Beyond the Gate (The Golden Queen) (Volume 2) (20 page)

Maggie’s stomach turned at the sight, and she gasped.

“Maggie?” Gallen asked. “What is it? I can feel something moving! Something’s burrowing into my head!”

There was a crackling noise of bones chipping away from his skull, just beneath the flesh.

“Ah, Christ,” Maggie muttered, and her first impulse was to take a knife and cut into his flesh, pull out whatever was burrowing into him.

Tallea rushed over to Gallen, looked at him, aghast. Then she reached into the hood at the back of Maggie’s cloak. “Careful,” she said.

She brought out a creature that could have been a mantis, with a wide body and a single spade-shaped arm. She held the back of its body gingerly between two fingers.

“The Word is inside him,” Tallea said. “The Inhuman is inside him.”

“Ah, God,” Gallen gasped, and he dropped to the floor, reached behind his neck, tried to pull the thing away.

Tallea dropped to her knees in front of him, peered into his face, curious. “You fight it!” she whispered fiercely. “You must fight!”

“Help me! Help me!” Gallen cried, and his plea terrified Maggie. “I feel it moving in my head.” She had never seen him plea for help, had never seen him despair. His eyes grew large, and beads of sweat dotted his forehead.

Maggie fell to her knees, held him close, so that he rocked back and forth, his face buried against her breasts. “It’s all right. You’re all right,” she whispered, yet she could not keep the tone of panic, the pure desperation, from her voice.

“How do you know?” Gallen cried.

“Some resist Inhuman’s Word,” Tallea insisted. “They not die. They not injured. You must say no to Word!” She took the insect-like machine in her hand and crushed it with emphasis.

Gallen looked up at the Word crushed between her fingers, and his eyes became vacant, as if his mind were far, far away.

Then his attention snapped back, and he looked up at the women, as if embarrassed. “My mantle? The Inhuman is trying to communicate to me through its Word, but my mantle has blocked the transmissions.”

There was infinite relief in his voice, yet the precariousness of his situation was not lost on him. Maggie could see by the manic gleam in his eye that he was horrified. Maggie had never seen Gallen like this—so terrified, so utterly alone, and she clung to him as he climbed to his feet.

“It was Zell’a Cree,” he whispered fiercely. “The bastard slipped those things into our hoods when we were outside!”

Maggie knew that it must be true, but there was little they could do about it. Gallen ran and leapt, kicking Zell’a Cree’s door, but the door held. He kicked at it again and again, then looked over his back at Maggie. “Damn, they build solid doors here!

“Get packed, and get the others,” he said, and there was a fury in his voice. She dared not argue. Maggie ran into her room, threw her things together, and helped Ceravanne pack. By then Orick was in the hallway, drawn by the noise, and Maggie came and stood at the back of Tallea, vibro-sword in hand.

“Do you think we can make it out?” Gallen asked Tallea.

“Inhuman seeks converts, not corpses,” Tallea said. “They might let us go. But if choose to kill—” She shrugged, as if to say that neither Gallen nor anyone else could stop them.

Maggie pounded on the door of one last passenger—the albino girl who was too frightened to leave her room during most of the trip, but the girl would not open her door now.

Gallen rushed up to the end of the hall, peeked through the door’s small window out over the deck, then backed up slowly. “They’ve got half the crew out there.”

Tallea nodded. “We should wait. I can’t see well in dark.”

“I can lighten things up for you,” Gallen said. grabbed his pack from Maggie, pulled out his incendiary rifle, and connected the barrel to the stock.

He opened the door and fired once. Burning white plasma streamed out, bright as the sun, and sprayed over the crowd, dousing the mainmast. Gallen shouted for the others to follow, and he leapt out onto the main deck.

Silently, Tallea raced out after him, followed by Orick and Maggie. On the quarterdeck, one Tekkar was a seething inferno. For a moment his skeleton remained standing, blazing like a torch, the bones fusing together, and then the skeleton crumbled. Several of the small red-skinned sailors had taken minor hits as plasma splattered from the rifle, and they screamed and spun about, madly dancing as they tried to escape. But with plasma heating to ten thousand degrees on their arms or torsos, even a minor wound was cooking them alive.

The bottom of the mainmast incinerated in a moment, and the sail began to topple forward, held only by the rigging. Maggie shouted for Ceravanne to follow her.

