“Many of our customers like our stock of masks, sirrah. They can keep an, ahh, overzealous partner from making too visible a mark.” The clerk stared at Gyll’s face, a smile touching his lips.
“No, thank you.” Steban trotted past, glanced quickly through the window of the store, but missed Gyll in the shadows. Gyll moved toward the door. He peered out, up and down the street.
“There’s no need for shame, sirrah,” the clerk said behind him. “We cater to a natural function. No one here will think less of you whatever your preferences for stimulation.”
Gyll laughed. “Then I’ll be back,” he said, stepping into the street. The apprentices were not in sight. Gyll backtracked, staying close to the buildings in case he needed to hide quickly. He vaulted the low bridge, landing easily on the street below. At a jog now, he made his way back to the wealthier business sectors.
His luck held. He saw no sign of the Hoorka apprentices. Hopefully, they would spend the next several minutes looking for him in Market Square before the tracer told them that he was no longer close. By then, it would be too late.
Forcing himself to move calmly, to meld with the people around him as best he could, he went to a transit stop and boarded a public tram, taking it from central Sterka to its last stop on the southern outskirts of the city. Overhead, he knew, a Hoorka flitter would pass the tram, moving toward Sterka and the apprentices.
Gyll left the tram, moving from the small secluded station that served the farmlands around Sterka. A flitter-rental outlet stood nearby. Gyll rented one of the machines—an old flitter well past its prime—and flew south across the fields toward Underasgard, perhaps five kilometers away in the hills. He put a hand in his pocket, fingering the small round pellets there that had come from his ship’s armory.
I’m sorry, Valdisa, but it’s time to end this farce.
By now, the full kin would have learned from the chagrined apprentices that Gyll was gone. The tracer would be used to find him—if he was very lucky, he was already beyond its range, and the Hoorka would have to guess which way he’d gone. Given that, Gyll could, by lying low and continuing to move, most likely elude the Hoorka without confrontation and greet the sunstar free and alive. He did not count on that luck, though; if he was still within the detector’s range, they knew which way he was heading, and he had only a small time in which to do what he intended to do. He raced the flitter as fast as it would go, landing finally in a clearing near Underasgard.
The cavern mouth looked as it always did. The dawnrock stood impassive under the stars, Gulltopp’s light throwing its shadow across the grass. The cave entrance yawned darker than night under a wrinkled brow of rock. Gyll knew that the guards would be there and watching—after his last visit here, the vigilance would be tighter. He knew that the old trick he’d employed then would not work again. No—this time it would have to be a headlong confrontation; Gyll would need luck. He muttered a brief prayer to Dame Fate, the old words passing his lips strangely.
Praying again; next you’ll be bowing low to full kin and getting out of their way like a lassari.
He made a circuitous approach to the mouth of Underasgard, moving as quickly as he could without making excessive noise. It took all of his standards of expertise in the skills of silentstalk, but at last he crouched behind a boulder just outside and to one side of the caves. He took a deep breath, held it, listening intently: no talking, but he could hear two shallow breaths, amplified by stone. Gyll reached into his pocket once more, took out a vial wrapped in cotton. He removed the protective covering and tossed the vial into the cave mouth. A tinkling of glass, a sharp hissing: Gyll waited a few minutes, then swung over the boulder and darted into the cave. Two apprentices lay slumped on the ground there, breathing deeply in sleep. Gyll smiled and moved deeper into Underasgard.
He knew the ways well. He slipped easily past the inhabited sectors into the less-traveled corridors. He broke the seal on a glow-tube, following its bluish light over the rough trails of broken stone. Slabs tilted beneath his feet, falling back with an echoing, dull clank. The noise did not bother him; there were no listeners here but the cave animals. He passed through a cavern where the light of the glow-tube failed to reach the walls, leaving him surrounded by leering darkness, where a cold wind blew past him like Hag Death’s breath. He came, in time, to the cavern of the headless ippicator, and there he stopped, shock and anger welling inside him.
Bones were missing; not many, but a few. Gyll’s eyes narrowed, and he walked nearer the skeleton. It was not disturbed or defiled—whoever had removed the bones had been reverent and careful—and by the tracks, the intruder had worn boots, such as those the guild-kin wore.
