Dream (19 page)

“But he’ll agree to us?” Derek asked.

“Yeah-my rep in action,” Sam said with satisfaction.

“What do you think, decoy off the main body?” Jeff asked Shad.

“Yeah. A fake attempt draws off the main body, me and one other slips in to torch the skull and grab loot.” A thought struck the Jinxman. “Why didn’t two groups of bravos just team up to do the job?”

“Too much like work,” Sam shrugged. “I’m telling you, the locals just don’t have the fire, and bravos are lazier than most. This place reminds me of the Russian serfs in those stories: no ambition, no interest, just staying within their narrow world view. You ever wonder why the powers-that-be ignore the bravos? On Earth large numbers of independent armed professionals pursuing private goals would excite considerable interest, but here they’re no threat because bravos don’t operate much above a group of a half-dozen, eight tops. They’re violent day labor, no Bill Gates amongst them.”

“Weird.” Shad shrugged. “I still can’t get adjusted to the idea.”

“Remember Iraq?” Jeff pointed out. “That place was stuck in the past like nobody’s business.”

“Yeah, but they had Islam to blame. And even they could get organized if they got motivated enough, even if the sight of a woman’s face destroyed their faith.”

“The locals just don’t think in terms of change,” the Bard shrugged. “And I’m grateful-I would be dead if they had any fire in their bellies.”

“OK, what’s the time-frame for the job?”

“Culverhouse will let the first group he thinks can get it done have a go at it. Nobody is jumping at the chance, though.”

“We’ll go the day after tomorrow,” Shad decided. “I’ll be in good shape, charm-wise. Derek, go buy stuff for a first-aid kit; operating in two groups means you guys will be on your own. I’ll give you the healing potion I’m carrying, too. What exactly can a Bard, and specifically
you
, do, Sam?”

“A Bard can do some pre-battle buffs with music, they have a lot of lore, and has access to a whole battery of social skills. Me, I’m maxed up on social, legal, and net-working-friendly skills.”

“What about combat capability?”

“In theory I’m like you: one-handed or bastard weapons, metal armor so long as it is encased in leather, no helm. However, all I have is skill in short edged weapons. Which I’ve never actually used.”

“Great. That’s gonna change if you’re going to be with us, I promise you,” Shad shook his head. “We chopped our way through a bunch of Iraqis and similar trash that tried to cancel our return ticket back to The World, and we’ve left a trail of bodies since we hit this armpit. Heaven help anyone who gets between us and home, and you are going to be toting your share of the load.”

The Bard swallowed hard, but held his peace.

Trade-Master Culverhouse had built his establishment on the inner side of a bend in the river so that the water protected three sides while a crude wall of stacked field stone and deadfall defended the fourth, east, side. He had roughly three acres within the confines, most of it taken up by storage areas for loaf-sized blocks of peat stacked like bricks. The only permanent structures were a stout supply shed that looked like a windowless log cabin, and a free-standing brick stove that served a eating area of rough tables under a pole-shed roofed by wicker sheets. Tents and crude shelters housed the filthy workers and the dozen mercenaries who guarded the place.

Culverhouse himself was a tall, lean man with a cheerful mien who wore his dishwater blonde hair pulled back into a pony tail. He looked to be in his early twenties, a rawboned young man with good hands, a patch over his left eye, and a long scar that that ran from his hairline to his chin centered on the now-covered eye socket. He was seated under the pole shed with a girl in his lap, a mug made from a jaw-less Human skull lined with gold to hand.

“’House, these are the bravos I told you about the other day,” Sam said, visibly nervous.

“The Black Talons,” Shad stepped up alongside the Bard. “We heard about the bounty.”

“More bravos,” Culverhouse sent the girl on her way with a slap on her rear and took a slurping pull from his mug. “I don’t care if you bastards die, but the rune plates cost hard coin.”

“The only hard coin you’ll be out is the bounty,” the Jinxman said levelly. “Speaking of which, have it handy-we don’t like to wait.”

The Trade-Master was wearing canvas trousers and an open leather vest decorated with Goblin teeth over his naked torso; leaning back against the table he scratched his stomach as he grinned broadly at Shad, three gold teeth catching the sun, their position in line with the scar. “Nobody finds Culverhouse unready.”

