Jedit

Chapter 6

"Dive!"

"Jump!"

The fireball screaming toward them fired reflexes honed in a hundred battles and brawls. Simone, lithe as a panther, bunched her legs and leaped in the air. Skinny Wilemina flopped flat, face in the dust. Only Badger hesitated, panting and fretting. He'd nearly drowned a few months past, and his lungs creaked from all this dratted running. Too, being older, he kept a fatherly eye on Adira's hotheaded youngbloods. So, when he should have leaped or dodged to save himself, instead he flung out both hands, one to knock Wilemina flatter and another to boost Simone higher, assistance neither woman needed.

In a second's fatal hesitation, the spiked force-sphere caught him. Badger had barely twitched aside when the sizzling death clipped his brisket and hurled him against the wall. The ball of ectoplasm streaked out of the alley and smashed a house front across the street, punching a hole big as a bushel basket and instantly igniting paint, lathes, and timbers. The householders dashed outside as someone yelled to form a bucket brigade.

Badger was down, feebly thrashing and slapping at his clothes. His shirt and vest burned and smoked, his formerly hairy chest was seared pink, and now his hands and even beard were scorched from licking flames. He could scarcely breathe. Simone and Wilemina whisked out the flames, then tried to stretch Badger flat to check his wounds.

Angry, sobbing, his hard hands beat them away. "Never mind me! I'll live! Get after Johan! Don't let him escape!"

Both women objected, but a sturdy kick sent them scampering in pursuit. The sailor crawled painfully to his knees and scrubbed his face with gritty hands. Sticky fluid gummed his eyes, and rubbing his wounds made them flare in agony, but he forced his eyelids open. Thank the stars, he wasn't blind. The pre-dawn world was dim and hazy.

A rumble like thunder over the horizon asked, "Are you all right?"

"Eh?" The sailor squinted painfully. The blurry figure wore some red- or orange-striped robes. Whoever he was, he was tall as a monox and seemed to steam in the chilly air. Badger was glad this was no enemy.

"Uh, yes. The women went after Johan."

Like a whisper in the night, the stranger was gone.

"Fish and follies," Badger asked himself, "who was that?"

At the mouth of the alley, Simone and Wilemina peeked around for their prey when a rapid padding rang behind. Nerves taut, they spun-and almost fell down. A whirlwind of orange and black stripes charged down the alley like a juggernaut. They barely jumped aside as the tiger-man blew past.

Both yelped, "Jaeger!". Jedit didn't contradict them or explain. He'd leave it to Johan to answer a thousand questions, even if Jedit had to skin the man alive.

Dawn cracked the eastern horizon. There were only two ways to go. To the left, the street joined a wider thoroughfare. To the right, it jinked-for no street in Palmyra ran straight- then widened and rose toward the marketplace.

"Likely he went that way, Jaeger! Into the market!" said Simone. "The other way offers tittle shelter!"

In a crashing hurry, Jedit leaped to all fours as if pouncing on a rabbit. His flat black nose and whiskers snuffled dirt. Launching into space, he landed ten feet farther and sniffed again, then took off running, with the women hard-put to keep up.

In the early morning market, shepherds and melon farmers and leatherworkers greeted neighbors, sipped mint tea, stacked wares, propped awnings, cooed to chickens and lambs, and warmed up singsong calls.

Every eye turned as someone blurted, "It's Jaeger!"

"Jaeger!" echoed a hundred voices. Palmyrans gawked at the towering figure who appeared as if by magic in the street. "Look! It's Jaeger! Hurrah!"

Intent on the hunt, Jedit Ojanen jolted to a halt. The chorus of calls and cheers confused him utterly.

Simone and Wilemina crept up beside the tiger-man. Gently the blonde archer touched his furry elbow. "Jaeger, what's wrong?"

"These people…" murmured the tiger, gazing at the cheering crowd. "They chant his name like a hero's."

"Eh?" Simone gazed at her companion, equally fuddled. "Of course. You're a hero to everyone in Palmyra."

