Nightlord: Shadows (26 page)

“Yes.”

I really wanted to ask for a decision, but sometimes pushing for a decision pushes people the wrong way. Or, at least, pushes them the way you don’t want them to go.

“Okay. I’m going to be training knights, tomorrow. Do you want to come by and help deal with sprains, aches, tears, pulls, cracks, concussions, and contusions?”

“It is not I who does such things, but the power of the Mother,” she corrected me.

“A fair point. Would you like to come watch? I’m not insisting, not even asking you to, just pointing out where I’ll be tomorrow, and if you want to, you’re welcome to drop by.”

“Perhaps I will.”

I bowed slightly to her; she bowed slightly, stiffly, in return.

“Then, until we meet again, it has been a pleasure.”

“I am pleased to have met you,” she replied.

As I started to leave, door open, foot across the threshold, I turned back.

“I am sorry,” I told her, sincerely. “I really am. I was terrified of being a father, and very much looking forward to it.”

“I…” she trailed off into another awkward silence.

“Yeah, it’s hard to explain. Anyway, goodnight,” I said, and shut the door.

Bronze followed me as I walked through town. She was very glad to be away from the Mother of Flame’s idol. Bronze kept her head lowered over my shoulder and I kept my arm under her neck, hand up alongside her cheek to reassure her. Well, someone was reassured by the contact. As we went, I talked to her about what I found out and how I felt about it. Being a father with a full-grown daughter is disconcerting. Discovering that, during your nap, you became not just a father but also a grandfather, all in one go…

Immortality problems. I am disturbed. Well, more disturbed than usual.

I once decided to accept that I’m not a human being anymore. I find that I have to keep reminding myself of that. I started as one and that’s still my dominant experience—possibly reinforced by all the humans souls I keep eating; I am very much what I eat, apparently—and it’s not always easy to reconcile being alive and dead. So, I’m sort of human, at least part-time. I have to be human and inhuman, which really messes with my moral navigation.

I’m a grandfather. An undead, blood-sucking, soul-eating, monster of the night grandfather to a sun-goddess Chosen One priestess of fire.

Suddenly, everything is different. In no particular order:

Tort used to be the little girl that had bad dreams about an ugly man with a heavy boot. She slept in a bed between a fire-witch and a nightlord and suddenly, no bad dreams. She used to be small enough to ride my hip and watch everything with big eyes while being adorable.

Now she’s a grown woman. She’s got the equivalent of a doctorate in magic. She’s got a career as a professional magician. She’s got her own home and, apparently, is moderately wealthy. She’s also very attractive, which I find hard to reconcile with my month-ago recollection of her being small and adorable.

I used to date a fire-witch. She was the priestess of a fiery goddess for a whole kingdom. She bore my children while I was sleeping—again, about a month ago, tops, to me. My girlfriend is now apparently old and senile, somewhere, and I should probably find her. We need to talk.

What we need to talk about is my daughter, who is now a grown woman and the Princess of Mochara, whatever that means. And we need to talk about my deceased son, whose deceasement seems to be a secret, or at least a sensitive subject. And there’s my granddaughter… She complicates my life in ways I don’t understand just by existing.

And, of course, Firebrand. We don’t share the same sort of connection that Bronze and I do, but Firebrand can actually talk—well, converse—with me. It will also argue with me, and is enough different from me that it has different viewpoints and opinions. In the deep of the night, when everyone else needs to get some rest, Firebrand and I can talk. But it’s probably quite content right where it is, hacking off heads and setting fire to anything it likes.

I looked at Bronze. She nuzzled my face with her nose. She assured me it would all be okay.

“Someday, I’m going to give you a voice,” I said. She flicked an ear dismissively. She really didn’t care, one way or the other.

Then, of course, there’s Tianna. I have a granddaughter. I don’t know who the father is, and I might not be able to find that out. If she was conceived during one of the rites on a high holy day, Amber might not have seen fit to tell her. Being fatherless makes the priestesses more devoted to their mother, or the Mother of Fire, or something. It’s the only family they have.

Which might explain Amber’s awkwardness around me. I’m not supposed to exist.

Of course, my awkwardness can be explained by being me.

Okay. Okay.

It’s after midnight, I’m wandering around a town I don’t really know, people are abroad in the world who want to kill me, I’m emotionally disturbed by a number of changes in my life, I have no one that I feel comfortable waking up just to talk to, I don’t know where my former lover or former sword are, I have factions of trained combatants who either want to serve me or test me or kill me or something, I have this insane urge to be moving and doing without pause, and because I am the ruler
de jure
, I may be about to be embroiled, so to speak, in political problems with the
de facto
ruler of this place, who happens to be my estranged daughter and priestess of a solar deity, and I’m undead.

To top it all off, I just want to go home. I miss easy chairs and air conditioning. I miss having
small
responsibilities.

Right. So. Do the next thing, that’s the ticket. What do I need to do now to get ready for tomorrow? Forget about the day after tomorrow. Focus on the immediate future.

In the morning, I’m training knights. Right. For now, what do I need to get ready for the morning?

Well, I could check in with the mountain. Bronze and I headed out the north gate again. She put her head down, grabbed my hands with her mane, and accelerated like a rocket sled on legs. It was a long, straight, smooth road, and she kept accelerating until I thought the wind was enough to peel a normal human right out of a saddle. I hunched lower, squeezed tighter, and she went faster. I gave up on trying to look forward; I didn’t want to lose my helmet. I just kept my face down and held on against a headwind that felt like the exhaust from a jet engine.

She really does love to run.

I briefly considered having her stop to let me put a windshield spell around us, but she was enjoying this. Smoke poured past me on both sides and the flare of flames from her nostrils illuminated the rapidly-moving area in front of us. I had no way to judge our speed, but I longed for a radar gun. I’d settle for a stopwatch and range markers. I think she’s even faster than I remember.

