Nghaaaaaa…!
For the first time, the knight felt a rush of almost camaraderie for his demon.I’m scared too, believe me…
He licked his lips. Salt and holy water were only there to focus the mind. If your heart was pure, you didn’t need them.
The sword…well, the sword would have been very useful.
He had not felt the Dreaming God’s presence in a very long time. Without it, what use was he?
Still …
He took a deep breath and said, in the paladin’s voice,“Halt.”
She paused. Just for an instant, just long enough to hope.
Then: “Think you command me, you?”
“Well, it was worth a try,” he said, not looking at Brenner.
“See now, me,” she said, and grinned with those wicked sharp teeth. Far down in her pupils, something alien looked out at him and laughed.
The antlered doe bent her muzzle to the abalone shell and inhaled deeply. Smoke rushed into those broad nostrils, and the coals flared.
She lifted her head and exhaled the smoke in twin streams into his face.
Caliban tried to hold his breath, instinctively. The rune behind him caught his hair and jerked his head sharply back. He gasped at the unexpected pain, and smoke rushed in.
It smelled sweet and acrid, like burning hay. He coughed and with each cough the world lurched sideways and farther away, as if he were moving backward, except that he was still kneeling in the dirt, unmoving.
Darkness closed around him.
CHAPTER 14
SLATE HAD FOLLOWEDthe line of dancing rats for what she thought was over a mile. She wasn’t used to thinking in such distances, particularly not when they twisted and turned and doubled back, but it had definitely been a long, scrambling way. Her face had been slapped by so many pine needles that she felt as if she’d been flogged by miniature whips.
It would have been a dozen or so blocks, anyway. About the distance from the gutterside docks to Archivist Street, I’d say.
The moon was out, but she hardly needed it. The drums drew her on, and the slithering line of rodents was as clear as a signpost.
I hope I’m actually going the right way, and that this isn’t some kind of random phenomenon—the Running of the Rat Bits—that happens occasionally in this part of the world.
Seriously, though, what are the odds?
She was standing in the middle of the rune village before she actually saw it. The sunken mud huts were so far from her idea of houses that if she hadn’t seen the rats vanish into a doorway, she would have taken them for hills. Once she realized that she was standing in front of a door—and that there were a good dozen huts around her—she stepped back into the shadows, heart pounding.
No one seemed to be moving. If anyone had seen her, they were keeping quiet about it.
She examined the building beside her carefully. It was some kind of mud-and-straw construction, like a bird’s nest. The walls looked thick and knobbly. When she dug her fingers into one, experimentally, it didn’t give at all.
I could climb on one of these if I need to.
Slate made a careful circuit of the village. There were eighteen houses all told, although some of them were so small they looked like storage sheds rather than living quarters. There didn’t seem to be any people in the village, except for the largest earth lodge.
This final lodge was a good forty feet across. The music was definitely coming from inside, and she could see a dull red glow through the doorway. If there were people in the village, they were likely inside.
The rats had finally stopped entering the doorway. Perhaps it had filled up. Instead the newcomers formed circles around the perimeter, six or seven deep.
It didn’t follow, however, that if Brenner and Caliban were prisoners, they were inside as well. Possibly they’d been dumped in one of the other huts.
