Fellowship of the Talisman

25

Snoopy knelt on the ground beside the fire and swept an area clear of litter with his hand.

“Watch closely,” he said. “I’ll draw a map to show you the situation.”

Duncan, standing to one side, bent over to stare at the smooth place on the ground, remembering how the goblin had drawn a map for them that first day they’d met in the chapel of the church.

Snoopy picked up a stick, stabbed a hole into the ground. “We are here,” he said. He drew a ragged line along the map’s northern edge. “There are the hills,” he said. To the south he drew a snaky line. “That’s the river.” To the west he made a sweeping line, running south, then turning west and looping to the north.

“The fen,” said Conrad.

Snoopy bobbed his head. “The fen.”

He ran the stick along the line that represented the hills, curved it east, made a tight loop, and continued south of the snaky line that was the river.

“The Horde,” he said, “is stretched out along that line. They have us hedged in north and east and south. Mostly hairless ones, with some of the other Horde members mixed in. They have us backed against the fen.”

“Any chance of breaking through?” asked Conrad,

Snoopy shrugged. “We haven’t tried. Anytime we want to, we can. We can filter out, a few here, a few there. They won’t even try to stop us. We’re not the ones they want. It is you they want. They lost you here; they know you couldn’t have gotten out of this pocket. Perhaps they think you may be hiding in the mound. If that’s the case, they tell themselves, the time will come when you must move out. They know you’ll have to surface sometime and then they’ll have you. And you can’t filter out as we can.”

“You mean,” said Duncan, “that they’ve just been sitting there and you’ve been just sitting here?”

“Not entirely,” said Snoopy. “Not us just sitting here, I mean. We’ve got dozens of magics set out for them, foolish little traps that will not really hold them, but that can hamper and confuse them, slow up any progress they might make.

Some of the traps are mean as sin. They know they’re there and don’t want to tangle with them until they have to. If they start to move anywhere along their line, we’ll know.”

“You’re sticking out your necks for us,” said Duncan. “We had not intended that you should help us, of course.

We were glad of the help you gave us. But we never expected this.”

“As I told you,” Snoopy said, “we can back off anytime we want to. There’s no overwhelming danger for us. You’re the ones who are in danger.”

“How many of your people do you have here?”

“A few hundred. Maybe a thousand.”

“I wouldn’t have dreamed you could get together that many. You told us the Little Folk have small love of humans.”

“I also told you, if you recall, that we have less love of the Horde. Once the word got started that here was a small band of humans marching into the face of the Horde, the news ran on all sides like wildfire. Day after day our people came flocking in, singly and in little bands. I will not try to deceive you. My people will not fight to the death for you.

Actually they have but little stomach for fighting. They’ve never been a warrior people. But they’ll do what they can.”

“For which,” said Duncan, “they have our gratitude.”

“If you’d only pay attention to what we tell you,” said Snoopy, testily, “you would be better off. I told you, specifically, to stay away from the castle mound. Don’t go near it, I told you. From what you’ve told me, it was only by incredible human luck that you won free of it.” He shook his head. “I do not understand this human capacity for luck.

Our people never have that kind of luck.”

“We had but little choice,” Conrad pointed out. “If we’d not sought refuge in the castle, we’d have been massacred.”

“If you could have gotten across the river…”

“There was no possibility of that,” said Duncan. “The Horde contingent would have run us down. They were re-forming even as we ran.”

“From what we found on the field of battle,” Snoopy said, “you wreaked a deal of damage on them.”

“Only for a time,” said Conrad. “We could not have held. Even as it stood, Diane and the Huntsman saved us. The unexpected violence of their attack…”

Snoopy nodded his head emphatically. “Yes, I know. I know.”

“This time,” Duncan promised, “we’ll pay a closer attention to you. We’ll follow your counsel. What do you suggest?”

The goblin rocked back and sat upon his heels. “Not a thing,” he said. “I have no suggestions.”

“You mean nothing at all? No plan at all?”

“I’ve thought it over well,” said Snoopy. “So have the rest of us. We held a council on it. We spoke for long, we thought extremely hard. We have nothing to offer. We fear your goose is cooked.”

Duncan turned his head to look at Conrad.

“We’ll find a way m’lord,” said Conrad.

“Yes, of course,” said Duncan, wondering as he said it if this might be some ghastly joke the Little Folk were playing on them. A joke or just the brutal truth?

“In the meantime,” said Snoopy, “we’ll do what we can for you. We’ve already found a blanket for the Lady Diane to shield her from the cold, for that flimsy gown she wore was no protection whatsoever. Without the blanket she would have frozen before the night was over.”

Duncan straightened up from the position he had assumed to study Snoopy’s map. The fire was burning high.

