Robert Charrette - Arthur 03 - A Knight Among Knaves (47 page)

The Snowhawk crashed, but Van Dieman was barely aware of the new violence done to his body, awash as he was in agony. New pain forced its way through his wretchedness as ceramic composite fragments from the verrie's fuselage, and razor-edged shards from the windscreen, tore through his body. Crumpling metal mangled his legs and ground his flesh to hamburger. His wounds should have killed him, but he lived.

Life you shall have,
the harbinger had said. He knew the words for a curse.

Smoke filled the air and Van Dieman's lungs. There was fire in the cockpit. Something oily and viscous began to drip onto his shoulder. Fuel or lubricant, its precise nature didn't matter. Whatever it was, it was highly flammable. He called to the harbinger, begging it to save him. Beating his fist bloody against the wreckage that imprisoned him, he screamed promises to the creature. He was willing to do anything for it. Anything!

"Just don't let me burn!"

The harbinger ignored his pleas.

It was singing to the stars.

Holger was impressed by Hagen's piloting skill. Once they reached the mountains, the dwarf shifted the Snowhawk into vertical mode for maneuverability and kept it there, but he never throttled back. The verrie pitched and yawed as Hagen flung it about, climbing to skim over a ridge or banking to avoid a cliff with the barest of margins. It was a wild, nerve-racking ride, but they steadily closed on the Snowhawk that they pursued.

The Dry Valleys through which they flew were strange, the bare ground out of place in this continent of ice. It seemed wrong somehow. He wanted to close his eyes and make it all go away, but he couldn't. Van Dieman's verrie was ahead of them somewhere, and every pair of eyes were needed to spot him. Holger had a duty.

Caliburn lay in his lap—the only way to carry the sword, since he'd had to take off the back-slung scabbard to strap into the verrie's seat. The sword's quick release scabbard exposed most of the blade; Holger ran his hand along it, feeling the cool calmness of the dark steel. The worn leather of the grip felt comfortable under the fingers of his hand. He was flying into battle armed with a sword and an automatic weapon.

Strange, but somehow right.

The strange had become his commonplace. There was no reason for an iceless valley in Antarctica to seem strange, was there? It was what it was, as he was what he was. There was nothing to do but accept it.

"What's that?" Hagen pointed to what looked like a column of smoke rising from somewhere ahead of them.

Holger squinted to see it better. What appeared to be smoke was windborne soil and rocks twisting in the grip of a monstrous dust devil.

"The work of the harbinger," Dr. Spae said. "We must hurry."

"Nice of it to tell us where to look," Hagen commented.

"Keep low," Holger said. "We want to get as close as possible before they see us."

"Don't have to tell me twice."

Hagen dropped the Snowhawk so low that Holger thought they were in danger of making an unintended landing. The verrie arrowed toward a break in the wall of cliffs, a side canyon that seemed to be the one from which the telltale column rose. They banked hard, heading for the mouth of the side canyon.

As he got his first glimpse of the canyon, Holger spotted their quarry. Van Dieman's Snowhawk was headed directly for the sediment-laden whirlwind.

"What have you got that sword for?" Chase asked.

An incongruous time for that sort of question.

"You
ought to know," John snapped.

Any surprise at the kid's remark was blown away as the vortex exploded outward, hurling its burden away from the center. A sheet of soil and rocks engulfed the verrie in front of them and hurtled toward their own. Reflexively Holger brought his hands up. Caliburn's point struck the roof of the cabin, the weapon's steel ringing like a gong. He'd forgotten he was holding it. Lucky he hadn't taken Hagen's arm off.

Hitting the airborne debris was like hitting a wall. The Snowhawk shuddered under the hail of stone. The cabin was filled with the thunder of the pounding they were receiving. The fuselage dented, bulging inward where the heavy stones struck. The verrie's windscreen pitted under punishment, then cracked. Just as the fury of the unnatural storm seemed to abate, the windscreen shattered. The cold wind swept into the cabin, carrying lacerating shards of Transparex along with the last of its burden of sand. The Snowhawk nosed down, dropping like a stricken bird.

