The Warslayer Read online

  The Warslayer

  by Rosemary Edghill

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2002 by Rosemary Edghill

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

  A Baen Books Original

  Baen Publishing Enterprises

  P.O. Box 1403

  Riverdale, NY 10471

  www.baen.com

  ISBN: 0-7434-3536-2

  Cover art by Carol Heyer

  First printing, May 2002

  Distributed by Simon & Schuster

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  Production by Windhaven Press, Auburn, NH

  Printed in the United States of America

  Dedications

  To the Troops of Oz:

  Barry Cadwigan

  Allen Hazen

  Andrea Hoseth

  Sylvia Kelso

  And the Home Guard:

  Greg Cox

  Elektra

  Doris Egan

  Nancy Hanger

  Jim Macdonald

  Sarah Thompsen

  Toni Weisskopf

  And Most of All, to the Men

  Behind the Legend:

  Russ Galen

  Jim Baen

  MOTHER OF ALL WARMOTHERS

  She was back where they'd started—the top of the mountain Grey Arlinn. The fairy-princess castle, the lawn, all the silly-bugger trappings were gone. In the center of the open space stood a huge slab of smooth black stone. Ivradan was manacled, spread-eagled as though he were waiting for a vulture to come and tear out his liver. He'd dropped Gordon and the little blue stuffed elephant was a blot of bright color at the foot of the stone.

  Glory ran across the mountaintop toward the stone. The whole set-up looked remarkably like one of the concept sketches from The Incredible True Adventures of Vixen the Slayer's "For Whom the Belle Trolls" episode they'd been supposed to shoot next season. In her hand, the Sword of Cinnas was vibrating madly, as though somebody had flicked a switch inside it.

  As she reached out to touch the stone, Ivradan's face went . . . strange.

  ::Have you come to chain me once more, little mortal?:: a voice said inside Glory's head.

  She froze, part of her mind waiting for someone to call out and tell her they had the shot, fine, cut for lunch. She turned, slowly, telling herself desperately that it didn't matter what she saw, she wouldn't scream, she wouldn't. The sound she made instead emerged as a desolate moan.

  Charane had gotten tired of playing. This was her true form at last—and it looked like every nightmare Ridley Scott'd had for the past twenty years. The monster towered over Glory in the greenish dusk, close enough that it only had to bend down to bite off her head.

  But she would not run. She was too terrified to think clearly, but Ross, her gymnastics coach, had spent years training her to go beyond thought. Her mind blank with an emotion too profound to be called fear, Glory wrapped both hands around the hilt and raised her sword. . . .

  BAEN BOOKS by Rosemary Edghill

  The Warslayer

  Beyond World's End

  (with Mercedes Lackey)

  Spirits White as Lightning

  (with Mercedes Lackey)

  "GOD'S TEETH!"

  The Making of a Cult Phenomenon

  (from Vixen the Slayer: The Unofficial Journeys)

  by Greg Cox

  From the start, she made an indelible impression on everyone lucky enough to catch her startling debut: charging out of the misty English (or was it Australian?) countryside astride her magnificent chestnut stallion, her silver rapier catching the moonlight, her scarlet tresses dancing in whistling wind like the very fires of Perdition. "Evil wakes!" she warned us huskily, as her unsheathed blade swiftly dispatched what would turn out to be merely the first in an endless parade of hell-spawned ghouls and revenants. For those of us who tuned into that first episode out of curiosity, or even by accident, it was clear at once that this was a woman to be reckoned with—as millions of devoted fans would soon discover.

  Who would've guessed that the first great TV heroine of the 21st Century would be a feisty, indomitable demon-hunter straight out of the Elizabethan era? Certainly not Gloria McArdle, the incandescent former Olympic gymnast who brings "Vix" thrillingly to life every Friday night, or so it seemed from the shell-shocked expression on Glory's face when she received a standing ovation from a veritable horde of adoring fans (many decked out in full 16th-century regalia) at the first official Vixen the Slayer Convention in New York City. I was there myself, frantically scribbling notes on the back of my program book, and can testify that the sheer amount of devotion, excitement, and, okay, out-and-out lust that filled that crowded convention center when Glory took the stage was enough to fuel a full-fledged crusade against the forces of darkness, or at least sell out every piece of licensed merchandise in the dealers' room. The Beatles may have been more popular than Jesus Christ, but Vixen has certainly got Lucifer beaten hands-down.

