The sergeant sat down on the bedrock again, his eyes on the ground as the members of his squad arrived, hunkering down around him. He remained silent, seeming unaware that he had company, his brow furrowed and jaw bunching as he ground his molars with a slow, steady precision.
«Sarge?» Fiddler said quietly.
Startled, Whiskeyjack looked up. He drew a deep breath. Everyone had gathered with the exception of Quick Ben. He'd leave Kalam to fill in the wizard later. «All right. The original plan's been scrapped, since it was intended to get us all killed. I didn't like that part, so we'll do it my way and hopefully get out alive.»
«We ain't going to mine the city gates?» Fiddler asked, glancing at Hedge.
«No,» the sergeant answered. «We'll put those Moranth munitions to better use. Two objectives, two teams. Kalam will lead one, and with him will be Quick Ben and:» he hesitated «: and Sorry. I'll lead the other team. The first task is to get into the city unnoticed. Out of uniform.» He looked to Mallet. «I take it the Green delivered?»
The healer nodded. «It's a local make, all right. Eighteen-foot fisher, four oars, should get us across the lake easy enough. Even a couple of nets included.»
«So we'll do some fishing,» Whiskeyjack said. «Coming into the harbour without a catch would look suspect. Anybody here ever fished?»
There was silence, then Sorry spoke up. «I have, a long time ago.»
Whiskeyjack stared at her, then said, «Right. Pick whoever you need for that.»
Sorry smiled mockingly.
Whiskeyjack pulled his gaze from hers with an oath under his breath.
He eyed his two saboteurs. «How much munitions?»
«Two crates,» Hedge replied, adjusting his leather cap. «Cussers all the way down to Smokers.»
«We could cook a palace,» Fiddler added, shifting about excitedly.
«Good enough,» Whiskeyjack said. «All right, everyone listen and pay attention, or we won't come out of this alive:»
In a secluded glade in the forest, Quick Ben poured white sand in a circle and sat down in its centre. He took five sharpened sticks and set them in a row before him, pushing them to various depths in the loam. The centre stick, the highest, rose about three feet; the ones on either side stood at two feet and the outer ones at a foot.
The wizard uncoiled a yard's length of thin gut string. He took one end and fashioned a scaled-down noose, which he tightened over the centre stick near the top. He ran the line to the left, looping it once over the next shaft, then crossed over to the right side and looped it again. He brought the string across to the far left stick, muttering a few words as he did so.
He wrapped it twice and brought it over to the far right stick, where he tied a knot and cut the trailing string.
Quick Ben leaned back and folded his hands on his lap. A frown creased his brow. «Hairlock!» An outer stick twitched, turned slightly, then fell still. «Hairlock!» he barked again. All five shafts jerked. The centre one bent towards the wizard. The string tautened and a lowpitched hum emanated from it.
A cold wind swept across Quick Ben's face, stripping away the beads of sweat that had gathered in the last minute. A rushing sound filled his head, and he felt himself falling through dark caverns, their unseen walls ringing in his ears as if iron hammers clanged against the rock. Flashes of blinding silver light stung his eyes and the wind pulled at the skin and flesh of his face.
In some shielded part of his mind he retained a sense of distance, of control. Within this calm he could think, observe, analyse. «Hairlock,» he whispered, «you've gone too far. Too deep. This Warren has swallowed you and will never spit you out. You're losing control, Hairlock.» But these thoughts were for him alone; he knew the puppet was still distant.
He watched himself continue, spinning, whirling through the Caverns of Chaos. Hairlock was compelled to match him, only upward. Abruptly he found himself standing. Beneath his feet the black rock seemed to swirl, cracked here and there in its slow convolutions by bright, glowing red.
Looking around, he saw that he stood on a spar of rock, rising at an angle, its jagged apex a dozen feet in front of him. Turning, his gaze followed the spar as it sank down and out of sight, lost to billowing yellow clouds. A moment of vertigo gripped Quick Ben. He tottered, then, as he regained his balance he heard a chuckle behind him. He turned to see Hairlock perched atop the apex, his wooden body smeared and scorched, the doll's clothing ripped and frayed.
