Deathstalker 07 - Deathstalker Return

because he was a Deathstalker, and that was what Deathstalkers did.
    Owen blew a bloody hole in the pack with his disrupter, killing three of them in a moment, and setting fire to the furs of those around them. The animals kept coming anyway. Owen was quickly in and among
    them, cutting them down with swift strokes of his sword.
    And still the animals pressed forwards, knives and lengths of chain flailing, forcing Owen back, step by step. Until there was nowhere left for him to go. His back slammed up against a stone wall, and the animals cried out as they fell upon him, swamping him with their numbers. Owen swung his sword in short deadly arcs, defiant to the last, and then one of them ducked under his swing and stabbed him in the side.
    Owen cried out, in shock as much as pain, and then they were all over him. Their knives plunged into his body again and again. Blood fell thickly, staining the filthy snow. Owen's legs gave way, and he slid down the wall. And still they kept at him, pushing each other aside in their eagerness. They kept on stabbing him with their dirty knives, his body shuddering under the impact of so many blows. Owen cried out again, but his voice was lost in the vicious baying of the pack.
    Lewis cried out, and ran forward. He cut at the animals with his sword, but they didn't feel it. He kicked and hit them, but they didn't know he was there. Owen was sitting in the blood-soaked snow now, his chin resting on his chest, the last of his blood running out of his mouth along with the last of his breath.
    Someone stole his sword and ran off with it. Lewis fell to his knees, crying angry helpless tears. And on his knees, in snow he couldn't feel, he watched Owen Deathstalker die. After he was dead, they stole his boots.
    Lewis cried hot, heavy tears. His sword hung uselessly in his hand. "It's all been for nothing," he said finally. "All of it. He really did die here."
    "Yes, he did," said Roland. "But the story isn't over yet. Keep watching."
    Time speeded up, in that squalid little dead-end square. The animals stripped Owen of everything worth stealing, and then they disappeared back into the night. The mists eddied this way and that. Owen lay dead in the bloody snow, his noble body gashed and punctured in many places, and soaked in his own gore. And that was how the organleggers found him. In Mistport there was always a thriving business in spare parts for transplant surgery, in those long ago days. Body banks were of course illegal, but then so were a great many other everyday activities in Mistport. The body snatchers took Owen's body away, and Lewis and Roland followed them, unobserved.
    The organleggers' warehouse wasn't far. They took Owen's body inside, locking the door carefully behind them. Lewis and Roland ghosted easily through the locked door, and watched as Owen's body was dumped into a refrigerated tank, to preserve it. Within a few hours, automated blades and saws would render the body down into its component parts, ready for marketing. The body snatchers laughed together, and walked away. Lewis and Roland watched them go. Lewis felt drained, worn out.
    "And still the story isn't over," said Roland. "When those two gentlemen return, they'll find Owen's body gone. No trace of it will ever turn up anywhere, and no one will ever know what happened to it. It becomes just another of Mistworld's little mysteries. Well, the answer is: you happened. Or at least, you will. Time travel can play merry hell with your tenses."
    The scene disappeared, and Lewis and Roland were back in the heart of the Madness Maze again.
    Lewis wiped at his face with his sleeve. Roland smiled at him.
    "You're going back in time, Lewis, courtesy of the Maze and the baby. To put right an old wrong.
    You're going to bring Owen back to life, rescue him from the body bank, and then you and he will be brought back here."
    "Just like that?" said Lewis. "The man is dead! They cut him to pieces! Even a regeneration tank couldn't
    save him now."
    "Owen's been through the Maze. He's really very hard to kill. All he needs is a nudge from the Maze, and you."
    Lewis thought about it. "You can send me back, in person this time? Back two hundred years?"
    "Time is just another dimension," said Roland. "Just another direction to move in. With enough power behind you, you can go anywhere and anywhen."
    "And I'll be able to save him? To… bring him back to life?"
    "Never underestimate the power of the Madness Maze, boy. I didn't