  But if McArdle was slow to realize the full enormity of her kohl-eyed counterpart's impassioned fan following, then she was probably the last person on the planet to do so. All you need to do is look on the Internet, where you can quickly find enough evidence to fill even Father Diavolo's Book of the Damned. Fan-generated Vixen web pages abound (despite the pernicious efforts of Full Earth's over-zealous legal department), with even Adrian the Wonder Horse receiving a score of tribute sites. Pseudo-scholarly web magazines like Camrado: Ye Olde Journal of Vixen Studies publish earnest treatises on such provocative topics as "Vixen: An Inspired Fusion of Red Sonja and Solomon Kane" and "Whither the Beast?: Biblical Imagery in 'Vixen'."

  Speaking of provocative, let's not forget all the fan fiction out there, an endlessly growing archive of semi-apocryphal "Vixen" adventures that are generally a whole lot steamier (and more explicit) than the exploits that actually air on the television series. Not surprisingly, the vast majority of these unsanctioned narratives have Vixen and her arch-nemesis, Lilith Kane, the Duchess of Darkness, taking their love-hate relationship to a whole new level. (Sometimes Sister Bernadette joins in as well, vows or no vows.) And don't get me started on all the "Mary Sue" stories out there, in which thinly-disguised versions of the authors are mystically transported through time to join Vixen the Slayer in her never-ending battle for truth, freedom, and the way of the ninja. (I refuse to comment on all those anonymously authored stories teaming Vix with "Gerg Xoc," journeyman scribe.)

  Meanwhile, in dozens of chat rooms and newsgroups, Vixites from around the world argue incessantly about what really happened in the infamous "dream" episode, or who would win in a three-way fight between Vixen, Xena, and Buffy? (The general consensus on the latter was that Buffy would win, but only if she was allowed to import a missile launcher from the 20th century.) In all, there's enough Vixen material on-line that, in theory, you could spend 24 hours a day in the world of our favorite ninja vampire hunter without ever watching the show! But who in God's name would want to do that?

  Every fan has their own favorite episode, of course. Some prefer the nonstop demon-fighting action of such classics as "To Hunt the Hunter" or "Thirteen Minutes to Doomsday," while others groove on moodier, more atmospheric fare like "The Haunter of Crimson Cove" or "Behowl the Moon." Hardcore romantics pine for more episodes like "A Slayer in Love" (with Christopher Marlowe, no less!), while still others (you know who you are) can't get enough of such, er, stimulating episodes as "Corsets and Catacombs" or "The Duchess's Delights." From a strictly historical standpoint, few shows are more fascina
ting than "Across the Veil of Worlds," in which the ever-frugal folks at Full Earth Productions incorporated footage from the original, never-aired pilot for Ninja Vampire Hunter starring Doreen Liu, thus providing an intriguing glimpse of an alternate reality featuring a very different Slayer.

  Granted, there are a few episodes that most of us would prefer to forget. Did we really need to watch a sixty-minute flashback to Sister Bernadette's halcyon days at the nunnery in "The Trouble with Anglicans"? Or watch our usually fierce Slayer baby-sit that obnoxious urchin in "Mother for a Day"? Oh well, I guess even the Anointed Champion of the Light can have an off day. Or two.

  How much longer can the Vixen phenomenon thrive and flourish? From where I'm sitting, the sky's the limit. As of this writing, the first official Vixen novel, The Warslayer by Rosemary Edghill, is sitting atop the New York Times Bestseller List, while First Lady Tipper Gore just cited Vixen as "an outstanding role model for America's youth." Not bad for the bastard child of an English lord and a Japanese geisha!