Jedit's mind reeled. It was true. As that older mage had urged, ask anyone in Palmyra and learn Jaeger was revered. Arrested by new evidence, Jedit fought to work it out. If Jaeger were a hero to Palmyra, he must have been an enemy to "Johan!" The tiger roared the name like thunder crashing. People stumbled back in fear. "Where are you, you lying monkey?"

No answer. Frustrated, Jedit gazed at the gathering crowd, a hundred people or more of all sizes and colors: dark-bearded nomads, sleepy-looking barbarians, tiny brown-clad leprechauns, goose girls, solemn Keepers of the Faith, Palmyran city guards in yellow smocks painted with red crescents, black-skinned freighters, hawk-nosed desert elves, dusty dwarves, and more. All jammed around a maze of wares stacked in heaps, piled on carts, hung from racks. Somewhere among them was Johan.

"Impossible! Impossible for the eyes! And the ears!" Jedit Ojanen hissed to himself like a kettle boiling. Coming from the sheltered valley of Efrava, he'd barely adjusted to one human being, then small groups, before he was catapulted into a goggling, gabbling mass of humanity. Furthermore, his rage, never far submerged, had built steadily at the man who'd lied, who must know his father's fate, who might have killed his father.

Ignoring all else, Jedit again dropped to all fours. Snuffling a wide circle, eyes closed, Jedit sifted a thousand scents, old and new in his mind, and concentrated to find the smell he'd known in weeks of crossing the desert. Whiskers to the ground, dust tweaking his nostrils, Jedit smelled dogs, elephants, cats, rats, goats, and people, hundreds of them.

There. The snake-dry musky tang of Johan leaped into his nostrils, fresh and strong.

Eyes closed, still on all fours, Jedit charged.

Palmyrans screamed and scattered as the tiger careened into the crowd like a raging bull. People newly arrived to the marketplace were bowled over by slung blankets and saddles, or else they turned to run and careened into more arrivals coming to see the ruckus. Havoc hit the marketplace as Jedit Ojanen plowed a furrow like a tornado with his nose glued to the ground.

Behind Jedit clattered Simone and Wilemina, one dark, the other fair, both panting.

Wilemina gasped, "I never saw Jaeger bull past citizens before!"

"I'm not sure that is Jaeger!" rasped Simone. "Does he look bigger? And more orange?"

"Orange?" asked the archer and promptly tripped over a watermelon for not watching her feet.

On the tiger pressed, now in five- and eight-foot bounds like a wolf spider that bowled aside people and wares. The marketplace only got thicker, more crowded, more frenzied as people rushed in every direction. In seconds, Jedit had covered fifty feet of the marketplace, sifting and discarding a thousand smells to follow Johan's. Palmyrans jabbered and hurled insults and questions as the tiger raised his head from the invisible trail in the dirt. He sneezed hard enough to snap a man's neck.

"Can you sniff him out?" asked Simone. She and Wilemina had caught up. The tiger gave off heat in palpable waves. As the sun topped buildings, the two pirates scanned the marketplace.

Jedit's eyes were slits of amber-green. Ignoring yells and curses, scampering livestock and spilled fruit, he growled, "His scent is close, yet I don't see him! Is this more human witchery?"

"With Johan, damned likely," agreed Simone.

"He must be disguised!" chirped Wilemina. "He's notorious for that!"

"Disguised?" Yes, Jedit had forgotten in the heat of the chase. Diving once more, snuffling a circle with quivering whiskers, Jedit suddenly bunched his legs to pounce. People shrilled and split like a covey of quail.

All but one.

Directly before Jedit stooped an old woman in once-red robes. Unkempt white hair straggled over her hunched back, her rheumy brown eyes were buried in wrinkles, and her lips crawled over toothless gums. She carried a frayed basket woven of palm leaves. Despite her foreknowledge, Sister Wilemina shrieked for the crone to move or be killed. Simone the Siren, however, ripped her cutlass from its scabbard.

Roaring like a windstorm, the tiger-man leaped full-length and soared through the air. Like a great striped bird, near a thousand pounds of destruction hurtled at the crone. Claws flicked from massive paws to tear the woman to shreds. Jedit never even noticed that he burst two poles supporting an awning, or that his whipping tail upset a stack of dried gourds, or that a small cart of watermelons collapsed as one foot brushed it like a hammer blow. The tiger saw only his enemy, and he clawed the air to do or die.