“Good. If you let us see the diagram of what we’re up against, we’ll drink some of your ale and work out how we’re going to do the deed.”

“What a dump,” Derek muttered when the five were seated at a table away from the Trade-Master.

“Welcome to unskilled labor,” Sam grinned sourly. “Cutting peat from ‘can see’ to ‘can’t see’ at four pennies a hundredweight.”

“Damn.”

“Culverhouse is a tight-fisted bastard; if you didn’t get a good look at the blade on his hip, its Dwarven-forged and he’s damn good with it. Nobody’s gonna get a union organized under his watch.”

“Can we trust him?” Shad asked.

“Not literally, but reputation is everything here. You welch on one debt and its cash up front forever more.”

“What about when we come back from the job-if we end up dead Culverhouse can just say the lizard-men got us,” Jeff pointed out.

“That might not be easy enough to make it worth a hundred Marks,” Shad grinned evilly. “His guards don’t look all that great. Derek, what do you make them to be?”

“Second to fourth, with Culverhouse around eighth or ninth.”

“They could take us, but only if they were willing to lose some men doing it. Sam, what is so great about this dump that Culverhouse is willing to pony up serious money to keep it? He looks mean, not stupid.”

“Well, bog iron is pretty valuable, but the word is he has a lot of useful sidelines. You need a body to vanish, need to stash someone, need a place to store a couple tons of merchandise that needs to cool, Culverhouse is ready with a remote grave or a tent. There’s plant and insect stuff for alchemists to be had around here, and if you didn’t notice he has fish traps and trotlines for a mile in either direction. With his own boats and fifteen miles to the City State he can sell everything he can find.”

“Low overhead,” Fred observed.

“Yeah. You can figure some of his guards and quite a few of his workers are in hiding, and some of the workers will be indentured, paying off debts.”

Shad checked the sun. “We do the job, get paid, and head right back to town. Reputation or not I don’t want to tempt Culverhouse too far; from that scar I’m betting someone already died from counting that bastard out.”

“Three hours by boat to the City State,” Jeff tapped the table-top. “Five miles to the lizards-figure three hours to get there and two and a half to get back, given the terrain.”

“Say six hours,” Fred agreed. “Plus the job itself.”

“Boats will travel after dark for the last five miles to the City-State,” Sam pointed out.

“We have ten hours and change until sunset,” Jeff continued. “If we left right now we could be safely back in the City-State tonight with about two hours for incidentals and the inevitable complexities.”

“Actually, going downstream the trip should be shorter,” Shad observed. “We took three hours getting here going upstream. OK, we’re going now. I can use runes to beef up your armor, although its only good for a couple hits.”

“I’ve got a song that makes the listener able to move quietly for a little while,” Sam offered.

“An attack in broad daylight is not something they would expect,” Fred said thoughtfully.

“Its just stupid enough to work,” Shad agreed, examining the diagram drawn on rough linen cloth. “And that’s our style. OK, it looks like they have dug themselves into a mound, maybe an old barrow. The skull and stuff is on top protected with a roof supported by pillars while the rest live inside the mound itself. The distraction team attacks from….say the southwest, creates a ruckus, and draws the lizard-men warriors away. The grab team comes in from the east, burns the skull, and grabs any likely loot. I have to be on the grab team to make sure the rune fires true-this stunt will only work once. The question is, do we put someone with me, or keep all four of you in the distraction?”

“I hate the idea of one man by himself,” Jeff shook his head.

“I do too, even when its not me, but if the distraction fails the grab team won’t commit at all. Four men in the distraction team means if one gets badly hurt there are two to drag him and one to act as rearguard.”

“You have it backwards,” Derek said suddenly. “We send two in the distraction team, and three in the grab team.”

“Two guys won’t last a minute,” Shad scoffed.

“They will if it’s a Shadowmancer with a bow and a Bard,” Derek grinned smugly. “I’m talking a real distraction: sniper fire and noise. Let their imagination do all the work. From the look of this place its peat bogs with medium ground cover and clumps of stuff that looks like twelve-foot-tall cane grass. Me and Sam should be able to generate enough noise, movement, and fire to convince them that we are a full scale ground attack. Meanwhile the three of you come from the east as planned. We set a rendezvous point, and Bob’s your uncle.”

“Why is it always Bob?” Jeff asked. “Do we have no aunts? What sort of family is this?”

