Petty Pewter Gods

47

"Garrett! Over here!"

Cat. I turned my head right and left to get a sense of her direction. I caught a toe on something, tumbled into a low place where snow had gathered eight inches deep. The Goddamn Parrot cussed me for being clumsy.

Cat appeared out of the milky shower. "Here." She offered me a blanket. I noticed that she was dressed for the weather. Which suggested she had an idea what was going on. But I didn't get a chance to ask. "Get up!" she barked. "We have to hurry. Come on! Some of them are on your trail again."

Her name was apt. She could see in the dark. She seemed to have trouble hearing in the dark, though. My "What the hell is going on?" fell into the snow without so much as a muted thump.

Cat led me about a hundred yards at right angles to my previous course. And there stood all her winged sidekicks, muttering seditiously amongst themselves. The weather didn't seem to bother Fourteen. The horses awarded me equine looks more laden than usual with the semi-intelligent malice of their tribe. But we did have something in common at last. They weren't happy about being out here, either.

"Shake your tail, Sugar Hips. Ya got bottom feeders headed your way."

I got a look at Cat's crew because way up in the snow clouds a pinpoint of light brighter than any noonday sun had popped and had taken a dozen seconds to fade away.

Cat helped me mount one of her beasts. It seemed to be the same one as before. And, behold! For the second time running I managed to get on top facing the same direction he was. It was an age of great wonders.

The Goddamn Parrot wanted to say something but couldn't squeeze it out. He couldn't control his shivering. Parrots are not meant for cold weather. I tucked him inside my blanket. He slithered around till he found a way inside my shirt. Then he settled down to shiver and mutter to himself.

"Cat, will you please tell me... "

Somewhere a wolf howled. Somewhere something named Nog polished its only thought. I didn't catch Cat's shout, but it was no answer.

The horses started to run. My blanket flapped in the wind. I held on with my legs while I tried to get myself wrapped again. I was shaking beyond all hope of control. It couldn't be long before the cold caused irreversible damage.

Fourteen zoomed past, bumblebee wings humming. "Grab your ass, Slick." He giggled. The bottom fell out.

My mount had run off the end of something again. Its huge wings extended, beat the flake-filled air. The cold breeze roared past, not quite as chilly now. I started to worry about frostbite but soon had trouble keeping a sharp edge on my thoughts.

Fourteen buzzed around running his mouth till even my ride got fed up and tried to take a bite out of him as he zipped past. A couple of cherub feathers whipped past me. Fourteen squealed and headed for Cat, plopping down into her lap.

Another one of those incredibly bright points of light popped over the north side of TunFaire. There was too much snow to tell anything else about it. I was trapped in a cold bubble in a sea of milk.

That flash made the flying horses whinny in dismay. They redoubled their efforts to gain altitude. Fourteen started cussing. Cat asked him what was going on. The horses turned directly away from the flash. Cat's mount drifted away from mine.

Curious. But I didn't have much hope of finding out what was going on. Everybody was giving me the mushroom treatment, keeping me in the dark and feeding me horse manure.

It all had to do with the feud going on back there, of course.

Something came down from the north and passed between my mount and Cat's. It went by too fast to see, arriving with a hiss, then leaving a baby thunderclap to mark its passing.

The horses yelped and tried desperately to get going faster.

Did my honey shout an explanation across, just in case it would help me stay alive? Sure she did. Right after she told me the guaranteed-to-win numbers I ought to bet in the Imperial Games.

I discovered that our course was southward because we arose above thinning clouds. I made out what had to be the Haiden Light at Great Cape, downriver thirty miles, south of town. We were way up high now, moving fast—and finding warmer air quickly, thanks to no gods. A little thumbnail clipping of a moon lay upon the eastern horizon, smiling or smirking.

I looked over my shoulder. TunFaire lay under an inverted bowl of clouds that flickered and glowed. Serpents of mist writhed upon the surface of the bowl and gradually sank toward the epicenter beneath.

The Goddamn Parrot got active suddenly. He wriggled till he got his ugly little head out into the wind. "Garrett. A dram of information. Shinrise the Destroyer turns out to be... "

"A Lambar Coast war god? Hangs around with cherubs and winged horses?"

"How did you know?" Next thing to a whine there, Old Bones.

"I remembered." Under stress some guys just can't shut up. Back when I was in the Corps we had had us one of those for a while, a kid from the Lambar Coast.

He had called on Shinrise whenever the going got tough.

One of those awful pinpoint flashes occurred on the far side of the city again. Ectoplasmic light expanded around it. For just an instant a point of darkness existed within that globe. Then cloud serpents began to spill down and twist into the lightning-laced mass below.

Lightning popped to our right front, close and over-poweringly intense. Cat and the horses screamed. Fourteen went on a cussing jag. Because I was still looking back to the north, I didn't suffer the blinding worst of it, but a brick wall of wind did smack me and almost bust me loose for one long and thrilling downward walk in the chill night air. I clutched mane hair and turned to see what had happened.

As I turned I thought I saw something cross the fragment of a moon. If I had not known that such things were mythical, the imaginings of men who hadn't ever seen an actual flying thunder lizard, I might have believed it was a dragon.

I faced front as that insane light's intensity dwindled to where it did not hurt the eye anymore. It was the same phenomenon again, only this time so close we got hit by the expanding ectoplasmic sphere. It smashed past me. My mount staggered. Blinded by the flash, he tried desperately to stay level while he recovered.

There was a hole in the night where the pop had taken place. It was a darkness deeper than that inside a coffin buried in an underground tomb on the dark side of a world without a sun. Then, just for an instant, something reached through that hole, something that was darker still, something so dark that it glistened in the light. Rainbows slithered over it like an oil film on water. It came my way, but I don't think it was after me.

The Goddamn Parrot went berserk inside my shirt. Either he wanted to get away bad or he had decided to snack on my guts.

Fourteen squealed like somebody had set his toes on fire.

Suddenly it was colder than any cold I had endured yet. The reaching something popped back through its window of darkness. For an instant, before the hole shrank to invisibility, a dark alien eye glared through, filled with a malice that was almost crushing in its weight.

All that didn't last more than a couple of seconds. My horse barely had time to beat his wings a full stroke.

The cold penetrated right down to the core of me. I knew, whether I wanted to believe it or not, that I had looked right into the realm of the gods. Maybe the eye belonged to something so unpleasant that the gods would willingly destroy my world rather than be forced to go back where that waited.

Hmm. That didn't feel quite right, though I had a suspicion that I had just seen something a lot nastier than any of the gods who were complicating my life now.

Damn! I couldn't see Cat anywhere. And my mount seemed to be having a seizure. Not to mention the fact that the ground looked like it was about eleven miles down.

I don't like heights very much. They give me the jim-jams in a big way.