Ahead of her, Gallen and Tallea were in a deadly duel, pitted against a dozen hosts of the Inhuman. Maggie saw Tallea lop the hand off one red-skinned foe, stab a giant in the eyes with her dueling fork. Gallen cut a giant down at the knees, and engaged two black sailors with bony ridges on their foreheads and long white hair.

The remaining Tekkar, a man with his hand tattooed red, rushed forward, his body a blur, and stabbed one of his own men in the back to move him out of his way as he sought to engage Gallen.

In seconds, the two were spinning madly, exchanging parries and thrusts. Maggie had imagined that with his mantle—which helped speed Gallen tenfold and which had the fighting experience of six thousand years stored in its memory crystals—no one should have been able to challenge him in single combat. But for fifty seconds the two traded punches and kicks, slashing and blocking with their swords, and it soon appeared that the match was even.

Each blow was jarring, so that when Gallen parried the deck rang with the sound, and Maggie was surprised that the swords didn’t splinter under the impact. And Maggie knew that Gallen was strong. He’d been training as a guard from his childhood, and his wrists and arms were far thicker than a normal man’s. Yet each blow by the Tekkar would knock Gallen back.

One sailor swung a pole at Gallen’s feet, trying to divert his attention, and the Tekkar dove in low, throwing his whole body forward in a deadly lunge, sword thrust outward. Gallen parried the sword away with his knife, and blood went splashing over the deck—though Maggie could not
see
whose—then the Tekkar’s body slammed into Gallen, knocking him back onto the deck.

For a moment they struggled together, the Tekkar on top trying to wrestle Gallen’s knife away, and it was growling.

Orick rushed to Gallen’s aid, but a sailor moved in to intercept him.

Maggie tossed the vibro-sword at the sailor, so that it flew end over end. It caught the man in the neck, slicing him open, and Orick barreled past, jumped on the Tekkar, and bit his shoulder.

In that second, Gallen wrested the knife away and brought it up into the Tekkar’s kidney with a violent jerk, so that the blade shot upward, spraying blood.

Then Gallen shoved so hard that the Tekkar flew back three yards and lay clawing the deck. Gallen surged up into the fray. He gutted the sailor who’d swung at his feet, leapt and kicked another in the head so hard that his neck snapped. Four sailors rushed away from him, and Maggie turned to see how Tallea was doing.

The woman knelt on the deck, holding her guts in with one hand, astonishment on her face. Three bloody-handed sailors advanced on her, aiming for a killing blow.

Maggie had no weapons, but without thought she shrieked and leapt forward, tossing her pack. It hit one man, driving his own sword back so that it split his nose.

Then Maggie was in front of them, shouting furiously, “Get out of my way, or I’ll cut your nuts off and send them home to your wives!” All three sailors stared at her, seeing that her hands were empty, yet somehow not trusting their own eyes.

And Maggie had a sudden thought. There were thousands of subspecies in the southlands, more than anyone person could know, and you couldn’t always tell the dangerous ones by looking at them.

“Believe me, friends,” she threatened. “You don’t wrestle a Tihrglassian, and walk away alive.”

The three servants of the Inhuman stood watching her, uncertain. Maggie raised her hands and bared her fingers threateningly, as if she had talons on them, and two of the men actually backed away.

One of them leapt forward with a roar, jabbing his sword swiftly for a killing blow. Maggie heard a gasp behind her, and suddenly the Caldurian’s own sword darted out, caught the tip of their foe’s sword and knocked it away with a flourish. With a deadly lunge Tallea let her own sword slide up the attacker’s arm, till it bit deep into the sailor’s ribs. The last two foes turned and fled, knowing themselves to be no match for Maggie and the wounded Caldurian.

The sails had become sheets of flame, and suddenly the mainmast fell forward, crushing the forecastle, sending up a shower of sparks. And then Maggie was running, pulling on Tallea’s arm. The warrior woman slumped to the deck, crying weakly, “Leave me!” And Maggie pulled her up, shouting to be heard above the flames. “Not for a fortune. I want to hire your services, if you live through this!”

“Agreed,” the Caldurian said.

Someone pushed Maggie from behind, and she looked back. Orick had her pack in his teeth, and Ceravanne was stooping to grab Gallen’s incendiary rifle. Gallen was leaping toward them all through the flames. Maggie saw with relief that the timid albino girl had come out, that she was running to the far side of the ship.

