Shadowrun - Wolf And Raven Part 23

His laughter had the same grating quality as fingernails being raked across a chalkboard. "Little man will make little smear."

The troll lumbered forward, but I struck with a speed powered by my anger. As he swung a ponderous fist through where I had been, I darted forward and drove two punches and an elbow into the muscles bunched above his right knee. My blows crumbled flesh to dust, but the creature's rock-hard muscles absorbed the impacts more efficiently than a black hole sucking in photons.

A roar of outrage started in Golnartac's belly and began to work its way up to his throat. He planted his left foot and tried to pivot back toward the right. I dropped low and spun in the other direction, giving the troll a tantalizing glimpse of my unprotected back. Both his arms swung over my head as a second and third punch missed me, then I sprang up and smashed my right fist into the back of his left hand.

Pain overshadowed outrage in the troll's bellow as my punch further splintered broken bones. Unthinking in his agony, the troll backhanded me with that same hand. I saw the blow coming and rolled with it enough to soak off some of the force. Even so, the swat caught me on the left flank, igniting fire in my chest, and sent me flying across the warehouse floor.

The troll's renewed scream drowned out my groans as I hit and skidded to a stop against one of the ogres' bodies. I rolled to my feet, but as I straightened up I felt something give in my chest. More pain shot through me and I felt the urge to cough because of the blood seeping into my lung. I remained half-hunched over and gritted my teeth against the pain. Hooking my hands into claws, I waved the troll forward.

Golnartac started toward me, but he limped slightly because his right leg failed to respond as it should. I swept in, flicked a glance at his broken hand, then again directed an attack against his right knee.

Jamming my left elbow into the joint, I felt Golnartac's kneecap shift sideways and an agonized roar quickly followed. Exultant, I slipped right and stabbed my right fist upward into his stomach.

The troll reacted to the blow instinctively. His right hand slapped my back and smashed me face first into a wall of rock-hard abdominal muscles. Dazed, I rebounded, but hesitated too long to escape him.

Golnartac's right hand closed over my head and he unceremoniously hauled me off the ground.

"Like an egg!" he shouted victoriously and started to apply pressure.

Pain shot temple to temple, forehead to spine, but I refused to surrender to it. My hands hooked up over the troll's wrist and, despite the tearing pain in my chest, I whipped my right foot up in a savage kick that locked the monster's elbow. Uncoiling my body for a second, I brought my foot up again and this time drove it through the elbow.

When I heard the sharp crack I couldn't tell which had broken, my skull or his arm. Then the vise that had trapped my head slackened. I dropped toward the ground and launched another quick attack by driving my right heel down on top of the troll's foot. More bones broke with the pop of a gunshot, and this time I knew I was thedamager, not the damages.

I heard the troll shriek with pain, but it did not matter to me in the least. The second I regained my balance, I whirled around in a circular kick that blasted my left foot through Golnartac's right knee. The leg bent to the side with a wet, tearing sound. The troll began to flail about wildly, his battle now waged against gravity, not me. Golnartac lost his fight and began to sag to the concrete floor.

The fury in my heart did not allow me to show him any mercy.

He would have killed Lynn. And he would have enjoyed it.

Emotions gathered in me like a storm. I took two steps forward before the troll had succ.u.mbed to gravity's relentless attraction. Defying the elemental force that was drawing him down, I leaped into the air. As the troll's head came into striking range, my right foot flashed up. The ball of my foot hit Golnartac square on the chin, shattering his jaw and smashing ivory teeth into splinters.

Golnartac's head snapped back as if someone had grabbed his long black queue and jerked hard. The thick, corded muscles of his neck stretched taut, thrusting his Adam's apple out like an alien creature fighting to win its freedom. As powerful as they were, even those muscles could not fully absorb all the energy in my snapkick. The troll's neck cracked as a vertebrae crumbled under the pressure.

Head lolling uncontrollably, the dead troll crashed to the ground.

I landed a second later on very unsteady feet. Pure agony told me I'd destroyed my right foot, and black pain exploded in my ribs. For a half-second the Old One let me view my fallen foe, then he, too, abandoned me and I slumped to the floor, unconscious.