And all through the buffeting Caliburn tolled softly and continually like a distant mourning bell.

Somehow Hagen regained a measure of control over the craft and fought it back to an even keel.

Holger was surprised to find himself barely scratched by the barrage of unconventional shrapnel. "Everyone all right?" he asked.

"Nothing serious," Spae reported.

"Wrong," Hagen contradicted. "Listen."

The steady throb of the Snowhawk's engines fluttered and shifted to a ratcheting grind.

"Land," Holger ordered. "We'll have a better chance on the ground."

"Like we have a choice?" Hagen's hands fought with the controls of the pitching verrie. "This bucket's had it."

John felt a flash of annoyance at Chase's question about the sword.
"You
ought to know," he snapped without thinking.

But why should Chase know?

There was no time to wonder. Something out in front of them surged and the energy in the vortex precipitously peaked. With hurricane force, the whirling cloud of soil and rocks exploded toward them.

Somehow the Snowhawk managed to survive the ersatz storm, and Hagen managed to get the verrie down for a safe landing. The battered aircraft sat at the edge of a huge bowl-shaped depression in the center of the canyon floor. In the center of the depression stood a truly enormous stone henge, and in the center of the henge lay Van Dieman's crashed Snowhawk.

It appeared Van Dieman had absolutely no luck with aircraft. Smoke—real smoke this time—was rising from the

wreck.

Kun was the first out of the Snowhawk, but he didn't go far. He stood at the lip of the depression, the sword Caliburn in one hand and a Viper machine pistol in the other, staring down at what lay below. One by one they joined him. Hagen, hampered by his wounded leg, was the last. The air was the coldest that John had felt since he'd arrived in Antarctica, but that wasn't what made him shiver. The wind made a keening sound—only there was no wind.

A monstrous serpentine shape, made of shadow, lay coiled beside the wreckage of Van Dieman's verrie. It was huge, bigger than any snake John had ever seen in a nature vid. And no snake outside a fantasy epic had ever had eyes that burned with fire as this one's did. No one needed to be told that this creature was the harbinger.

"This doesn't look good," Kun said.

What Kun was seeing might not look good, but what John was seeing looked worse. The great serpent shape coiled around the wrecked verrie looked even more loathsome to arcane sight than to the mortal eye. But what truly unnerved him were the other serpents, smaller and more ghostly, that spiraled down from the darkening skies and wove among the henge stones in a twisting, torturous dance. John watched in horror as one of the whirling spirits left the stones and squirmed across the open space to join with the harbinger and add its essence to the shadow creature. The great serpent quivered, moaning orgiastically. The ululating wail notched up in volume and the sky darkened further. Another of the lesser beings started wriggling toward the harbinger.

"At least Van Dieman's out of the picture," Chase said.

"How do you know?" Hagen asked.

"He's trapped in the wreck," Chase said with a confident smile. Something about his expression was very familiar.

"Then it's just the harbinger we have to deal with," Dr. Spae said, staring at the monster.

Chase nodded. "Isn't that enough?"

Yet another of the small shapes slithered to the harbinger and was absorbed. The creature's hue darkened fractionally, becoming more substantial.

"It's getting stronger," John pointed out.

No one said anything, No one moved. John knew that they had to act. They had to do
something
! He felt strangely reluctant to act.

"Deadly," Dr. Spae said, sounding awed. Her eyes were riveted on the harbinger.

Maybe reluctance was not so strange. It was suicide to try to attack such a creature. Wasn't it?

"We've got to do something," Kun said.

His wavering tone suggested that he didn't know what, but his words galvanized Hagen to action. The dwarf put his Viper to his shoulder and ripped off a burst, then another. His aim was good, but the bullets passed through the harbinger as though it was not there. Beyond the serpent the slugs kicked up clots of dirt and spanged off the wrecked verrie.