In a moment, Gallen was beside Maggie, half carrying Tallea. They rushed to the aft of the ship, found sailors lowering a lifeboat. It had just hit water, and already some of them were scurrying down the rope ladders to get in.

Gallen aimed his incendiary rifle, shouted to them, “Go on, all of you. Get away from the boat!” And the sailors stopped. One man leapt off the ladder, began swimming for shore, while another raced back up to the deck. The sailors at the ropes all rushed to the far side of the ship, hoping to get to the other lifeboat before the ship burned.

Gallen stood on the weather deck, keeping the sailors at bay, while Maggie and the others climbed the rope ladders down to the boat. Maggie held the Caldurian in her lap, for the woman had saved her life, and with her own hands she pushed the woman’s intestines back in place. The Caldurian’s brown face was a mask of pain, and she looked up toward the stars, her dark eyes fixed, unfocused.

Then everyone was in the boat, and Ceravanne was pulling at the oars, splashing them all with water in her hurry to leave. Gallen stood in the prow, balancing on a seat, incendiary rifle in hand.

Fire-lit smoke streamed across the water, and the ship was a roaring inferno. Maggie looked up. The batlike scouts were circling the burning ship, and Orick said to Gallen sadly, “You can’t let them get away, lad. It’s a man’s work you have to do.”

Gallen nodded, took his incendiary rifle, sighted for a second, and fired into the sky. Plasma streamed high, lighting the darkness, and hit one of the scouts, splashing enough so that a second also fell.

A third wheeled out over the water, and Gallen fired. But the scout was far away by then, and it dodged the incoming plasma.

Gallen fired twice into the ship for good measure, and Maggie watched several men throw themselves overboard. A dozen men rowed into view from the far side of the ship, and Gallen fired into their boat at a hundred yards. The plasma rushed toward them, a bolt of lightning, and for ten seconds after the hit, the sailors sat burning in the inferno, flesh melting from bones, so that they were skeletons that crumbled in the furnace.

And then the horror of what had just happened—of the murders Gallen had just been forced to commit—fell upon Maggie like a solid weight, like an invisible stone falling from heaven. She saw him standing with head downcast, shoulders limp, limned in the light of the fires.

“Oh, god forgive us,” Ceravanne whispered, and then it was over.

They were rocking in the lifeboat, and the sea was fairly calm. Gallen made a little whining noise, a cry of shock and disgust and fear, and he let his rifle clatter to the hull of the boat.

Men were out in the water, swimming for their lives, and the flaming ship was sailing to oblivion, making a sound like the rushing of wind, while spars and timbers cracked. And Maggie knew that some of those men were her enemies, servants of the Inhuman, and it was dangerous to show them any mercy. She knew that they should row out there and cut the men down.

But none of them had the heart for it. Gallen shook his head, muttering, “I know what I’m fighting for, but what in the hell am I fighting against?”

No one answered. Instead, Ceravanne brought out her bag of Healing Earth and began to administer to Tallea. Maggie watched out the back of the boat, to a cloud on the horizon, and at that moment, she saw that the Inhuman was but a shadow, a vapor. Every time they tried to strike against the Inhuman’s agents, they faded back and disappeared. She wondered how they would be able to strike against enemies who would not face her.

As Gallen took the oars and rowed toward the distant shore, where the city lights dusted the hillside like flour, Orick began reciting the last rites for those who had died.

Zell’a Cree dove deep beneath the burning ship, and looked up. It seemed for a second that the sky was aflame—or as if the water had turned to amber that scattered the sunlight. Then he climbed for the surface, broke through.

The burning ship roared like a waterfall, and Zell’a Cree floated a moment, floundering, then a wave lifted him and he saw a dark ball floating in the water. He swam to it. It was Captain Aherly, his bald head lolling as if it had been crushed.

Zell’a Cree clung to the floating corpse, and gritted his teeth, looked up at the scouts who were wildly flapping about the ship. All of its masts were aflame, and there was nowhere for them to land, yet the scouts seemed to be circling in the hope of helping survivors.

One of them spotted Zell’a Cree and dove toward him, just as a finger of light arced up from the sea. The scout turned into a flaming skeleton that dropped like a meteor, splashing not far away.

Poor Ssaz
, Zell’a Cree thought. Some of the sailors were getting away in a boat, and another finger of light touched them, sent them screaming into torment.