Wolf Captured (93 page)

Rahniseeta’s dark head appeared at what had once been a window opening. Her lovely face was smudged with dirt and her eyes wild. Despite this there was about her the tense stability of one who knows that there is room for nothing other than strength.

“Up here! We need help. Sky was hit by something falling and Questioner’s … caught.”

Firekeeper didn’t waste time asking for more details.

“Can you lower one or other? We guide or catch?”

Rahniseeta shook her head. “They’re too heavy for me. I’ve tried.”

Something in how she moved alerted Firekeeper.

“You are hurt, too?”

Rahniseeta nodded. “Something hit me. My right arm and shoulder are numb.”

“I come up,” Firekeeper said.

Firekeeper looked around and noticed a length of rope trailing through the debris. She tugged at it, but too much of it was buried beneath the rubble for her to take time digging it out.

She cast around and located Integrity and Dark Death, both newly arrived, and looking up apprehensively.

“I am going to climb up,” Firekeeper said. “Find the maimalodalum and tell them I need hands.”

Blind Seer came loping up at that moment.

“I found Derian and Harjeedian,” he reported. “They follow close behind.”

“Have them dig that rope out,” Firekeeper said. “We may need it. Also, don’t let them go far. I will need help when I bring those above down.”

Blind Seer pressed close.

“You are going up there?”

“They need help. I have hands and feet for climbing this as no beast does. The maimalodalum are mostly larger than I.”

Firekeeper shrugged. There was no time for further explanation.

“I only hope,” she said, picking her way through the rubble to the vine-wreathed base, “I will not cause it to fall.”

She set her hands and feet to the first of the stones, finding rough holds. As she began to climb, Truth spoke from behind her.

“Keep an ear to my voice. If I dip into Time’s river, I may be able to guide you.”

Firekeeper knew how risky this was for the jaguar, but was it any worse than what she herself was willing to do? She accepted without debate and continued to climb, head tilted up and back to find the next handholds, feet guided by feel alone. She tugged at the vines to see if they would hold her, but their roots were shallow and would not bear any weight.

Several times Truth warned Firekeeper away from a handhold just as she would have rested her weight upon it. Other times the jaguar’s coughing roar guided her to set her foot slightly to one side or another. It was painstaking, tedious work, and had the distance been farther, she might not have managed it.

Eventually, nails broken and bloody, the cotton of blouse and trousers torn, her skin scraped and oozing in countless places, Firekeeper hauled herself over the window ledge into what had once been a room.

Many of the crossbeams and braces had broken, but some—built strong by those who wished them to bear the weight of tile in addition to more usual burdens—had survived. Two of these supported a narrow catwalk beneath the window, and on this Rahniseeta knelt next to Sky.

The white feathers on the maimalodalu’s eagle head were bloodied, but a rough bandage had been tied around the source of the injury. Sky’s other hurts were such that Firekeeper immediately ceased to feel her own aches and scrapes, but he continued to breathe, the sound shallow and painful, but without the bubbling that would announce a punctured lung.

“He spread his wings,” Rahniseeta said, looking up from where she had clearly been attending to Sky’s wounds, “to shelter me. I almost have him free. Can you get Questioner?”

Firekeeper turned to look and understood at once why Rahniseeta had said nothing more. Where Sky rested on the catwalk beneath the window, Questioner was caught within an interweave of splintered wood, rubble, and less definable detritus. He hung out over the void, and Firekeeper dreaded that his body was integral to whatever webwork supported their tenuous walkway.

She leaned to touch his human face and his blue eyes fluttered open, looked at her from a world of pain, then closed again.

“Rope,” Firekeeper said, not voicing her despair.

She rose and went to the window.

“Rope!” she shouted down. “We must have rope.”

The scene below had changed while she climbed. Derian was there, as was Harjeedian. Several of the maimalodalum had come out as well. All with hands were working to clear a path through the rubble. There was another cluster around the jaguar Truth, and Firekeeper fleetingly wondered if once again the jaguar was lost in possibility.

Derian looked up at her, his expression filled with confusion, and Firekeeper realized that she had howled rather than spoken.