Quick Ben asked, «This is the Spar of And? isn't it?»
Hairlock's round head bobbed. «Half-way. Now you know how far I have gone, wizard. To the very foot of the Warren, where power finds its first shape, and all is possible.»
«Just not very likely,» Quick Ben said, eyeing the marionette. «How does it feel, standing in the middle of all that creation but unable to touch it, to use it? It's too alien, isn't it? It burns you with every reach.»
«I'll master it,» Hairlock hissed. «You know nothing. Nothing.»
Quick Ben smiled. «I've been here before, Hairlock.» He scanned the swirling gases around them, scudding on contrary winds. «You've been lucky,» he said. «Though they are few in number, there are creatures who call this realm home.» He paused and turned his smile on the puppet.
«They dislike intruders-have you seen what they do to them? What they leave behind?» The wizard's smile broadened at seeing Hairlock's involuntary jerk. «So you have,» he said quietly.
«You are my protector,» Hairlock snapped. «I'm bound to you, Wizard! The responsibility is yours, nor will I hide the fact if I am taken.»
«Bound to me, indeed.» Quick Ben lowered himself to his haunches.
«Good to hear your memory's come back. Tell me, how fares Tattersail?»
The puppet slumped, looking away. «Her recovery is a difficult one.»
Quick Ben frowned. «Recovery? From what?»
«The Hound Gear tracked me.» Hairlock shifted uneasily. «There was a skirmish.»
A scowl grew on the wizard's face. «And?»
The puppet shrugged. «Gear fled, sorely wounded by a mundane sword in the hands of that captain of yours. Tayschrenn then arrived, but Tattersail had slipped into unconsciousness by then, so his search for answers was thwarted. But the fire of suspicion has been stoked beneath him. He sends out his servants, and they stalk the Warrens. They hunt for signs of who and what I am. And why. Tayschrenn knows your squad is involved, he knows you're trying to save your own skins.» The puppet's mad gaze flickered. «He wants you all dead, Wizard. And as for Tattersail, perhaps he hopes her fever will kill her so he won't have to-but there is much he'd lose if she died without his questioning her first. No doubt he'd seek out her soul, he'd pursue what she knows into Hood's own realm, but she'd know enough to be elusive.»
«Shut up for a minute,» Quick Ben ordered. «Back to the beginning. You said Captain Paran stabbed Gear with his sword?»
Hairlock scowled. «I did. A mortal weapon-it shouldn't have been possible. He may well have dealt the Hound a fatal wound.» The puppet paused, then growled, «You've not told me everything, Wizard. There are gods involved in this. If you keep me in such ignorance I might well stumble into the path of one of them.» He spat. «A slave to you is bad enough. Do you think you could challenge a god for mastery of me? I'd be taken, turned, perhaps even:» Hairlock unsheathed one of his small knives, «used against you.» He advanced a step, a dark glitter in his eyes.
Quick Ben raised an eyebrow. Inside, his heart lurched in his chest. Was it possible? Would he not have detected something? A flavour, a hint of immortal presence?
«One last thing, Wizard,» Hairlock murmured, taking another step. «Tattersail's fever crested just this night past. She screamed something about a coin. A coin that had spun, but now it has fallen, it has bounced, it has entered someone's hand. You must tell me about this coin-I must have your thoughts, Wizard.» The puppet stopped suddenly and looked down at the knife in his hand. Hairlock hesitated, seeming confused, then sheathed the weapon and squatted. «What's so important about a coin?» he growled. «Nothing. The bitch raved-she was stronger than I had thought.»
Quick Ben froze. The puppet seemed to have forgotten that the wizard was present. The thoughts he now heard were Hairlock's own. He realized he was looking through the shattered window into the puppet's insane mind. And it was there that all the danger lay. The wizard held his breath as Hairlock continued, its eyes fixed on the clouds below.
