Swords of Waar (33 page)

Goddamn it! What the fuck was I going to tell Wen-Jhai!

Sei-Sien snapped me out of it by screaming like a schoolgirl. “Faster, Lhan! Drive them faster!”

I looked around. We weren’t out of our turn yet and already the crowd was halfway across the plaza and closing fast, and there were flashes of orange mixed in with them, pushing to the front. Priests! And I saw the white tube of the wand of blue fire at the back. We weren’t gonna make it. The crowd was gonna close around us before the kraes got up to speed.

Unless…

“Lhan! Gimme the water tokens!”

He looked around at me as he finally got the krae straightened out. “For what, Mistress?”

“We’re not getting outta here without ’em.”

“But—but they are needed. Without coin, the Aldhanan’s dream of bringing down the church will die!”

“And without a distraction
we’re
gonna die! Now give ’em up and get going!”

He looked sick about it, but let me pull the satchel off his shoulder as he cracked the whip over the kraes’ heads and we jolted forward. Sei-Sien, on the other hand, stared as I opened up the flap like he’d just seen the face of Jesus in a tortilla. He grabbed at me as I stepped to the back of the cart.

“You mustn’t! The cause needs this money! By the One, the things we could do! The campaigns we could—”

I shoved him down. “You ain’t gonna do any of ’em dead.”

He reached after me, wailing, as I raised the satchel over my head. “But you’re wasting it! You’re giving it away!”

“I thought your whole deal was to take water from the church and give it to the people. Ain’t that what I’m doin’?” I turned to the crowd, which was spreading out like an amoeba behind us, getting ready to swallow us whole. “The blessings of Laef be upon you! Water for everyone!”

And with that I grabbed the satchel by the bottom and swung it wide. The tokens flew out of it like an orange rainbow, glinting bright in the last of the sun, and the guys at the front stopped like they’d run into a wall as they realized what was raining down around them.

Well, that caused the mother of all pile-ups, as the rest of the crowd barreled into ’em and fell flat on their faces, and then the mother of all brawls as everybody and their grandmother started scrabbling in the dust, trying to snatch up as many coins as they could. Then the priests got into it and shit got really nasty. They started kicking and punching and cracking heads and shouting, “Touch not those tokens! They are tainted!”

Yeah. Like that was gonna work.

With nobody in our way, Lhan drove the kraes hard down the wide street that curved around the palace and headed for the ship at a gallop. I breathed a sigh of relief, but Sei-Sien was staring out over the backboard like we’d left his firstborn to the wolves.

“Wasted… wasted…”

Unfortunately, we weren’t in the clear yet. Not by a Texas mile. As we rode onto the ship field, I saw half a dozen airships rising into the sky and more orange and white robes swarming around our navy cutter. We had as much trouble ahead of us as we did behind.

A whole squadron of temple paladins and priests was attacking the ship, climbing up the sides, killing the sailors who were trying to cut the mooring ropes, shooting crossbows into the canopy, while the ships around it were heading for the high ground as fast as their balloons would take them. There were dead sailors all over the ground, and more were falling over the rail every second. I didn’t get it.

“Wh-what are they doing?”

“Killing them.” Lhan’s mouth was as thin as a razor blade. “All of them.”

“But why? We didn’t tell the crew anything. Not even Captain Ku-Rho knew what we were doing.”

Ru-Zhera shouted over the rumble of the cart wheels. “The temple cannot allow the contagion of your heresy to spread!”

Lhan snorted. “Also, we have a hold full of tithes.”

He aimed our cart straight for the ship, full tilt.

Sei-Sien cringed back. “’Ware, Lhan! Do you intend to crash us?”

“Yes.”

I got into a crouch on the bench and drew my sword. Our kraes started to balk as we raced toward the crowd, but Lhan cracked the reins over their backs and they skittered on, squawking in protest. At the last second, the paladins under the ship heard us coming and turned, just in time to get a face full of beak. About half a dozen guys went down under claws and cart wheels as we bounced and bucked over their bodies. I used the jolt to launch myself toward a clump of priests who were fighting a gang of the sailors, just under the curve of the ship’s belly.

I hit ’em like a wrecking ball, sending ’em flying in all directions, then helicoptered around with my sword, chopping meat and splintering bone at every point of the compass. Some of ’em died. Most scattered, and I started charging from rope to rope, hacking through them as behind me, Lhan rallied the sailors and Sei-Sien and Ru-Zhera picked themselves up, and the krae cart rattled off for the edge of the field with no one at the reins.