IV Leaning heavily on a swordcane that had not seen use since the Silicon Wasp died, I watched from afar as Dr. Raven shook hands with Phil Ingold at the base of the Fuchi tower. The parting seemed amiable, though Phil looked stiff and turned away slowly to walk back into the building. I didn't sense hostility in him, only sadness and resignation. Phil moved as if he hurt on the inside the way I hurt on the outside.

A fibergla.s.s cast encased my right foot. A similar one sheathed my left arm. St.i.tches pulled the flesh together on my right flank and bandages helped hold my broken ribs together on the other side. My nose still hurt when I sneezed, and the bruises all over my body had gone from purple to a uniform shade of brown, with jaundice-yellow highlights.

I looked up as Raven came over to me. "You explained everything?"

Raven nodded solemnly. "Lynn is recovered from her ordeal and wants to see you. Neither she nor her mother understand why you won't be coming around again. Mr. Ingold does understand, but I think he feels his daughter's pain at not seeing you now more than he fears what might have happened in the future."

I shook my head. "He sees future danger as hypothetical, but you and J know it is reality."

"Do we?"

"Sampson went after her once to get at me, he'd do it again. Breaking it off with her and getting her a transfer out of Seattle is the only way to keep her safe. We both know that."

"It's not the only way. Stealth would have killed the Halloweeners for pocket change."

"Slaughter of Innocents."

"And wewill deal with Mr. Sampson." Raven's eyes drew distant and the colors in them swirled into a vortex. "Oak Harbor provided some interesting clues about him, as did his display of magic a week ago.

His days as a threat are numbered."

"And in single digits, too." I sighed heavily. "Still, if it isn't him, it will be someone else. The person I would have to be to protect Lynn is a person she would hate."

Raven looked over at me as we walked slowly down the street. "You're saying that as if she's incapable of changing and accepting the risks a life with you would entail. She was more concerned about your injuries than her own. Things might not turn out as you think."

"All dreams become nightmares, Doc, if you don't wake up soon enough." Deep down inside I wanted to believe what he was saying, but in my heart of hearts I knew I couldn't accept the level of responsibility caring for Lynn required. I'd helped hundreds of people like her, and accepted responsibility for them because I knew that responsibility would someday end. With Lynn it would not, and while a life with her would be glorious, life without her, if she died because of me, would be unlivable.

Raven smiled slowly. "When you sent me your message, I rejoiced in it because it told me you were willing to shoulder a burden I have refused to accept. I thought you a better man than me in that, Wolf."

I blinked in surprise. "Me, a better man than you? Realities, Doc, not hypotheticals."

"I was certain then, my friend, and I am certain now that I was not wholly wrong." He laid a hand gently on the back of my neck and squeezed. "Perhaps, someday, we will both be able to work past that final barrier."

"Agreed." I shook my head. "It's kind of funny, though, being willing to care for the whole world, but being unable to do it for one special person."

"It's a nightmare, really, Wolf." Raven shrugged easily, but his eyes burned with intense color. "But if we stick with it long enough, we can push on through to where it becomes a dream again, and the dream becomes true."

Afterword.

The stories about Wolfgang Kies and Dr. Richard Raven are surprisingly special to me for a number of reasons. While I've probably written the least about this group of characters-in comparison to my BattleTech or Star Wars work anyway-Wolf and Raven hold a disproportionately large position in the minds of readers. Even in the midst of a Star Wars book signing, I'll often have at least one person ask, "Oh, yeah, are you ever going to do a novel about those Shadowrun guys?" And that's years after the magazines and books in which the stories were published have folded or gone out of print.

I first heard of Shadowrun back in March of 1989, when it was being developed. I was in Chicago to talk with the FASA team about designing the Renegade Legion roleplaying game, but then Jordan Weisman told me all about SR, filling my head full of all sorts of images and cool things. I returned to Phoenix on a Thursday and couldn't stop thinking about this stuff. For a writer-especially one with an a.s.signment that didn't include Shadowrun-that's not a good thing.