  Now you'll have to excuse me. It's nine o'clock and a brand new episode has just begun. On my TV screen a full moon is rising, the Duchess and her fiendish lackeys are plotting new devilment, and justice, in the form of a flame-haired female privateer, is riding into the dark and unholy night.

  I may never go out on Fridays again.

  * * *

  GREG COX is the author of numerous books, including Vixen the Slayer: The Unauthorized Journeys. He has never missed a single episode.

  CHAPTER ONE:

  Leather and Steel

  The troll was enormous: eight, maybe nine feet tall. Its skin was a mottled bluish-purple, covered with coarse black hair and warts the size of dinner plates. Its knuckles nearly brushed the ground when it walked, and its wrists were as big around as her thighs.

  Vixen the Slayer bared her teeth in a feral smile, tossing her sword from hand to hand as she moved backward in a fighter's crouch. The monster had to be stopped here, and there was nobody who could do it but her. She was just lucky that something that big was also slow. . . .

  The troll tottered forward another few steps, then wavered and fell flat on its face, exposing the two puppeteers who had been inside and the tangle of trailing air-hoses that led back to the rest of the crew.

  "Cut," Megan said, sighing. "Rennie—"

  "He tripped me!" Rennie said, pointing at his partner Roald, on whose shoulders he'd been sitting a few moments before.

  "Maybe we should try it the other way around," Roald suggested snarkily. He was six feet three and outweighed Rennie by a good ten stone.

  "It was nobody's fault," Megan said, putting on her "soothing mom" voice. "Vix, honey, we're going to have to go again. Everybody take ten!"

  Vixen the Slayer, ninja-raised do-gooder and scourge of the Satanic legions that plagued the Elizabethan countryside, stretched and sighed, her hand on the small of her back. That knife-fighter's crouch looked great on camera, but it played hell with the vertebrae.

  "Sure, Meg," she called back. "I'm going to be in my trailer, okay?"

  Megan nodded, distracted, and Vixen—aka Gloria Emmeline McArdle—walked off. She knew from long experience that ten minutes was going to be at least forty-five, what with getting all the air-hoses and electrical cables untangled so that Truxton the Troll would be ready to go again. He was really just a nine-foot All-Purpose Creature Armature that could be dressed in any number of foam latex monster disguises; otherwise, he'd have been far too expensive for the budget of a syndicated TV series, even one filmed in The Wonder Down Under.

  She walked past the camera and craft services until she got to her trailer. Closing the door behind her, she tossed her sword on the couch and sat down in front of the mirror. Vixen's masklike makeup and kohl-lined eyes stared back.

  This time last year, she'd been plain Gloria "Glory" McArdle, ex-Olympian, red-headed teacher of girls' gymnastics and physical education at Ned Kelly High School in Melbourne, Australia. She'd been good enough to be on the Australian team that went to Seoul, and not good enough to medal and garner tempting offers from top coaches and sportswear manufacturers, and that was that. When her final growth spurt hit late that summer, taking her from five-five (pretty tall for a gymnast even at that) to six foot in her stocking feet and built like a Vargas pinup, it thoroughly put an end to any possibility of ever competing again.

  She'd been wise enough not to go into coaching—better a clean break than being tormented with constant reminders of "might have been." She'd gotten her teaching certificate instead, and while she was relieved to find that she enjoyed teaching—molding and shaping impressionable little minds and bodies—as she settled into her new life, she found she was still hungry for . . . something.

  Boredom is a dangerous taskmaster. Out of boredom Glory had gone to an open audition for a straight-to-cable series called Ninja Vampire Hunter. The ad had mentioned that gymnastics training was a plus, but Full Earth Productions had really just been looking for extras to stand around in the background while Doreen Liu, their Asian martial arts star, bounced off trampolines.

  So she'd started fooling about, and found that a six-foot redhead who could do back flips, layouts, and walkovers had gotten the casting director's attention. She'd been hired on the spot, spent the Long Vac on the set, and thought that was the end of it. She wasn't a professional actress, and other extras with more experience had told her that most pilots didn't get picked up.

  But Ninja Vampire Hunter had tested well, and with a little tweaking had gone to series, following in the fertile footsteps of such disparate role-models as Xena: Warrior Princess and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And that was when Barry Doherty and Full Earth had offered her the lead.

