The Lost Steersman (Steerswoman Series) (14 page)

She looked up the street, down. They were one house from the corner in one direction, three houses in the other, with the view past it clear for another six.

The hum grew, and perceptibly now continued to grow, acquiring faint overtones that she had not heard in the Outskirts. The creature must be very near.

She tried to gauge its speed by the change in volume. Slower than a man might walk, she thought. It must be up the next street, somewhere around the near corner.

How well could it hear? In the Outskirts it had never been close enough to see, and Bel had still been afraid; but the land there was open. Here among the houses, could the beast locate purely by sound what it could not see?

There were obstacles here, places to flee to, places to hide. If they moved now, could they make it down the street, around the corner? She could tell how fast the creature moved; she could guess its direction; she knew it was near, but not how near.

She cautiously waved to Steffie, beckoning him across the street toward her, moving herself away from the corner, agonizingly soft-footing each step. Steffie began to move carefully, lifting Gwen so that her feet just cleared the ground. Rowan wondered how long he could keep that up.

Gwen was frightened and confused; her feet tried to find purchase. She shifted in Steffie’s arms and one shoe hissed against the dirt. Rowan halted and stiffened in fear; seeing her do so, Steffie froze.

The lowest note was abruptly clear, new overtones blooming above it, themselves half heard, like fever noise; and in the narrow street the air became a substance of sound. The creature had cleared the corner.

Her back to the stone wall, Rowan could not see it; in the center of the street, Gwen and Steffie could. They looked.

Terror on Steffie’s face as swift and shocking as a blow, and then his expression was utterly blank, as if his fear had gone beyond what his body could express. He stood empty, head tilted back, lips parted; but he did not let go of Gwen.

Above his hand, Gwen’s eyes grew wide, and she cringed back into Steffie’s arms. Rowan feared that Gwen would scream; she fainted instead. Steffie continued to hold her upright, motionless.

If they made no sound, Rowan thought, if the creature had never seen a human before, if they stayed utterly still, would it think them an object, would it pass them by?

Cold stone against her back, Rowan waited for her first sight of a demon.

And far away, across the houses: a hoot, a whoop, and an odd warble, voices laughing.

Someone was drunkenly singing his way home: Lasker, with his friends in tow. The voice of the demon steadied, then began to fade back. The creature had chosen a new direction.

No! Lasker could not know to stay silent; Rowan could not shout to tell him.

She ran.

Away from the demon, down the street, left at the next corner, two blocks and left again, up toward the demon’s street. She stopped at the tailor’s shop at the corner, thrust two fingers into her mouth and let out a shrill, piercing whistle.

It echoed, clearly, hollowly. In the pause that followed, only the demon’s hum, now distant, but not retreating. Rowan whistled again. The hum began to approach.

The tailor’s door banged open. “Here, you— ”

She clutched the man’s shoulders, shook him. “Get help. People with weapons. There’s a monster in the streets.”

“What— ”

She meant to shake him again, but her hands acted of themselves. They slapped his face, spun him around, beat him on the back, shoved him. “Run! Run that way, run from the sound!”

The overtones returned; the demon was near. Rowan dashed out into its street and across. A shadowy dark shape two blocks away moved at the edge of her vision; she cut into another side street, ran ten feet down, stopped.

She whistled— and stood shuddering, sweat cold on her face and back, waiting.

She had to draw it away from town. And away from the dell, without crossing the center of town. East.

Wood houses here, muffling the sound. She could not tell if the demon was moving; it did not seem to be retreating. She whistled again.

The hum grew. Rowan backed away.

She needed to bring the demon toward her, keeping far enough ahead of it; but she did not know the margin of safety. She stepped back softly, mental eyes scanning an imagined map of the streets.

And then, far off, to her left southwest of her a whistle, shriller, stronger than her own. Someone else was drawing the demon.

Rowan had an ally. And now, a plan, if her comrade was a person of intelligence.

They could protect each other, drawing the demon toward them by turns, running ahead of each other down the side streets. They could take it out of town.

And then? They would end up alone with it, in the sea marsh, with no obstacles to dodge behind.

Possibly help would arrive by then. No time to wonder now.

Streets were less regular here. Rowan chose her route, a zigzag toward the east, staying north of the demon’s assumed location, hearing her unknown friend call the creature again. When she guessed she was past that person’s position, she whistled herself, needing to try twice, out of clumsy fear.

How smart an animal was a demon? she wondered. How stupid? A few times through this pattern, would it grow frustrated and simply choose the the last-heard target?

The distant whistle came again, southeast. Her ally understood. Rowan chose a path, moved.

Buildings grew fewer. She kept close to them, sidling, picturing the demon’s route and her own. They were coming to the manufactories; there was less chance of an early riser meeting the creature.

Her friend— he or she must be moving toward the warehouses south along the harbor. The fishers rose early.

Rowan whistled.

Across the distance, above and beneath the creature’s humming; a strangled wail became a shriek, and then silence.

Rowan wondered who had died. There was a long pause, and only the voice of the demon.

And then: the whistle, nearer to her, and sooner, than it had come before.

Yes
. Draw it away from the harbor. She angled down the length of a long shed, down another, paused to check the loudness of the demon’s voice, heard that it was approaching. She and her comrade were now nearly in a straight line from each other. They needed more lateral distance between them, to safely cover each other.

No help for it. Get the demon away from the harbor. Rowan whistled, listened, waited for the demon’s approach.

The creature’s tone stayed steady.

The next whistle should come southeast, just behind a warehouse storing metal scraps, right next to the rope-walk.

