Going Postal

looking. Moist flung his back to the cold stone wall and slithered along it until he ran out of wall and acquired a doorframe.
    The faint blue glow of the Sorting Engine was just visible.
    As Moist peered into the machine’s room, Tiddles was visible, too. He was crouched under the engine.
    “That’s a very cat thing you’re doing here, Tiddles,” said Moist, staring at the shadows. “Come to Uncle Moist. Please?”
    He sighed, and hung the suit on an old letter rack, and crouched down. How were you supposed to pick up a cat? He’d never done it. Cats never figured in Grandfather’s Lipwigzer kennels, except as an impromptu snack.
    As his hand drew near Tiddles, the cat flattened its ears and hissed.
    “Do you want to cook down here?” said Moist. “No claws, please—”
    The cat began to growl, and Moist realized that it wasn’t looking directly at him.
    “Good Tiddles,” he said, feeling the terror begin to rise. It was one of the prime directives of exploring in a hostile environment: Do not bother about the cat. And, suddenly, the environment was a lot more hostile.
    Another important rule was: Don’t turn around too slowly to look. It’s there, all right. Not the cat. Damn the cat. It’s something else.
    He stood upright and took a two-handed grip on the wooden stake. It’s right behind me, yes ? he thought. Bloody well bloody right bloody behind me! Of course it is! How could things be otherwise?
    The feeling of fear was almost the same as the feeling he got when, say, a mark was examining a glass diamond. Time slowed a little, every sense was heightened, and there was a taste of copper in his mouth.
    Don’t turn around slowly. Turn around fast.
    He spun, screamed, and thrust. The stake met resistance, which yielded only slightly.
    A long, pale face grinned at him in the blue light. It showed rows of pointy teeth.
    “Missed both my hearts,” said Mr. Gryle, spitting blood.

    M OIST JUMPED BACK as a thin, clawed hand sliced through the air, but kept the stake in front of him, jabbing with it, holding the thing back…
    Banshee , he thought. Oh hell…
    Only when he moved did Gryle’s leathery black cape swing aside briefly to show the skeletal figure beneath; it helped if you knew that the black leather was a wing. It helped if you thought of banshees as the only humanoid race that had evolved the ability to fly, in some lush jungle somewhere where they’d hunted flying squirrels. It didn’t help much if you knew why the story went that hearing the scream of the banshee meant that you were going to die.
    It meant that the banshee was tracking you. No good looking behind you. It was overhead.
    There weren’t many of the feral ones, even in Uberwald, but Moist knew the advice passed on by people who’d survived them. Keep away from the mouth, those teeth were vicious. Don’t attack the chest, the flight muscles there are like armor. They’re not strong but they’ve got sinews like steel cables, and the long reach on those arm bones’ll mean it can slap your silly head right off—
    Tiddles yowled and backed further under the Sorting Engine. Gryle slashed at Moist again, and came after him as he backed away.
    —but their necks snap easily if you can get inside their reach, and they have to shut their eyes when they scream.
    Gryle came toward him, head bobbing as he strutted. There was nowhere else for Moist to go, so he tossed aside the wood and held up his hands.
    “All right, I give in,” he said. “Just make it quick, okay?”
    The creature kept looking at the golden suit; they had a magpie’s eye for glitter.
    “I’m going somewhere afterwards,” said Moist helpfully.
    Gryle hesitated. He was hurt, disoriented, and had eaten pigeons that were effluent on wings. He wanted to get out of here and up into the cool sky. Everything was too complicated here. There were too many targets, too many smells.
    For a banshee, everything was in the pounce, when teeth, claws, and body weight all bore down at once. Now, bewildered, he strutted back and forth, trying to deal with the situation. There was no room to fly, nowhere else to go, the prey was standing there…instinct, emotion, and some attempt at rational thought all banged together in Gryle’s overheated head.
    Instinct won. Leaping at things with your claws out had worked for a million years, so why stop now?
    He threw his head back, screamed, and sprang.
    So did Moist, ducking under the long arms. That wasn’t programmed