At the same time, the old woman seemed to melt like a candle, blurring as if seen through water. Her form flowed upward like volcanic smoke issuing from a fissure. The basket fell to earth and rolled away. White hair blew away like dandelion fluff. Faded red robes flushed a vivid plum-purple. The crone's mottled brown skin turned ruddy red and was immediately covered with black stripes like a tiger's pelt. Tall reared the figure, no longer ascetic and bony like some desert hermit but lean and dangerous as a bloodied knife blade.

In Palmyra's marketplace stood the real Johan, Tyrant of Tirras, Emperor of the Northern Realms, foremost wizard of all Jamuraa. A travesty of a human, he was twisted by the marks of arcane sorcery: red skin, black tattoo stripes, a dark V between hairless brows, and living horns jutting from his chin and downtuming from his temples. He was clad in a slithery robe of iridescent purple like the skin of some giant lizard.

Worst, his eyes glistened coal black, mercilessly prepared to kill. Johan hissed an arcane spell as he whisked together red-black hands to warm a small stone plucked from the ground. Between his palms suddenly crackled a ball of lightning.

"Beware, Jaeger!" shouted Sister Wilemina.

Too late, for the great cat had already leaped in the air. Jedit Ojanen heard a brief snort, the only laugh Johan would allow himself, then the sizzling rock struck him with a blow to cripple an elephant.

Simone and Wilemina had suffered from the same spell earlier, so both flinched as the scorching sphere walloped Jedit in mid-air. Punished by magic, Jedit yelped. Yet the tiger managed to twist in the air faster than a human eye could follow. The crackling sphere smacked Jedit on his striped shoulder. Hair frizzled and caught fire, skin charred and curled. Jedit was seared across his shoulder and down his back, then the glowing miniature sun spanked off his lean hip and burned the tip of his thrashing tail. The sizzling spike sailed on to punch an adobe wall.

At the vicious stroke, enough power to kill a dozen men, Jedit Ojanen was blown from the sky. Knocked spinning, the tiger crashed on a heap of rugs. So hot did his fur burn that sparks set fire to red- and blue-patterned rugs that smoked with a dusty odor. Rolling, almost panicked by an animal's instinctive fear of fire, Jedit rolled over and over, smashing into a cart, bowling over a table, crushing baskets in a tangle of split wicker.

Running, Simone and Wilemina both chirped "Jaeger!" Still clutching swords, they plied callused hands to flip baskets and rugs and awnings aside. Revealed were orange-black stripes smeared red with bright blood.

Wilemina wailed, "He must be dead! He took the full force-"

"Get after Johan!" Simone pointed her cutlass at the purple-robed man who again fled. "He mustn't-whoa!"

A roar like a hurricane made the woman recoil. Jedit Ojanen exploded from the wreckage like a phoenix from a funeral pyre. The tiger bled freely from a long hideous slash down his beautiful hide, but he was hale and hearty-and fighting mad.

As the tiger launched past the two pirates, Sister Wilemina bleated, "Lady Caleria protect us all!"

The archer's amazed cry made Johan turn in his flight. Glancing over a shoulder, the ruddy mage glimpsed a vast expanse of snow-white belly and throat, white fangs long as his fingers, and black claws curving like a condor's talons, all not ten feet behind.

Johan gulped. "Impossible! It can't be."

Only a lurch and wild leap saved Johan's life. Claws swept by his scalp and shoulder, ticking his robe and skin and pricking bright drops of blood. A fold of lizard-skin robe was sheared away like lamb's wool by five razor talons. In one stroke, Johan stumbled half-stripped, so his bony red ribs and one arm were exposed to the rising desert sun. The mage actually shuddered, for that blow had come as close as the kiss of death, the closest chance ever of destroying Johan's mortality. Staggering against a shelf of leather purses and vests, Johan fumbled at shreds of clothing, his mind temporarily rattled past all reasoning. The tiger should be dead! Yet the creature raised a fearsome right paw to tear off Johan's horned head — and halted. Johan hardly dared breathe in case some unseen spell had been cast upon the cat. Blind with battle lust, the tiger should have torn Johan apart, for he cowered small and helpless as a blind monkey. Black claws were upraised to slash the mage's red skin from his bones. Yet clearly, Johan could see, some strange sight had frozen Jedit's hand in mid-air. Jungle rage warred with a human's keen mind in the tiger's skull as he stared at Johan's shoulder. — Flustered, the sorcerer glanced down to find his robe in shreds. Amid rags gleamed a round buckle or medallion. Big as a man's palm, the half-circle of twisted white metal formed a double-spiraled emblem like a stylized ram's head and horns.

