The Wolf Age Page 9

Rokhlenu caught his meaning. His breath grew short. "I suppose ... take out the one on the left with the thing." The thing was what they usually said when referring to the strangling cords, when they had still been talking about them.

  "What about Khretnurrliu?" Morlock whispered. "What could you do about Khretnurrliu?"

  Rokhlenu slumped a little. The hope went out of his face. He looked directly into Morlock's worried eyes and said, "Nothing. I would do nothing about Khretnurrliu. I'm sick of hearing about him. He's dead, Morlock. Dead."

  Morlock was troubled. He'd had a fairly sophisticated argument planned, given his still-primitive vocabulary of Sunspeech, all of it leading toward the proposition that Morlock would tackle the two living guards, if Rokhlenu confronted the dead wolf. He was going to explain about ghost binding and the twine and everything. But now it seemed there would be no point.

  Morlock went back to his corner by the door and thought. He rocked back and forth; he clenched and unclenched his muscles and he thought. The guards didn't look at him. Rokhlenu had climbed up to the window and was staring out into the hot afternoon air. Even Khretnurrliu seemed to be looking away scornfully.

  Morlock sat wrestling with the dread of the dead wolf the rest of that afternoon, all through the night, all through the next day until dark. In the end he came to the conclusion that it was safer to stay in the cell and not try to get out. This was his life now. He could endure it, if he could not love it.

  Except that was not quite the end. Because ... it wasn't just that he didn't love this life. He hated it. He hated the raiders who had inflicted it on him. He hated the ghost-sniffers who had driven the spike into his head, blinding him to the world of dreams. He hated the guards and their stupid tortures and rapes. Most of all he hated his hate: he hated the stink of it in his mind, the filth of it in his eyes and bones. What hell could the dead wolf inflict on him that was worse than this? And he was inflicting it on himself. He could make it end now, one way or the other.

  He, of course, didn't have the courage, but he had known a man once who would never have given up, would never have inflicted this on himself if he had the chance to escape it, even by certain death, who never resigned himself to fate. That man had drowned ... in the Bitter Water, he thought; he couldn't remember his name, unless ... unless it was Morlock.

  Bells began to ring, as if in answer to this appalling conjecture. Morlock looked up. Khretnurrliu stood in man form in the corridor, tossing his severed head from hand to skeletal hand as if it were a ball. The guards were staring down the corridor, a faint silver light shining on their faces. The one in the day shape raised his hands and underwent the transition to wolfhood, screaming in ecstasy and pain. Rokhlenu was at the cell window, reaching out his left hand for a single thread of moonlight as he gripped the sill with his right. He transformed abruptly to wolf, howling as he fell down into the cell's darkness.

  Other werewolves were howling, up and down the corridor. And bells were ringing. Echoing faintly in through the windows, louder in the corridor, mixed with the despairing howls of prisoners, the joyous or merely drunken howls of guards.

  It was the first night of the year, the night of Cymbals they called it in Morlock's distant home. Trumpeter and Chariot were setting, and Horseman was rising. A bright year, they would be calling it back home, since the first call would not be moonless. In dark years, all three moons set together and the night sky was dark and starlit until Trumpeter rose again.

  Back home, the celebration would go on all night.

  A long, joyous, noisy time.

  Would these moon-worshipping werewolves celebrate less or more?

  In any case, they were celebrating now. Loudly. Joyously.

  God Avenger, thought Morlock, the thin fraying thread that was still Morlock in his madness, this is my hour. I will celebrate the New Year in a way the Sardhluun will never forget.

  From where he sat he tossed the twine over the end of the lock-bar and caught it. He stood, hefting the lock-bar from its place. It fell ringing to the floor, one more bell welcoming in the new year. Morlock threw the gate open and strode across the threshold of the cell. The wolf-guards, startled, turned to meet him. But for them it was already too late: they had seen their last moonrise.

  orlock was achingly conscious that he was turning his back toward the dead man who had haunted him all these weary months, but that was the choice he made: not to be bound by his fear.

  He stooped down to seize the iron lock-bar from the corridor floor. One of the guard-wolves was already leaping toward him; the other, the one who had just undergone transition, was struggling in the harness of his human armor.