Daniel and Beauty were standing companionably together, heads hanging, across the fire from him. Tiny lay curled up, half asleep, not far from Conrad. Around the fire sat and crouched a number of the Little People — goblins, gnomes, elves, sprites and pixies — but the only one he recognized was Nan, the banshee. She sat huddled close to the fire, her wings wrapped neatly about her. Her eyes, so black they seemed to be polished gems shining in the firelight, peered out from beneath a shock of disordered, coal-black hair.

He tried to read the faces, but could not make them out. If there was friendliness, he failed to see it. Nor did he see hatred. They simply sat there, staring, waiting. More than likely watching, he told himself, to see what the humans were about to do.

“These lines that hem us in,” Conrad said to Snoopy. “Surely they cannot be made up of the entire Horde.”

“No,” said Snoopy. “The main Horde is across the fen, west of the fen, moving northward up its shore.”

“Closing us in from the west.”

“Perhaps not. Ghost has been keeping watch on them.”

“Ghost has been working with you? Where is he now?”

Snoopy waved a hand. “Out there somewhere, watching. He and Nan have been our eyes. They’ve kept us well informed. I had hoped that there might be other banshees. They would have been useful.?But Nan is the only one who came. You can’t count on them. They’re an ugly lot.”

“You said that the main Horde may not be blocking us on the west. How is that?”

“Ghost thinks that tomorrow or the next day they’ll move farther north, leaving the west bank, directly across from us, free. But why are you so interested? You could not hope to cross the fen. No one in his right mind would try to cross the fen. It is mud and swamp and water and shifting sands. There are places where there is no bottom to it, and you can’t know, until you come upon them, where those pits may be. One spot may be solid footing, but the next one is muck that seizes you and holds you. Once he sets foot into the fen, one has no chance of coming out alive.”

“We’ll see,” said Conrad. “If that’s the only hope, we’ll try it.”

“If Hubert is still around,” said Duncan, “Diane could go out on patrol with Ghost and Nan. That would give us one more set of eyes.”

“Hubert?”

“Diane’s griffin. He was not around after the castle fell.”

“We’ll look for him tomorrow,” Snoopy said.

“I’m afraid,” said Diane, “that he’ll not be found.”

“Nevertheless, we’ll look,” Snoopy promised. “We’ll try to make up as well for all you lost.”

“We lost everything,” said Conrad. “Blankets, cooking utensils, food.”

“It will be no problem,” said the goblin. “Some of our people right now are working on a set of buckskins for milady. The gown she wears is useless for this sort of life.”

“It’s kind of you,” said Diane. “One thing else I beg of you. A weapon.”

“A weapon?”

“I lost my battle axe.”

“I don’t know about a battle axe,” said Snoopy. “But perhaps something else — a blade, perhaps.”

“A sword?”

“Yes, a sword. I think I know of one I can lay my hands upon.”

“It would be gracious of you.”

Snoopy grumbled. “I don’t know what’s the use of all of this. You’re caught within a trap. To my way of thinking, there is no way to get out of it. When the Horde decides to move in, they’ll squeeze you like a bunch of grapes.”

Duncan looked around the campfire circle. All the Little People crouched there were bobbing their heads in agreement with Snoopy.

“I never saw such a bunch of quitters in all my life,” said Conrad scornfully. “Hell, you’re ready to give up without even trying. Why don’t you all take off? We’ll get along without you.”

He turned and walked out into the darkness.

“You must excuse my friend,” Duncan told those huddled at the fire. “He is not one to accept defeat with any grace.”

Just beyond the fire a figure moved furtively out of the trees, stood there for a moment, then scuttled back again.

Duncan hurried in his direction and stopped at the edge of the grove from which the figure had emerged.

He called softly, “Andrew, where are you? What is wrong with you?”

“What do you want with me?” asked Andrew in a pettish voice.

“I want to talk with you. You’ve been acting like a spoiled child. We have to get to the bottom of it.”

Duncan walked a few steps into the grove. Andrew moved out from behind a tree. Duncan came up to him, stood facing him.

“Out with it,” he said. “What is chewing on you?”

“You know what’s chewing on me.”

“Yes, I think I may. Let us talk about it.”

The firelight did not reach the spot where they stood, and all that Duncan could see of the hermit was the white blob of his face, but in the faintness of the light he could read no expression.

“You remember that night we talked in my cell,” said Andrew. “I told you how I had tried hard to be a hermit.

About how I tried to read the early fathers of the Church. About how for hours on end I sat staring at a candle flame, and how none of it seemed to be of any use at all. I think I told you I was a failure as a hermit, that my early hope to be at least a slightly holy man had come to nothing. I probably told you that I was poor timber for a hermit, that I was not cut out to be a holy man. I am sure I told you all of this and perhaps a great deal more. For I was sore of heart and had been for some time. It is no easy matter for a man to spend the greater part of his life at his profession and in the end to know that he has failed, that all his time and effort have gone for naught, that all his hopes and dreams have vanished with the wind.”