A broken sigil. Any mystic power the emblem had contained must have dissipated, for Johan recalled how he himself had driven a dagger through the buckle and into Jaeger's hide. That, he hoped, would put an end to the cursed cat who dogged his trail and haunted his dreams. Yet here was another such animal-man poised to take his life.

"My father's emblem," rumbled the cat man, still with one hand curled to strike.

Johan flinched as realization struck in the tiger's mind. Quivering all over, like a geyser set to explode, Jedit muttered, "You could gain that symbol in only one way! You did kill my father!"

"Kill him!" screamed Simone, not ten feet behind.

Blind with rage, Jedit lashed out with both paws.

Fear gave Johan wings. Wrenching backward in desperation, the magician lost more robe as sweeping paws ripped the air before his nose and chest. Johan crashed to the ground painfully and kicked backward like a crab. His shoulders bunched in cloth and table legs as market items clattered and clinked on his bare chest and legs. Still the battle-mad tiger lurched to rip him apart, and Johan had no place left to retreat.

Better die than surrender, thought the mage. With no other hope, he reached into distant memory and plucked forth a spell once glimpsed in an arcane book so horrid he'd suffered nightmares for months. There were many places among the infinite planes of Dominaria so frightening that even to imagine them drove seasoned mages insane with horror. One land was so volatile that even to breathe its air would blister a man to ashes. Yet desperate times called for desperate measures.

"Unleash," Johan gasped, already recoiling from horrors to come, "the beasts of Bogardan!"

Flaming hell descended on Palmyra's marketplace.

Chest-high, the creatures were part goat, part hellhound, and part dragon with twin rows of scales down their spines. They carried part of Bogardan with them, for flames licked at their nostrils. One second Johan was crawling like a half-naked crab through the dust of the marketplace, about to be torn to flinders by a raging man-tiger, and the next instant thirty-odd beasts appeared in a circle around the mage and stampeded toward anything that moved. Nor were the goat-beasts the only creatures to escape Bogardan, for a flock of long-winged bats circled and peeped and dove at folks' heads with ivory teeth seeking blood. Most fearsome were two black beasts like great apes. Tentacles whipped the air behind their shoulders, and red flame shone in mad eyes.

As dawn lit the Palmyran marketplace, panic followed on the heels of war. People cannoned into one another and ran headlong for cover as the beasts of Bogardan ripped into them like wolves into sheep. An urchin carrying candlewood was attacked by two goat-dogs. Flaming fanged jaws snapped off a foot and hand before the child could even scream for help. A milkmaid was grabbed by a tentacled ape and squeezed so hard her back broke and ribs punctured her lungs. She died with blood bubbling from her lips. An old cobbler was knocked flat by three stampeding beasts, then had his liver ripped out before he died. Flittering and squeaking, bat-things flocked over two rug merchants, smothering them in smoking-hot flesh, so their screams were drowned out as razor teeth slashed skin and rasping tongues lapped up spurting crimson. Many more people were attacked from all sides, as well as from the sky. Running, screaming, or standing their ground, a score were immediately pulled down and savaged by coal-black beasts from an infernal pit.

Johan was saved by the onslaught of the hellish beasts. Jedit Ojanen, Sister Wilemina, and Simone the Siren found the fight of their lives.

