[Kelvin 03] - Chimaera's Copper (with Robert E. Margroff) (19 page)

Kelvin blinked, but the sight remained. Where the man's wrist should have been was a metallic something that could hardly be bone.

From the foreshortened arm a ruby laser flashed out. It cut through one of the pincers. The pincer and Stapular hit the floor simultaneously.

"Now you'll see!" Stapular said, rising and pointing the stump. "I came prepared! It was planned that I be the last, and hide this until the last moment! I didn't want to have to reveal my nature, but this Minor World scum forced my hand." He glanced briefly at the hand he had removed. "Now, Chimaera--"

Mervania screamed. Mertin made an exclamation of dismay. Grumpus growled. If a monster could tremble, this one was doing so.

Casually Stapular lanced off the second pincer. With his back against the wall, immune from being grabbed, he could proceed to cut off every arm and head.

"Listen, Minor World being," Stapular said. "You wouldn't have it the conventional way! You had to make me ruin my cover! Now listen to the death cries of the last known surviving chimaera in all the frames!"

"No, no!" Mervania cried. It sounded very much like a woman's pleading, and indeed there were tears in her eyes.

Kelvin could not have said how it happened. Suddenly he raised, reversed, and flung his sword forward. It was the gauntlets' doing. For the moment the gauntlets appeared to have chosen a strange side.

The sword turned in the air, the point coming to the fore. The blade penetrated Stapular's throat precisely in the middle. Stapular looked surprised. Then he raised his intact hand and yanked the sword partway out.

Something black gushed forth. Alien blood? No, not blood at all, Kelvin realized. Oil! Stapular was what his father called a robot!

Whatever it was, the fluid was necessary for the thing's functioning. As it poured out, Stapular collapsed. He could not function without oil pressure any better than a living creature could function without blood pressure.

"You have saved us! You have saved us!" Mervania exclaimed, and even Grumpus growled something that sounded appreciative. Monsters valued their lives as much as other folk did.

Now John Knight and Kian were opening their eyes, returning to bewildered consciousness.

"It was all a trick!" Mervania babbled indignantly. "A trick of the hunters!"

"That thing never would have tasted right!" Mertin said with disgust. "It would have given Grumpus indigestion."

"GROOOOMTH!" the dragon head agreed with a disgusted expression.

Kelvin looked quickly to his father and brother, and back to the faces of their captor. Now they were in for it, he thought. Now they were all going to be rewarded in the worst possible way for his colossal stupidity and for the gauntlets' interference. Now they had no way to escape being eaten by the chimaera.

Grumpus snapped his big jaws and darted forth his forked tongue as if hungry already.

CHAPTER 14

Turnings

St. Helens prepared himself for death, as well as he was able. He expected a spear to be rammed through him or a knife slitting his throat. Yet even as this child-king who was not a child screamed "Kill him!" the witch opened her eyes and stared piercingly at the men holding him.

"No, precious," she said, her eyes flicking back to the child. "He must be a prisoner."

"He killed you!" the child shrilled.

"Not yet, precious. Not yet. Please, darlings, humor me. My kind are hard to kill." With those words the old woman ceased speaking and closed her eyes as though for death.

St. Helens heard a sword snick out of a scabbard. She had spoken too late, or died too early, he thought. Now the brat-king would have his understandable revenge.

"No!" the little guy ordered. "Don't kill him! Put him in the dungeon! As for Helbah, take her in!"

"But--"

At that moment a large houcat, very black, ferocious of eye, leaped from behind the second young king and ran to Helbah's apparent corpse. For one moment St. Helens felt the sharp yellow eyes, and heard the wickedest, deepest, longest-drawn hiss he'd ever heard from anything feline. Then the houcat was on the corpse, breathing in and out against Helbah's worn mouth.

Suddenly the houcat stiffened all over. Then it collapsed like a black, empty bag. The blackness stayed there and seemed even to be melting as a soldier jerked St. Helens' arm.

Now there were two corpses, he thought. Witch's and witch's familiar. But whatever else he might think of her, he knew that the witch had saved his life.

