Blood Ties (6 page)

Instead of the expected and comforting explosion from the rifle, however, all I heard was a hollow click. The hobbe actually paused, automatically bracing itself against the expected impact from the bullet. That was more brains than I would have thought a hobbe would have displayed, to say nothing of sense of self-preservation.

I fired again, and was again rewarded with nothing but a click. I knew I'd rushed the reloading, and I was paying for it. Vanessa had jammed.

The hobbe, newly emboldened, came right at me with more speed than I would have credited it with.

Instantly, I assessed the situation with the new difficulties that had been presented me. Factoring in the speed with which the hobbe was moving, I immediately realized I had no time to toss aside the rifle and draw either my pistol or my sword.

So I did the only thing I could. I took a step back, reversed the rifle, and used it as a bludgeon. I swung it around as hard as I could, catching the creature on the side of the head with the rifle stock. The hobbe went down with a screech, hitting the ground, its eyes crossing as it looked up at me, dazed.

I swept the rifle around and down, hoping to split the thing's head open. Instead, it moved quickly, and the rifle struck the ground, sending a shiver of pain up my arms as it did so. The hobbe then swung its arm around and knocked the rifle out of my hands with its club, sending my weapon clattering across the ground.

Because the hobbe was on its back, that gave me the precious seconds I needed to yank my sword from its sheath. The hobbe made a sound deep in its throat that came across like a combination of a growl and a snort of derisive laughter as it swung its club. It was a bludgeon against my cutlass. The cutlass was fairly useless when it came to stabbing; it was more effective for slashing attacks, and that was the use to which I put it. I came at the hobbe, slashing back and forth like a berserk windmill. Repeatedly, I deflected its club, sometimes through design and at least twice, I hate to admit, through sheer dumb luck. I had to be careful, though. For the most part I was batting aside the club, but if the hobbe managed to land a direct blow with it, it would likely shatter my sword.

Hobbes weren't designed for sustained battle. They were used to attacking quickly and overwhelming opponents almost immediately. Even though this was a larger hobbe, its endurance wasn't on a par with mine. In moments I heard it grunting and huffing. As its lunges became clumsier, I sidestepped it and slashed quickly. I came within inches of chopping the thing's head off. As it was, my cutlass opened up the side of its face, and whatever the thick, dark liquid was that passed for blood in its veins started to gush down the side of its face. The hobbe let out a screech of pain and backpedaled hurriedly. It seemed that its taste for battle had left it all at once.

“Wait! I'm not done with you!” I called, but it seemed in no mood to listen. Instead, it turned its back on me and sprinted toward the protective trees. I reached for my pistol and withdrew it, cocking the trigger and taking aim all in one movement. But the hobbe darted behind a tree so that I no longer had a clear shot at it. I stepped to one side, tried to find it again. It was too late. I heard the rustling of trees and branches, then it was gone, having disappeared into the woods.

For a moment I thought it might try to circle around and come at me from a different direction, but then I dismissed the notion. It seemed most unlikely. Hobbes weren't traditionally big fans of fair fights. They generally liked to outnumber their opponents at least two to one, and preferably five times that. When I had whittled down the odds to one-on-one, I had only needed to inflict the most minimal amount of damage on the hobbe to sour it on continuing the battle.

Still, it would have been nice to be able to kill the thing and have one less hobbe running around Albion. On the other hand, even if I had managed to accomplish it, what did it really matter in the long run? No matter how many of the damned creatures that harassed the good (and even not-so-good) citizens of Albion were killed, there always seemed to be more ready to replace them. I didn't know where these monstrosities came from. Whatever their origin, there certainly seemed to be an endless supply of them.

Shoving the pistol back into my belt and the sword into its sheath, I promptly started checking through the flintlock rifle to make sure that another misfire didn't occur. As I did so, checking over every moving piece, I remembered my unexpected, if acerbic, savior.

“He's gone!” I called. “You can come out!”

“Well, I think you're doing me a disservice.” Whoever was taunting me from hiding, he clearly had a good deal of hostility. I needed to let him know that he had no reason to vent it toward me. “Actually, I'm quite a good shot.”

“Why would I consider you a target? You saved my life!”

“Then why did you warn me?”

I had to laugh at that. “You, sir, have a twisted sense of humor. I like that in a man.”

“Wh-what?” My laughter faded. “No! I'm not that type at all!”

I didn't know what to make of that. “Why? What have you heard?”

By that point, I had cleared out the bullet that had jammed in the chamber. The problem hadn't been the rifle but rather the ammunition, which apparently had been made irregularly. I was damned lucky the weapon hadn't blown up in my face. “No. I wouldn't like to know.”

“There's nothing
to
know. Look,” I said, once I was satisfied that Vanessa was in perfect working order. “Here's the bottom line, good fellow—”

I ignored him. “You saved my life. Whatever your reason, and whatever your methods, and why ever you feel the need to just hurl insults from hiding instead of . . .” I was going to say “showing yourself” but anticipated another off-color distortion of a harmless sentiment, and so changed it to, “. . . coming out here and accepting my thanks . . . well, let those reasons remain your own. But know this: I am grateful to you, and Ben Finn's gratitude knows no boundaries. I am eternally in your debt . . .”

