Dreams of Steel

Chapter Fifty-Five

Croaker leaned on the lance supporting the Company standard, wearing his Shadar disguise. He was bored. He was not alert. He was depressed. He had begun to despair of escape. He was ready to say the hell with it and try walking first time a faint chance arose.

The Prahbrindrah Drah and Soulcatcher chattered and laughed beneath paper lanterns while garden staff came and went. They were oblivious to anything but one another. The surprise guest, the Radisha, was out in the cold, ignored.

Croaker had grumbled about spending so much time on the prince and not enough on preparing soldiers. Catcher had laughed, told him not to worry. She would be true to him forever. This was just politics.

He would not be able to resist her much longer. She had him on the run, desperate, on the brink of surrender. Once he did that she would have won everything.

Maybe he should. Maybe once she counted that final coup she would just go away, back north, where her prospects were so much finer. She talked about going north sometimes.

Being her companion was cruel. She had made of him something more than spoil. She talked about the Soulcatcher inside sometimes, when what she had chosen to be became too much to bear. In those moments, when she was human, he was most vulnerable. In those moments he wanted to comfort her. He was sure the moments were genuine, not tactical. Her approach to conquest was not subtle.

Brooding, it took him a while to notice that the Radisha was paying him more attention than a bodyguard deserved. She was not obvious but she was subjecting him to intense scrutiny. It startled him, disturbed him, then just left him curious. Why? Some flaw in his disguise? No way to tell. He'd never seen the man he was supposed to be.

He started thinking about what Lady might be doing, what relationships she might be forming. Was there yet another level to Catcher's vengeance? Did she not only want to seduce him and rape his heart but want Lady to find someone-so she could then let her know he was alive after all?

Weird people. All this for little pains. Relatively little pains. Maybe not so little to them, who in their ways were demigods. Maybe to them love was more significant than to mere mortals.

The Radisha was damned near staring at him. She frowned like someone trying to recall a face.

He had little to lose. He winked.

Her eyebrows rose, her only reaction. But she did not study him anymore. She pretended interest in her brother and the woman he thought was Lady.

Croaker resumed brooding. Lost in his own inner landscapes he did not notice the crows departing, one by one.

Though she had the greater capacity, Catcher did not show off the way Lady did. The coach was dull and quiet. Croaker, beside the driver, clutched his lance and wondered what they were talking about below. The prince and his sister had accepted a ride because the skies had begun to leak again.

The drizzle suited his mood perfectly.

The driver said, "Ho!"

Croaker glimpsed the sudden glow in an alleyway now drawing abreast. As he turned a blinding, fist-sized ball of pink fire shot out, smashed into the left-hand door of the coach. A second ripped out behind it, hit the front of the coach, flared brilliantly. The horses broke loose, leaving the vehicle. A third ball hit the coach, shattered a rear wheel. The coach heeled over almost to the point of toppling. Croaker jumped. The counter-momentum of his kickoff was just enough to stop the tipping. As the coach crashed back he hit the street on the side away from the alley.

Men charged out of that alley.

Croaker ripped open the coach door. Catcher and the Radisha were unconscious. The prince was dazed but awake. Croaker grabbed his pretty suit and yanked.

Up above, the driver cried out.

Croaker charged around the rear of the smoldering coach-smack into what looked like a floating bundle of rags. He stabbed with the lance he still clutched.

The bundle howled.

Croaker's blood stilled in his veins.

There were three men with the Howler. They turned on Croaker.

The prince stumbled around the front of the coach, dandy's sword drawn. He cut one of those men from behind.

The Howler screamed. He waved both hands wildly. Croaker stabbed him again. The whole street boomed and rocked. Croaker was flung back against the coach, thought he felt ribs give way. The boom seemed to echo endlessly up and down a deep canyon. His last clear thought was, not again. He'd just gotten over a serious injury.

. People were scurrying around like panicky mice when Croaker recovered. The Radisha knelt over her brother. The more collected bystanders had dragged the attackers away. Two seemed to be dead, a third badly injured. Croaker got to his knees, pressed fingers against his ribs. Pain answered but it was not the pain of broken bones. He'd gotten through it with bruises. He pushed toward the Radisha, asked, "How bad is he?"

"Just unconscious, I think. I don't see any wounds." She did not look at him. There was shouting way up the street. Belated help was on its way.

Croaker looked into the coach.

Soulcatcher was gone.