The soldiers rushed him away. Lomax steadied his young resolve as he looked up and down the line of survivors of the recent fight. They had lost only about a dozen men in addition to St. Helens, but twenty more were wounded seriously enough to be sent home. The remainder, Lomax determined, were going to cross that border again. But first there was this other matter.

"All right! Who did it! Who fired that crossbow bolt! Who violated the truce?"

No one spoke. All the Hermans remained impassive, while the mercenaries were interested rather than apprehensive. Judging from appearances, none here were guilty.

"You, Phillip, did you--"

He was going to say "see someone do it?" but the boy interrupted him.

"Yes, I did it! I did it! I'm the one!"

"YOU! But why?" His head swam even as he asked it.

"St. Helens plays chess! He knows you have to take out the dark queen!"

"You've killed him! You're responsible for his death!"

"He's my greatest friend! Oh, Lomax, please, please hang me as he asked!"

Lomax shivered. "You really--"

"Please. I did it for him. I did it for all of us. So that we could win. The same as when Kelvin destroyed Melbah in Aratex."

"Damn!" Lomax said, pained and unenthusiastic. The kid really did think it a game! Doubtless he thought that afterward the dead simply woke up and resumed living, ready to play the game again. Kids!

"Please," Phillip repeated. "It was my dearest friend's last request. He was not only my dearest friend, he was my only friend!"

Lomax shook all over, unable to stop himself. "You really want me to give that order? You really want to hang by your neck and choke, your eyeballs bugging out? You want to die?"

"Yes."

He considered it. He liked Phillip in spite of himself. Would St. Helens really want him dead? St. Helens had saved the former figurehead king of Aratex from death, and had treated him as a friend. Should he, could he now follow what had been St. Helens' command?

"NO!" he said forcefully. "That'd be too easy on you! You have to go back with us into Kance! You have to fight the enemy and make up for what you've done!"

"Oh, thank you, thank you, kind, gentle friend!"

Was that for refusing to hang him, or for visiting on him presumably worse punishment? There were tears in the boy's eyes, but his voice was not devoid of sneaky triumph. What game was he really playing?

Well, the reality of battle would sweat that out of him, if it didn't kill him first.

St. Helens, Lomax thought in what was almost a prayer, I promise you will be avenged even if it costs every one of our lives!

The phantoms were not coming now, Mor thought. They'd quit appearing and disappearing in midbattle. Yet his men were losing, losing badly, and not to witchcraft.

He finished off the Klinglander he was fighting and then wheeled his horse. Dead and dying men lay everywhere, and yes, the tide of battle had definitely turned. It galled him to do it, but there was no alternative. He lifted the horn to his lips and blew the signal for retreat.

Their only consolation, he thought, was that in the forests grew bloodfruit for the treatment of the wounded. Before this war was over, the magical fruit would save a lot of lives.

Thinking grimly of the surgery that would have to be set up, Mor turned his horse. A forest with bloodfruit was reasonably close behind.

Zoanna stared into her crystal and laughed a most unbeautiful laugh that Rowforth found deliciously chilling.

"Look! Look!" she ordered.

He was looking. He saw the witch who controlled the kingdoms of Klingland and Kance lying motionless without a visible sign of life. There was that black houcat lying on her face, melting into it. There were the Kancian soldiers dragging a bewildered St. Helens away.

"Does this mean we've won?" he asked. He felt stupid asking a woman about anything, even Zoanna. He felt particularly stupid now, knowing that he had done nothing to direct the battles or secure the triumph.

"We will have won if she never recovers," Zoanna said. "We must see that she doesn't."

"You will use more magic?"

"Magic won't be needed in the war. Of course my not helping our side will mean many more casualties. Some of those will be our former enemies."

"A shame," he said smugly. "They'll fight their hearts out and never know why."

"Yes, they'll die for us, one way or another. Those who survive the battles may have to die later."

"Slowly, with our help, and with much pain."

"Of course. That is what we both want."

They embraced, the battles revealed by the crystals fading from their minds. Soon, he thought, there was going to commence the fulfillment of all his dreams. It would be brutally, bloodily, ghastlily glorious.

Lester Crumb imagined that he was back fighting the Queen's Guardsmen, with Kelvin's Knights of the Roundear. Then he opened his eyes and found that the man bending over him wore a different uniform. He strove to think, to reorient, and then it came, the pain of the wound high in his chest. Where was Jon? Jon had saved his life and then gone on to become his wife. What had happened?