«Gear should have killed her-would have, if not for that idiot captain. What irony, he now tends to her and puts his hand to his sword whenever I seek to come near. He knows I would snuff her life in an instant. But that sword. What god plays with this fool noble?» The puppet spoke on, but his words dwindled into inaudible mumbles.
Quick Ben waited, hoping for more, though what he'd already heard was enough to set his heart pounding. This mad creature was unpredictable, and all that held him in check was a tenuous control-the strings of power he'd attached to Hairlock's wooden body. But with this kind of madness came strength-enough strength to break those strings?
The wizard was no longer as sure of his control as he had been.
Hairlock had fallen silent. His painted eyes still flickered with black flame-the leaking of Chaotic power. Quick Ben took a step forward.
«Pursue Tayschrenn's plans,» he commanded, then he kicked hard. The toe of his boot struck Hairlock's chest and sent the puppet spinning.
Hairlock flew out over the edge, then fell downward. His outraged snarl dwindled as he disappeared into the yellow clouds.
Quick Ben drew a deep breath of the thick, stale air. He hoped that his abrupt dismissal had been enough to skew Hairlock's recollections of the past few minutes. Still, he felt those strings of control growing ever more taut. The more this Warren twisted Hairlock, the more power he would command.
The wizard knew what he'd have to do-Hairlock had given it to him, in fact. Still, Quick Ben wasn't looking forward to it. The taste of sour bile rose into his mouth and he spat over the ledge. The air stank of sweat and it was a moment before he realized it was his own. He hissed a curse. «Time to leave,» he muttered. He raised his arms.
The wind returned with a roar, and he felt his body flung up, up into the cavern above, then the next. As the caverns blurred by, a single word clung to his thoughts, a word that seemed to twist around the problem of Hairlock like a web.
Quick Ben smiled, but it was a smile responding to terror. And the word remained, Gear, and with that name the wizard's terror found a face.
Whiskeyjack rose amid silence. The expressions arrayed around him were sober, eyes downcast or fixed elsewhere, closed into some personal, private place where swam the heaviest thoughts. The lone exception was Sorry, who stared at the sergeant with bright, approving eyes.
Whiskeyjack wondered who was doing the approving within those eyes-then he shook his head, angry that something of Quick Ben and Kalam's suspicions had slipped into his thoughts.
He glanced away, to see Quick Ben approaching. The wizard looked tired, an ashen tint to his face. Whiskeyjack's gaze snapped to Kalam.
The assassin nodded. «Everyone, look alive,» he said. «Load up the boat and get it ready.»
Mallet leading the way, the others headed down to the beach.
Waiting for Quick Ben to arrive, Kalam said, «The squad looks beat, Sergeant. Fiddler, Trotts and Hedge moved enough dirt in those tunnels to bury the Empire's dead. I'm worried about them. Mallet-he seems to be holding together, so far: Still, whatever Sorry knows about fishing, I doubt any one of us could row their way out of a bathtub. And we're about to try crossing a lake damn near big as a sea?»
«Whiskeyjack's jaw tightened, then he forced a casual shrug into his shoulders. «You know damn well that any Warren opening anywhere near the city will likely be detected. No choice, Corporal. We row. Unless we can rig up a sail.»
Kalam grunted. «Since when does the girl know about fishing?»
The sergeant sighed. «I know. Came out of nowhere, didn't it?»
«Bloody convenient.»
Quick Ben reached the dome of rock. Both men fell silent at seeing his expression.
«I'm about to propose something you're going to hate,» the wizard said.
«Let's hear it,» Whiskeyjack replied, in a voice empty of feeling.
Ten minutes later the three men arrived on the slick pebbled beach, both Whiskeyjack and Kalam looking shaken. A dozen yards from the water's edge sat the fisher boat. Trotts was straining on the rope attached to the prow hook, gasping and moaning as he leaned forward with all his weight.
The rest of the squad stood in a clump off to one side, quietly discussing Trotts» futile efforts. Fiddler chanced to look up. Seeing Whiskeyjack marching towards them, he blanched.
