and started bringing it up. A normal pistol did not have the accuracy to be much of a threat to a single target that far away, and elevated besides. Even a marksman would find the shot a challenge, maybe impossible. Ducoed’s was not a normal pistol. Nor was he a normal marksman. He focused on the soldier’s chest, letting his hand do the aiming, then squeezed the trigger.

Lightning laced with fire exploded from Ducoed’s pistol, arced through the air between him and the soldier, and struck the soldier in the chest. The soldier’s rifle discharged but the shot went wild. The soldier flew back against the crenellations on top of the wall. His rifle fell out of his hands as he fell out of sight.

Ducoed reloaded before he ran toward the wall where the soldiers had shot at him. His immortality waited for him just beyond that wall. He saw the twisted stairs leading to the top of the wall, but he was beyond stairs. He laughed and leaped, throwing his chest forward, his arms stretched behind him.

He felt the magic of the air and the winds and grabbed them with his mind through his pistol. He forced the winds to bear him up and up until he could step on the top of the wall. The strain pounded in his heart and in his head, but the wind whipping around him, carrying him, felt like nothing he had experienced before.

His breath came in great gasps as he stood on the wall, looking at the world that seemed spread before him. He felt like a giant, a god. He laughed and clenched his left hand as if holding the air, keeping it subdued and under his control. Maybe he did not need Umoya after all. For anything.

He heard a girl’s scream and recognized Margaret. First the girls, for his debt, then Umoya, for his pleasure.

He stepped up on the ramparts, between the crenellations, and looked down. He saw Chal fighting hand to hand with izidumbus trying to get around the corner of the wall. Margaret huddled behind Chal while Janett raised a rifle and took aimed at the izidumbus. Behind Janett was Major Haley, also lifting a rifle. The major, though, was aiming at him.

Ducoed brought his left hand around in front of him as the major fired, using the winds he still held as a shield. He had never heard of such a thing before, but as he stood there with the winds in hand, it was the most natural thing in the world. The winds did not stop the bullet, as he had hoped, and he flinched as the bullet grazed his right cheek.

The pain was nothing compared to the shame of flinching. Ducoed pointed his pistol at Major Haley and unleashed fire. No lightning this time, just pure flame. The fire flowed like water and tried to drown the major, who screamed and dropped his rifle as he fell to the ground. Ducoed watched him roll and slap at the flames, laughing, wondering what Rose would think of the major’s pretty face after this.

He almost did not notice little Margaret down there, looking up at him, her hatred of him plain on her face, pointing a pistol at him that looked ridiculously huge in her small hands.

He jerked against the winds again, to his left this time, and harder as Margaret’s pistol fired. He did not flinch this time as the bullet flew wide of him. He laughed as despair mixed with the hatred in her eyes.

He saw Janett fire at the izidumbu trying grab Chal, then begin a clumsy attempt at reloading. He saw Margaret go to her hands and knees to pick up her dropped pistol. He watched Chal chop at an izidumbu with the edge of her hands and heard the crunch of an arm bone breaking. He bared his teeth in a grin. He had to give up Margaret and Janett to the Ubasi, but there were no other claims on Chal than his own. How he would enjoy–

As if she could hear his thoughts, Chal’s head came up and turned slightly in his direction. She did not look at him, though. She spun and kicked backward with her right leg and sent the izidumbu with the broken arm over the cliff. Then she stepped up to Janett, grabbed the girl and threw her over the cliff.

He had to release his grip on the winds as he reached forward with his magic to create a barrier of raw force between the surface of the river and the falling girls. Janett first, then Margaret, then Chal. He nearly lost his grip on his pistol from the strain of halting the falls of three people. Janett’s fall especially, since she fallen the farthest. The magic pulled against him and tried to pull him off the wall to fall with the girls.

The magic continued to pull. It did not ease up, even when all three bodies had ceased falling. The muscles on his arms and his chest strained against a resistance he had never felt before. He shifted his stance, trying to brace his feet against the edge of the wall. He
pulled
.

It was like pulling on the mooring line of a fully loaded trading skiff. He remembered as a boy being amazed that anything that floated on water could be so heavy and difficult to move. He remembered his father whipping his back, shouting at him, ordering to
pull, damn your eyes, pull!

Ducoed pulled.

The resistance did not diminish, but it did not gain ground either.

Braced now and no longer in danger of being pulled off the wall, Ducoed looked down at Janett and Margaret and Chal. The three girls were stopped in midfall. Margaret and Janett looked as he expected, immobilized, caught in the grip of his magic. Chal, though, still moved. He could feel her as she shifted. As her form morphed and grew.

Chal was the source of the resistance. She was the force that pulled against him, still trying to break free.