Howler was gone.

"He took her?"

The Radisha looked up. Her eyes widened. "You! I thought there was something familiar ..." Soulcatcher's spells had perished? He was himself now?

"Where is she?"

"That thing that attacked us..."

"A sorcerer called the Howler. As powerful and nasty as the Shadowmasters. Working for them now. Did he take her?"

"I think so."

"Damn!" He lowered himself gingerly, recovered the lance, used it to support himself. "You people! Get out of here! Go home. You're in the way. Wait! Did anyone see what happened?"

A few witnesses confessed. He demanded, "The thing that fled. Where did it go?"

The witnesses indicated the alley.

Using the lance as a crutch-he had a badly twisted ankle to go with the bruised ribs-he hobbled into the alleyway.

Nothing there. The Howler was gone and Catcher with him.

As he headed back he realized what the absence of Catcher's spells meant. He was free. For a while he was free.

The Prahbrindrah Drah was sitting up. The onlookers, realizing their prince had been attacked, were turning ugly, threatening the attacker who had survived. Croaker bellowed, "Back off! We need him alive. I said go home. That's an order."

Some recognized him now. A voice said, "It's the Liberator!" The title had been bestowed by public acclaim when he and the Company had undertaken to defend Taglios.

Some went. Some stayed. Those moved back.

The racket of help too late drew nearer.

The prince looked up at Croaker in amazement. Croaker offered him a hand. The prince accepted it. On his feet, he whispered, "Is the disguise part of some grand strategy?"

"Later." The prince must think he had masqueraded as Ram all along. "Can you walk? Let's get off the street before more trouble finds us."

Help arrived in the form of a half dozen palace guards. They had been summoned by someone with enough presence of mind to go for them.

The prince asked, "Someone snatched Lady?" Bemused, he muttered, "I guess that was the whole point, else we'd all be dead."

"That's my guess. Are they in for a surprise. Let's get moving." As they started walking, surrounded by the guards, Croaker asked, "Where was your pet wizard while all this was happening?"

"Why?" the Radisha demanded.

"That little shit has been on the Shadowmasters' payroll for weeks. Ask him about it."

The prince said, "I'd love to. But a demon tried to kill him and almost succeeded. He's in a coma. Won't come back."

Croaker glanced back. "Somebody ought to bring the prisoner. He might tell us something useful."

He would not. He had died while no one was looking.

Croaker was amazed at himself, taking charge the way he was. Maybe it was pressure from so many months of helplessness. Maybe it was urgency brought on by the certainty that he would not have long to grab hold of his destiny.

The prince had to be right. Lady had been the object of the attack. That meant the bad boys had lost track of her somehow and had thought Catcher was her. He smiled grimly. They would not be prepared for the tiger they had caught.

How long would Catcher toy with them before revealing herself? Long enough?

Count on nothing. Hurry.

He by damned had to grab for all he could get while the opportunity existed.

Croaker finished his story. The prince and his sister had listened agape. The Radisha recovered her poise first. She'd always had the harder edge. "Way back, Smoke cautioned us that there might be more going on than met the eye. That there might be players in the game we didn't see."

All eyes turned to the unconscious wizard. Croaker said, "Prince, you used that sticker pretty well tonight. Think you'd have trouble pricking him if he asked for it?"

"No trouble at all. After what he's done the trouble I'll have is not sticking him before we get a story out of him."

"He's not all bad. He walked into a trap trying to do what he thought was right. His problem is, he gets an idea in his head and he can't get it out if it's wrong, no matter what evidence you hit him with. He decided we were the bad guys come back for general mayhem and he just couldn't change his mind. Probably never will. If you execute him he'll die thinking he's a hero and martyr who tried to save Taglios. I think I can waken him. When I do, you stand by to stick him if he tries any tricks. Even a puny wizard is deadly when he wants."

Croaker took an hour but did tease the wizard out of life's twilight and got him to choke out his story.

Afterward, the prince asked, "What can we do? Even if he's as contrite as he says, the Shadowmasters have a hold we can't break. I don't want to kill him but he is a wizard. We couldn't keep him locked up."

"He can stay locked up in his mind. You'd have to force-feed him and clean him like a baby but I can put him back into the coma."

"Will he heal?"

"His body should. I can't do anything about what the devil did to his soul." Smoke's past cowardice looked like outrageous courage now.

"Do it. We'll deal with him when there's time."

Croaker did it.