“Never!” I protested. “I'm not someone who forgets services that other people do for him, especially when those services save my stupid neck. I swear, on my honor, that I would never do you any harm or, by standing aside, allow someone else to do you harm. I take my debts seriously, and I owe you one that can never be repaid.”

I wasn't thinking about their prettiness but just their honesty. “It's not just words. It's a solemn oath. I would never hurt you or take any action against you. As long as”—and I laughed—“you didn't try to kill me, of course.”

“Look,” I said, my patience starting to wear thin, “I've said my piece. You've said yours. You have my gratitude whether you want it or not. Now either show yourself, so I can shake your hand and thank you properly, or continue to hide and toss about insults because . . . I don't know, because you have some deep-seated need to try to get me angry. I promise you, though, that you're not going to succeed.”

“No. In fact, I bet we could actually be friends.”

There was a rustling of trees from overhead, and something suddenly dropped directly in front of me, landing in a crouch. It looked like a gargoyle come to life. Its nose and ears were pointed. It was wearing overlarge shoes, leggings, a loose shirt, and a conical hat perched atop its head. It was hard to tell how tall it was since it was so low to the ground, but I didn't peg it as being more than three feet high. Still, one couldn't judge how dangerous something was in Albion simply by its size, or lack thereof. Instantly, I started to reach for my pistol, not knowing what the thing in front of me was and not caring.

And then I stood there, stunned, my hand hovering over the butt of my pistol, because the thing opened its mouth and the voice of my “savior” emerged from it.

“Oh, we could be best friends,” it said, “if I liked people with arses for faces.” Then it nodded toward the pistol I was still reaching for but hadn't quite gotten around to drawing. “Nice big weapon there. Compensating for something?”

“
You're
what saved me?” I said, incredulous. “What
are
you?”

I had thought that it couldn't have sounded more disdainful before. I was wrong. “Don't you know anything, aside from how to make yourself an easy target? I'm a gnome, you ignorant twat.”

“A gnome?”

“That's right. Repeat it a few times, and maybe it'll stick. You know: like excrement does to your backside because you never remember to wipe it.”

I'd heard rumors about the creatures in the same way that everyone hears random stories about things that have gone wrong in the world. From what I'd picked up here and there, supposedly there was some fool in Brightwall who'd had a garden full of gnome statues. Somehow, the stupid things had come to life and spread throughout the entirety of Albion. There were those who claimed that our noble ruler was actually responsible for the mishap in some manner, but I dismissed such suggestions out of hand. Our ruler had many enemies and detractors who seized any opportunity to try to cast aspersions. I wasn't fooled by it for a moment.

Word was that gnomes were relatively harmless, aside from their propensity for tossing out insults. Nor did it take much to dispose of them. A single well-placed shot was enough to blow them back to wherever it was they came from, be it Brightwall or the netherworld itself.

Angry over its incessant insults, I pulled my pistol out and took aim.

It didn't flinch. Instead, it actually seemed to welcome the threat. “Hah! So much for what your word means. Go ahead, shoot. Prove that your promises are as worthless as you are. You know what I like about humans? They die. Which is what's going to happen to you next time you're not lucky enough to have a gnome warning you.”

Never had I wanted more to pull a trigger on a weapon than I did at that moment. By the same token, never had I been less able to. The damned thing was right. I had given my word. It didn't matter that the recipient of that word was some inhuman, insulting creature that had started out life—or what passed for life—as a statue in someone's garden, providing something for birds to roost upon and crap all over.

A promise was a promise.

I holstered my gun and said aloud for the first time: “A promise is a promise.”

The gnome looked and sounded disappointed. “You must be joking. Not that there's a bigger joke in all these words than your face, but still . . .”

“No, I'm not joking. I'm not going to go back on an oath just because you're not human. And why would it bother you that I'm letting you live? Would you rather die than be faced with the idea that a human's word is his bond?”

“Yes,” said the gnome without hesitation. “Humans are worthless, smelly, foul-breathed, and disgusting. And those are their good points.”

“Okay, well . . . you can add the fact that we keep our word to our good points.”

“You call that a good point? What kind of brainless git makes a promise that he'd rather not keep, then keeps it even though it's going to cause him nothing but problems ?”

“The kind who believes that promises mean something.”

“The stupid kind, you mean.”

“There's no point in arguing this with you,” I said. “I'll be on my way, gnome, and you be on yours. Good day.”

“How can any day be a good one when you live to see the end of it?”

I didn't bother to reply. What was the point? The creature was what it was, and there was nothing to be gained by trying to go toe-to-toe with it in an insult competition. “Farewell, gnome.”

I continued on my path down the road, then I heard a scuffling next to me. I looked down. The gnome was following me. “Where do you think you're going?” I said.

“That depends.”

“On what?”

“On where you're going,” said the gnome, with a gleeful ringing in its voice.

“Wait a minute.”

“Why a minute? Is that the maximum length you can hold a thought in your head?”

“I didn't say you could come with me.”

The gnome chortled at that. “You didn't say I couldn't. Now that I think about it, even if you had said I couldn't, that wouldn't stop me.”

“But . . .” My mind was racing. “But why in the world would you want to come with me? I don't even know where I'm going.”

“Of course you don't. With your head so far up your arse, how could you possibly be aware of anything?”

“The point is, there's nothing for you to be gained by tagging along.”