Must Love Hellhounds

“Shit!” she said. From the corner of her eye she saw that Crick had adapted and was working with his dagger. He was having better luck with his smaller blade than she was with her sword, so she pulled out her own knife and began cutting. The second guard, a human who looked quite a bit like Trovis, had drawn some kind of handgun, a hazardous decision in a rock tunnel. Since a ricochet was just as likely to wound her or her client as it was to hit the one who deserved it, Batanya threw her dagger through a rent she’d just made in the net and killed the Trovis-like human, who gurgled dramatically before he crumpled to the floor of the tunnel. There was a certain flash of satisfaction in the moment.

The net-thrower seemed startled that things weren’t going his way, and he wasn’t keeping the net mended quickly enough to contain Crick and Batanya. Crick was working very quickly, which was good, since Batanya had been forced to return to using her sword. She’d changed her technique to the more effective one of stabbing through the net in short jabs, rather than trying to sweep a large cut through the strands.

Batanya was startled to see something long and dark slide past her on the tunnel floor. By the time she realized it was Clovache, the other woman was on her feet and plunging her neotaser into the mass of the net-throwing thing’s body. A good jolt of electricity will interrupt almost any being’s thought processes, and it had a dramatic effect on their gray enemy. All four legs shot out and began skidding around on the slippery surface of the tunnel. The effect was weirdly like dancing, but when Clovache delivered another jolt, it became evident that the creature was in its death throes. It collapsed in a spidery heap, twitched a couple of times, and lay still.

“That was brilliant,” Batanya said, trying not to pant.

“I took a running start, threw myself down, and away I went. It was just like sliding over ice.” Clovache looked rather pleased at the compliment. “Especially at the sides of the floor where no one walks.”

Crick was staring at them wild-eyed while Batanya cut the remnants of the tattered net away from their limbs.

“You all right?” Clovache asked him, clapping him on the shoulder by way of encouragement.

“Yes,” Crick said. He took off the idiotic goggles. He had quite sharp blue eyes underneath them. Without the sparkly distraction, his face was bony and agreeable and intelligent. “I want to say right now, you two are worth every penny I paid.”

“Say that after you get back alive,” Batanya advised him, as Clovache deposited the neotaser into the pocket designed for it. After the slide across the slug slick, her summer armor was a little grubby, but completely intact. Clovache’s hood had come off in the fracas, and she tugged it back over her matted hair. (“If you have an iota of vanity, this is not the job for you,” the sergeant who’d recruited her from her home village had said. Clovache, like all the young recruits, had lied.)

“We have to get out of here fast,” Batanya said, and without another word, they all stepped over the bodies and hurried down the tunnel. With a glance at the map, Crick indicated a dark opening to the side, again to the left, and they ducked into it, none too soon. Howling, another gray quadrupedal creature loped across the spot they’d just vacated.

Batanya wondered if the gray creatures had some kind of mind-link. Perhaps the dead one had sent some kind of signal when he was wounded.

After a long moment, they heard an eerie wailing. The second soldier had found his dead buddy. This was going to draw all kinds of attention to the area, and the faster they relocated, the better.

Batanya made the punching gesture with her fist that meant “move out,” and they hurried away from the wailing. This time they were going west, following Crick’s gestures. This tunnel was particularly slick, and they had to pick their way very carefully to avoid landing on their asses. The unpitted glassiness of the slugs’ hardened secretions argued that this passage was not much traveled by the minions of Lucifer; that was the good part. It also argued that the slugs used it a lot. That, of course, was the bad part. Batanya had a momentary image of being beneath one of the slugs as it moved with its slow, sure, rippling motion. She could feel the goo clogging her nose and mouth until she couldn’t breathe. She would harden to the floor after the slug had passed.

Then she shook herself vigorously. Letting one’s imagination take over was an indulgence that sapped the energy of a warrior. She glanced over her shoulder at Crick, who was shuddering. Maybe he’d had the same mental image.

From behind him, Clovache hissed, “Hurry up!”