Villains by Necessity (60 page)

Robin had just discovered his bracelet was no longer functioning.

"Aaaaaaahheeeeeeeeeeeeehiiiiiiiihhhihhhhhihhhhhihhhhhhi!!!!!"

"Silence, you imbecile centaur! Bad enough we have to die without listening to you screaming!" shouted Valerie.

The raven cawed in fury and fear, plummeting with its mistress, its soul-link too strong to abandon her.

"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaiiiihiiiii-" There was the sudden whacking sound of a mailed gauntlet knocking a centaur upside the head, and the noise stopped.

"Do something, Valerie!" Kaylana requested loudly.

"Any suggestions?! There's too many of us to levitate!"

"Slow us down, then! I shall handle the landing!"

"Postulum momentum entropicus descendus-" Valerie squeezed her eyes shut as she hurriedly wove a spell.

The air seemed to thicken around them, just as the chute suddenly did a slick curve and shot them out into the air and sunlight, with craggy mountains all around and a very rocky bottom looming below them. They swooped up into the air and then began to fall, slower, but not slow enough.

"Hahoo!" cried a voice. There was a faint crackle around them as a swirl of energy plummeted past them, toward the rocks below ...

The jagged stones racing up to meet them abruptly seemed to blur and run ...

There was a series of loud splocking noises as a Barigan, an assassin, a sorceress, a Druid, a centaur and a knight fell one by one into a deep pool of soft mud. "Effective," commented Valerie, as they scrambled out. "Messy, but effective."

"I am so glad you approve," muttered Kaylana.

"Sanitarius," muttered Valerie, and a shower of shimmering purple-black lights enveloped her. The coat of mud fell away, and her clothes, hair, and skin were clean once more.

Kaylana found a large boulder as the others were trying to brush the mud off as best they could. Blackmail, for reasons best known to himself, was dragging the unconscious centaur out of the thick mud. The others didn't give the minstrel a second thought. Kaylana spoke a few words of magic and tapped the stone lightly with the point of her staff. A gush of clear water fountained from the bare rock. Sam was uncomfortably reminded of the shamans of Mula.

"Wash yourselves off," she recommended, as the party hastened over. "It will not last long."

Soon, damp but clean, with the magical spring depleted, they contemplated their next move.

"Well, where are we?" asked Sam. He glanced over at the centaur, who was still out cold. "By the way, Kaylana, I've got to bring you up to date on our fourlegged fink over there ..." he moved over to talk to her as Arcie answered his question.

"I've gotten a map," volunteered Arcie, taking out a folded piece of paper. Valerie eyed it suspiciously as the Barigan unfolded it.

"That looks like a Wilderkin drew it," she said.

"Well, perhaps so," admitted Arcie. "But it's still a map."

"Are you a Wilderkin?" Valerie asked rhetorically.

Arcie shook his curly head. "Then it won't help us." The thief snorted and consulted the map.

"Horsefeathers! Tis perfectly simple, see you, here's the mountains, there are the ocean. Nay, I'm mistook, 'tis a desert. I'm sorry ... wait, nay, that's a ... west is ... um ..." His eyebrows curled up in confusion like dying caterpillars. "Um. Well, we're at in a gorge of mountains, 'tis obvious enough." He quickly folded the map and put it away in his tobacco pouch.

"Ohhoooyy," came a quavering moan, and Robin slowly staggered to his hooves, rubbing his head. Finding himself muddy, he set his hooves and shook himself, nearly splattering the others, then pulled his bedraggled hat out of the mud, and put it on. Robin looked at the knight accusingly. "You hit me," he grumbled. Blackmail nodded his head; Robin decided not to press the issue, but nervously took out his harp, making sure it was undamaged.

"What time are it?" asked Arcie.

"Two of your clock, after noon," answered Kaylana.

"Six o'clock," said Sam.

They looked at each other. "It is two by the sun," asserted Kaylana.

"It's six by my timesense," answered Sam.

"Whatever it be, it's light out," said Arcie. "Plenty of time to be making a start out of here ..."

They began to make their laborious way through the crags of the mountains. The chute had dropped them on the far side of Putak-Azum, where foothills and crags they had not seen in their earlier approach nuzzled against the side of the huge central mountain. A small path, perhaps used by the ancient Dwarves, availed itself, and they followed it.

