An Empire Unacquainted With Defeat (42 page)

"Tell him I don't make the weather."

"Suppose he wants to come topside?"

"Stall him."

"And if I can't?"

"Then let him come. He probably can't tell north from south."

"And if he catches on?"

"Then it's chains time." Or worse.

Tor stalled Junior all day, but soon after nightfall the Speaker-of-Truth came lumbering topside, animated by anger. "You betrayed us!" he raged. "Your men slew . . . ."

"Aye," I muttered, and signaled Tor.

They chained Junior, gagged him, and tucked him away on the forecastle deck. Up there he could enjoy the maximum chill.

Below, the anvil yielded a tentative
clang
that echoed into the deep. For an instant
Vengeful Dragon
and the sea stood still. Then
Dragon
plunged forward again, shuddering.

The next
clang
did not come for several minutes. The third and fourth were more widely separated and weak.
Dragon
survived.

I had Mica brought topside. "Cold enough for you, runt?"

He would not speak to me.

"Not for me. That idol thing can still move its arms. But we're about to hear the last of him."

Mica eyed me, frowning.

"Yo!" a lookout called. "Iceberg! Two points off the port bow. Two miles out."

I held my course, studied the berg once it was close enough to make out. It was not big enough. We sailed on, Mica sullen beside me.

I found the right iceberg next morning. We were way north then, having run before a constant wind. The men were grumbling about the possibility of getting iced in. I put that horror out of mind. Eternity locked in the ice with that devil god? I refused to consider it. Cautious glances heavenward. I wondered.

I brought the ship alongside the berg, put a boat over, had the men shape the ice so we could lay alongside. Then it was undo rigging and unstep a mast, open the deck, hoist the big guy and swing him onto his frosty new home.

Several of his arms moved as he sat there. He tried to feed off the heat of our bodies. But our bodies had no heat. We had paid time's price already. Something else, the power of some divine curse, animated us now.

We put
Dragon
back into sailing shape and headed south. I watched the idol and his ice barge dwindle, amused. The old devil faced a different wind. Every iceberg in sight drifted with the breeze that drove us. Except his. His berg was headed north, toward colder climes.

I gave the sky a big grin. I wondered how the Hope of Callidor had managed to so offend the rest of the supernatural community. And guessed I'd never know. "Mica. You ready to forgive me?"

"I guess. What now?"

"We go pick up Toke and the boys. And hope them that live up top give us good winds south. We hope they're feeling generous, now we've done what they set us up to do. We have Junior take us home. He knows how to take us there."

"We didn't win anything, Bowman. We barely broke even."

"I'm thinking that might've been the whole point. To test us. To see how far we'd backslide. And we didn't." Truthfully, I did not think that was the real story at all. I was sure we had been a weapon in a scheme to get rid of a threat that was a lot bigger than we could imagine.

"How about that anvil? That thing has got to be dangerous."

Also more so than we were capable of understanding, I suspected. "I figure on dumping it after Junior takes us home. Somewhere deep. I don't see how it could hurt the Fish people from there."

He seemed satisfied. He went off to play with his sack of glowing gravel.

I stared at the gray, cold sea, wishing there were some way that anvil could be destroyed.

Evil never seemed to go away. Not forever.

Vengeful D.
was concrete proof.

Junior is cooperating. He is deflated, having seen his god defeated by mere whatever we might be. And he doesn't want to ride the demon anvil down when we chuck it over the side.

I am afraid. I am not sure Junior's devil did not trick us and the gods alike. And I have mixed feelings about returning to the place of fog, though it offers a blessed surcease from pain.

Surcease must be in order. My mind is working too well. I have been remembering those atrocities I committed that got me condemned here. There is no end to the pain inside the dictatorship of memory.

A glance at the sky. "Wherever we end up, make it warm."

Lightning rips out of the fat-bellied clouds. The bolt strikes the maintop. Blue ghost fires roam the sails and stays.

Junior gets busy.

A black, spinning cloud forms on the main deck and grows rapidly, then devours
Vengeful Dragon
whole.

Oblivion descends. Oblivion engulfs. Oblivion rules.

Introduction
Soldier of An Empire
Unacquainted
With Defeat
The Nights of Dreadful Silence
Finding Svale's Daughter
Ghost Stalk
Filed Teeth
Castle Of Tears
Call For The Dead
Severed Heads
Silverheels
Hell's Forge