“Ballsy,” Shad observed, studying the painted lines on the linen. Derek had frequently surprised them in Iraq-although armed with only a minimum of military training he had developed a good grasp of small unit tactics. From his Ranger training Jeff was too aggressive, Fred was too stubborn to have a complete tactical flexibility, and Shad’s unthinking nature was inclined toward violent resolutions, so the slender Radio Shack assistant manager had often been the voice of reason and subtlety in their planning and operations.

“It’s a stupid plan within an idiotic mission, but that’s the nature of the beast. Let’s get going, we’re burning daylight.” Shad tucked the linen map into his pouch.

“You ever miss Iraq?” Derek asked Shad as the Black Talons headed towards the river.

“Every single day.”

“I don’t.”

“Well, the climate sucked, the people were bastards and the food was awful, but I miss the fighting. A firefight is the most intense thing in the world.”

“You ever think about going back?”

“Nah. It turned into IEDs and snipers. I wasn’t about to set foot back in that garbage pile unless there was a chance to do real infantry work.”

“I wonder if we accomplished anything?”

“We definitely accomplished a lot: something like a hundred thousand dead Iraqis and associated regional lunatics.”

“Is that really an accomplishment?”

“It works for me.” Shad hitched his shield into a more comfortable position. “Plus we liberated the Kurds.”

“Yeah, that’s true.”

Chapter Ten

“I thought this was going to be like Louisiana,” Fred grumbled. “Its kind of worse.”

“It could be more like Deliverance, so shut up,” Shad snapped.

Fred grinned-the Jinxman was largely immune to cold, and coped well enough with heat, but mud made him notoriously ill-tempered.

This place wasn’t what the barbarian would have thought of as a swamp: it was mostly slick, slimy mud covered with knee-high bristly green plants growing densely together, with clumps of what looked like cane grass here and there. The mud was only about an inch thick, but walking on it was like walking on wet canvas covered with soft tar-the black goopy mess stuck to everything and the entire place stank. There wasn’t any standing water that they had seen, and there weren’t a lot of bugs, either; it was more annoying than anything else, especially since Shad was getting seriously hacked off and as was his custom, exporting his emotions.

“There,” the big warrior pointed: just visible over the tops of the nearest clump of cane grass was the roof of woven reeds that topped the mound.

“OK, here is where we part ways,” Shad kept his voice down. “You two sure about this?”

“No,” Sam was pale.

“Too bad.” The Jinxman carefully drew a symbol on the Bard’s chest in royal blue ink, repeated it on Derek, and followed it with a cherry red rune drawn on their upper left arms. “These should convey extra armor protection for a couple hits, and improve your chances of stealthy movement.”

“What do you mean, ‘should’?” Derek asked.

“My first use of runes,” Shad shrugged. “Maybe they work, maybe they don’t. You shouldn’t have volunteered.”

“You’re a douche.”

“The facts do seem to support that conclusion. You’ll start the dance-we’ll move when we hear the lizards going after you.” Shad handed over the healing potion he had been carrying.

“This plan sucks,” the Shadowmancer complained.

“Its
your
plan,” Jeff pointed out.

“That just proves I know what I am talking about when I say that it sucks.”

“Good luck,” Fred slapped Derek on the shoulder. “Try not to dwell on that this could end with your being cooked alive over a slow fire.”

“I hate you guys.”

“Looks like six on guard,” Jeff advised, easing back to the hiding place. “Honor guard.”

“They don’t look too tough,” Shad observed contemptuously, and the others muttered agreement. In Iraq they had been notorious for being too aggressive, and as their squad leader Shad had skated on the edge of disciplinary action on more than one occasion for getting into firefights of questionable value and for pushing the rules of engagement.

The lizard-men they were watching were five foot six so or, slender and proportioned as are Humans, with a tough scaly hide that was more olive drab than green, and tails slightly longer than their legs. Their heads were the most alien, resembling crocodile heads balanced on necks that seemed too thin to support the weight.

“They look like something the Mayans would have worshipped. Or the Aztecs. One of those, anyway,” Fred muttered.

The lizard-men wore simple loincloths, and were armed with large wicker shields and bog-iron axes whose heads were surprisingly graceful.