It led them up among the rocks and boulders. They had to scramble along in silence in several places, and Robin had more than a little difficulty. None of them spoke to him. If Robin suspected that they had found him out, he gave no sign. Unable to report to Mizzamir, he was harmless. They could easily have killed him, but there didn't seem to be much point; he was rather a pitiful figure, a little difficult to just slay in cold blood. Sam could have done it, but not without payment; Valerie could have also, but felt it was a waste of her power. They were content, for now, to let him tag along, as a possible hostage or bait.

A narrow cliff-ledge almost solved their problem for them. Robin, bringing up the rear, began trembling uncontrollably as he looked over the edge. The ground seemed to spin and swoop far, far below him. His legs began to shake like leaves.

Robin shared with most centaurs, those of the Commots in particular, a fear of heights. Now, the dizziness caused by his recent head-wound, the terror of the previous fall, the sudden danger of the hostile villains, and the vertiginous drop below the pass all struck him at once.

Robin's blood ran cold as he imagined a terrible crashing fall, snapping bones ... and as he shook in nameless fear frozen on the ledge, afraid to move, pebbles rattled down from his hooves. The others, hearing the noise, turned around just in time to see him suddenly slide down the cliff as the path gave way under him. He was too terrified to even make a sound, hooves backpedalling in fear until at last he came to a halt again on a tiny ledge on the rocky slope, half-sitting on his haunches, a few inches away from the sheer drop.

"Och, that takes care of the spy, then," snorted Arcie softly.

"Help." Robin's voice drifted up to them, very small, very scared, very young-sounding. He was past screaming, past scrambling or fainting, just locked into that paralyzed animal fear that sends creatures into frozen deafness, unable to move, or think, or run, as their death approaches. Valerie smiled down at him, but he didn't see her.

"Well, centaur. It looks like your friend Mizzamir isn't going to help you now, eh?" she purred. Robin's ears didn't even twitch. They were laid back flat against his skull, hidden in his thick gray mane. A whimsical wind whipped his plumed hat off his head and sent it spinning away into the chasm.

"Might we give him a wee push, or just let him fall when his legs gets woozy?" asked Arcie, looking down at the stricken centaur.

Sam looked away. He'd seen enough of death in his time. He didn't enjoy it, but he didn't hate it either. It was just something that happened, something he did, as a farmer would slaughter hogs. But when death came, he felt, it should be swift and sudden, unforeseen, unsuffered.

He didn't like to see this lingering misery, fear ...

He shook his blowgun out of his sleeve and snapped it together.

A quick spot of sleeping toxin would send the minstrel tumbling unaware into the depths, to die in his sleep. He glanced up at Kaylana. She stood back, not looking at the centaur, not looking at them. He wondered what she was thinking. By her stance on good and evil, he would imagine she expected this sort of thing from the group of evildoers, and because of the great imbalance, would condone the act. But how she felt personally about the whole thing was another matter; the green eyes, the stern face told nothing.

"Help." The voice floated up to them again. There was no hope in it, not even any pleading now; it was simply the only word his frozen voice could produce.

"A pity," mused Valerie. "We won't even get so much as a steak off him now."

She was enjoying the spectacle. Sam shook his head slightly. She must have an awful lot of bitterness inside somewhere to act like that... but, of course, she was evil.

They all were, even Kaylana by association. He fitted a needle into his gun, raised, aimed... and was stopped by a hand on his shoulder. A gauntlet, to be precise. He lowered the blowgun and looked quizzically up into the dark visor of Blackmail.

The knight shook his head slightly, pulled a coil of rope from the shoulder pack Kaylana had given him, and handed it to Sam. "What?" he asked. The knight indicated the centaur, made a scooping gesture, and then indicated Sam. Sam shook his head. The others didn't seem to notice their quiet one-sided conversation. "Save him?

No. He's a spy. He's a liability. Besides, that's not my business."

"Help," said Robin again, softer now.

Blackmail then reached inside the wrist joint of a gauntlet, and drew out a tiny black leather pouch in his mailed fingers. He handed it to Sam. Sam took it, puzzled, opened it, and shook the contents out into his hand.

And caught his breath in wonder.

In his palm sparkled a perfectly faceted stone, spherical, slightly larger than a cherry-pit. It was clear, but with radiance unlike anything so common as a diamond. It picked up the colors of Sam's hair and eyes and clothing, and sent glittering flashes of black and hazel and gold dancing in its depths. He'd never seen one before, but he knew, by legend and rumor, what it was. It tingled slightly against his skin.

