Songs of the Dancing Gods

or mortal, a practical difference only to them, but no people.”

“I also wonder just how long ago this battle was,” Macore commented. “I mean, it’s ancient enough to have passed into legend, and I Ve yet to recognize any creature as something I’ve met, but the armor and the weaponry and things like saddles and such look very up to date. In fact, a lot of it looks better than what we have now.”

“Some races might have died out right here,” Marge noted. “Others might well have been transformed or scattered to the four comers of the world by any power strong enough to do this. As for the men, their souls might well be long gone and only their bodies remaining locked in the ice. We fairies, on the other hand, don’t have that luxury. I think that what we’re seeing are actual fairy souls, ancient ones, freed of their husks, unable to dissipate, rising in the cracks into the air and then dispersing to the air before a new husk can form. It’s pretty depressing, if you’re fairy.”

Joe sighed. “The only thing I can say is that everything I’ve seen so far is something I don’t mind having dissipated. I keep thinking that we might not have it right, though. I keep remembering Quasa’s tale of seeing the one-time humans turned into a collection of bestiary after being in here. I know there’s even supposed to be frozen spells in this crap, but that wouldn’t explain that sort of stuff. Nobody throws spells that give the enemy goat heads or fish tails.”

“Fairy blood was probably stronger then, like the magic,” Marge guessed. “There are fairies even today with goatlike heads, and others with fishlike tails. Suppose you were standing right on one of those openings when the fairy spirit rose? The instinctive thing would be to find cover, to find a temporary husk. If pieces of those souls had time to get to mortal flesh, they might produce that sort of thing.”

“The odds of being on top of one of these cracks when it goes is pretty slim,” Macore responded, thinking. “But if you added heat, you might get a whole bunch in full strength at once balding for the flesh. What do you bet that they peed themselves into monsters?”

After walking for what seemed like hours, at least, although there was no reliable way to tell time, they broke for a rest. The bag was well used, and they knew it would be a total discard by the time they were done, and the block of ice for a seat was barely big enough for Joe, with Macore almost sitting on his lap. The little thief looked up at the big man, grinned, and said, “Daddy.”

“You be good or I’ll throw you off!” Joe threatened.. Marge and Mia sat wearily in the snow, knowing that their body heat, at least, would not transfer without action on their part, and action was the last thing either of them wanted.

Mia looked back at their tracks. “Do you think they are still following us, Master?” she asked nervously.

“If they haven’t peed their own selves into oblivion or worse by now, yeah,” Macore answered before Joe could. “Most of ’em are kind of bored and not real energetic, but that Quasa is a tough, hard-nosed bitch who would pursue you to the City-States and beyond, if you forgot to fill out a form.”

Joe looked around. “If there was any kind of cover I’d almost be tempted to wait for them. If they do catch up, Mia and I will handle them, understand? Just stay behind us and don’t make yourselves targets.”

“But the crossbows!” Marge objected. “And you don’t dare run at them in here!”

“Don’t have to,” he told her. “It might be a little bloody and painful, but all the bolts I saw in there were wood or bronze-tipped.”

“Whatever you do, don’t bleed on the snow!” Macore warned. “Blood’s warm.”

“I’ll try not to, if it’s necessary. But if one of them goes down, it could be hairy.”

“We may find out after all,” Marge said. “If that’s not two figures of flesh and blood coming, I don’t know what they can be.”

Joe sighed tiredly and got up. “And it was always my experience that women seemed to be always going to the bathroom. Bad luck.”

“Perhaps not, Master,” Mia responded, getting up as well and pulling her knife from the pack, then walking slowly away from him. “I, for one, would rather meet these two than an assemblage of those horrors we’ve been seeing.”

Marge used her extraordinary vision. “Crossbows for sure. I doubt if there’s much hope of you not taking one in the chest, Joe.”

“Just remember where not to bleed!” Macore emphasized helpfully.

“And watch out for a chain reaction,” Marge warned. “If you get one of them and she falls and bleeds, it’s sure as hell gonna raise something.”

The two women stopped about twenty or twenty-five yards from them, crossbows now at the ready. They weren’t going to allow themselves to get close enough in to take a sword or knife.

“You’re coming back!” Quasa told them in a firm, businesslike tone. “All four of you. I don’t know where you came from, nymph, but you can’t fly here and you sure as hell can’t run.”

“Nymph! I’m a Kauri, you little broom-ridin’ boot-lickin’ daughter of a bitch!”

Joe drew his sword, which hummed in excitement of having its own feast. Below, the colored lights seemed to change and shift, as if reacting to the sword.

“Your crossbows won’t save you,” Joe told them flatly. “They’ll cause us a little pain, but that’s the way it goes. Your plan to amputate a part of me wouldn’t have worked, either. It would have come back. The only thing you could have done to me physically was make my hair fall out, and I kind of like my hair.”

Quasa seemed confused about the reply. Never before had she had someone in this position, where she could drop them with one well-placed shot but they couldn’t possibly get to her, when they didn’t surrender.

“What do you think you are? Demons? Sorcerers? You have no protective spells. I can see the spells you have. And the bitch is a slave. That’s plain to see!”

He took a step toward the women, and Mia, to one side and presenting a separate target, started in, as well.

“But not even a sorcerer can see blood curses,” he replied. “And even mercenaries and slaves can be werewolves.” He’d long ago given up any idea of explaining the concept of just a were.

“Werewolves! You’re bluffing!” But she didn’t sound so confident, and actually retreated a step.

“So you can’t kill us, you see,” Joe kept on. “But we can kill you with these weapons. You’re the ones who can’t run or hide, not us. Better be sure before you shoot that thing. Blood’s warm. You see the Devastation gathering around us? It senses battle, it senses death. Who knows what we’ll raise by our fighting? Perhaps you’ll have a pig’s head and a duck’s feet. How’s that for explaining to superiors?”

“Stay back!” the other woman screamed. “We’ll shoot!”

Joe and Mia kept their advances. Ten yards. Eight. Six. “We are already reconciled to that,” he said.

The other woman, frightened and confused, raised her crossbow and trained it at Joe.

“No! Shiza! Don’t!” Quasa screamed, but it was too late. Shiza fired her bolt.

It struck him with tremendous force right in his chest, the force of it almost bowling him over backward. It was only with an extreme will and the fact that he was wearing two flattened oversized ice blocks on his feet that kept him up at all. Even so, he bent over backward so much he was afraid he was going to touch the ground, and he did brush the snow slightly.

But, boy! That hurt like hell!

He straightened back up, looked down at the bolt buried deep in his chest, grabbed it with his left hand so Irving could remain in his right, and, gritting his teeth, he pulled the bloody thing out and away. It hurt more to remove the damned thing than it did to be shot by it.

“Man! Is that ever the worst case of heartburn I ever had!” Satisfied that the bloody thing had cooled, he threw it well away and continued forward.

It was too much for Shiza. She panicked, dropping the crossbow, then turned, kicked off the ice blocks on her own boots, and began running.

The display of color under them suddenly shifted and started chasing her. Puffs of electriclike energy bolts in a variety of colors seemed to come out of the snow, and the whole mess seemed to take on a life of its own. Joe, and even Quasa, stood frozen, watching what was going to happen.