Castle for Rent

Twenty-seven Estate

As Incarnadine, lord of the Western Pale, sprinted for the woods, he wondered which way of dying would be the quickest and least painful: being crushed to death under huge reptilian feet, being burned to char, or being eaten alive, torn apart in the maw of the gargantuan creature that was now chasing him. The question was academic, inasmuch as the creature would most likely combine all three methods. First tenderize the meat, parbroil it to taste, then gobble it down after a few brisk chews.

Flames from the creature licked at his back. Something crackled around his head, and he realized his hair was on fire. Slapping at his head, he willed a forfending shield to cover him and hoped it would be efficacious.

He dove into the woods and hid behind a stout oak, peering around its trunk. The monster was temporarily blocked by the trees. It roared out its disappointment over losing a quick meal, streams of thin red flame shooting from its nostrils. Then, extending its upper limbs, it took hold of two birch trees and pried them apart. The trees snapped like matchsticks and fell over. The monster began to bull its way into the woods, branches snapping as it moved.

Incarnadine examined the hand-held missile launcher that had materialized in his grasp. It was a long tube affair, set about with gadgets and gizmos. It was very heavy. He studied it for a moment. He was not familiar with its type, but the device did not look overcomplicated. Probably a Soviet design. He balanced the tube on his shoulder and put his eye to the aiming scope. He centered the beast’s thorax in the cross hairs and waited for a clear shot. Finally getting one, he squeezed the trigger-grip.

The missile whooshed away, spewing yellow flame and leaving noxious fumes in its wake. Incarnadine did not see it hit, but heard the explosion.

When the smoke cleared, he saw that the beast was down, its massive head wedged between two tree trunks, the glow of its yellow eyes dimming quickly. Then, suddenly, the huge animal vanished with a bright flash. Nothing remained but trailing smoke.

The missile launcher also disappeared, but with less fanfare. Incarnadine walked out of the woods and rejoined his brother on the meadow.

“Nice solution,” Trent said.

“Thanks. Better than conjuring a knight atop a foaming charger, or some such poetry.”

“Whatever it takes.”

They advanced up the sloping meadow, soon reaching the crest of the hill. Below them stood a large manor house done in the Tudor style, surrounded by trees, gardens, and numerous outbuildings. Dim light glowed behind curtained windows in the main house.

“So far, so good,” Trent said. “What next, I wonder?”

As if in answer, a bright green shaft of energy lanced out from what looked like a large tool shed near the house. A blinding green aura enveloped the two brothers, outlining the bell-shaped forfending shields around each of them.

Trent made circles with his index fingers, moving first clockwise, then counter. “Okay, they don’t have enough power here to get through our shields using the fancy high-tech stuff.”

“Maybe we have a ghost of a chance after all.”

“Maybe. The stuff they do have is nothing to sneeze at. Looks like it might boil down to swordplay, though. I can’t figure it. They must not be connected to their continuum.”

“Hope springs eternal. I thought they’d be running a channel right through the castle to here.”

“That’s what I figured. But maybe Ferne’s still holding out.”

“I don’t see how she could be,” Incarnadine said. “But more power to her. For the moment.”

Another bolt, this one a bright magenta, shot out from the trees.

“Testing different frequencies,” Trent said. “Maybe they’ll find one that works. In the meantime, this will keep them honest.”

Trent raised his arm and pointed at the source of the firing. A blue-white shaft of energy speared out from his fingertip and hit the shed, which disintegrated in a fiery explosion.

“Good shooting,” Incarnadine said.

A sudden droning came from above — the motor of a plane. Looking up, they could see its outline against the stars. The plane banked, then went into a screaming dive.

“Sounds like a Stuka,” Trent said. “The bombs we can live with, but it could strafe us with silver bullets.”

Tiny sparks of flame budded along the black outline of the bomber, and the rattle of machine guns sounded. A few slugs chunked into the earth at Incarnadine’s feet.

Behind them, something rose from the trees on a pillar of fire and streaked into the night, heading along a collision course with the plane. Within a few seconds, missile and plane met in the air about midway between the house and the top of the knoll. A brilliant starburst of light blossomed at their joining. Almost simultaneously, a huge explosion tore up the meadow about twenty yards in front of where the brothers stood. A second bomb hit just behind them, splattering chunks of frozen brown earth.

“Think we should take cover?” Incarnadine asked when the smoke and dust had cleared.

“Not yet. I can’t say I’ve been really impressed by anything so far.”

“You didn’t have that reptile chasing you.”

“I concede the point. But I wonder why they’re holding back? Toying with us?”

“Trent, it may just be that they’re as chary of us as we are of them.”

“Gee, think of that. Let’s get closer.”

“Hold on.”

Many things began to happen. Great winged beasts appeared, defecating balls of fire as they flapped their huge pinions overhead. A motley troop of creatures — variously taloned and beaked, chitinous and scutellate, some with claws, others with pinchers — began charging up the hill. Amorphous shapes slithered out of shadow, leaping and gibbering. Vapors coalesced and churned with demonic energy, advancing like tornadoes. The grass was alive with fang-bearing homunculi that screamed and chittered their venomous hatred.

“A shooting gallery!” Trent said, both index fingers raised and spewing multicolored fire. “Have fun!”

“It may be our last chance,” Incarnadine said as his first shot dehorned a seven-foot-tall ambulatory crustacean with delusions of horror-film stardom.

The spooks charged and the bolts flew. Smoke and fire rose from the hayfield as chitin smoldered and scales burned. Great flying creatures plummeted from the sky, trailing pink and yellow sparks and bright blue smoke. Vortexes exploded, and brilliant shafts of radiant energy intersected in the night. There came swarming congeries of fiery motes, and bright tongues of flame, the sky taking its color from their flashing luminescence.

Incarnadine flamed a four-pincered lobsterlike thing that had advanced to within a few yards of him, and when the creature vanished in a puff of vermilion smoke, the armored, insectoid little hellion that it had shielded leaped at him like a grasshopper. He fired, diving to the right and rolling to his feet again, only to confront another hobgoblin, this one a nine-foot-tall cross between a praying mantis and a sexually aroused ostrich. Incarnadine hosed it down, then played his beam of energy on the blasphemous horror that wriggled and twitched behind it.

The battle continued for some time, stratagems being employed on both sides. Creatures would feint at one invader and charge the other. The brothers cross-fired on oversize and airborne demons, and generally helped each other when they could.

Eventually the stream of apparitions petered out.

Incarnadine burned the last of the big ones, then mopped up what remained of the salamanders and other smaller incubi.

When done, he turned to see Trent shaking off a small legless thing with big yellow teeth that was worrying at the cuff of his trousers. He kicked it away and spritzed it with fire. The thing squealed hideously, blazing into nothingness like a scrap of flash paper.

Trent walked over to his brother, smiling, his breath trailing behind him in the cold night air. “So much for the fireworks. I wonder when the real battle’s going to start?”

Something was forming in the air over the manor house, something big. It was an image, at first blurred and indistinct, gradually growing sharper.

It was a face, a human face, dark of eye and square of jaw. The thin lips curled into a pleasant smile.

“Hi!” the image said brightly. “Listen. Can we talk?”