Immortal (17 page)

“Somebody told me you were the oldest man in Carthage. Must’ve been thinking of someone else.”

“No, that’s me,” I said.

“Huh.” In two quick steps he was on top of me, both arms out and seeking to grab and possibly hug. This would be the preferred attack, I guess, if one wanted to stop getting stuck with a sword. The charge left both of his sides exposed, but since I’d already taken an unsuccessful swing at his torso I wasn’t about to try it a second time.

Instead, I jumped aside and swiped at his leg. Nearly got the sword broken in two, but it did trip him up and he even yelped in pain just moments before landing flat on his face. I seized the opportunity and lunged at his neck, but he’d already begun to roll over. He caught the blade with the palm of his bare hand and swatted it aside. If he were a man, he’d be down one hand.

Still on the ground, he kicked me in the stomach. I staggered backward, desperately seeking air, which was not immediately forthcoming. This left him plenty of time to get back up to his feet.

“This is fun,” he said. “You’re a lot better than those guards of yours. They just stood around and hacked at me.”

My reply was to gasp for breath.

“We about done here?” He was leaning over me the way one might if one were examining a dead bird. Overconfident, he left his neck unguarded.

I pushed his raised arm aside and brought the sword around, this time catching him in the neck with the strongest force I could muster.

It was about as effective as the shot to the torso.

“Aahhh,” he uttered, less in pain than in aggravation. He shoved me away. “Just give it up, will you?”

“Can’t,” I said.

I’d pretty much run out of ideas. A part of me knew this battle was going to end up more or less the way that it had, but as I’d never attempted to kill a demon before I figured I owed myself the chance to try it at least once. Stupid me.

Whomp sighed dramatically and then charged for me again. Having tried the duck-and-counter and the step-aside-and-sweep already, I went for the only idea I had left. Charge back.

What followed was somewhat like a joust, with my sword pitted against his fist. We both connected. He hit me with a glancing blow that exploded into the side of my face and spun me around and down like an unstrung puppet. I landed gracelessly a few paces away from where he fell on his side. Fully half of my sword had ended up buried in his chest.

He lay still, and for a few seconds I thought I’d actually pulled it off.

“Oww,” he grumbled. He looked down at the blade. I tried to get to my feet, but he’d seriously messed up my equilibrium, so I sort of just crouched there and waited for the hillside to stop rocking.

“You almost ran me through,” he noted. “Good work.”

Up until he rolled up to a sitting position, I was holding out hope that I’d caused some nerve damage or something, but no. He was almost completely unharmed.

I made it to my feet, still fairly wobbly. “Does that hurt?”

“Oh, yeah,” he said matter-of-factly. He reached down and grabbed the sword by the blade and pulled. Slowly, it slid out of him.

At least I’d drawn blood this time.

He climbed to his feet again, my sword and all hope of winning this battle still in his hand. He broke the blade over his knee.

Tossing the pieces aside, he asked, “Any other ideas?”

My vision finally clearing up, I said, “I thought I’d fall back on running.” And then I did just that.

I sprinted down toward to the pier. He didn’t start after me immediately, not because he was too worn out, but because he was clearly aggravated that I wouldn’t just surrender already.

Other than the pier, my only real option was to head up toward Mount Byrsa and maybe just keep on running until I reached a landmark I recognized, like the Nile. I was pretty sure I still had long-distance running skills to my advantage. It’d be like old times, when I’d have to spend six or seven days running after food until the food finally got too tired to run. But that would take too long. Plus, I’d have to return to Carthage eventually—if only to pick up my stuff—and I’d still have a demon problem on my hands. Better to find a place to hide for the night, steal back into the city in the morning, and not leave again until I’d found out who hired Whomp or until I was sure I’d outlived him. Finding such a hiding place would be the hard part.

Meandering through the small collection of boathouses, I reached the dock, which had only my ship in port at the time. This significantly reduced my options. With two or three boats, I could conceivably hide in the hold of one of them, but hiding in the only boat available was maybe not the best idea ever. And I’d end up cornered.

I could hear him coming. With the houses in the way, he was temporarily obscured from sight, but it sounded like he was heading straight for me. Evidently, demons are good trackers.

Out of choices, I jumped onto my ship and climbed the mainmast. Whomp reached the dock a few minutes later.

“There you are,” he said, looking up. He stepped aboard the ship, checking out the surroundings to see if I had any other surprises left, like a small army hidden below deck. What I wouldn’t have given to have a small army hidden below deck. “You run pretty fast. How old did you say you were?”

“I don’t know how old I am. Lost count.”

“Yeah?”

“I’m immortal.”

I figured it was a good conversation topic, and the more talking he did, the less killing he did. He looked confused rather than impressed.

“Im-what?”

He was circling under the mast while talking, making me wonder if he was going to attempt to climb it.

“Immortal,” I repeated. “I don’t get old and die.”

“No kidding.” No, definitely not impressed. And it looked like I wasn’t going to get the “well, since you lived
that
long” free pass from him.

I was clinging to the very top of the mast. We didn’t have crow’s nests in those days. We barely had sails. Just pieces of silk we threw up on the odd chance the wind was going the same way we were. Usually, we rowed. Consequently, if he were patient enough, I’d eventually fall because it’s not easy to hold that position. But demons are not known for their patience. Makes them great for storming sieges.

“How’s that worked out for you?” he asked, as regards my immortality. It looked as if he’d decided how to approach this problem.

“Not bad so far,” I said.

“What happens if you fall from, say, the top of a tall mast onto a hard wooden deck?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “Never tried it. Hey, can I ask you something? Before you kill me?”

