Surrender to the Will of the Night - By Glen Cook Page 0,55

around. Several men were in the initial stages of undress.

“Rhuk! Consent! With me!” He stepped to the nearest falcon, seized the slow match from the chief gunner. “Lift the back end. I want it pointed right at the middle of the water.”

Consent and Rhuk did as instructed. Which both would regret.

As he touched match to primer Hecht saw a face on the surface of the water. It did not last. The falcon bellowed. Consent and Rhuk howled when the recoil threw them back. Silver and iron darts whipped the surface of the pond.

Thunder began a continuous roll as every falcon crew assumed the first blast was the signal to fire.

Godshot shredded the shadows in the natural armpit.

No one could hear. Hecht moved Consent and Rhuk back, examined their wrists while the falcon crew swabbed and reloaded. “Put the shot into the water!” he shouted in the crew captain’s ear. “That’s where it is!”

The center of the pool rose, a pillar of dark water that took human form. That morphed into a naked woman. An incredibly sensuous woman. Twice life-size.

The Patriarchals were practiced at deicide. Most kept their heads. Lighter weapons began popping. A few falcons shifted aim. Their shot tore the water woman apart.

She did not rise again.

The firing faded. The weapons reloaded. The troops awaited their commander’s will.

The Captain-General wished the Ninth Unknown were handy. He did not know how to identify success.

His officers seemed as uncertain as he. “Titus. Can you hear me now?”

“Yes, sir. It’s only really bad if you get in front of the falcons.”

“You went through this with all the others. How did you know when they were done?”

“You just felt it. You knew. The earth itself seemed overwhelmed by sorrow.”

“Meaning we haven’t gotten our guy.”

“Not fatally. What came up out of the water wasn’t Rook. That was some local Instrumentality. Too big for a dryad. Maybe a water horse …”

A falcon spoke, someone having seen what he took for movement. In a moment every weapon discharged, mostly into the pit that had been the main target before. With the brush destroyed and the rock laid bare, now, the darts ricocheted, buzzed, and whined off in every direction. A man died and a dozen were wounded before the firing stopped.

Hecht asked, “Do you suppose he’s laughing at us? For being so panicky?”

“No,” Titus said. “I think he’s been hit so many times that he’s more scared than we are. He was right down there where we guessed he’d be. Because there was nowhere else for him to be.”

“And he didn’t fight back. An Instrumentality, a revenant deity, and he didn’t fight.” Shade had put up a fierce fight. Men had died. And the revenant had left a husk of a corpse that the Patriarchals ground in a mortar and scattered a pinch at a time.

“He was never that strong. And he’s been getting cornered and escaping now for more than half a year. Each time we get close we hurt him. This is the end. Stirring the undine, or whatever that was, was his last hope. If we thought it was him we’d killed …”

Consent was rattling. Stream of consciousness pouring out his mouth. Hecht had seen it before in men under stress. Had been guilty himself when he was younger.

A soldier yelled. Another did the same. A third called, “Hey, General, there’s some guy down there.”

Hecht squinted. Sure enough, he saw a bony, pale character in rags who looked like one of the Grolsacher fugitives Count Raymone and his bloodthirsty wife were hunting out of this quarter of the Connec. The man had both hands in the air. He kept bowing.

Hecht asked, “What do you think?”

Consent replied, “I think Rook is still with us.”

“Bring him up that gully. Rhuk, I want a whole battery positioned to rip him apart. Have him stop on that piece of white stone.…”

Rhuk was frowning and shaking his head. Hecht saw the problem. If the falcons fired while the man was right there shot would ricochet into the troops on the far slope.

“All right. He stops a yard short. The ricochets will mostly hit him.”

The man seemed to be waiting for someone to come get him. “It isn’t going to happen, fellow,” Buhle Smolens called down from the head of the fall. He had a pair of falcons discharged in the man’s direction.

Hecht said, “Bonus for Smolens.”

A shadow flickered over the ground. “Raven,” Kait Rhuk said. “Landed in that big oak behind Sedlakova. Just to the left.”

No one knew