Sung In Blood

XII

Rider wakened with the sun. His body ached from the previous day's exertions and bruises, yet he was eager to be at his new vocation. He leapt out of bed, began doing calisthenics.

Su-Cha stuck his head in the doorway. "Up already?" Su-Cha was always up. Imps did not sleep often. "The juices are flowing, little friend." "Shall I waken the others?"

"No need. They deserve their rest. How is the prisoner?" "Unhappy. And as full of blessed ignorance as ought to elevate him direct to nirvana. Someone put sixty pounds of gold on your head. The King's, too. Chaz is going to wilt when he hears his noggin is worth only five." "What I expected. What of the web?" "Nothing shaking. His nibs ain't moved." Rider abandoned his exertions, though customarily he devoted an hour to exercise. "I'll bathe quickly. Two chores to be done. Take your pick. Cook breakfast or fetch shantor's robes for the whole crowd."

"And if I choose cooking?"

"I'll boot you downstairs."

"What I thought." Having little need to consume food, Su-Cha had no need to learn cookery. His occasional efforts verged on the poisonous. "Enough for everybody?"

"Yes. It'll take the whole crew to corner a rat like Odehnal."

"Remember the old saw."

"I do. I don't expect he'll be taken easily."

Someone in one of the sleeping rooms grumbled about all the racket. Moments later Spud toddled past, headed for the kitchen. He banged around enough to waken everyone else. When Su-Cha returned with the shantor disguises he found the whole crowd tripping over one another while cooking and eating.

The donning of disguises took place not far from the suspect tenements. The weeping sickness was common in the slums, and the terror of the riverbanks. It was a slow and gruesome killer, and one challenge Jehrke had not been able to meet. Rider's men would not stand out unless they made it appear there were too many shantors in one area. People would stay out of their way. Though Jehrke had proven the weeping sickness not to be communicable like measles or the pox, no one believed him.

"Take your time getting into position," Rider told the others. "Don't attract attention. I’ll touch you through the web when I'm ready." He sent them off in pairs, ringing their warning bells.

He let a half hour pass. He spent that time touching the neighborhood through the web. There was a disconcerting quiet about it, as though people had sensed Odehnal's presence and knew it augured explosion and terror.

Odehnal was not difficult to locate, this close. The woman Caracene made an outstanding marker. From her Rider caught hints of turmoil, from the dwarf a glowing calm.

There were others in the place. At least four more men, none of whom Rider gave any special attention. They would be the dwarf's hirelings.

He tugged that part of the web which allowed him to touch his associates. I am going in now, he sent. Be alert.

He moved into the filthy street, stooped, tinkling his shantor's bell. Through a gap between drunkenly leaning tenements he glimpsed the brown dirtiness of the river. Here the old wooden buildings stood with their tails over the water, supported by pilings rising from the bottom mud.

These places were always collapsing into the flood, drowning their occupants, and being rebuilt as slovenly as before.

The suspect structure was identical to its neighbors. Rider tinkled from door to door, pausing before each as if begging. When he reached his destination, though, he flicked a finger. A soft click sounded behind the door, a bolt snapping open. There was no guard.

He stepped inside. Behind him one of his men rang his bell.

The darkness within was asphalt thick. He drew a gem-like crystal from a pocket, whispered to it. It began to glow, no more brilliant than a lightning bug. He did not go on till his eyes adjusted.

Odehnal was too confident, Rider thought. No guard, no spell to alert him to intruders. As a soldier Rider had learned that one must always expect the worst in enemy territory.

Eyes adapted, he touched his men again. I am going upstairs now. Odehnal was above somewhere.

Caracene and the others were in the rear, also upstairs.

Odehnal was not as lax as first glance suggested. Two thirds of the way up, Rider froze.

Something was wrong. He allowed his senses free rein, not moving a muscle. His attention focused upon a stairstep a couple above that where his feet rested.

Even knowing where to look it was a moment before he spied the black thread stretched taut an inch above the worn and grimy tread.

Tricky, setting the trap for a point where an intruder would begin worrying more about what lay ahead. He examined the steps above with even more care. He would have set a back-up.

There it was. A step set to trigger an alarm when weight fell upon it.

He stepped over both carefully.

The stair ended on a balcony which ran athwart the building and L-ed to his right. Several doors along the back leaked light beneath them. But Odehnal waited out along the L.

He paused to scatter pop seeds at the elbow of the L, then moved to Odehnal’s door. He listened, sensed. The dwarf seemed to be sleeping.

He examined the doorknob minutely. The crystal's light revealed no trap.

Below, he heard the slightest breath of sound. Sunlight poured inside. He saw a shape the size of Chaz slip inside, followed by one of Su-Cha's slightness. He frowned. It was too soon for them to come.

Move quickly!

He turned the doorknob, passed through the doorway swiftly ... and stopped, startled, awed.