  Morlock swung the iron bar with all the unpent fury of his madness.

  The guard-wolf's head shattered like a piece of ripe fruit. The body rolled to the floor and lay still. Morlock turned to silence the other guard, who had begun to yammer for help in Moonspeech, but he had only taken one step when a gray shadow streaked past him and fixed long white teeth in the guard-wolf's throat.

  Morlock seized the guard's abandoned sword and severed its head from its body as Roklenu jumped nimbly out of the blade's path.

  Rokhlenu gave Morlock an agreeable but bloody smile. He wished Morlock a happy New Year in singing Moonspeech.

  " Khule gradara!" Morlock replied. "That's what we say back home: goodbye moons!"

  The other guards were crowded by the window at the far end of the hallway, peering out at the last moonlight they would see for some time. Those who could change had already changed to the night shape. Those few in the day shape held out their hands wistfully, or drank smoke from great stone bowls, or just stared at the free air as if they hated the prison as much as Morlock did.

  Rokhlenu looked slyly at the severed head and back at Morlock's free hand.

  Morlock grinned in answer. He picked up the severed wolf head and hurled it down the hallway to land in the mournful celebration of guards. It struck one guard on the elbow while he was inhaling some smoke. The coalladen jar shook, spilling some fiery matter. The jostled guard turned and struck the wolf nearest him across the snout. It yowled a curse at him and bit him on the knee. The jar dropped and smashed on the ground, scattering smoke and fire. The fire burned many feet, and a cacophonous chorus of rage sprang up against the background of bells and wolfsong floating in on the evening air. The guards were embroiled in a general fight before Morlock and Rokhlenu reached them, the severed wolf head being kicked here and there by heedless feet in smoky chaos.

  It took them a few moments after Morlock and Rokhlenu reached them to realize the fight had taken a more serious turn. Soon other severed heads were being jostled about on the floor, and the guards in day shape had all been hamstrung by surgical strokes of Rokhlenu's bright teeth. He then returned to sever their neck veins with equal precision.

  The surviving guards, all in the night shape, fled down to the other end of the hallway.

  Rokhlenu sang that they must not let the rats escape the trap; there would be no chance, otherwise.

  Morlock did not understand what he meant about chances. He simply intended to kill his enemies until they killed him. But he was more than willing to start with the fleeing guards.

  Side by side, the former cellmates ran back up the corridor. The prisoners in the cells all began to chant their names: Khretvarrgliu and Rokhlenu; the Beast Slayer and the Dragon Slayer.

  The fleeing guards, some of them still trailing human war gear, tangled up at the narrow entrance to the stairway, blocking each other from escaping.

  None escaped.

  Morlock leaned against the outside of the cell that had once been his, among uncounted dead enemies. He wished vaguely there had been more.

  One more werewolf appeared in the shadows of the stairway entrance: a pale mottled muzzle and a pair of shocked pale eyes. It was Hrutnefdhu, the trustee.

  Rokhlenu sang that they were celebrating the New Year by escaping. He wondered if Hrutnefdhu wished to leave the prison alive
or in pieces.

  Morlock turned away and walked down the corridor again. If Hrutnefdhu would not join them, he must be killed. Morlock's throat was too choked with hate to use persuasive words; he hoped Rokhlenu's song could lure the pale castrato to abandon his trust. Otherwise Morlock would have to kill him.

  He occupied himself by tossing back the lock-bars and swinging the gates of the cells wide. Some of the cells had mechanical locks; these Morlock forced with a sword or his fingers. The prisoners swarmed into the hall, praising his name, Rokhlenu's name, the moonset, the New Year's Night, the carnage of the hated guards.

  Most wore night shapes, but there were a few who did not or would not undergo the change, including one red-skinned gold-haired monster with the build of a gorilla, the hands of a juggler, and the intelligence of a vacant room. The wolves were varicolored: red, black, gray, and white. They were battered, scarred with wounds that showed even through their wiry fur. Their eyes were cold and bitter as the lost light of the moons. They were the irredeemables, and they knew he would lead them into death among the swords and teeth of the guards. They shouted for it. They howled for it.