The women jumped back to back and filled their fists with steel, Wilemina with an archer's leaf-blade sword and her ornate bow, Simone with a cutlass and dagger jutting point down. Immediately they were attacked, for the beasts showed no fear of weaponry. As a pair of beasts lunged for Wilemina's legs, the oaken-armed archer rammed her blade straight into one flaming mouth and rapped her stout bow atop another beast's skull. The throat-pierced beast died in blood, but not before it leaped higher on the blade and snapped at the archer's fingers, skinning them to bone. For the other, Wilemina yanked upward to tangle the beast's bearded chin between string and ivory while she ripped her bloody sword free of the dying beast's mouth. Whirling in a frenzy, she slashed at the attacking beast's eyes. The orbs also flamed, and oddly the archer wondered how the fiend could see. The goat-dogs stank of burned metal. Her sword blow knocked the beast sprawling, but it scrambled on four crooked legs and leaped again. Flaming breath licked at Wilemina's bare legs hot enough to raise blisters.

She wailed, "They're hard as Arcades's armor and hot besides! What shall we do?"

"Fight or die!" snapped Simone, busy with her own troubles. "And hope the other Seven pick up their feet!"

A flame-mouthed goat-dog jumped and snapped at Simone. The black pirate punched straight-armed with her sword to spear its nose, then chopped diagonally to cut the thing's foreleg out from under it. She scored, slashing the beast above the hock, so the blade lodged in bone, but if she expected the Bogardan denizen to whimper or cave in, she was disappointed. It ignored its wound and attacked anew. A belch of fire gushed from its nostrils and set fire to the sleeve of Simone's blue silk shirt. Mad as the place that spawned it and unmindful of pain, it clamped naming teeth on Simone's dagger blade. The pirate cursed and grunted as she beat the thing to the ground with hard sword blows. Meanwhile a dozen more beasts cavorted nearby, as eager to attack armed fighters as screaming townsfolk.

Jedit Ojanen saw no one else's plight. Closest to the fallen Johan, the tiger was swarmed by five coal-black brute-dogs. Toothed mouths brimming flame latched onto his striped tail, onto his thighs, his belly ruff, his forearm. A thousand pounds of forge-hot fury hung on the tiger's mighty frame even as sharklike teeth tore furrows in his bright orange-black hide. Yet Jedit proved just as savage and heedless of pain. A beast clinging to his right thigh, the tiger-man hammered straight down with a fist like a sledgehammer. With a sound like a tree splitting, the beast's neck broke. Only reluctantly, dying, did the goat-dog slacken its jaw. Another creature latching onto Jedit's forearm like a leech received a slash from black claws, so half its neck was shorn away. Blood sprayed from a severed throat where red froth bubbled. Even then Jedit had to dig claws into the beast's snout and pry open jaws like a steel trap. Some of his orange fur stayed lodged between the wicked incisors of the dead goat-dog.

Hung with dog flesh, Jedit half-turned and lashed out with a big clawed foot, for another creature gnawed on his thigh. The first kick, hampered as the tiger was, bounced off the beast's brisket. Crouching, snarling in berserker rage, Jedit kicked hard enough to break down a temple door. Four claws like flint spearpoints rammed into the goat-dog's belly, so blood welled onto the dust of the marketplace. Growling, Jedit kicked outward, straightening his leg with the power of a battering ram. Sinew and tendons parted, yet the Bogardan fiend refused to lose its hold on Jedit's thigh, and finally it was torn in half, hips ripped away from its spine. Jedit flicked his leg, bloody to the knee, and sent the lower half flopping to the dirt. He caught the goat-dog's head, where the flame in its eyes smoldered and flickered out, and wrenched a half-circle to pry loose the beast's jaws.

Infuriated at twin goat-dogs still chewing on his foot and tail, Jedit joined two fists, slung them in the air, and brought them whistling down while squatting to add weight to the blow. With a fearsome crunch, the skull of the beast on Jedit's foot pulped like an egg. Slinging his backside and hips, Jedit whisked the creature gnawing his tail in a swooping circle. The wretch tumbled atop its comrade, still growling furiously. The tiger raised both fists and dived like a cormorant. Missiles of flesh and bone hammered the beast's chest, ribs, and lungs into mush.

Yet the tiger wasn't spared a moment's rest, for the tentacled gorillas, fresh-bathed in the blood of innocents, singled out the battle-weary tiger-man as a challenger. With guttering roars like an avalanche, eyes and lips flaming, the coal-black fiends leaped upon Jedit with sloping arms and lashing tentacles. With a roar just as fierce, the wounded cat accepted the challenge.