One rope at a time was not how you were supposed to unmoor an airship. You were supposed to let all the lines go at once so there would be a smooth liftoff. The way I was doing it, the ship was jerking up at different angles with every rope I cut, and I heard people shouting and falling above me. Oops.

I had to stop as the Paladins came in again, spears stabbing, and I ended up leaving the boat tilted above me like a jaunty hat as I beat ’em back. Then I ducked under the keel of the ship with Lhan and the sailors following after me and swung for the ropes on that side. I couldn’t reach ’em. The paladins drove us back until I was ducking to keep from knocking my head on the hull, and more were coming from all over the field to stop us. Then a rope off to the right twanged. The guards looked around. Sei-Sien was stumbling back, a sword held in both hands, as the ship jerked up above him. Old Ru-Zhera stood in front of him, holding out his arms like he was trying to protect him.

“Brothers. Put up your spears. These men have done nothing.”

A guard smashed him in the mouth with a spear butt, and he went down hard, his head bouncing off a mooring ring. Sei-Sien went batshit, screeching and slashing at them like a spastic hummingbird.

“You kill your own? You kill old men? Where is the mercy of the Seven? Where is it!”

Sei gutted the first guard by sheer force of crazy, but the second smashed him back, and there were more behind him. Before they could kill him, however, Lhan jumped in and drove them back.

“Bravely done, Sei, but attack the ropes and leave the spears to us. On your left, Jae-En!”

I spun left. Three guards had overrun our sailors and were stabbing for me with their spears. I bashed the points aside, then chopped at the guards. Two went down, almost cut in half. The other staggered away, holding his face, and I ended up fighting next to Lhan, and almost stepped on Ru-Zhera, who was staggering to his feet with a gushing head wound. I steadied him and looked around.

“Last three ropes behind us, Lhan.”

He nodded, and we started circling that way, but then Sei stopped between us and almost caught a backhand in the mush.

“Aur-Aun!”

Ru-Zhera narrowed his eyes. “And Duru-Vau. The shame of the church.”

I followed their gaze and saw the taxman and the chinless high priest striding onto the ship field with the priests from the arena behind them. And they still had that goddamn wand of blue fire.

“Fuck. Faster, Lhan. We gotta go.”

I surged for the last three ropes, clearing a path with my sword, and Lhan came after, protecting my back. The guards scattered and died and we made it to the ropes, slipping on blood and entrails.

“Lhan! Sei! Grab a rope! You too, padre. I’ll cut ’em and we’ll…” I looked around. The priest wasn’t with us. I looked back. I didn’t see him there either, or on the ground with the dead.

“Where’d he go?”

“I know not. Ru-Zhera!”

The sailors on the ground were dead and the guards were closing in on us, with Aur-Aun and the fresh troops running in behind. There was no time to go looking for him. We were dead if we didn’t go now.

“Goddamn it! Grab on!”

Lhan snarled something that didn’t translate and grabbed a rope. I chopped through it under his feet, then slashed through Sei’s to my left. The one I was holding creaked and stretched under my hand as it took the whole pull of the ship by itself.

The guards were feet away now, spears stabbing. I lashed out in a sweeping circle, then looped down, lifted my legs and cut through the rope beneath me.

The ship jerked up so fast I almost didn’t go with it. The rope zipped through my hand like sandpaper, and I had to clamp down with my thighs and ankles to keep from slipping off it altogether.

“So long, suckers!”

Below me I saw Aur-Aun and Duru-Vau screaming up at me and shaking their fists. It was a beautiful sight, but then I saw an ugly one. The paladin with the wand of blue fire was aiming it at the gas canopy. He was going to blow us out of the sky.

“Oh fuck.”

But just as he had us in his sights, a skinny little figure in orange robes burst through the paladins and chopped at the wand with a sword. The white tube cracked in the middle, and in the split second before the sizzling white flash that exploded from it knocked everybody back and filled my eyes with floating black spots, I saw that the guy in the orange robes was Ru-Zhera, screaming like an angry rabbit.

The blast turned the guard with the wand into a human candle, and I don’t just mean he was on fire. He was melting too, like something out of one of those House of Wax movies.

