Goblins.”
They pullulated over the swamp, squatting in mud and on beaten-down reeds, swarming, erupting in screaming throat-rending fights that ended when others appointed to the task clubbed them down again. Hundreds, perhaps thousands. On the patches of higher ground crude altars of logs stood, with figures strapped across them- swamp-devils, and others that looked like normal men and women. Those were mostly hundreds of yards away, and she was thankful for it. What she could see brought memories back and the taste of vomit at the base of her throat. In the center stood an altar taller than the others, built on a platform of cypress logs. Standing upon it was a figure in black, silhouetted against a roaring fire. He raised his arms and silence fell, save for the screams-then a chanting, discordant at first, growing into unison.
“Tchernobog! Tchernobog! Tchernobog!”
Drums joined it, war-drums of human hide stretched over bone, thuttering to the beat of calloused palms. The beat walked in her blood, shivered in her tight-clenched teeth.
“What does that mean?” Robre asked.
“Tchernobog,” King whispered back. “Black God. Peacock Angel; the Eater of Worlds. That’s the one who taught them.” He hesitated, looked at both of them. “If I kill him, there’s a chance they’ll be demoralized and run. On the other hand, there’s a chance they’ll come straight for us. At the very least, they’ll be short of leadership beyond the kill-and-eat level. Shall I?”
Robre nodded. Sonjuh did, as well. “He’s the cause of our hurts,” she said. “Kill him!”
King nodded in the gloom, the shadow of his turban making his outline monstrous. He unslung the heavy double rifle, lay behind a fallen log, waited a long second. A silence seemed to fall about him, drinking in sound. He could be more still than any man she’d ever met, and it was a bit disconcerting-like his habit of crossing his legs in an impossible-looking position and doing what he called meditating.
Now there was a slight, almost imperceptible hiss of exhaling breath, and his finger stroked the trigger.
Crack. The sound was thunder-loud, and she’d never seen the weapon fired at night. The great bottle- shaped blade of red-orange fire almost blinded her, and left her eyes smarting and watering. She looked away to get her night vision back, blinking rapidly. The foreigner who’d taught the wild men how to act together-the Russki — was staggering in a circle. At six hundred paces, Eric’s weapon had torn an arm off at the shoulder; the swamp- devils were throwing themselves flat in terror, their voices a chorus of shrieking like evil ghosts.
Crack. The distant figure fell.
“Dead as mutton,” King said. “And now, let’s go.”
Scarred chinless faces were turning their way now, the huge goblin eyes staring. The moonlight would be enough for them; legend said that they saw better by night than true men did. Sonjuh came to her feet and ran, with Slasher trotting at her heel. Behind her the sound of the others’ feet came, and behind them more of the squealing, shrieking horde. There must be hundreds of hundreds of them…
The gun roared again, and again. Below it she could hear Robre’s bow snapping; they must be discouraging the foremost pursuers. Sonjuh kept her head down and ran, the cool wet air of the riverbottom night was good for it. She blinked in surprise as the riverside came into sight, moonlight making a long rippling highway on it. There was no time to waste; she tossed her crossbow into the last of the big dugouts and dug her heels into the mud, putting her back to the wood and pushing.
Nothing happened, nothing save that stars and glimmers danced across her vision as she strained. It did give her a good look at what was going on behind. Eric came out first, panting so that she could hear him across fifty paces, turned, knelt, breaking open his weapon and reloading. Behind him Robre came, turned, drew, shot, drew, shot-incredibly graceful and swift for so large a man. Sonjuh abandoned her efforts at the canoe, scurried over the sand, grabbed the quivers of the dead swamp-devils, pitched them into the canoe, went back to shoving. Was that a slight movement, a sucking sound in the mud? Her feet churned through slickness.
“Lord o’ Sky burn you, you stupid log, move!” she shrieked in frustration; her own sweat was stinging her chewed lips like fire.
Another crack-crack as Eric fired his rifle. Two cannibals almost to spearcast of Robre pitched backwards, one with most of the top of his head disappearing in a spray of blood that looked black in the moonlight. Robre came pelting back past the Imperial, threw his bow into the canoe, bent to put his shoulder beside hers.