Ungodly howls made the whole marketplace wince, but no one paid attention to the grappling man-tiger and hell-apes. From the far end of the marketplace came wild curses that smoked the air blue. Adira Strongheart had arrived to scream at townsfolk and pirates alike.

"Belay there, you skulking bottom-feeders! Drop anchor and pick up that wagon tongue! Virgil, beat that goat-thing to death, and be quick, or I'll scourge you bloody! You there! Smash those things with that jug! Don't stand gawking! Murdoch, lend a hand there, you worthless scalawag!"

With snappy orders and sparkling curses, Adira Strongheart hurled herself, her Circle of Seven, and anyone still alive into the battle of Palmyra's marketplace.

Where the market ran down both sides of the wide street, kiosks and awnings and carts had been upset, rent, chucked underfoot, and trampled. Fires springing from the Bogardan beasts burned canvas and wool awnings, nomadic robes, and more. Scattered about were saddles, bottles, melons, chickens, wooden serving bowls, and other detritus. More than a dozen townsfolk had been killed, dragged down and torn asunder by the terrible black goat-beasts, and a dozen monsters still tussled with fighters and savaged innocents. At the far end of the rambling melee, the tiger-man Jedit, more scarlet than orange, grappled with two monstrous apes whose backs sprouted lashing tentacles. A heap of dead goat-dogs encircled them, shedding blood, making even the dry dust slippery as ice. Nearby, Simone the Siren had momentarily lost her balance, tilted on one knee. Gamely she jabbed her cutlass to fend off three marauders. Sister Wilemina, so bloody even her short blonde braids looked dipped in red ink, straddled her companion and flailed sword and bow to keep them both alive. Elsewhere townsmen and women wrestled with dogs, crimson to the elbows from bites of the fiery jaws and stickle backs. Women sobbed, men cursed, children shrilled as a blacksmith and a farmer tried to brain a beast with a wooden stool and a manure fork. A mother with a child strapped on her back struggled with a beast whose throat she'd rammed with a wooden cart tongue. Two men punched a beast that wouldn't release a child's belly. Two town guards in yellow smocks painted with a red crescent labored to kill goat-dogs. More fights just as furious raged up and down.

Counting noses and looking to the worst scraps, Adira sent Virgil to drive a long-toothed spear through a goat-dog's side. The grizzled pirate shoved so hard and fast the struggling beast was rammed into a wall and the spear shaft snapped off in Virgil's hand. Grousing as usual, Virgil swung the broken haft like a club to belabor the brute's blazing head.

At Adira's order, Murdoch, the former sergeant turned mercenary, flung himself into the fray to prove his mettle to his new commander. Dark-tanned and ruggedly handsome, Murdoch fought with an iron-rimmed buckler strapped to his left arm, a fighting knife in his left fist, and a broadsword in his brawny right. With a battlecry "For Yerkoy!" he split a goat-dog in half through the spine.

Adira's two other recruits hung back, appalled by the carnage and unsure where to jump in. One was a brownie or halfling named Whistledove Kithkin, another refugee rescued from the fabulous sandstorm that smothered Johan's army. With smooth red hair and a billowy shirt and pantaloons in pink and purple, she resembled a child dressed for court, yet her rapier stung like a cobra. The other was Jasmine Boreal, a druid with red-blonde curls who wore linen and wool leggings, earrings of polished bone, and a wide leather belt hung with pouches and charms.

Shoving both women at the enemy, the pirate queen snarled, "Four bells, you two! Get the lead out! We're not playing at any Circle initiation! We're at war! Whistledove, fly or whatever you do! Get to Wilemina and stick something with that hairpin! Druid, waggle your fingers, and smoke some hides!"

Leaning back, Adira Strongheart whisked a dagger to hand and sent it spinning into the sky to skewer a bat. She caught the pommel in one hand without looking and flicked a dying Bogardan horror off the blade.

"All hands! Stand fast and earn your grog! Cut 'em down, fire their sails, and send these bastards to the bottom of the sea!"