Lhan gaped as we rose, but not at the melting guy. “Astonishing. To have seen the destruction of a sacred weapon of the Seven.

Sei-Sien nodded. “And at the hands of a priest.”

“Crazy motherfucker, he’s commiting suicide.”

Actually, I was surprised he wasn’t dead already, but amazingly, although all the priests and paladins around the melting guy were screaming and rolling around on fire, but, Ru-Zhera had only been singed. He was flat on his back about twenty feet back, his robes and hair smoldering and his sword half melted, whatever rage had pushed him over the edge was still firing on all cylinders. He hopped up again like somebody half his age and charged at Duru-Vau, who had caught the edge of the blast and was still stunned and smoking.

“Yes! Get that fucker!”

Unfortunately, shit that good only happens in the movies. Ru-Zhera took a running swipe, then went stumbling past when Duru-Vau ducked, and by the time he turned for another attack, the high priest was thrusting his palm at him, and Ru-Zhera flew back and slammed to the ground. It made my hair stand on end.

“How the fuck does he do that? It can’t be magic. It can’t!”

As the old priest lay there twitching, Aur-Aun crossed to him and stabbed him through the heart like somebody stepping on a bug.
   

I turned my head as we kept lifting higher. “Poor old guy.”

Lhan lowered his eyes. “It is a brave man who stands up to his superiors when they are wrong. Would that the church had more like him.”

Sei-Sien grunted. “Sadly, his bravery has not bought us much respite.” He pointed down and left. “Look.”

Lhan and I followed his gaze. The priests and paladins were running to the last few airships that were still on the ground and shouting at their captains. The fuckers were coming after us. It wasn’t gonna be a clean getaway.

We climbed the ropes as our ship drifted over the palace and out of sight of the shipfield, then started up the side of the hull. At the rail, sailors hauled us over and set us on the deck, then shoved us to the center where Captain Ku-Rho and his first mate had Shal-Hau on his knees. The sailors made us kneel beside him.

Ku-Rho and the mate put their swords to me and Lhan’s necks. Ku-Rho looked like he was about to blow a gasket.

“Your friend has been telling me the true purpose of this voyage, and why the priests were attacking us.”

I swallowed. Uh-oh.

“What I fail to understand is why you cast us off when the Aldhanan was not on board.”

I tried to tell him, but I still couldn’t get it out. My throat still closed up every time I thought about it. “The Aldhanan… He….”

Lhan hung his head. “The Aldhanan is dead. Assassinated by the priests. We failed to stop them.”

“It isn’t true. It can’t be true.”

We all looked around. Captain Anan was sitting up from where he lay on the deck, cut to ribbons. He was shaking.

“The Aldhanan cannot be dead.”

Lhan bowed to him and crossed his wrists. “I am sorry, Captain. It is true.”

Anan’s face, which had always been as calm and cold as a statue’s, twisted up like an angry lion’s. “Then you are at fault! You killed him!”

Lhan nodded. “It is true. We failed to reach him in time. We failed to see Aur-Aun’s treachery before it was too late. Had we not—”

“Aur-Aun is a traitor?” Captain Ku-Rho looked shocked.

“You didn’t see him down there with the priests?” I jerked a thumb over the rail. “He’s the one who ratted us out. He wanted the Aldhanan’s job. And his daughter.”

“The villain!” Anan was standing now, though he shouldn’t have. It looked like he’d left half his blood on the deck, and the rest was still leaking out of him. “I have long noted his lust for the Aldhanshai, but I did not think…”

“And there is more.” Lhan edged back from Ku-Rho’s sword point and stood. The captain didn’t do anything to stop him. “Aur-Aun and the priests have named us the Aldhanan’s assassins, and will stop at nothing to kill any who know the truth of this voyage.” He looked around at Ku-Rho, Anan, the heretics and the crew. “Friends, we are now outlaw. All of us.”

CHAPTER FORTY

AIR BATTLE!

W
e should have beat the three ships that were following us by a country mile. We were on an Oran warship, for fuck’s sake. Unfortunately, the ship was pretty wrecked. Half the crew were dead or wounded, the canopy was leaking like a sieve from all the crossbow bolts the priests had shot at it, the sails were full o’ holes, and the hold was full of gold. We were wallowing around like a walrus in quicksand, while slowly but surely, the priests’ balloons got closer and clearer behind us in the moonlight.