Séa Gets Lucky

38. Loopy

Séa phased back into a dark, blurry world of confusion and pain. The King mumbled something, and she had no idea what he had said. She crooned, "Torugg's blessing be upon you," and laid a kiss upon his forehead. He was a handsome young man beneath the bloodspatter. Lusty Chantelle, do you know how comely the King is?

She bumped into Frullan when she stood up. It sounded like pots and pans clashing. The Dame said things, too, but Séa's ears sang with unseen choirs and invisible harps. She took a wild guess at what the topic might be. "I forgive you, Frull'n. You hadda follow your own paff. 'N' you'll do fine." The paladin stumbled in a semicircle. "Where's Tash 'n' Bayrump?"

Voices buzzed like spastic wasps, but the senseless sounds contained no comprehensible information. The paladin stumbled among bodies in the dark. Somehow, she knew that most of the insensate forms were alive. Those horses in harness were alive, too. Asleep, and dreaming disquieting dreams.

A ragged black hole in the night's gloom caught her mind's eye. A quasit. The last demon left. Too far away to do anything about. A messenger. A witness. Well, I hope the little nip got an eyeful.

Warmth bumped her, and a basso nicker tickled her ear.

"Aw, good ol' Bayrump. Fuzzy girl, you seen Tash? Where's Tash?"

Her sense of sight came and went. One minute, the sky held stars peeking through ragged clouds. The next, the very fields of Elysium spread from horizon to horizon with the sound of bells and joyful splashes of dancing water.

A memory flitted by. The lithe body of the rogue slipping behind the bole of a—

"Tree," Séa said. "Whish tree, though?" She lurched for the side of the road.

For a moment, a teenage girl in chainmail stood out clearly her vision, one of Frullan's squires. Freckles stood out on her pale, pale face, and her mouth had gone slack in horror as her eyes roved the roadway bodies.

Séa said, "It is terrible. Ish why war is bad. Ish why demons 're bad. Issa paradox, y'know. Paradox thatcha gotta fight to end war." But at the end of her speech she found herself speaking to the bole of a tree, not a squire.

"'M too drunk t'see straight, Bayrump. Can you see Tash? 'M gettin' worried. Where's Tash?" The warm mare stood near, but gave no advice. Séa staggered on, doing her best to walk a zig-zag for purposes of searching the ground for signs of the half elf. But trees blocked her and her own feet tripped her and it was dark.

When next her vision cleared her gut clenched. Tash's shortbow lay on a blanket of pine needles. Séa fumbled for it through a vision of pure white birds that frolicked in fountains composed of liquid light. "I can't track, Rumpy. She could, she's so smart. Where is she? Did she run? Did they take her?"

The paladin gasped anew. "A dagger! I see a dagger!"

For twenty more yards, in a ragged line, Séa collected five daggers, a sabre, and a garrote noticeably eroded by demon blood-acid. It seemed to take her hours to stuff the items into Bayrump's saddle bags. The beginnings of nausea fluttered in her stomach. "They took her," she said bleakly. "C'mere, Bayrump. Lesh go get'er."

Séa vaulted into the saddle, then nearly toppled off again. She gripped the saddle so hard the leather creaked. "Ish all right. I made it. Go on, girl." They followed the course of an ephemeral stream bed gently downhill. Oothra, the quick moon, had risen, shedding wan light. The valley walls funneled the horse and rider along and permitted only one course.

Suddenly, the horse stopped, and Séa flopped forward onto Bayrump's muscular neck. The horse's front hooves dislodged a pebble, which clattered down and down a vertiginous rocky cleft. On her own, Séa would have also clattered metallically to her death far, far below.

Forcing patience upon her knotted stomach, Séa let the moonlight reveal two possible paths, both narrow. One led down to the right, and one led uphill to the left.

"Torugg. Torugg, with your one eye, can you see which paff I should take?"

In her experience, her god had never answered such a question. Had never spoken to her directly, come to think of it. Tonight was no exception. An owl hooted, but echoes obscured which direction the animal might have called from.

Séa donned her gauntlets and hung her head. "It's hard to think when I'm like thish, Bayrump. But I think the bandits took her. They took her because she is a nenemy. Nemeny. Maybe they want to drink her blood and gain her powers." Her face pinched in disgust. "They have a hideout. It is either high or low. Left or right."

She hiccupped. "An' my god will not tell me whish."

The heavy mare stamped.

"Yeah. I'm frustrated, too."

The charger blew air through blubbery lips.

Séa mimicked the rude buzz and threw her head back to stare up. "What would Tash do?"

Bayrump's ear twitched.

"Well said, Rumpy. She'd trust her luck."

The ear twitched again. It was the left ear.

The left side of Séa's mouth twitched upward in response.

"Luck, just let me know if I can do anything for you, all right? Up we go, girl." Séa moved the reins left and squeezed Bayrump's ribs.

The mare picked her way up the narrow trail. Her long ears rotated and twitched in response to owl hoots and the rustlings of nocturnal rodents in the undergrowth. The wan moonlight laced the path with shadows.

Accompanied by soft metallic clanks, a heavy weight settled on Bayrump's neck. Her rider's legs, too, went slack. The mare's pace slowed. Her rider did not protest.

The mare stopped.

Again, no objection.

The mare locked her knees and closed her eyes.

For the sole reason that it was better for business, Pogrosh's gang usually employed a sleep poison on their initial barrage of arrows. Most of their victims awoke injured and penniless, but alive. The false impression of a merciful attitude kept their bounty low.

As a former gang member, Tash knew this. The knowledge leapt to mind when a spear of hot pain lanced through her shoulder.

Tash shot the scrawny fellow who had nicked her shoulder. He dropped his bow, wrapped fingers around the arrow in his gut, and tottered on long, stork legs. Tash snorted as she recognized him. He was the bowman that Séa let get away before they reached Millage. With grim satisfaction, Tash watched him fall.

But a dead feeling spread along her side. Oh, shit. Hide. In the few seconds of consciousness that she had left, she wedged herself behind a cluster of trees. Her head nodded, then fell forward.

As she fell into a drugged stupor, her hand dropped from her bow. With the leisurely pace of fate's inexorable march, the bow balanced on its tip for a moment, then tumbled to the pine needle carpet, as obvious as a jester in a graveyard.