Abruptly, he knew who it had been, and knowing that, why. “Valdisa,” he breathed. “Is it so bad that you’d sell what is sacred to the kin?” A chill not of the cavern went through him. D’Embry had said that he would have his answer if he ran the contract—he knew now. The code was cracked and broken, a vestige that would soon be gone entirely. Dead, like the ippicators themselves. “Valdisa, She of the Five will leave you with the Hag forever for this,” he whispered, then straightened, inhaling.
No time, no time—do what you came to do.
He set the glow-tube down and pulled a handful of dark pellets from his pocket. Frowning, he took each one between thumb and forefinger and twisted. Small, dry clicks accompanied the rotation; he counted them carefully. When each pellet was timed and armed, Gyll took two of the seedlike objects and dropped them carefully near the entrance to the ippicator’s cave. “Rest forever, Old One,” he whispered. Then he left, going back the way he’d come. As he neared the Hoorka caverns he placed more of the pellets, then—stealthily—set them around the Hoorka lair itself. He used the old apprentice backtrails to move toward the kitchens. There, in the greenish illumination of the glow-fungi, he saw Felling, the Hoorka’s cook, sitting in his room off the kitchen, reading.
“Felling,” he called softly.
The man looked up, his mouth agape in a rotund face.
His pudgy fingers dropped the reading wand. “Ulthane?” Felling stuttered with nervous laughter. He wiped his hands on his pants, his mouth undecided between smile and frown. “Gods, you startled me. I thought one of the little apprentice bastards . . . Well, you’re certainly a surprise. Thane Valdisa’s out on a contract tonight, if you wanted her . . .”
Gyll leaned against the wall. He smiled. “I know,” he said. “She’s hunting me. I’m the victim.”
Felling started to smile, changed his mind. His gaze skittered about the room, nervous. “But . . .” he began, then shook his head. “You pick a funny place to hide.”
Gyll laughed softly. “I’m not here to hide, old friend. I need you to do something for me.”
“Ulthane, if you’re being hunted—”
Gyll waved him silent. He moved away from the wall, taking a step toward Felling, who backed away. “Get everyone out of the caverns. You have about ten minutes. The kin are to leave everything and run. Anyone left here will be food for Hag Death.”
“You can’t mean that.”
“Oh, but I do.” He still smiled. “Underasgard will be filled with rock in ten minutes, buried and gone. Unless you want the kin to be part of it, get moving.” Then, more softly: “I’m sorry, Felling. I truly am. Tell Valdisa this for me—tell her that from here on it will be the hunt of knives. I leave my fate to the Dame.” He gestured harshly. “Now
move,
man!”
As Felling fled one way, Gyll went the other, out from the caverns, sowing his pellets and lastly putting one beside the dawnrock. Then he moved away from Underasgard at a run, angling deeper into the folded landscape of hills and forest.
Minutes later, he felt more than heard the explosions. The rumbling added speed to his feet, and he prayed that Felling had gotten all the kin outside.
• • •
Gyll knew that they followed.
He could feel it in his stomach, twisting with worry—he’d seen the flitter from a vantage point on a ridge near Underasgard, seen the noisy apparition wheel across the sky with its flickering riding lights, sliding behind the trees below him near the wreckage of Underasgard. The flitter’s presence meant that someone in the caverns had the presence of mind to contact Valdisa before his explosives had brought down the rock. Which meant, also, that they would know he was near, that the detector would point toward him like a deadly finger. Gyll rubbed his hands; ill luck, that. Had the Dame been mindful of him, Valdisa might never have known of Underasgard’s destruction until the dawnrock failed to chime at the sunstar’s arrival. With luck, they’d have been scouring the land around Sterka for him. With luck.
But perhaps the myriad gods of Neweden had wanted to see the excitement of a close chase, the furious, frightened scurrying of the hunted quarry. Perhaps the Dame still intended for him to live.
Gyll was moving through a stand of trees newly shed of their leaves, moving diagonally up a steep slope. His boots were muddy to mid-calf, and he pulled himself up, gripping at branches and the trunks of young trees. The night was fairly bright. Both Sleipnir and Gulltopp were up now, and the woods shimmered in their double glow. Gyll struggled to the top of the rise, panting.
Worn out in truth this time, old man, and Valdisa and her companion will be fresh and anger-driven. Better find your reserves soon.
He crouched, head down, his breath loud and visible in the chill air. Sweat made his spine cold beneath his clothing; the dampness had gotten into his boots, numbing his feet.
Crack!