About six months previously my agent, Ricia Main-hardt, had asked me to put together a bible for a men's adventure series of novels that we could sell. I gave it some thought and though I eventually rejected the idea, some of those thoughts lingered in the back of my brain. I had decided that I'd write about a band of heroes led by a genius, something akin to Doc Savage and his band of a.s.sociates. The difference for my group would be that the stories were told from the first-person point of view of one of the aides, much in the same way that Dr. Watson or Archie Goodwin chronicle the exploits of Sherlock Holmes and Nero Wolfe, respectively. That viewpoint allows the genius to be a genius and the reader to roll along for the ride.

That Friday night Liz and I went to Fiddler's Dream-a coffee house in Phoenix where folk singers played. I recall withdrawing into myself, hearing the music on the outside, but being a million miles away.

Shadowrun had reared its head again and lots of images flashed through my brain. All of a sudden I saw a Rolls Royce car, but instead of the winged woman on the hood, it had a raven. At that moment I saw the double-R logo beneath the raven and knew instantly that the car belonged to Richard Raven-Dr.

Richard Raven-an Amerindian elf and top-notch shadowrunner.

Raven slipped into the men's adventure framework perfectly, and I knew the aide who would chronicle his adventures was named Wolf. I also knew Wolf was a werewolf of sorts-at least that's what he believes-but I didn't know if that was possible or not in the Shadow-run world. It didn't matter-I had two characters in place and the world as I saw it began to congeal.

On Sat.u.r.day I called Jordan up at home and asked him some questions about the fictional background.

On Sunday, in one ten-hour marathon session, "Squeeze Play" was written. By Monday I Fedexed it to FASA, making it the first piece of Shadowrun fiction written.

This was rather remarkable since the rules didn't exist yet.

B.y the end of that week I'd written "Quicksilver Sayonara" and by the end of the month the story that became "If As Beast..." had also been written. All that writing hadn't gotten Wolf out of my system, but I faced the basic difficulty of all writers: if you want to get paid, you have to do things for which folks pay you. I shifted over to the Renegade Legion work and Wolf let me go.

That summer, with Shadowrun slated for GenCon release, Jordan decided we really needed a SR anthology and he wanted to make it into a braided novel. Between the two ofus we created the background, figured out the plot points that each story would have to hit, and brought writers together.

Jordan chose Robert Charrette to lead off and me to anchor the book. Everyone else was given a plot point to hit in it and we were off to the races. By GenCon we had the first draft of the anthology put together. All the rough spots were ironed out at a big dinner meeting at Maders.

My two stories comprise the last third of the anthology. The first, "Would It Help If I Said I Was Sorry?" is not a Wolf story. It is a Zig and Zag story, or Iron Mike and Tiger, as they prefer to be known. The second story is Wolf through and through. "It's All Done With Mirrors" chronicles the events referred to as the "Night of Fire" in this book. Both stories slot into the time frame between "Squeeze Play" and "Quicksilver Sayonara."

After writing the two stories in which a chunk of downtown Seattle was destroyed, I actually visited that city. The trip was a lot of fun. I was especially pleased to see I'd gotten uphill and downhill right-an educated guess based on the location of the ocean.

It looked at that point as if there would be no other Wolf and Raven stories until there was a novel, which I thought would be great fun. Bob Charrette was given the first three Shadowrun novels-as well he should have since he was one of the game's designers-and I was hoping to pick one up shortly thereafter when ROC began publishing both BattleTech and Shadowrun books for FASA. My first chance at a SR novel slipped away, however, because in the opinion of FASA's Sam Lewis I was all tied up with BattleTech. At that point it looked like I'd be writing one book a year for FASA and Sam wanted that to be BattleTech.