“Yes, I remember some of it,” said Duncan. “I think, in telling it now, you have embellished it a bit. I think that having felt yourself a failure as a hermit, you then jumped at the slightest chance to become a soldier of the Lord. And if that is what you really are, although I’m not too sure of the proper definition, you have done rather well at it. You have no occasion to be out here now sulking in the brambles.”

“But you do not understand.”

“Please enlighten me,” said Duncan dryly.

“Don’t you see that all the staring at the candles paid off in the end? The candle business, and perhaps some of the other things I did. Perhaps the fact that I willingly took the road as a soldier of the Lord. I’m not sure that I am a holy man — I would not be so brash as to claim I am. It might be sacrilegious to even hint I am. But I do have powers I did not have before, powers that I had no suspicion that I had. My staff…”

“So that is it,” said Duncan. “Your staff broke the demon’s chain. Broke it after a full blow of my sword did nothing but strike a shower of sparks from it.”

“You know, if you’ll but admit it,” Andrew said, “that the staff itself could not have fazed the chain. You know that the answer must be either that the staff itself suddenly has acquired a magic, or that the man who wielded it…”

“Yes, I do agree,” said Duncan. “You must have certain holy powers for the staff to accomplish what it did. But, for God’s sake, man, you should be glad you have.”

“But don’t you see?” wailed Andrew. “Don’t you truly see my predicament?”

“I’m afraid this entire thing escapes me.”

“The first manifestation of my power resulted in the freeing of a demon. Can’t you understand how that tears me up inside? That I, a holy man, if a holy man I am, should use this power, for the first time, mind you, to free a mortal enemy of Holy Mother Church?”

“I don’t know about that,” said Duncan. “Scratch does not appear to be a bad sort. A demon, sure, but a most unsuccessful demon, unable to perform even the simple tasks of an apprentice imp. Because of that he ran away from Hell. And to demonstrate how little he was missed, what a poor stick of a demon he had turned out to be, the Devil and his minions did not turn a hand to haul him back to his tasks in Hell.”

“You have tried to put a good face on it, my lord,” said Andrew, “and I thank you for your consideration. You’re an uncommon kindly man. But the fact remains that a black mark has been inscribed against me.”

“There are no black marks,” said Duncan with some irritation. “This is about as silly an idea as I have ever heard.

There’s no one sitting somewhere, inscribing black marks against you or anyone else.”

“Upon my soul,” said Andrew, “there is such a mark. No one else may know, but I know. There is no way for me to wipe it out. There is no eraser that will obliterate it. I’ll carry it to my death and, mayhaps, beyond my death.”

“Tell me one thing,” said Duncan. “It has puzzled me. Why, seeing that the sword had failed, did you wield the staff? Did you have some sort of premonition, some sort of inner light…”

“No, I did not,” said Andrew. “I was carried away, is all. Somehow or other, I don’t know why, I wanted to get into the act. You and Conrad were doing what you could and I felt, I suppose, although at the time I was not aware of it, that I should do what I could.”

“You mean that when you dealt such a mighty blow with that staff of yours that you were trying to help the demon?”

“I don’t know,” said Andrew. “I never thought of it in that way. But I suppose I was trying to help him. And, realizing that, my soul is wrung the harder. Why should I try to help a demon? Why should I lift a finger for him?”

Duncan put out a hand and grasped the hermit’s scrawny shoulder, squeezed it hard. “You are a good man, Andrew. Better than you know.”

“How is that?” asked Andrew. “How does helping a demon make me a good man? I would have thought it made me worse. That’s the entire trouble. I gave aid to a minion out of Hell, with the reek of sulphur still upon him.”

“One,” said Duncan, “that had forsaken Hell. That turned his back upon it, renouncing it. Perhaps for the wrong reasons, but still renouncing it. Even as you and I renounce it. He is on our side. Don’t you understand that? He stands now with us. One with the mark of evil still upon him, but now he stands with us.”

“I don’t know,” said Andrew doubtfully. “I’d have to think on that. I’d have to work it out.”

“Come back to the fire with me,” said Duncan. “Sit by the fire and be comfortable while you work at it. Get some warmth into those shivering bones of yours, some food into your belly.”

“Come to think of it,” said Andrew, “I am hungry. Meg was cooking up a mess of sauerkraut and pig’s knuckles. I could taste them, just thinking of them. It has been years since I have eaten kraut and knuckles.”

“The Little Folk can’t offer you kraut and knuckles, but there is a venison stew that is monstrous good. There’s enough of it left, I’m sure, to more than fill your gut.”

“If you think it would be all right,” said Andrew. “If they’d make room for me.”