As he watched, Chal’s form became bigger, but less distinctive. She swelled and the edges of her body engulfed her clothes and the pack on her back. As she grew, she became transparent. She became a wave, halted as it tried to break across the river below her.

The wave-Chal engulfed Margaret, wrapping the girl in wet, pulling the girl into the center of what had once been the native girl, Chal.

The wave rolled forward, tumbling Margaret within it, reaching for Janett.

The runes on his pistol burned as bright as the sun and the barrel glowed red from the magic that pumped through Ducoed, through the gun and into the barrier. All the muscles in his body were tensed, threatening to pull him apart.

He almost let go, refusing to kill himself in his quest for immortality, then he found a new source he could tap.

Chal herself.

Images flashed in his mind too fast and too alien to comprehend, but he knew, somehow, that Chal was sacrificing herself to save the girls. She had made a choice, a choice that she could not unmake. A choice that left her vulnerable to him.

Ducoed laughed as he felt the raw power coming into him, pulled, taken, pillaged out of what once been Chal the native girl. She really was more than she seemed. More than he could have ever expected.

He saw Margaret looking up at him through the haze of water that engulfed her. He pulled back his lips to show his teeth in a grin. He no longer needed the Ubasi. Margaret and her sister, the lovely Janett, would be next.

Chapter 20

Rose

Battlefield, Fort Russell

1742 A.D.

Ducoed’s laughter still rang in Rose’s ears, mocking her as it had too many times before. She longed for a target to shoot at. Especially Ducoed.

She stumbled about in the darkness that had wrapped itself around her, shouting for Corporal Rickell or Sergeant Tabart or any of her men. And her pistol. She had to have her pistol. She still had the last pistol she had taken from Rickell, and it was loaded, but it was not
her
pistol. She would need her own pistol to take on Ducoed. And she would need to rest. Or draw from one of the men. The magic she had already performed had taken a lot out of her, and she had not had a chance to rest.

She tripped over something–or someone, since it seemed to move against her–and fell forward. The fall took longer than she expected, continuing after she took the first impact on her left shoulder and the side of her head. She flailed with her right hand, looking for the ground, and lost her grip on the pistol as the back of her head struck hard, packed earth at the bottom of what must have been a trench. Lights streaked visible pain across the darkness of her vision.

The sharp pain in her head, the loss of the pistol, the dirt in her mouth, the smells of fresh earth and death sent her to the edge of panic. She teetered on the edge of losing control. She rolled off her wrenched left arm and into a sitting position. That helped.

She stood slowly, right hand feeling the side of the trench, left arm curled against her chest. The sounds of the battle seemed muffled, either by being below the battle here in the trench, or because of the darkness. Or maybe from the throbbing pain in her head. She also heard the sounds of a struggle in the trench with her, not far away, in front of her. She thought about moving toward the struggle. Sudden memories of the mud and death in Brittany, though, made her start to back away from it. The trench walls she could not see suddenly seemed to hem her in on all sides. She started to turn around. Then she stopped moving, forced the memories from her mind, and tried to regain control of herself again.

This was not Brittany, and there was no mud trying to suck her in even as she lay in it trying not to be seen, hoping that the next groundshaking explosion and rain of mud would not be her last. Then, after that blast, hoping the same thing again. Then again.

By comparison, her current situation was almost idyllic. Except for the darkness, which still pressed against her.

She took a deep breath and tried to calm herself. She would need to be calm if she were going to go after Ducoed. She took another breath and let it out slowly. If she were going after Ducoed–and there was no doubt about that–she needed to get rid of this darkness. Another breath, in and out. If she was going to get rid of this darkness, she needed the gun she had dropped.

After a final deep breath, she squatted and felt around with both hands. Her left hand found the last loaded pistol Corporal Rickell had handed her and she grabbed it again with both hands and pulled it to her chest. She hoped the gun was still loaded. No way to check. She hoped the corporal was still alive, for both their sakes. No way to check that either.

Still squatting, she raised the gun over her head with her right hand and pointed it straight up. Some magic did not require aiming. For what she was about to do, “up” was as specific as she needed to be, but she did not want the bullet–if it were still there–if the gun were not jammed with dirt and about to blow up in her hand–to hurt anyone. She paused to think about how to counteract the blackness, and decided on a simple shredding–with a lot of effort behind it, since a man who could suspend himself in midair probably drew on some stalwart magic–plus a gunwitch flare. She covered her eyes with her left hand, ignoring the pain in her left shoulder, opened herself up to the magic inside her, and pulled the trigger.

The effort yanked the air out of her lungs and she felt the pistol disintegrate in her grasp. Cold splinters of wood rained down on her. She had no idea where the barrel went. She lost her balance as the kick of the pistol and the force of the magic pushed against her and she fell back. Her head thumped off the side of the trench, but she kept her face covered.