The harbinger raised its head, slowly, menacingly. Its blunt, wedge-shaped snout turned toward Hagen. Jaws gaped wide. With a hissing that John felt rather than heard, the harbinger exhaled a stream of noxious green steam that shot toward Hagen like a laser blast. Better for the dwarf if it had been a laser beam; it would have been kinder. The deadly steam splashed across his chest, dissolving his thermal suit and eating away flesh and muscle. Howling and thrashing, he fell to the ground. His spasms lessened to twitches and diminished further until he lay still, a smoking cavity in his torso. The stench was awful.

John couldn't look at the fallen dwarf for fear of vomiting. His eyes unwillingly drifted to the harbinger. It stared back; its blazing eyes of cold fire sweeping across them, and John was sure—absolutely sure—that they didn't have a prayer.

CHAPTER

41

As soon as he saw it, Holger feared that this harbinger was kin to other supernatural things that he had encountered. That fear stopped him from firing his Viper. Hagen had fired, though, and his shooting hadn't had any effect—just as Holger had suspected. The thing coiled beside the wrecked Snowhawk was one of the
real
nightmares, immune to the weapons of ordinary men.

He watched in awe as the harbinger struck Hagen down. The dwarf died a painful, terrible death. A pointless death.

Holger realized that he was backing away from the stone ; circle, away from the harbinger that he had come to slay, and he felt ashamed. He forced himself to stand his ground. It was hard; he wanted to turn and run. He didn't know where he would run to, but anywhere was better than here. Anything was better than facing that monster. He didn't want to let Bear down, but what could he do? That thing in the circle was powerful, much more powerful than any man could hope to overcome.

He was worthless here, as worthless as the day that he had failed Mannheim. The anguish of self-loathing for his failure warred with the need to run away, and drove him to his knees. His vision blurred as tears froze his eyelids together.

Worthless!

Van Dieman retained a fragment of the link that he'd once had with the harbinger. Through it, he felt the magic that the creature was working on those who had pursued him. Before the crash, before the harbinger had betrayed him, he would have applauded its action. He would have enjoyed watching his pursuers stand hopelessly by, filled with despair, while the harbinger achieved its aims. He would have relished the irony of their having come so far only to stop themselves by their own fears and uncertainties.

But those emotions were gone from him, burned away in the flames that ate his body.

All he had now was pain.

John watched Kun fall to his knees. Now he was really scared. Kun was supposed to be the big brave warrior, and even he was afraid to face the harbinger. If Kun couldn't face it, what was John supposed to do? What could any of them do against such a monster?

"Take hold of yourself, Jack."

It was Chase speaking to him, shaking his shoulder. Why wasn't the guy quaking like the rest of them? And why had he used the name Jack?-No one here did that. There was something odd about Chase, something that made John forget about the harbinger for a moment. He looked into Chase's face and saw that Chase was—Bennett.

"I replaced Chase some time ago," Bennett said.

"What the hell are you doing here?"

"The Wyrm is the enemy of all who love life, and this is my fight as well. Had I known earlier that you had planned to hunt this thing down, I might have joined you sooner. As it happens, I was pursuing my own course to stop the madman and the creature, but your ambush at McMurdo forced a change in plans. Now there's no time for subtlety. We have to act."

"We can't beat it," John told him, though Bennett surely knew. It was so obvious.

Bennett scowled at him. "That's what it wants you to think, and you're being weak-minded enough to oblige. You've let human thought patterns corrupt your will. You're an elf, Jack! Look to your blood! You are a prince of Faery, and no servant to the will of that deceptive corruption down there!"

"You ought to know about deception," John shouted back. All the lies Bennett had told him came flooding into his mind and along with them the one true thing that Bennett had told him, that he was an elf. "And you can drop the lies about being a prince. I know better now."