The sound was sharp in the stillness. It made Gyll draw in and hold his breath, brought his head up sharply, narrowed his eyes. Luck, his luck this time; across the valley he’d just left, two figures in nightcloaks moved. They’d been on the far side of their ridge when he’d made his climb. If he moved quietly now, the noise of his passage would be masked as he moved down into the next valley. The Hoorka—too distant to see who they were—moved slowly, obviously casting about for signs of Gyll’s passage. He was within the near limits of the tracer; they knew he was close, knew basically which way he was moving. But the luck was still holding. They were moving at a slight angle to him, away from the obvious tracks he’d made getting down from that last ridge. It had rained recently, and the earth was soaked. Except under the carpet of dead leaves (and sometimes even there), his trail was painfully visible; if they found it, they would not need the tracer any longer. Gyll looked to the moons—it was around three, as near as he could tell. Dawn at Underasgard would be just after six—three hours. Even if they found his trail, he had a chance. His breath had returned. Gyll thought that he could keep the distance between them. To stay close, where their detector would be useless, gave too much to chance; a misstep, a sound, or a moment when he was not hidden, and they would be on him.
Crouching, he slipped over the top of the ridge and started down the far side.
There was a creek at the bottom, thin ice at the edges of noisy water. He stepped carefully across it, hoping that none of the rocks in its course would tilt and shout alarm to his hunters. The next hill was bare except for dry meadow grass; Gyll decided to move down the creekbed toward another stand of trees. The wind picked up a bit, blowing in his face—bad; it would carry sound behind him, but there was nothing he could do about the wind. He was almost to the trees. He glanced back over his shoulder. What he saw froze him for an instant. Against the night sky, a figure stood on the hilltop. It pointed at him. Another figure came up beside it. Together, they half-ran, half-slid down the slope.
A shiver ran the length of Gyll’s spine. For a second, he could not move. Then, with a curse for the vagaries of his luck, he turned and fled into the trees, seeking height and shelter. As he ran, he put himself in his pursuers’ place, trying to decide what they would do. One would be certain to follow his trail, but the other . . . that one might take the easier route through the tall grass, figuring that Gyll would make for the top of the ridge—a pincer trap, with the quarry between. Gyll pulled his vibro from its sheath but did not yet activate it. He retraced his steps a few meters, trying to stay in his tracks, then swung himself up onto an overhanging branch. Crouching against the bole of the tree, he waited.
Don’t let it be Valdisa. Please don’t make it be Valdisa. And keep me hidden.
The Hoorka was a man, alone. Gyll thought he recognized the face, much younger in his memory, as a surly apprentice named Meka Joh. The Hoorka made his way through the stand of trees, his head—despite Hoorka training—down and intent on the trail Gyll had left.
Boy, you should have learned your lessons better. Use all of your
vision
—
keep the trail low in your sight and your head up.
Gyll waited until Meka was underneath him. His muscles tensed for the leap.
He hit Meka just behind the head, flicking his vibro on at the same time. Gyll fell heavier than expected, twisting to face the Hoorka. Meka was slow, stunned, but his weapon—a Khaelian dagger—was out in a defensive position, instinctively. Gyll moved with a grunt of effort, his vibro moving past the dazed man’s guard easily, warding off a slash of the dagger. The foil slid easily into Meka’s midriff. With a low moan, the Hoorka doubled over. His head up, he stared at Gyll with wide, pain-stabbed eyes. His mouth worked but no words came out.
He fell.
Blood steamed in the cold; from Meka, from the gore covering Gyll’s foil.
He felt very little: no guilt, no remorse, just a cold satisfaction that he was still alive, that he’d taken out his enemy.
Would it be the same if Meka were Valdisa, if she were the one I’d given to the Hag?
He shook the thought from his head—he must move. Gyll slipped the vibro back into its sheath, took the Khaelian dagger from Meka’s unresisting hand, slipped the homing device for the dagger from the body’s waist. Then, grimacing, he stripped Meka of the Hoorka nightcloak. He put the cloak on, feeling the once-familiar weight of the heavy cloth, the old clasps, the fullness of the hood behind his neck. It fit him well. He shrugged the nightcloak into place around his shoulders and made the sign of the star over Meka’s body. “Rest well, Meka Joh,” he whispered. “May the Dame snatch you back from the Hag soon.” He strode away in the direction he’d come, pulling the hood over his head.