“I need rope,” she said, “to get hurt ones down. Have you some?”

“We’ve freed up most of a line,” Derian said. “But how to get it to you …”

Bitter croaked sardonically and plopped himself down in front of the human, answering the question quite effectively. Derian, accustomed to the ways of the peregrine falcon Elation, extended one end. Bitter took it, adjusted to the weight, and began flapping up while Derian played out the line so it would not become tangled.

As she reeled in the rope, Firekeeper noted that Derian actually seemed relieved at the comparative normality of being ordered around by a bird. Doubtless he had not yet adjusted to his first sight of the maimalodalum.

“How with others?” she asked.

“Harjeedian’s trying to get them to calm down,” Derian said. “They’re a floor or so up from you, but back around the corner, not directly above. I think there are four alive.”

Firekeeper didn’t bother to ask which ones. Frankly, until these who had a greater claim on her loyalty and skill were safe, she didn’t care.

RAHNISEETA COULDN’T FEEL her right arm below the shoulder, and from the way it flopped when she moved, she was actually glad. With Firekeeper’s help, she bound the useless limb close to her torso, and then concentrated on taking orders.

“We lift Sky,” Firekeeper said, “you under lower legs. Me upper body. First to window, then over. Lower slowly until those below can catch.”

They had rigged a sort of harness around the maimalodalu’s upper body. His scales were tougher than those of a snake and Rahniseeta hoped they might protect him some. However, there was no way the constriction about his torso would do him any good.

But what is our choice?
Rahniseeta thought.
Leave him here until the building falls?

Before Firekeeper had reached the top, Rahniseeta had taken a chunk of rock and smashed away the slivers of glass that remained in the windowframe. Even so, as they lifted Sky she noted smears of blood on the stone.

“Move legs over edge,” Firekeeper ordered, her voice showing no strain, though she held most of Sky’s weight. “Hurry. Floor moves.”

Rahniseeta hurried, moving Sky’s long, scaled legs to dangle over the edge.

“Now move more,” Firekeeper said. “I have rope.”

The wolf-woman did, too, wrapped around her body to leave her arms free. They hadn’t trusted the stonework to provide a solid anchor.

Rahniseeta felt as if she was pushing Sky out of the window, but the rope slowed his descent, and as she leaned out to grab hold and help steady, she saw that an enormous maimalodalu who resembled a bear as much as anything was standing directly below. They felt the change as soon as he had hold of Sky.

“Get rope,” Firekeeper ordered, releasing it from her body as soon as they knew Sky was supported from below. “I check Questioner. Yell. See if they can help you down.”

“And leave you and Questioner?”

Firekeeper shrugged.

“Less weight on floor.”

Rahniseeta didn’t think the wolf-woman could manage alone, so although she retrieved the rope and coiled it ready for use, she did not attempt to descend. Instead, moving as carefully as possible, she went to help Firekeeper.

“Is he alive?”

Firekeeper snorted, and Rahniseeta translated the sound as meaning “Do you think I’d bother if he wasn’t?”

Instead of asking anything else, Rahniseeta busied herself helping Firekeeper free the maimalodalu from the wreckage. Questioner looked worse than Sky had, but Rahniseeta took some hope from two things. One, a large piece of planking had fallen over his torso, effectively making a lean-to that protected that vulnerable area from greater injury. Two, from time to time, blue eyes opened, watching for a moment with painful clarity.

One by one they freed the dangling legs, and in another demonstration that he was aware, Questioner drew them close to his body—all but the left foreleg, which he tried to move and then stopped with an involuntary moan of pain. Firekeeper ripped a strip from her already ragged trouser and tied his leg to Questioner’s body.

“I’m sorry,” she said softly in Pellish. Rahniseeta had never imagined the wolf-woman capable of such pain over something that, after all, had to be done.

There was a tense moment where it seemed that they might not be able to get Questioner’s tail free. Firekeeper drew her knife to cut it off, then in an apparent fit of temper smashed the plank that pinned it. This precipitated a minor avalanche, but the tail came free.