He looked up at the still and silent figure of the knight, reverently placed the stone back into its pouch, tucked the pouch into his tunic, shouldered the rope, and smiled.

"Well, Blackmail, it just so happens that the price of a one-assignment mid-hire complete reversal of my profession is one, count 'em, one, Heartstone." He stepped to the edge of the cliff and looked down, motioning to Arcie to step back.

"Move, old chum. I'm hired to get that centaur to safety," he explained cheerfully. He looked over the side.

The ledge the centaur was huddled on was already crumbling around the edges. It probably wouldn't take his weight in addition. Have to come at it from the side.

"Hired to save him?" hissed Valerie sharply. "Who by?"

Sam refused to answer; no assassin would answer such a question about an assignment, but Blackmail raised a mailed hand. Valerie stared at him. The two matched gazes a long moment, then the sorceress backed down from that inscrutable black visor. "I assume you have a reason, strange one," she muttered. The helmet nodded.

"Well, it had better be a good one."

"Here now, laddie," complained Arcie, moving out of his way. "Ye bein't whitewashing, now are ye?" Sam shook his head as he checked his boots carefully.

"Nope, just greed, old chum. Perfectly acceptable motive." 

"Ye'll be risking yer life, ye great clommox!"

"Aren't we all? Now don't drop pebbles on me." Sam swung himself over the side. The group watched in silence.

Sam crawled down the ledge like a spider. It was obvious what would have to be done: get Robin to tie the rope around himself, or tie it around him by hand, then hope that Blackmail could pull hard enough and that Robin would snap out of his fear enough to scramble back to the ledge. Robin was obviously in no state to get the rope on himself, the others didn't seem willing to assist; hence the need for Sam. And he felt great. He hadn't liked having to see the poor colt get snuffed, and with this unexpected sparkling bonus ... The cliff wasn't too bad, vertical, sure, but plenty of handholds. His legs swung out over a three-hundred-foot drop, and he looked down at an eagle flying below. He almost laughed in delight.

Sam liked heights.

"Och, I told you he were crazy," Arcie said to Valerie.

"A whatsit, splitten personality."

Sam worked his way hand over hand to where Robin sat. The centaur's eyes were open, staring, and focused only on the empty space below. Sam could almost hear the double-thumping of the centaur's two hearts. The human grinned.

"Hi, ponybutt," he greeted Robin, fixing his feet and one hand into holds on the wall while he unslung the coil of rope from his shoulder. "Gonna get you out."

"Help," whispered Robin.

Fates, he looks just like a kid, thought Sam. Did I ever look like that? He whipped the rope around the centaur's human waist, over the shoulders and withers in a harness, and secured the whole with a knot he painstakingly tied with his free hand. Then he gave a shrill whistle, and Blackmail appeared on the ledge above.

He threw the other end of the rope, and the knight caught it. Sam pulled his old black scarf out of his tunic, and whipped it around the minstrel's staring eyes, tying it in a blindfold, blocking out the view of certain death.

After a moment, the centaur's trembling eased.

"Help?" he asked, with a little more interest this time.

"Right," agreed Sam. "We're going to pull you, but you have to back up and out as best you can, all right?"

"Up, out," agreed Robin shakily. "All right."

"Now, Blackmail!" called Sam, and he quickly climbed up and away as the rope pulled taut. Robin began painstakingly backing his way up the steep rocky ledge, his hooves slipping on the loose stones but still making progress. Sam threw one leg over the edge onto the path and hauled himself up to safety. Blackmail stood on the path, his armored feet set, pulling hand over hand on the rope. And soon up over the edge came Robin's gray hindquarters and singed tail, and finally with a clatter of hooves he scrambled back onto the path, still wearing his blindfold, feeling his way with his hooves.

"Don't take the blindfold off," cautioned Sam, as he got to his feet.

"Well, you were lucky this time, minstrel," Valerie said, as Robin panted with exertion and clung to the path. The centaur gulped and nodded.

"You know about Mizzamir," he said.

"Aye," agreed Arcie.

"And yet you saved me ... Why?" His covered face looked at Sam and Blackmail, his furry ears swiveling to pinpoint them. Sam spread his palms.