At roughly the same time as that decision came down, the anthology was heading out into distribution. I asked FASA for permission to put "Squeeze Play" up on the GEnie network, in the Games Forum, as a taste of Shadowrun fiction to spur sales of the anthology. After I'd posted it, Loren Wiseman of the late Game Designers' Workshop and I were talking in a real-time conference. Loren told me that their magazine,Challenge, was open for submissions. I shot back that I was booked solid. Loren said that was too bad because they would have loved to have a story by me in an issue. Fiction, I noted back, was a horse of a different color. (SinceChallenge had never carried fiction before, I thought Loren was soliciting articles or scenarios.) I pointed Loren to "Squeeze Play," which he downloaded and inside a weekChallenge bought it.

I followed quickly by sending them a copy of "Quicksilver Sayonara," which they also took. In the spring of 1990 I wrote "Digital Grace" andChallenge took it as well. In the summer, at FASA's request, I wrote me story "Better to Reign" for an advertising handout that was available at Origins. It introduced the character of Green Lucifer and fleshed out his back-story. Not wanting a good character to go to waste, I followed with "Numberanner" and included in it the character of Dempsey-a character created by Loren Wiseman.

Because of my schedule it was about a year before I finished another Wolf and Raven story. Ever since writing "Digital Grace," I knew I wanted to return to the character of Albion and have Wolf deal with the aftermath of that story. I had the opening scene in mind, no problem, but I didn't know where the tale went from there. Then, one day when I was fooling around with the Destiny Deck (designed by Dennis L. McKiernan and Peter Bush), I tossed cards out to see where the story would go. The Destiny Deck is great for generating game scenarios and, in this case, the rest of the story just fell into place based on the clues on the cards. "Fair Game" was born, and it was rather big.Challenge agreed to take it and spread it out over two issues.

Early in 1992 it looked as if I'd finally get around to getting a contract to write a Shadowrun novel. At Sam Lewis' request I sent in a proposal for taking some of the short stories as a starting point for the novel and weaving them into one big long adventure. I sat back and waited to hear, but before FASA said anything to me, my agent called with an offer of a contract from Bantam Books for two unwritten fantasy novels, includingOnce a Hero. At that point in time, in my career and in publishing, few better offers could be found. Clutching two birds firmly in hand, as it were, I phoned Sam to tell him I had to let the one bird in the bush go.

Sam said, "So, you're telling me that you're turning down the book we're offering you." Because of my commitment to Bantam, I had to. If I'd only had FASA's offer in hand first, I could have delayed the Bantam work, but such are the complications of the publishing business.

It's at this point that things get a bit surreal concerning Wolf and Raven. In the spring of 1992 Liz and I were invited to be guests at Conduit 2 in Salt Lake City. The Guest of Honor there was Roger Zelazny, a man whose work I had admired for decades. I had hoped to get to know him there-often at conventions the out-of-town guests are thrown together just because of circ.u.mstances. While we did get to chat a bit, I never felt we connected, and I ended up rather disappointed in myself for not having made a better impression on him.

In September of that year Roger came to Phoenix as the guest of honor at CopperCon. The following weekend Roger, Jennifer Roberson, Liz Danforth, and I were all supposed to be guests at Wolfcon in Mississippi. Having been to Wolfcon the previous year, I knew how small and intimate a convention it was, and I knew I'd be miserable if I didn't get to know Roger before we headed out there. I resolved to acquit myself better at CopperCon and headed off to the convention.

When I walked into the green room to get my badge, Roger unfolded himself from a chair. "Hey, man, great to see you," he said, adding, "Roger Zelazny." Right. Sure. As if I could possibly have forgotten who he was.

I mumbled a greeting and shook his hand. He then said, "A friend of mine sent me some stories you wrote about Shadowrun. I really liked them. You have some great characters there." At that moment two things were confirmed for me: 1) There clearly was a G.o.d 2) Apparently I had made Him happy Wolf and Raven allowed me to become good friends with Roger Zelazny. The stories also prompted Roger to ask me to partic.i.p.ate in the braided novelForever After, which was one of the last projects he worked on before his premature death. And the story "Designated Hitter" served as a starting point for the story "Tip-Off," which I wrote for Roger'sWheel of Fortune anthology.