“No armor, hand weapons,” Jeff checked the wax paper protecting the venom on the bolt in his hand crossbow. “Easy meat.”

“I bet those are javelins in those vase-looking things, but they look pretty light. That looks like the shield,” Shad shaded his eyes. “Hanging there on the east side.” The simple woven reed roof was supported by four elaborately carved posts which were decorated with a variety of weapons, shields and other items, while net bags of boiled skulls hung from the rafters.

“OK, when we go, we clear the top,” Shad eyed the steep sides of the mound. “Then you two secure while I fire the rune-plate and grab loot.”

“I don’t think we’ll be bored,” Jeff nodded.

Derek was right: he and especially Sam sounded like a full platoon prepping for an assault, and the lizard-men bought the act completely. Horns with a thin, reedy tone sounded followed by someone beating on a tinny gong as if the gong had done them personal harm. Two of the skull guards vanished down the slopes out of the trio’s line of sight, presumably to join the force of lizard-men surging forth to repel Derek and Sam’s imminent assault.

Shad finished counting to fifty. “Let’s roll.”

“Lock ‘n load, boys,” Jeff grinned. Steadying his crossbow, he sighted carefully and released. Atop the mount a lizard-man
cawed
in surprise and pawed at the slender bolt standing out from its lower back, its taloned fingers missing the mark as its major muscle groups began to spasm. The Night-grifter swiftly reloaded and fired again as Shad and Fred hurled themselves up the slope, then joined in the assault.

“
Shit
!” Fred swore as his boot slipped, jamming the butt of his axe into the mound to remain upright. “This is a bitch.”

Shad grunted agreement around the hilt of the throwing knife he held between his teeth, having freed up both hands to make an undignified but faster all-fours scramble up the side of the mound. The slope was both not very hard-packed and damp, so the three bravos slipped, staggered, and sent sprays of torn earth with each step.

The barbarian cursed again as a slender javelin shattered against his armored shoulder, a splinter of wood from the shaft impaling his cheek.

One of the skull guards was down, thrashing, and another was gripping a signaling horn but retching or gagging too hard to use it, fruits of Jeff’s work, while the other two hurled flint-topped javelins at the scrambling bravos.

Wearing less armor than Fred and less equipment than Jeff, as well as moving more or less on all fours, Shad drew ahead of his comrades, helped by the fact that Fred’s armor made him a the lizard-men’s primary target; the Jinxman thought that choice pretty well established that the saurian-beasts weren’t all that bright, because the big man’s splint armor was shrugging off their javelins. Grabbing the knife from his mouth he gasped a word and threw it, sending the blade flickering end-over-end to slam into the skull guard with the horn. Unnoticed by the two javelin-throwers the third lizard-man slumped to the floor, the horn dropping from its fingers.

“That’s how you do it,” Shad snarled, drawing his shield around on its shoulder strap and getting it set on his arm. Resuming his climb, he grinned mirthlessly as a javelin
thumped
into his upraised shield. “Too late, gecko-boy.”

It would have been smarter to wait for the others, but being over-aggressive was nothing new to Shad. He abandoned his three-limbed crawl as the slope began to level out to the mound’s top, where run-off channels and a gravel base gave the top much improved footing.

One of the skull guards caught up its shield and charged the Jinxman as he lurched up onto the gravel, drawing his sword as he came. It blocked with its shield as it swung overhand, but Shad led with his point, his index finger hooked over the crossguards to give him better control. His longsword had a smoothly tapering point and a blade not much wider than the sword-rapier Jeff had used before gaining Blackwand, and the wicker shield was intended to receive swinging blows whose impact would be distributed across a wider area. The point hit, slid, bit between two interwoven pads of reed, and then the Jinxman levered up and forward, the point cutting and slipping between the fabric of the shield, emerging out the other side and sliding into the lizard-man’s unarmored belly even as its axe rebounded from Shad’s upraised shield.

The lizard-man hissed and staggered back as the Jinxman frantically rocked his sword back and forth to free it from the enemy’s shield before the skull-guard had the presence of mind to release it and leave Shad’s weapon stuck. Even as the longsword was drawing free of the shield Jeff was up on the gravel and dealing with the other guard. Shad opened the narrow throat of his wounded foe before it could recover its balance and bring its damaged shield back into play.

“Sum-
bitch
!” Fred gasped, finally reaching the top. “All that work and its over.”