  When Morlock returned to the stairway, Rokhlenu was singing of plans, of forethought, of deliberation, of safety.

  "We don't need safety," Morlock said. "That's what keeps us safe."

  He plunged into the dark stairwell. Cheering and howling, the irredeemables followed him.

  Wide-eyed, the pale mottled trustee watched the ragged pack of irredeemables cascade down the dark stairs.

  Rokhlenu snarled. First he had thought Morlock mad; then he thought him sane; now he was sure the never-wolf was mad. If Rokhlenu himself were not mad, he would take advantage of the chaos Morlock was causing to escape the prison. It would be so easy!

  But he couldn't. When Rokhlenu had gone mad, Morlock had watched out for him, had not let the guards' cruelty destroy him. He had risked his life. Rokhlenu would do the same for him if it killed him, as Rokhlenu was glumly sure it would.

  He forced himself to think sunlit thoughts, dreaming of a gold the world would not see for hours, that he might never live to see. The agony of transition swept over him, without the exultant shout of light to remake his heart. He had to remake it himself. It seemed to take forever, and it hurt like chewing a leg off. But at the end of it he stood like a man and began to arm and armor himself from the bloody torn equipage scattered around the floor.

  "Stay by me," he said to the yet-more-astonished-if-possible Hrutnefdhu. "Morlock has run mad. If we stick together, maybe we can live through this thing."

  Hrutnefdhu's pale face looked as dubious as Rokhlenu's heart felt. But they did go together down the dark stairway.

  The fourth floor of the prison was larger than the fifth; there were several aisles among the freestanding cages and more prisoners in each cage. Rokhlenu remembered there being more guards there, too. Whether that had been the case or not Rokhlenu never knew; by the time he and Hrutnefdhu arrived the guards were bloody rubble in various corners, slain by Morlock and his irredeemables. Morlock was forcing locks with a long knife and freeing the prisoners; other irredeemables were smashing at locks with stolen swords ... or, in a few cool-headed cases, using keys they had looted from dead guards.

  Rokhlenu said to Hrutnefdhu, "Get the ones using keys. Have them come to me. Round up anyone who isn't moon simple."

  Hrutnefdhu wondered if he were moon simple; he didn't understand.

  "There are guard stations in the stairways below; we'll need to divide in two bands," Rokhlenu began.

  Hrutnefdhu barked a curt acknowledgment and ran off to do Rokhlenu's bidding. Rokhlenu himself grabbed a few wolves who seemed to be able to pay attention. When Hrutnefdhu returned with a dozen men and wolves, Morlock and his irredeemables were already streaming toward one of the stairwells.

  "We take the other," Rokhlenu said. "Ware guards. Kill the men and maim the wolves as severely as you can; behead them by choice."

  They nodded and snarled in acknowledgment. These were not blooddrunk ex-prisoners intent on vengeance. They were hardened criminals engaged in escape. Rokhlenu knew he could trust them as long as it looked like he might succeed.

  They ran down the stairs to the guard station. The guards there were waiting for them: three smoke-drunk men with rusty swords in their trembling hands. Rokhlenu's wolves took them down and left them sleeping off their drunk in death.

  The third floor was even larger than the fourth; some guards were still resisting when Rokhlenu and his band arrived. Worst of all, one was at a window blowing a horn-call. Rokhlenu ran over and stabbed him through the rib cage, killing him instantly, but the damage was done. The sound of bells and songs from below had diminished greatly: what guards remained in the prison now knew of the escape. Rokhlenu hoped it was a skeleton crew; if so, they'd soon crack it to the marrow.

  Many of the prisoners on the third floor were terrified and refused to leave their cells. Still, the numbers of escapees swelled, and many began to stream down the stairwells.

  If Rokhlenu had been in charge, they would have skipped the second floor and gone down to confront the guards on the first floor while they were still relatively unprepared. But no one was in charge. Many of the more panicky escapees did indeed run from the second floor to the stairwells leading down to the ground floor, but Morlock and his irredeemables cleared the second floor of its few guards and broke the locks on all the cages. On this level, more prisoners were day shaped than night shaped, and almost none refused to leave their cages. The number of the escapees, as they finally charged the stairwells, was very large, but the men were very poorly armed and armored.

