The Sea Peoples(97)

He tried not to think of Who else might be involved; he didn’t . . . or wasn’t supposed to . . . believe the Aesir did things like that, and he didn’t even know what Powers Alan Thurston called on, and he had probably never even heard of those Toa’s people followed if they weren’t Christians.

The three formed up shield-to-shield; John was in the center, as the man with the heaviest armor and biggest shield.

An honor I could do without, he thought.

Aloud he said quietly: “Friends, I always hated the training in walking backward in armor. The sergeants-at-arms laughed at the squires every time we tripped and fell, and that hurt worse than the bruises. Perhaps I was a little hasty. It teaches you to be graceful about your exits; as a musician, that’s a valuable skill. And I’d really like to get off the stage here before they start booing and throwing things.”

“You dance well, too,” Deor said with a chuckle. “What a shame your tastes are so conventional otherwise, my liege.”

“Let’s do this,” Alan said.

John knocked down his visor and raised the shield. Back a step, and a step. Uoht’s yellow gaze moved as the column of mist slid forward, pivoting, and the force of it was like a hot blow, like being trapped in your coffin and smelling your own body rotting. He hunched his shoulder into the shield, the way you did when weapons beat on it. The feel of comrades to either side of him kept him steady; he could feel his father’s hand on his shoulder, too, his mother’s eyes full of love and pride at his knighting, as he came out of the chapel after the vigil.

“Back a step,” Deor said. “And back . . . and back . . .”

Something was keeping those eyes from really seeing them, but that only enraged the . . . whatever Uoht was. Slaver drooled in long threads from the fangs, and the thin lips moved—he had a horrible suspicion that it was shaping words.

Then he grunted, and heard Deor and Alan make almost the same sound. Something had hit him, impalpable but strong, and his mind vanished in a blaze of pain for an instant. His next step backward was involuntary, and he braced himself as if leaning into a storm-wind, a blizzard in the Cascades. The pillar drifted towards him. As it did the world dimmed and thinned. As if it were a screen, and behind the screen . . .

A tower on a hill, amid a wasteland of tumbled mud and beneath a cindered moon and behind that the spires of a city. More dog-headed pillars, all of them turning to look at him . . .

John pushed with his mind, as if he were back on the squire’s training-field, ramming his shield against a pole set on a weighted skid, trying to budge it with his legs churning.

“Back,” Deor said again, more hoarsely this time. “Back a step . . .”

The deep nostrils flared, hunting for a scent. A sound came from between its jaws, a deep humming sound. It grew louder and louder, jarring, and suddenly the teeth in his jaws hurt. A warm trickle started from his nose, running salt over his lips—the distinctive metallic tang of blood. Blood was running down the faces of the worshippers too, as they capered and shrieked:

“Uoht! Uoht! Uoht!”

The note grew deeper, and the hilt of his sword was growing hot in his hand, beneath the leather palm of his armored gauntlet and the wrapping of bison rawhide and silver wire on the weapon. He wasn’t sure if a material weapon could cut Uoht anyway . . . except that Deor had explained convincingly that this wasn’t actually a material place, despite the irritating itch that he couldn’t scratch in a delicate place. His very material self was sleeping in a bed in a beach-house in Baru Denpasar with Pip and Thora beside him.

He pushed away that distracting thought. The pressure against his shield was building, building. The same sense of weight seemed to be squeezing at his temples, constricting like a knotted cord until he felt his eyeballs start to bulge. They retreated step after step, his sabatons skidding on the smooth granite cobbles of the street. The smell of mud and water grew stronger. . . .

“Got the boat!” Pip called.

“Run!” Deor wheezed, like a man throwing down an impossible weight. “Run!”

John wheeled, and almost fell to his knees as the pressure increased. But now he wasn’t trying to resist it, and his feet seemed to fly over the stones. Ahead the road sloped into the water, and a boat was waiting—with Toa throwing the mooring-post it had been chained to into it, having apparently torn it out of the ground by main force. Pip was aboard, shipping a steering oar, and Thora helped the big Maori as he fell to pushing it forward.

The union of their straining effort started the twenty-foot, double-ended hull moving just as the three men arrived. John managed to sheath his sword as he ran—fortunately it was hard to stab yourself in the hip or groin in full armor—and pitched the shield ahead of him to fall with a hard clatter in the bottom of the boat. His hands clamped on the gunwale, and he joined the others in running it down the slope and into the water.

“Alan first!” she called, going by their positions.

The Boisean rolled over the gunwale and into the boat and scrambled on all fours towards the bows.

“Now Deor . . . now John . . . Thora . . . Toa!”

John was knee-deep in the water when she called his name, feeling it pouring into his greaves. He leapt and pushed, grunting against the weight of body and armor and wetness, rolling into the sopping bottom of the boat and shuddering-glad he hadn’t pushed the rail under the surface. Someone heavy landed on top of him, and he gave a protesting ooof!