“Rope,” Firekeeper said at last. “When we have him harnessed, you get on that windowsill or I put you there. I think he holding up that—” She indicated the “lean-to” board with a toss of her head. “And when we move him, it drop, and when it drop …”

Rahniseeta understood.

“What are you going to do?”

“I slide him slowly, then lift him, and we lower like Sky.”

“And if the floor breaks?”

“That is why you on windowsill.”

Throughout the long process, Rahniseeta had been periodically aware of sounds from outside. There had been voices, human and otherwise, shouting orders, occasionally calling up to them for reports on their progress. She gathered there were several different crews at work: trying to rescue the northerners, treating the wounded, and shoring up the tower as best as possible.

Now a clear shrill howl cut through all of this, and at its call, Firekeeper’s head snapped up.

She howled in return.

Rahniseeta watched in amazement as Firekeeper’s hands tied the final knots on the harness, moving as if unaware of what they did. Periodically the wolf-woman howled, the sounds high and keening, occasionally interspersed with argumentative growls.

The last growl, though, came from Questioner, and at the sound of it, Firekeeper rose stiffly and turned toward the window.

Questioner had said nothing all the while they worked over him, but that growl was clearly no moan of pain. It was an order, and Firekeeper had obeyed.

“Tell me what’s going on!” Rahniseeta said sharply.

Firekeeper didn’t stop moving.

“Truth say I must get Shivadtmon. I trust Questioner to you. He is my father, and I would not leave.”

The wolf-woman’s face was alive with grief and fear.

“Do what I say before and maybe it work. Truth say it might.”

And on that enigmatic note, Firekeeper climbed heavily onto the windowsill and began groping her way up the side of the tower.

IN THE COOL LITTLE CORNER of his mind that never stopped looking for the advantage, Waln assessed the different ways men faced death.

Four remained of the nine who had gone in. Tedgewinn and Elwyn were presumably buried beneath the collapse their foolishness had started, and as Waln saw it, the only pity was that they’d have such a large monument to mark their graves.

Rarby was somewhere down there, too. He’d been mounting the stairs when the crash came and had vanished in a cloud of dirt and stone. Nolan had been standing a few steps from the top, and had lost his balance. His raw scream as he fell still echoed distractingly in Waln’s imagination, though it had long since vanished from the air. He had no idea where Rahniseeta was, nor did he care.

The survivors—Waln, Shivadtmon, Wiatt, and Shelby—crouched on an island where the two sides of the half-moonshaped building met. The stairs had broken off beneath them, cascading down, each hitting the ones beneath until just stubs of stonework remained. The portion of the staircase that remained was nowhere near them—even if any of them had felt the impulse to climb up to the teetering remains of the stepped top.

Down wasn’t that attractive either—not now that what had been hiding in the forest and the other towers had come out. Gigantic beasts prowled among the scattered stones—for not all the detritus had fallen into the shell of the tower—and here and there among them monsters could be seen. Moreover, not one of them was uninjured, and while the injuries were far from fatal, the pain reminded them of the risks they would be taking.

Yes. It was interesting to study the different ways men faced death.

Shelby was obviously shattered by the death of his older brother, so shocked that he felt neither anger nor regret. Indeed, Waln would be surprised if he felt much of anything at all. Shelby sat at the point where two corners of the wall met, the crossbow he’d somehow retained unloaded and resting idly between his knees. There was a nasty cut on his forehead, but the blood had mostly stopped flowing, leaving Shelby’s features bordered in dried blood.

Looks like we have a new nominee for ship’s fool now that Elwyn’s dead,
Waln thought, but despite the jocular cast he tried to give his thoughts, Shelby made him uneasy. There was no telling what his mood would be when he emerged from the shock, and Waln depended on having some idea how those he led would react.

Wiatt had proven equally unpredictable. He’d come close to falling—indeed, if one wanted to be perfectly technical about it, he had fallen, but he had caught the jutting edge of a broken beam and laboriously pulled himself to the relative safety of this aerie. In the process, he’d banged his right knee badly, and even wrapping it hadn’t stopped it from ballooning up to twice its size. However, even with the pain from his knee, Wiatt’s biggest worry seemed to be how the yarimaimalom would react when he reached the ground.