Sung In Blood

XXXIII

Shai Khe's feet hit the deck of the ship. He cursed, dropped his burden. A glance told him his man was dead. He whirled, began arcing a fireworks show toward the east bank.

Su-Cha decided it was time he absented himself from the sorcerer's company. To go on meant ever-increasing danger. And it was unlikely that Shai Khe would ever be less attentive than he was at the moment.

His intent was to slip over the side behind Shai Khe, hit the water, become a porpoise, and swim as if sharks were after him.

Rider saw Su-Cha begin to move, guessed his approximate intent.

He would never make it. A sorcerer of Shai Khe's attainments never became so angry or so distracted he failed to notice the movement of people around him.

Rider cooked up a little golden firework of his own.

This quite needless bombardment, which threatened to demolish the district, hinted that the easterner was fishing for a reaction anyway.

Su-Cha was not expendable. Neither were the people of the district.

Rider stepped out and delivered his apple-sized golden ball in one smooth motion. It streaked across the river. Halfway over it looked as if it would miss the smuggler by fifteen feet. Three quarters of the way over it began to slide to the right. In the last fifty feet it jumped.

It impacted upon the ship. Light flared. Timbers flew. A third of the smuggler burst into flames.

Mocking laughter and a volley of blue fireworks were Shai Khe's responses. He had won the roll, drawing Rider out.

Rider noted that Su-Cha was in the water.

He plucked another golden ball out of his left hand and hurled it. This one streaked straight toward Shai Khe. Another followed an instant later. Then another. The first died a hundred yards from the blazing ship, the second fifty. The third almost reached the easterner.

Shai Khe grabbed his surviving airshipman and bounded away, in leaps as long as those -he had taken when he crossed the river. He trailed wicked laughter.

Rider's golden balls pursued him, through every twist and turn of his flight through Henchelside.

"Wondered when you were going to turn up," Chaz said, coming to stand beside Rider and glare at the burning ship.

"You played too long a bet," Rider admonished gently. "You'd all have been dead if I hadn't."

"I know." The barbarian was not the least chagrined as he added, "We didn't expect you. Glad you showed, though."

Others began leaving cover. Even a few residents began looking out to see if the storm had passed.

General Procopio lumbered up. "Good show! Eh? What? Got the beggar on the run. What next?"

"First we dig the woman out of the warehouse," Rider said.

Chaz gaped. "But ... The sorcerer. He carried her off with him."

Rider chuckled. "That was Su-Cha again. He ought to be turning up any second, hungry enough to eat one of us." He was talking to the barbarian's back.

"And after Chaz saves Caracene? What then?" Greystone asked. The scholar looked exhausted, physically and emotionally.

"Then we loaf down to our yards and take a short airship ride." He peered across the river.

Shai Khe was no longer visible, but his progress could be traced by the fireworks he tossed off as he went.

"He's going to turn into a ghost again in about two minutes."

"Maybe. But this time I know where he will do his haunting."