  Rokhlenu and Hrutnefdhu followed Morlock down the stairwell. Rokhlenu thought there was some chance that the guards below (they could hear the sounds of fighting echoing up the stone ways) might rally and come up other stairways to attack Morlock's group from behind. His criminals would serve as a rearguard, then. If not, Morlock and his irredeemables would be their shock troops.

  Just before Rokhlenu made it down to the ground floor, he heard Morlock laughing.

  When he came out into the high-vaulted central chamber on the first floor, he saw why.

  Morlock had not seen the dead rotting ghost of Khretnurrliu since he had rushed into the corridor, and a feeling of exultation was growing in him. It was separate from the poisonous glee of satisfied revenge (which, however, he also felt). The dead beast was dead, but it still fled from him. Perhaps it feared binding. Morlock had lost his twine somewhere, but Khretnurrliu might not know that.

  Morlock kept looking about for Rokhlenu, but whenever he turned his view was blocked by the great gorilla-like red werewolf, who grinned at him with gray teeth through his golden beard. He had no weapon but fought only with his huge gold-clawed fists. Morlock did not understand a word he said, if the sounds he made were words, but he seemed intent on guarding Morlock's back.

  Long before he reached the ground floor, Morlock met a backwash of escaped prisoners running back up toward the second floor. Morlock attacked them with the same cold empty rage he had unleashed on the guards: they were in his way. He killed a man, dismembered a crawling wolf, and drove the rest screaming before him down the stairs again.

  They were pinned between Morlock and a knot of armed guards at the outlet of the stairwell. Of the two, they feared Morlock the more and threw themselves at the guards with panicky fervor. Morlock came up behind them and started stabbing through the bodies to cripple the guards. They broke and fled, and Morlock and his irredeemables ran into the central chamber of the prison's first floor.

  There were no cages or cells here. This was the marshalling point of the guards, the sorting place for incoming prisoners. A sort of balcony ran around just under the ceiling of the high-vaulted chamber; beyond it were entrances to the upper wall outside. Morlock wondered if that might be a way to escape. The only way up to the balcony was a few rope ladders, though, so the wolves could not go that way. And when Morlock
had last seen Rokhlenu, he was in the night shape. He turned away from them and contemplated the scene in the chamber itself.

  Its chaos mirrored the disorder in his own soul, and he found it pleasing. Very few of the guards were in day shape; most had changed their skins to celebrate the bright New Year. The chamber was full of werewolves snarling and biting each other, with more pouring through the stairways every moment. The air was filled with smoke, from torches and from the aromatic bowls of smoke the werewolves seemed to love inhaling. The walls glittered with mounted weapons, mostly useless to the night-shape guards. The few guards in day shape-and some of the freed prisoners-were running up and grabbing these.

  Morlock watched as one guard seized a very familiar scabbard and drew from it a glittering crystalline sword, the blade interwoven white and black.

  Morlock laughed. The gorilla-like red werewolf was standing beside him now that they were free from the narrow stairway; Morlock slapped him on the shoulder and shouted ("There!"), pointing at the guard who bemusedly held Tyrfing.

  The red werewolf grunted something and followed as Morlock began to fight his way across the chaos of the great chamber. The irredeemables followed at their heels.

  The guard holding Tyrfing slipped in and out of Morlock's sight through the battle in the center of the chamber. At first he seemed inclined to put aside the deadly blade as a mere showpiece, but then a prisoner in a stolen guard's harness leaped at him and he struck out with the blade, shattering the attacker's weapon and armor, the blade sinking deep into his body.

  Then the tide of battle blocked Morlock's sight. He grimly fought toward the place where he had last seen the guard holding Tyrfing.

  Soon he was rewarded with another glimpse: the guard was cutting his way with the dark crystalline blade toward a group of guards blocking a sort of tunnel.

  Morlock knew that tunnel. He remembered being dragged through it on his first night in the Vargulleion.

  He wondered if he dared call out to Tyrfing. It had been long, so long, since he had implanted the talic impulse in its crystalline lattice, and he was worried that it might have dissipated. Blinded as he was on the talic realm, his inner self could hear no whisper of life from the blade-or from any other entity.