As we thundered up the road, I saw the mountain closing in on us. Were we gradually going even faster as she ran? Possibly. I’ve seen her body adapt to circumstances before. Given her heavy, draft-horse appearance, I’d guess she hadn’t gone for a speed run in quite some time. Judging by the feeling of exhilaration, not to say joy, I was absolutely correct.

A three-day trip on foot took, at most, half an hour. Probably less. That works out to slightly under ridiculous miles per hour on horseback.

We clanged over the bridge and around. The pivot-gate in the wall was still open, so we cornered through it and started up the mountain. She slowed a little as we reached the top; the curve of the road was more pronounced up there. We finally slowed to a more normal trot as we cornered at the end of the road, through the courtyard gate, and made our way around the inner/upper peak to the main door.

I leaped down as Bronze halted in the great hall. Without the wind to cool her, she could have been a horse-shaped door to a furnace—which, come to think of it, she might be. I dismounted quickly because I didn’t want to risk setting anything I was wearing on fire. She also breathed fire involuntarily, jet after jet of it roaring from her mouth—waste heat as she cooled off? I don’t know enough about golem biology…

Actually, yes, I do. It is waste heat, because bending metal heats up and causes the external portion of the golem to generate more heat than normal, while the internal portions also generate more energy due to the increased demand. Jointed golems, such as suits of armor, don’t generate as much waste heat because they’re designed—

Ow. Headache. But, yes, all golems generate heat, and it was the normal way to cool off.

I patted her on the nose and thanked her, then went up toward the royal chambers and the room the mountain chose for providing metal. There were obvious ribbons of ore in the walls, but no actual lumps that could be easily hacked off. Well, the stone could only respond so quickly. Maybe in a couple of days.

I mentally checked that off. One down. What else could I accomplish before dawn? How about more equipment for tomorrow’s training? I might not have metal to work with, but there are lots of trees in the Eastrange.

We zinged down the mountain again, gaining speed as we descended the grand spiral, hooves clanging and ringing. We slowed a bit when we entered the large, open area just inside the city’s main pivot-gate.

Something heaved itself out of the water to a great height. It crashed down, smashing the southern guard tower and the pivot-gate itself. Stone crumbled under its weight and rubble rolled and tumbled aside. Just the portion of the Thing that lurched out of the lake-moat must have been eighty feet long and maybe twenty in diameter. I couldn’t see any eyes, but the business end of it was entirely mouth. I knew this because it opened in three directions and showed me its tooth-lined maw and gullet, preparatory to eating me.

Why is it that Tort is the only person that gives me
pleasant
surprises?

It was directly in front of us as we barreled down on the gate. I drew steel and leaped straight up; Bronze lowered her head and accelerated right down the Thing’s throat. We didn’t plan it that way, we just did it. There was no way she could stop on the stone surface, especially with the sudden burst of rubble and gravel, but she made a great missile. I, on the other hand, needed room to swing a sword effectively.

I landed on top of the Thing, or nearly so; the smell reminded me of rotting blood and burnt onions. I slid across the slick, oily surface while it involuntarily swallowed Bronze. Unfortunately for it, I had the presence of mind to reverse my grip, ram my sword down into its rubbery hide, and continue to slide with it, like a man in a boat holding a steering oar. My own mass and momentum, even without armor, was more than enough to rip the Thing open for yards. A terrible, fetid odor immediately bubbled out of the Thing, followed by a black sludge full of severed rubbery bits. It put me in mind of a whale corpse that had rotted on the beach until it exploded.

When I came off the Thing’s back, or top, or whatever that surface was, I landed on the ring road with nearly a foot to spare; just a little farther and I’d have been in the moat. I hurled myself away from the Thing and from the edge. I expected the Thing to whip around and snap at me, but it didn’t. Instead, it sat there, partly inside the wall, partly trailing over the edge of the road into the water. It bulged and humped and twisted, as though having some sort of big, worm-like seizure. At a guess, it was trying to digest my horse, which is problematic for anything short of a car crusher.

I circled away from the moat and started slicing the Thing. Up, down, and across, the sword was wonderful; it cut right through the thick, rubbery hide, the blubber and foulness, even the occasional cartilaginous bit. It was almost like swinging through air. I even ran down one side of the Thing, sword buried to the hilt in it, and opened it from midline to jawline.

Bronze kicked her way out through that cut, bellowing fire. The Thing seemed glad to let her go; it certainly made no move to try and eat her again. It did try to eat me, but I parried three snatching tentacle-tongues with the edge of the blade and severed them messily. When it snapped at me the next time, I was prepared. With a cutting implement of that quality, I could do surprising things.

I stepped forward in hyperdrive, between the open jaws, placing myself inside the mouth but between the majority of the teeth; Bronze had bashed out a nice gap when she went down its throat. I also had my sword ready, held low, pointed down and to my left. When the jaws closed around me, I cut across and up and over and down and around, a huge, circular cut.

This maneuver removed its face, or the equivalent. The front of the jaws fell off and I stepped back out, mindful of ichor on my clothes. Bronze took that as an opportunity to breathe fire into that ichor-spurting orifice.

With that much done, killing it was just a matter of keeping at it until it quit. While Bronze’s kicks—even
Bronze’s
kicks!—didn’t have much effect, Bronze practically stuck her head into any opening I made and roasted internal chunks. It thrashed, trying to pummel us, but Bronze didn’t really mind being hit with a sack of blubber. While I minded something awful—yuck!—I generally managed to punish it by carving away large chunks. That was a trade I could make all night, no matter how disgusting it might be.