Different war. Different battle. Different circumstances. Jon was far away. Safe. Oh, he hoped she was safe!

A gnarled hand mopped at his brow. He felt the sweat that was all over his face, soaking his undergarments, the blanket he lay upon. Overhead was the roof of a tent. The tent was flapping dismally in a wind that howled like disembodied souls slain in battle.

"We were fighting Kance soldiers," he said. "I fell. Someone saved me. It was almost like another battle when I was unhorsed."

"Save your strength, Commander."

Commander? Him? He could hardly remember. His head hurt and pounded like a drum beaten to announce someone's death. Oh, if only Jon were here to hold him! He tried remembering the officer's name. Klumpecker, that was it! Lieutenant Karl Klumpecker from Throod.

He looked into the deep blue eyes, noting the blond hair and the smile so typical of Throod mercenaries. Big shoulders, too, and a strong frame, though not quite as great in these departments as his father.

"Did we win the battle?" "No, Commander, we lost."

Somehow he thought he'd say that. "Many casualties?"

"I'm afraid so, Commander. On both sides."

"Can we win the war?"

"Eventually, Commander. When Commander Reilly and the Hermans and your father and his troops and ours all reach the caps."

"Yes, the caps." Insane business, two capitals in one. Governed, theoretically, by two very slowly maturing boys. Governed in fact by a witch identical in appearance to the one Kelvin had destroyed in Aratex. Would Kelvin soon return? Would he return as in Aratex to put everything right? When he had started this adventure he had been certain. Now wounded, now defeated in battle, he was no longer certain of anything.

"Commander, your wound is so serious that--" The lieutenant paused, seemingly searching for words.

"If I cannot command, you must, Lieutenant. We must not surrender! We must fight on! My father and St. Helens are depending on us!"

"Yes, Commander Crumb. We will fight our way into the caps and into glory."

With me or without me, Les added in his own troubled thoughts. He wanted to pass out, even to die, but thoughts of Jon would not allow it. Then it seemed that he was but a little boy, that he was lost, and that all others were gone.

Charlain moved her copper locks out of her violet eyes with a quick sweep of her slender hand. The cards she was laying out on the kitchen table had come out the same as before. Every time the Blind Fool headed Kelvin's file, designating great danger and uncertainty for him.

"Does the prophecy still apply?" she whispered to herself. "Can it still?"

She tweaked her right pointed ear to keep herself awake. John Knight had been intrigued by that habit of hers. Strange man, John. She had once thought of him only as a way of fulfilling the prophecy. He, a roundear, would mate with her, a pointed-ear person, and their son would be the one mentioned in the Book of Prophecy. It had all seemed so simple when she was young. John had come straight from the queen's dungeon, torn, lonely, and confess it now, handsome. She had wanted him from the start, and they had married quickly and without attracting attention. They had had their son, and then a daughter. Only roundeared Kelvin could relate to the prophecy, but pointeared Jon had supported him loyally.

In time Kelvin had indeed slain dragons, and freed their kingdom of Rud from the tyrannous Queen Zoanna. The prophecy was being fulfilled, as she had foreseen.

Then things had changed, and nothing was as she had expected. Perhaps her action in implementing the prophecy had caused the fabric of the situation to change. Kelvin had left this frame and returned to it just in time to save Rud and Aratex by uniting them, just as in the prophecy--but that had been by the skin of his fingernails! Now "joining four" were the next words in the verse that applied to him. He was supposed to join four kingdoms. But how could he? Kelvin wasn't even here! He was in another frame, and the prophecy that he would rid his homeland of a sore was rapidly being nullified. Sometimes she almost thought that John Knight had been right.

"Nonsense, this prophecy business! Nonsense!" John had said, sometimes sitting at this very table. She had soothed him, calmed him, knowing even then that he would not always be hers. He had suffered himself to be soothed, not because he accepted magic, but because she was beautiful in his eyes (and perhaps in others' eyes too), and he liked to be close to her. So his contempt of magic had been muted at times, until finally he began to believe. Then she had lost him, through no choice of either of theirs, in the necessary tragedy of the times.