What seemed like a series of large black cutouts of an unfamiliar animal flickered across the open ground. It looked nothing like a dog. It had too many limbs. But in its brief moment beside the stump it lifted a hind leg and loosed a river.
And then, of course, it was not there anymore. But Soulcatcher was, in her own form. And she was in a towering rage.
"Something has changed," Narayan gasped through his pain.
"Something more than Mother."
Something more than the Mother of Night.
Something that, from that moment onward, left them feeling as though they were being watched every moment—even when they could see nothing around them anywhere.
29
Khatovar: The Lords of the Upper Air
My ravens worked hard. Within the same hour I learned that Sleepy had broken out into our homeworld and that the forvalaka had left the Voroshk and was rushing our way. I began issuing orders immediately. Bowalk could not possibly arrive for hours but I wanted to make sure that each of my companions was exactly positioned and that all of my resources could be brought to bear almost instantly. Willow Swan followed me around reminding me that most of the fussing I was doing was exactly the sort of half-ass officiousness I resented from Sleepy.
"You want to make your future home in Khatovar, Swan?"
"Hey, don't kill the messenger."
I grunted unhappily, went and collected my sweetheart. "It's time we got dressed up. Get ready for the show."
"Ooh!" she said. "I've always had a weakness for men in black with birds on their shoulders."
Our preparations were complete. Our dozen surviving fireball projectors were positioned, I felt, to perfection to bring the forvalaka under saturating fire as she attacked me. If that did not destroy her itself it would drive her to me, directly onto One-Eye's black spear. I looked forward to our confrontation. That was unusual for me. I am not one of those men who enjoys the killing side of this business.
The ravens had the monster just an hour away. People were having a last meal so we could get the fires all put out before it arrived. There was a pig that Doj had killed. It went fast. Not many vegetarians in my crew.
Murgen joined Lady and me where we were playing paper, rock, knife with Willow Swan. "Goblin's here. He just came over the rim of the plain. There's two guys with him. That's a good look for you." He had not yet seen the new Widowmaker armor in action.
"Bless the Captain and her infinite wisdom," I grumbled. "That was quick. Let's keep an eye on the little shit." Like that needed repeating. I asked Lady, "Should I put him to work?"
"Absolutely. Right out front. One-Eye was his best friend, wasn't he?"
"Murgen, when he gets down here, after we talk to him, I want him positioned down there where I put the pair of two-inchers. We don't know if either of those has anything left in them. Then have those guys fall back to cover the approach to the shadowgate. You and Thai Dei stay with Goblin."
Murgen offered me a carefully blank look.
"If you have to, stick him. Or bop him over the head. If he gives you a reason."
"Which might be?"
"I don't know. You're an intelligent adult. Don't you think you can tell if he needs smacking around?"
"Don't you think that that's what those guys with him are there for?"
I had not thought of that. It did seem probable. "Are they men we know well enough to trust completely?"
"I couldn't make out who they were yet when I came over here."
"Then the instruction stands."
I studied Goblin intently. I had not seen him since before I had gone underground. He had aged a lot. "Last I knew of you, you'd deserted."
"I'm sure One-Eye explained all that." The voice was the same but there was an indefinable difference in the man that, probably, had more to do with time and the betrayals of memory than it did with any evil new within him, but I have never gone far wrong by being suspicious.
Goblin's stature approached the extreme low altitude end of normal humanity. And he was wide, despite not having eaten well in recent years. And he had almost no hair at all anymore. Nor did he smile readily. He seemed infinitely tired, as though he labored under a weight of weariness that stretched all the way back into antiquity.
My long nap in the cave of the ancients had not been all that restful, either.
"One-Eye was a notorious liar. The way I heard it—fifteen years after the fact—was that it was all your idea and he just got dragged along."
"The Captain was satisfied." He did not argue and he did not make light. And that was the last clue I needed. There was no humor left in this Goblin. That was the big change.
"Good for her. You've arrived just in time. The forvalaka is only minutes away. We're going to kill it this time. You didn't lose any of your skills while you were trapped, did you?"
Something stirred in the deeps of his eyes. It seemed cold and angry but might have been just his irritation because so many pairs of eyes peered at him so intently, so suddenly.
"Captain?"
That had to be one of the real old hands. Everyone else was out of the habit, though many still called Lady "Lieutenant" because Sleepy never filled that position officially. Sahra did much of the work despite her official status as an outsider.
Why did we set such store by these tiny distinctions?
"What?"
"There's movement out there. Probably the Black Hounds coursing the forvalaka. Which means the monster is getting close."
"Full alert. Murgen, show Goblin his post." I clattered and clanked. The armor was mainly costume but it was real and it was heavy.
"Captain!" From farther away. "Down there!" A man stood out of his concealment, pointing.
I gawked.
"Shit!" Lady exploded. "Why the hell didn't your crows tell us about that?" She dove for cover.
Three flying things were headed toward us from the west, in a V formation. My man had spotted them so far away that, despite their speed, we had time to observe their approach. Eagle-eye there was a guy who deserved a bonus.
The flyers had made the mistake of approaching at an altitude calculated to avoid the notice of the Unknown Shadows. That left them completely vulnerable to detection by the naked eye because it silhouetted them against the clear blue sky on the one day the weather chose to be neither overcast nor rainy.
Lady snapped. "You concentrate on the shape changer, darling. This is a diversion. I'll deal with it." She shouted orders. I boomed a few of my own.
She was wrong, of course. The forvalaka was the diversion for those flying Voroshk—though Bowalk would be convinced that the reverse was true. Once they moved closer the airborne sorcerers appeared to be rippling lumps clinging to long fenceposts. They were wrapped in and trailed acres of something resembling black silk cloth.
They must have had some reason to believe that we would not be able to see them. They made no effort not to be noticed.
When they slowed their approach I suspected immediately they wanted to coordinate timing with the forvalaka—and I was right.
A burst of screams and dark fury erupted a scant hundred yards from our most forward post. Unknown Shadows were all over the forvalaka. Exactly as they were supposed to be, suddenly and briefly, at that point.
The moment Bowalk stopped charging to rip at the spooks they faded away.
For that moment she made a wonderful target.
The fireball projectors opened up.
Unfortunately, most that worked sped their blazing, unpredictable missiles toward the Khatovaran sorcerers. Only two light bamboo pieces remained trained on the monster. And one of those gave up the ghost after projecting just one bilous green ball that flew in erractic skips and jerks but did graze the beast along the flank scars she had gained during our previous encounter. She took a solid hit in the shoulder from the other projector.