“Not yet,” Shad hastily wiped his sword’s blade on the side of his boot and sheathed it. “Make sure of the lizards and then keep watch.” Pulling the knife he had gotten at Wrym, he examined the battered shield hanging from the pole. Nodding to himself, he pried at the inner lip of the rim with the point of his knife, and shortly had exposed a hollow that contained a tight roll of vellum inside an oilskin wrapper. Discarding the shield he stowed the knife and documents and turned to the skull.

The skull was large but not all that impressive, looking like what Shad imagined a crocodile skull would look like if the croc had a head the size of an entire Herford bull. The bone was age-pitted and chipped here and there, and most of the teeth were missing, taking a lot of the thing’s ability to impress, not that the Jinxman was inclined towards sight-seeing. Pulling the foot-square tile from his pouch, he unwrapped the rags that had protected it and carefully positioned it atop the cranial dome.

One eye on his cheat sheet, Shad carefully articulated the prescribed words and then tapped the corners of the tile in the order he had noted on the scrap of parchment. Instantly the elaborate pattern inscribed on the tile changed from pale blue to a steadily-deepening red and the plate began to radiate heat.

Stepping back he checked on the others, who were crouched on the gravel watching the decoy operation. Nodding to himself, he glanced over the trophies hanging on the posts and grabbed a few down. A set of bracers, three pendants on good chains, and a pair of gloves went into the sack he had brought for this purpose and an expensive-looking sword-rapier hanging on a baldric that appeared to be some sort of black reptile hide was slung over his shoulder. Scooping a triple-fistful of gold Marks from a crude fired-clay plate as foul-smelling smoke began to rise from the top of the skull, he trotted over to the others.

“Time to go.”

“Man, that worked slick,” Sam chortled, pale-faced and sweating from the after-effects of the combat rush. “They never looked back.”

“Derek is known for his ideas,” Shad nodded, watching Culverhouse’s fort drawing close as the boatman drove the sweep with enthusiasm.

Jeff slapped the Shadowmancer on the shoulder. “Hey, remember that time at GenCon when Derek got liquored up and …”

“Shut up,” Derek shook his head tiredly.

“Or the time we had a pass after NTC and hit that strip club…” Fred grinned.

“You, too,” the slender Radio Shack assistant manager cut him off.

“When we get to the dock you guys hang back,” Shad interrupted the routine harassment of Derek. “I’ll deliver the news.”

“You’re going to go alone?” Jeff frowned.

“Yeah. If Culverhouse is planning a double-cross he’s going to do it at the payoff. If its just me, that means his guys have to charge you guys across open ground. Throws the odds off.”

“Not for you.”

“I’m not at risk if they can’t get us all. If they can jump us by surprise twelve guards could take us, provided they’re willing to lose a few. But twelve rushing you means only eight or nine reach you, and in a straight-up fight they might not get you all and would lose a bunch doing it. A deal like this, it’s all cost and profit.”

“Unless Culverhouse is as crazy as he looks,” Derek pointed out.

“Yeah, there’s always a problem,” Shad grinned. “But a hundred Marks is a hundred Marks.”

Walking across the boot-torn grass of the fort towards the Trade Master under the gaze of the lounging guards reminded Shad of rolling into Iraqi villages where there wasn’t a kid or woman in sight, just a few hard-eyed young men idling here and there. Rolling in with every weapon locked and loaded, waiting for the shooting to begin, waiting until you were eager to get it on just to end the waiting. And then afterwards, stacking the enemy dead, collecting weapons, securing an LZ for the wounded, maybe tossing a shaped charge down the community well or setting fire to a couple outbuildings to remind the locals why it was a bad idea to cross the US Army, that feeling would come back: being watched, being measured, being evaluated.

The Trade Master was slumped in a battered wooden chair next to stacks of curing peat blocks using a long strand of grass to play with a kitten. He didn’t look up until the Jinxman was directly in front of him, although the knot of guards nearby had been watching since Shad stepped off the dock. “Yeah?”

“The skull is torched.”

The tall man glanced at the boatman who had hauled the Black Talons back and forth across the river. “All right.” He scooped up the kitten and set it atop the peat stack. Picking up a heavy sack from behind the chair, he tossed it to the Jinxman. “Want to count it?”