“Sure.”

“How come there aren’t more of you?”

“What, you mean in Carthage?”

“I mean in general. Since you’re so hard to kill and all.”

“It’s a secret,” he said, honestly sounding like nobody had ever asked him that before, which was possible.

“Yeah, but you’re gonna kill me anyway,” I pointed out.

“That’s right.”

He reared back to take a swing at the base of the mast.

“You didn’t answer my question,” I shouted.

“The answer is, I don’t know,” he said. Then he punched the mast.

The whole thing wobbled mightily, especially at the top. It was all I could do to hang on. I fortunately had plenty of tree-climbing experience to draw from.

“Hmm,” he muttered. He stepped back to try again, but before he could, a loud CRACK sounded out from the center of the mast.

“Uh-oh.” He’d hit a weak point in the wood grain. The whole thing was splitting up the middle and coming down like the felled tree it once was.

I swung around to one side and, with my hands gripping the top of the mast and my feet touching just below my hands, tried to offer some guidance to the chosen direction of the mast’s descent. A few seconds later the mast sounded out another loud CRACK and down it went, pretty much falling the way I’d hoped it would. I landed not on the deck but in the water, a little stunned, but otherwise none the worse.

The top fourth of the mast had snapped off after impacting with the side of the ship. I found it floating beside me in the water.

“You lucky devil,” Whomp declared, on verifying my continued good health. I grabbed onto the mast tip.

Something occurred to me. “Hey,” I shouted. “Can demons swim?”

“No,” he admitted. “But you can’t stay in the water forever.”

“I don’t have to. I can swim to the city from here.” I used the mast like a kick board just to illustrate my point.

This was not an outcome that pleased Whomp. “I’ll destroy your ship and your house, kill all your slaves and everyone else who gets in my way if you don’t get out of the water and let me kill you!” Not the most convincing argument.

“Go ahead,” I said. “The boat’s already half-destroyed anyway.”

He picked up the heavy base of the mast and hurled it into the water. He missed me, but I gave him points for effort.

“You’re not nearly as charming when you’re not about to kill somebody,” I pointed out.

“Get back here!” he raged.

“Can’t,” I said. “Gotta go. But it was nice meeting you.”

Swimming off, I could hear him tearing apart my vessel piece by piece, his roaring growing more distant with each stroke.

*
 
*
 
*

It took me the rest of the night and part of the next morning to reach the city’s inner harbor. By then Whomp had destroyed most of the homes on the pier and killed dozens of people, many of whom didn’t even work for me. Midday, around the time I reached my main house in Carthage, the sufets had figured out that something horrible was happening outside the city walls and a garrison of soldiers was sent to deal with the problem. It took a couple of days, and there were a tremendous number of human casualties, but they did eventually take care of Whomp for me.

The subsequent inquiry uncovered the name of the merchant who was foolish enough to hire a demon. Guy had been a guest in my home dozens of times, which explained how he knew so much about my ledgers. He was sentenced to death.

And I got a good discount on two of his ships. So, like any good businessman, I came out ahead in the end.

But I never did learn why there are so few demons in the world.

Got a visit from the man himself today. He wanted to see how I was holding up, or so he said. His real motive might have had something to do with Viktor, who I might just be getting to. Can’t have your top scientist asking difficult questions when you’re so close to success.

   
So, he kept going on about how this situation I’m in is “just temporary” and how I should “relax.” Because I’m supposed to be naïve enough to think he’ll actually let me walk out of here when this is all over. I told him to fuck off. Not the best way to get an extra helping at dinner, but whatever.

*
 
*
 
*

I looked again at the frozen image of Gary’s crushed face. What idiot set a demon on me? It seemed unlikely that a bounty was put on my head at the same time a demon was sent to hunt me down, so the most apparent conclusion was that the demon was another bounty hunter. Or at least he was hired by the same person. This is as stupid in modern times as it had been in ancient Carthage. Demons don’t do subtle. They may be motivated by money, but they’re also motivated by bloodlust, and usually the bloodlust wins. Possibly, the person who was behind all of this knew perfectly well that sending a demon would result in some collateral damage, and possibly he or she considered that acceptable. This did not compel me to surrender.

“Do you have any more?” I asked Tchekhy, waving the empty bottle at him.

He looked at me for the first time in two hours. “You need more?”

“I do,” I said. “Turns out there’s a demon chasing me.”

“There is a demon chasing all of us, my friend.”

“I mean literally. You find anything?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Feel like telling me what?”

He lit another cigarette and paused dramatically. Tchekhy can be very theatrical. “Come,” he said. “I’ll show you.”

I got up and half-staggered across the room as the vodka said hello to my motor skills. Perhaps another bottle wouldn’t be a good idea.

Tchekhy pointed to one of the monitors. “You are familiar with the Internet?”

“Of course I am,” I replied indignantly.

I was, in fact, only somewhat familiar with it. Try to look at this from my perspective. I remember getting drunk several of years ago with a guy named Bob who declared that “everything” in the world of computers changes completely “every eighteen months.” He went on with “honestly, you blink and you’re hopelessly behind.” That describes just about my whole existence. Nod off during the Restoration, next thing you know you’re right in the middle of the French Revolution, and you’re wondering what the hell just happened.

“Good,” Tchekhy said. “What you are looking at here is a MUD.”

“Okay.”

“Multi-User Dimension.”

“Okay.”

“It is fantasy. Role-playing. You understand?”

“Not even a little bit.”

He sighed heavily. “Many different people join a group, all right? It is a group where everyone pretends to be someone else in someplace else at some other time or some other world.”