While I had toyed with "Designated Hitter" a bit through the years, I'd not touched a Shadowrun story for awhile when Rodney Knox became the editor of the Shadowrun Fan Club magazine,Kage. Rodney asked me if I could write a Wolf and Raven story for him and I agreed to do so, thinking I'd finally finish "DH." As Rodney's deadline grew close and I realized I couldn't finish the story in time, I pulled up the only completed ma.n.u.script I had of a W&R story and rewrote it into "If As Beast You Don't Succeed."

The original version is cruder and decidedly darker; but I like the version here much better. "Beast" was run inKage in two parts, and succeeded in killing the magazine in 1994. Very few folks saw both halves, so, for all intents and purposes, there had been no Wolf and Raven stories published since "FG" in 1992.

Despite that hiatus, I kept being asked about the stories. I tried to interest FASA or ROC in collecting the stories into an anthology, but anthologies seldom sell as well as novels. (This is why this isn't an anthology. Nope. It's abraided novel. The difference, though subtle, is one we all hope makes itself apparent at the check-out counters.) Because of the sales issue, FASA and ROC both hesitated and I forgot about the idea of a collection while I dove into Star Wars novels.

Apparently others did not forget. When Mike Mulvihill took over as the Shadowrun developer, folks asked him about Wolf and Raven. Even out on the Internet I'd see folks occasionally lamenting the lack of a Wolf and Raven novel. At Origins in the summer of 1996 when Mike and I were riding up an escalator and heading off to lunch, he asked me about these SR stories I'd written. I let him know I had nearly a book's worth of stories prepared and that Heyne, FASA's German publisher, was interested in doing a collection over there.

One thing led to another, and you've got the result in your hands. I finally completed "Designated Hitter"

for this collection and slotted it into place in the chronology where I had always intended it go. A couple of points were cleared up, some pa.s.sages edited (or restored from theChallenge editions), and the rest is history.

A lot of folks-be they writers, critics, or academics- often opine that a writer's characters are really that writer; and since the Wolf stories are written in first person, it would be easy to a.s.sume Wolf is somehow my idealized self. Not true. Wolf gets away with things that would, quite rightly, get me killed.

And while I wouldn't mind having his car, I'll leave friends like Kid Stealth and a shadowrunning career far behind, thanks.

One of the coolest things about writing from Wolf's point of view is that my brain starts producing remarks that are a lot more witty or cutting or sarcastic than normal. Seeing things through Wolf's eyes seems to hone my sense of satire and the absurd. It also makes me p.r.o.ne to chuckling at various moments at nothing.

In writing the stories I very much enjoyed how the saga just slowly grew. In "Squeeze Play" you can read what I knew about Kid Stealth as I knew it-I had no idea who or what he was as that story was pouring out into the computer. The rest of Raven's aides have defined themselves as well, not becoming what I want or need to have for a story, but what they apparently were intended to be all the way along.

Lynn Ingold is a great example of this sort of thing. I had never intended to carry her beyond "Quicksilver Sayonara," but she kept showing up. She adds a stabilizing and humanizing element to Wolf's life, which allows him to exert more and more control over the Old One. Since Wolf's life can be seen, in part, as a struggle to control the Old One, that makes Lynn very powerful. The fact that the Old One likes her, and is really only part of Wolf anyway, makes the whole set of relationships there something that might even seem to reflectLiterary Aspiration on my part.

It's a pa.s.sing phase, really. But it does go to show that a story is about characters, and even stories set in a commercial universe can have characters who develop and grow. I think a great deal of the positive response over the years to these characters is based not on what they do or have done, what they have killed or escaped or blown up, but on who they are and how much we like or fear them.

So the only other question to be asked and answered is this: will there be more Wolf and Raven stories?

There's only one other that's partially complete; the rest are ideas and fragments. I'm sure, someday, Wolf will become restless and force me to finish them.

But, that's what I like about Wolf-you can't keep him down. He keeps coming at you until he gets his way. In the matter of more stories I'm fairly certain he'll get it.

-Michael A. StackpolePhoenix, Arizona August 1997.

end.