“They’ll welcome you,” Duncan assured him. “They’ve been asking after you.” Which was not exactly true, but it was a small untruth and it could do no harm. “So come along.” Duncan put an arm around the hermit’s shoulder and together they walked back to the fire.

“I’m not yet clear in mind,” warned Andrew, stubborn to the last. “There is much to puzzle out.”

“Take your time,” said Duncan. “You’ll get it straightened out. You’ll have the time to mull it over.”

Duncan escorted him across the cleared area around the fire at which he’d talked with Snoopy. Diane and Nan were sitting together and he took him over to them.

“Here’s a hungry man,” he said to Nan. “Could there still remain a bowl of stew?”

“More than a bowl,” said the banshee. “More than even he can eat, hungry as he looks.” She said to Andrew, “Sit down close to the blaze. I will get it for you.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” said Andrew.

Duncan swung about and looked for Conrad, but was unable to locate him. Nor could he find Snoopy among the scattered Little People.

The moon had moved well up in the sky. It must be almost midnight, Duncan told himself. Within a short time all of them should be settling down to get some sleep, for they’d need to be up by dawn. What they’d do he had no idea, but as quickly as possible they had to have a course of action planned. Conrad, he thought, might have turned up some new piece of information, and it was important that he see him soon.

It was just possible that Conrad had wandered over to another fire. Purposefully he set out for the nearest one. He had gone only a couple of hundred feet or so when someone hissed at him from the darkness of a clump of bushes.

Swiftly he swung around, his hand going to the sword hilt.

“Who’s there?” he challenged. “Show yourself.”

A deeper shadow detached itself from the bushes. Moonlight shimmered on the crumpled horn.

“Scratch, what are you doing here?” Duncan asked.

“Waiting for you,” the demon said. “I have a thing to tell you. Quietly. Not too loud. Squat down so we can talk.”

Duncan squatted to face the dumpy little figure. The demon leaned forward painfully, head thrust forward by the hump upon his back.

“I have been listening,” he said. “You are in trouble.”

“It’s nothing new,” Duncan told him. “We always are in trouble.”

“But this time facing powerful forces on all sides of you.”

“That is true.”

“No way to escape?”

“So the Little People tell us. We do not take their word entirely.”

“There is a way across the fen,” said Scratch.

What was going on? What was Scratch attempting to do here? Shut up in the castle for centuries, how would he know about the fen?

“You do not believe me,” said the demon.

“It’s hard to. How could you know?”

“I told you once that someday I would tell you of my adventures. We never got around to it.”

“You did tell me that. I’d be delighted to hear the tale you have to tell. But not now. I’m looking for Conrad.”

“Not all of it now,” said Scratch. “Just a part of it. You must know that once I fled from Hell the word got around in human circles there was a demon loose — a fugitive demon from whom the protection of Old Scratch had been withdrawn, fair game for anyone who could lay hands upon him. I was hunted mercilessly.

“That’s how I came to know about the fen. At this very place, the south end of the fen, I hid for several years; until I felt that I was safe, that everyone had forgotten me, that the trail had grown cold and the hunt been given up. So I came out of the fen and, wouldn’t you know it, almost immediately was gobbled up.”

“But the fen is death,” said Duncan. “Or so we have been told.”

“If one knows the way…”

“And you know the way?”

“A water sprite showed me. A grumpy little sprite, but he took pity on me. One must be careful, but it can be done.

There are certain landmarks …”

“It’s been a long time since you’ve been in the fen. Landmarks can change.”

“Not these. There are certain islands.”

“Islands change. They can shift or sink.”

“The hills come down to the fen and stop. But a part of them, very ancient parts of them, still remain, much worn down and lower than the hills. These are the islands that I speak of. They stand solid through the ages. All rock, they cannot sink. Rock ledges run underwater between them, connecting them. The ledges are what you follow to get across the fen. They are covered by water and just by looking, you cannot see them. One must know.”

“Deep water?”

“Up to my neck in places. No deeper.”

“All the way across? To the western shore?”

“That is right, my lord. A hidden ridge of rock, a part of the ancient hills, but there are tricky places.”

“You’d recognize the tricky places?”

“I am sure I can. I have a good memory.”

“You would lead us, show us the way?”

“Honored sir,” said Scratch, “I owe you a debt I had never hoped I could repay. Showing you across the fen would be only partial payment. But if you would accept…”

“We do accept,” said Duncan. “If events so order themselves…”

“Events?”

“It may be the main Horde of Harriers will block our way. They are moving up the west bank of the fen. If they should continue moving north, as they were when last seen, then, with your help, we can cross the fen and be clear of them.”

“There is one thing else.”

“Yes?”

“At the western edge of the fen stands a massive island, much larger than the others. It is guarded by dragons.”

“Why dragons?”

“The island,” said Scratch, “is a wailing place. The Place of Wailing for the World.”