A spray of swamp-devils came out of the trailhead into the open, howling like wolves with every step, their tomahawks and knives glittering like cold silver fire in moonlight and starlight. Eric had slung his rifle; now he drew the revolver from his side. He stood erect, shoulder turned to his enemies, his feet at right angles to each other and his left hand tucked into the small of his back, weapon extended. It seemed a curiously formal pose…
Crack. Much lighter than the boom of the hunting rifle; more like a spiteful snap, with a dagger of red flame in the night. The foremost swamp-devil stopped as if he’d run into an invisible wall, arms flying out to right and left, weapons turning and glinting as they flew, then collapsed; the next tripped over him and never rose. The Imperial’s long arm moved, leisurely and sure, and the pistol snapped. Again and again, six times, and there were six bodies lying still or writhing on the sandy mud. The seventh came leaping over the pile of them, screeching and swinging a mace of polished rock lashed to a handle with human tendons. Eric’s sword flashed out, a clean burnished-steel blur in the moonlight, cut again backhand. The cannibal staggered, gaping at a forearm severed and spouting blood in pulsing-fountain spurts, then collapsed as his guts spilled out through his rent belly. An eighth lay silent as Slasher rose from his body, jaws wet. The Imperial turned and ran.
The canoe was moving, finally moving. King was nearly to them; Slasher soared by him, hit the ground and leapt again, flashing over the two clansfolks’ heads like a gray arrow. Dark figures moved behind King’s back, more of the swamp-devils come from their sabbat, loosing as they ran in a chorus of wolf-howls, pig-squeals, catamount screeches. Black arrows began to flicker past Sonjuh in a whispering hiss of cloven air, invisible until they were almost there; some of them went thunk into the canoe and stood quivering with a malignant hum like evil bees.
The heavy craft was in the water now, river up to her knees, then her thighs, soaking into her leggings and chill against flesh heated by running and the pounding of her heart. She rolled over the side; Robre was pushing hard, his greater height letting him wade out. Sonjuh stuck her head up enough to see over the upcurved stern-end of the dugout, and saw Eric splash into the water at speed, lunging forward to grasp the wood. She also saw more arrows heading toward her like streaming horizontal rain, and ducked down again. King landed atop her, driving the breath out of her with an oof! and grinding her back into the inch or two of water that swilled around in the middle of the hollowed-out cypress log.
The man gave a sharp cry and then spoke fast in that other, utterly unfamiliar language he had-she could tell the difference when he was speaking the one that sounded almost-but-not-quite like Seven Tribes talk. From the sound of it, he was swearing with venomous sincerity. Robre was in the hull now, digging his paddle into the water and looking back to find out why King wasn’t.
Sonjuh had a good idea why, even if it was a little too dark to be sure. She wiggled out from under King and felt down along his legs.
“Arrow,” she said-more were falling into the water about them. “Nearly through the calf slantwise-missed the bone-head’s just under the skin here.”
“Push it through and break it off,” Eric King wheezed. At her hesitation-“ Do it, there’s no time!”
She drew her tomahawk, drew a deep breath, as well, and hammered the arrow through with the flat of the hatchet against the nock. The long body beside hers went rigid for an instant, with a snarling exhalation, his hands clamping on the wood. She used the sharp edge of the weapon to cut the shaft off to stubs on either side, moving his leg so that wood rested on wood for a quick strong flick of the hatchet-blade.
“Give me a hand,” he said tightly; she helped him to a sitting position, and he seized a paddle and set to work.
So did she, in the more conventional kneeling manner; the canoe was long and heavy, made for ten or fifteen men. They managed to drive it out past midpoint, and the rain of arrows ceased. Glancing over her shoulder, Sonjuh gave a harsh chuckle at the screams of rage, as hundreds of the swamp-devils poured onto the riverbank and found their canoes gone.
“That-won’t-hold-’em-long,” Robre panted between strokes. “They’ll-have-more-close by.”
“Or swim, or use logs and rafts,” Sonjuh said unhappily.
We are screwed up, she thought.