  "Doreen doesn't want to spend a year in Melbourne, and anyway, you look a lot better in a black leather corset," he'd said winningly.

  It wasn't one of Life's Tough Choices. Playing "Orcs-and-Bush-Rangers" as Vixen (neé Koroshiya) the Slayer (even with a whoppingly sexist leather corset) was more fun—and more lucrative—than teaching high school. She signed a three-year contract with Full Earth to star in the re-christened The Incredibly True Adventures of Vixen the Slayer (TITAoVtS for short) and entered the glamorous world of show-biz on the spot. On an eighteen-hour shooting day and an average six-day-per-episode shoot, Vixen the Slayer and her sidekick Sister Bernadette wandered the villages and hedgerows of England in search of supernatural evil and religious intolerance. The Australian exteriors gave viewers a peculiar idea of the English countryside, not that anyone particularly seemed to care.

  Veteran stage actress Anne-Marie Campbell was playing her co-star, the doughty ex-nun Bernadette, and American soap villainess (and former Southland Studios child star) Romy Blackburn had the plum role of Vixen's recurring foe: Lilith Kane, the Duchess of Darkness. By the time the first six episodes had aired, Vixen was international front-page news, captivating millions of UPN Network viewers every Friday night and generating hundreds of column inches. Glory became a Star overnight, and discovered that she was suddenly somehow terribly important and publicity-worthy. The usual news story portrayed TITAoVtS' star in mid-backflip beneath a banner headline saying something like: "Is this Today's Woman?"

  Well, only if today's woman needs to be able to slay trolls and vampires at need, Glory thought, and kept her thoughts to herself.

  When the publicity hit, Barry realized that it was important to strike while the zeitgeist was hot and had taken advantage of owning the Flavor of the Month to book the regulars for a promotional tour of the U.S. during hiatus: interviews, photo layouts, talk shows, personal appearances, the whole enchilada. The moment the season's filming wrapped, Romy, Glory, Anne-Marie, Dylan (the Duchess of Darkness's lackey, the venal Jesuit Fra Diavolo), and even Adrian the Wonder Horse (a burly chestnut with a tendency to overact) would be shipped Trans-Pacific to fame, frenzy, and a general blurring of the lines between fantasy and reality.

  Such is fame, Glory thought wisely to herself, unimpressed
. I wonder how long this is going to last?

  * * *

  Two months later:

  I wish this were over. Glory sighed, and began to put on the makeup that would hide her thousands of pale-gold freckles. There were deep circles under her tiger-yellow eyes, and she looked haggard. This isn't what twenty-six and famous is supposed to look like.

  And this is supposed to be my vacation. . . .

  Six weeks. Three dozen American cities that all looked alike. They'd done ShoWest, Letterman, Leno, Oprah, six media conventions, dozens of local shows and special appearances, and interviews for everyone from Movieline and the Sci-Fi Channel to Cosmopolitan. As the show's star, Glory bore the brunt of the publicity: she'd signed copies of TITAoVtS tie-in books at chain stores across America and schmoozed with every UPN executive they threw at her. Every single one of the people she met wanted just one little piece of her, but a million little drops added up to an ocean, and a million little pieces added up to more than one Glory "Vixen" McArdle.

  Everything they've ever told you about fame is true, Glory told herself sagely. She'd had a taste of it in her Olympic days; she'd known it wouldn't be all gravy—but somewhere deep inside she'd assumed the TV star business wouldn't be that much different from the Olympics. She'd been right . . . and wrong. The Summer Games only lasted two weeks, and a promotional tour went on forever.

  I want out, she thought forlornly.

  But if you get out, where will you go?

  That was the real question. It wasn't so much that Fame had changed her. It had just changed everybody else, to the point where they yelled for Vixen and Glory answered, and she wasn't really sure how much of a difference there really was. She knew this couldn't last forever, but she didn't know if she could just go back to being a Phys Ed teacher again once it was over, and she knew she didn't want to. But if not this, and not that, then what?