The room was as opulent as an eastern potentate's private quarters. Odehnal lounged upon huge down-stuffed pillows, face asmile and dreamy. Burnt opium embittered the air.

Quickly, now! Before Chaz or Su-Cha called attention to their presence.

He cast a small spell which sealed Odehnal’s lips. He used a modified form of the same spell to join the dwarf's ankles, then his wrists, and even his fingers one to another.

Odehnal stirred once, but only to make himself more comfortable.

A gong hammered in the rear of the house.

Rider hurtled out of the room, into intense light. Chaz stood upon the trap step, a dumb look on his face.

Two men charged out of rear rooms, weapons in hand. Su-Cha materialized between one's legs. He pitched off the balcony with a shriek. The other saw Rider, whirled, charged into the room where Rider knew Caracene and another man to be.

Rider followed, pop seeds exploding beneath his feet. He hurled a shoulder at the door. It burst inward. Chaz breathed down his neck as he entered a room outshining Odehnal’s. A thrown knife ripped between them.

In the rear of the room, in shadow, Caracene stood with hands at mouth, looking down. The man who had preceded Rider slammed her out of the way, dropped like a badger plopping into its hole.

Caracene scrambled ...

Then Chaz had hold of her and Rider was staring down at a man thrashing through brown water, chasing a boat which meant to waste no time on him.

Rider's gaze fixed on the man in the boat, a lean, powerful oriental with astonishing green eyes. "Shy key, Vlazos said," he murmured. "Shai Khe." One hand came from a pocket clutching a phial. He hurled it.

The man in the boat dropped his oars, raised hands, loosed a warding spell. The phial plopped into the river.

The man saved himself from the misery in that fluid, but lost his oars. He drifted at the mercy of the current.

Rider heard shouts. Soup and Greystone. They had spotted the fugitive. Someone threw a line to the man abandoned.

The oriental's long fingers began weaving sparks. Rider snapped, "Out of here, Chaz. Take the woman. Su-Cha. Get Odehnal." His tone brooked neither questions nor argument.

He drew on the web, began binding it around the sorcerer. Chaz and Su-Cha pounded away.

Too late Rider realized what the oriental was doing. Not attacking him directly at all.

A piling snapped like a twig. The house lurched. Another piling went. The house began to shift, to groan, to tilt toward the river.

Rider did not hesitate. He dropped through the hole, hit the water feet first. He drove himself deep with one powerful stroke, then swam with the current. His strokes were strong and practiced.

The water screamed with the sound of the building collapsing. The scream grew to a roar. But no building comes down in seconds.

When Rider surfaced he was beyond danger of the collapse. Indeed, the structure's main mass smashed into the river as he came up. It raised a wave that lifted him five feet. From the wave's crest he looked at the man in the boat.

The sorcerer's face betrayed frustration. His fingers began weaving again. But the wave caught the boat and toppled him into its bottom. When he recovered Rider had made the riverbank. The oriental wasted no time on an enemy in a position to best him. His boat flew away as though upon a lightning current.

Rider clambered between houses, to the street, where he settled on a stoop to dram his boots.

Chaz settled down beside him, Caracene held almost negligently in one arm. "Who was that guy?"

"Shai Khe," Rider replied. "I should have thought of him when Vlazos tried to tell me. He said Shai Khe and I heard shy key."

"That's his name," Chaz said. "But it don't tell me nothing about him." They watched Su-Cha drag Odehnal their way. The dwarf remained imprisoned in his opium dream.

"I know only one thing more," Rider said.

"Uhm?"

"My father was afraid of him."

Chaz looked startled.

"Yes. He wouldn't talk about it. Shai Khe is some great terror in the east. He commands an empire more vast than Shasesserre's. But that does not satisfy him. He wants it all."

Wreckage from the collapsed building drifted away. Rider's men assembled. Neighbors came to watch from a distance safe from shantors.

"More prisoners," Greystone said. The man who had jumped into the river was trying to talk Soup and Spud into turning him loose.

Rider caught his eye. "You're luckier than your friends." He indicated the wreckage. Two men were in it somewhere. To his own men, he said, "We've done what we can do here. Take these people to the Citadel. We'll question them later. Spud, Su-Cha, Preacher, come with me."

"Where we headed?" Su-Cha asked.

"Airship yards. Before we left the Citadel I sent word for a ship to be readied. We'll use it to hunt Shai Khe. Particularly if he runs to his own ship."

Shai Khe, not Kralj Odehnal, had killed Vlazos and escaped in an unlicensed airship.

Chaz stepped close as Rider was about to leave. He whispered, "What about the girl?"

"Treat her the way she wants you to treat her. If she doesn't suspect she's marked for the web, arrange it so she can escape again. She could lead us again."

"Right. Will do."

Rider and those he had chosen hurried a quarter mile, to where a pair of chariots waited. They shed their shantor's robes as they went.