No whistle. The demon’s voice continued unaltered, then dropped abruptly as it turned some corner.

It had chosen, and it had not chosen Rowan.

She tried to guess her ally’s position, tried to visualize his or her options for escape. Long buildings, there, warehouses. An easy retreat by going closer to the harbor, but further in, nearer Rowan, a mere two streets away—

Cul-de-sac. Two huge, angled warehouses with what might seem an alley between but ending in a shared loading dock.

How well did her comrade know these streets? As well as a steerswoman?

Rowan ran toward the voice of the demon.

And behind her, north: distant shouting voices, rattles as of weaponry, footsteps heavy and quick. Help. But they would arrive too late.

She reached the warehouses, the streets broad and sandy. The lemon dawn sky was high and wide above her; the demon’s tone, unechoed and erased of overtones, now sounded deceptively distant. But she could hear a series of soft thumps, in quadruple rhythm: the four-footed steps of the creature. Rowan flattened herself against the front of the first building, edged her way to the corner with painful slowness, and looked down the alley.

The creature stood just over five feet tall: a gray-mottled vertical column of flesh, strange muscles shifting beneath the skin as it raised first one, then each other low-kneed, flat-footed leg, its body weaving in a circular motion as it walked. Its four arms splayed out, horizontal from the top of its body, then angling downward at sharp-jointed elbows. It had no head, no visible face or eyes, no apparent difference between front or back or sides. Rowan could not tell in which direction the creature was looking, but the direction it was moving was certain: down the cul-de-sac toward the loading dock.

Up against the dock there stood an empty, tall-wheeled wagon. And backed up against that, with nowhere further to run, Rowan’s ally: Steffie.

Rowan whistled.

The demon stopped and threw its arms high; in panicked instinct, Rowan ducked back behind the building’s edge. A short, sharp jet of clear fluid barely missed her, spattering far out into the dirt of the street. An instant’s terror as she realized how close the spray had come, but she was already thinking, noting the spot where the jet had come to earth: about sixty feet. That was the demon’s range.

She scanned the ground at her feet, gathered up a rusted horseshoe, a half brick, a palm-sized clamshell. The voices and running footsteps were nearer, a few streets away, and Rowan called out to them over the demon’s humming; but she did not wait. She took a breath, ducked forward, hurled the brick with all her strength.

The creature, some forty feet away from Steffie, was raising its arms. The brick caught it above one rear knee, and it staggered, weird arms flailing. Rowan dodged back before it could recover to spray again.

Nine people pounded into the street behind Rowan, six men and three women, armed with pikes, swords, bows: a contingent of the town’s militia. “Here!” Rowan called to them.

“What’s this, then?” one man demanded, as his squad milled to a confused halt around him.

“It’s a demon, a creature from the Outskirts,” Rowan told him quickly. She tried to recall his name and failed. “It’s dangerous— No, you, get back!” She clutched the back of one militia woman’s shirt, pulling her away from the alley’s entrance, eliciting a cursing complaint from the woman. Rowan ignored her, turned back to the leader. “It’s in there, it’s got Steffie trapped against the loading dock. He has no weapon; we’ve got to lure it out and kill it.” She stopped to catch her breath. “It may be on its way out now. It follows sound.”

“How big a beast is this?”

“So high.” Rowan demonstrated, and prepared to explain further; but the leader cut her off with, “Right, lady, we’ll take it from here.” And he gestured his people to advance.

Rowan spun him viciously around. “Wait, you don’t know what you’re walking into!”

He threw off her hand. “Here, you!”

There came another sound from the alley, at first like a man’s voice, then changing to an animal shriek it seemed no living human could possibly emit. The cry ceased, and Rowan said, “No . . .” once, then, “
No!
” again when the nearest of the militia ran into the alley’s mouth, then: “No! Get
back!
”

The three fighters who had advanced fell back, staggering, crying in pain, one of them screaming in full voice as she fell prone, struggling to scrabble away. Someone ran forward to assist, shouted, and stumbled when another jet caught his leg. Limping, he dragged his comrade aside, and Rowan’s hands and others’ pulled, helped, leaned the woman against a wall.

The woman was now making sounds like a dog being beaten, writhing helplessly. Half her chest was raw flesh and red bone. Her rescuer’s left leg was blood from hip to ankle.

Rowan stood. “Sixty feet,” she said, “it shoots a corrosive spray— its range is about sixty feet.” The words came out more quietly than she had intended, but the squad leader beside her heard.

The street was wide here; and with waves of his arm the leader directed the squad back, up against the rear of a smithy. Then he sidled slowly along the building until he stood directly opposite the alley’s entrance, safely out of range.

Rowan was beside him.

There was movement down in the alley. Someone, a person, was staggering blindly, groping along one wall toward a little door that stood open, tucked away in a niche.

Another figure lay on the ground, silently convulsing as the demon leaned above it, spraying over and over.

Back by the wagon, having moved only enough to fall to his knees: Steffie. Rowan saw white eyes beneath his tangled hair.

The wall behind her seemed to rush up to strike her back; she had staggered against it in relief. “Steffie,” she shouted, “stay put! Don’t move!” The creature had found other targets, was perhaps too busy to remember Steffie’s presence.

How did it
see?

“Come on, you monster, come this way,” she said through clenched teeth. She whistled again, shrilly, the iron taste of someone’s blood on her fingers.

The squad leader hissed at her, “What are you doing?”

“Calling it out.”

He grabbed her arm, half dragged her back to where the squad waited. “Are you mad? It’s better off in there.”

She looked at him blankly. “Archers,” she said. “You need archers.”