Whispering Woods

CHAPTER 1

An explosion like thunder made Gull look up.

The sky was clear, blue and deep. The sun was high and spring-warm. The Mist Moon, a dull white, was a fingernail paring over the western trees.

There was something else in the sky too. All Gull had ever seen aloft were moons, clouds, and birds, yet now…

A big lumpy ball like an inflated bladder drifted in the blue.

The woodcutter stepped away from the tree into a spot he'd cleared that morning. He hopped up on the stump to see better. He and his team were no more than half a league deep in the Whispering Woods. Whatever that… flying thing… was, it was close to his village. Above it.

"What in the name of Chatzuk…"

His mules snuffled uneasily. Gull shushed them and strained to hear.

The round bladder-thing was encircled with ropes, and from them hung a basket full of tiny scruffy figures, all arms and pointed heads, all jabbering. They struggled with something, making the basket sway jerkily. They were hurling things.

At his village?

There came another thunderclap, louder than the first. The stump under Gull's feet jumped, then trembled.

His mules nickered. Flossy, with her gentle disposition, minced in her leather hobble, seeking shelter under a chestnut tree. Knothead, stubborn even for a mule, lowered his head to chew through his hobble. Gull hopped down and yanked on his ear. The mule snapped at him with yellow teeth.

"Not now, Knothead!" he griped. "I need help, not hindrances!" Tugging at the mules' collars, he started to lash them together so they couldn't wander. But something made him stop: a premonition that he wouldn't return soon.

Like most muleteers, he talked to his animals as if they understood, for often they did. "Stay here, you two. I need see what's happening. And where's Greensleeves… Ah!"

His sister had wandered off, as usual, but the explosions had brought her scurrying back from the depths of the forest.

Greensleeves was built the opposite of her brother- small, so scrawny you could count the bones in her hands and arms. Yet she was obviously related, for her eyes were green, her chestnut hair wavy and untidy, her cheekbones wide and mouth narrow, her skin walnut-dark from a lifetime outdoors though she was just sixteen and not full-grown. She wore a faded linen smock dyed green with lichens, and a tattered shawl peppered with sticks and leaves. She wore no hat, and never anything on her feet, even in winter snows. As always, her hands were dirty, her wrists stained green from rooting in the soil and plucking at grasses. Her mother had named her Greensleeves for those stains.

Not that it mattered what her name was, for the girl barely knew it or anything else.

Frightened as a squirrel by the noise, she ran to her brother and grasped his brown hand. She gabbled in her animal tongue, chattering like a squirrel, chitter-ing like a badger, spilling incomprehensible questions as she wrung his fingers.

Gull spoke to her the same as to his mules. "Stay here, Greenie. I'm going"-he couldn't say "home" lest she feel deserted-"to see about something. To see a man. Stay here. I'll be back soon." She still looked worried, and he wondered how much she understood. He pried her fingers off his hand.

His mind aswim with questions-What was happening to the village?-Gull slung his quiver and bow-case over his shoulder. He carried them for hunting, but now he might have to drive off those little… creatures in the sky. He looped his mulewhip around his belt, then hefted his big double-bitted woodcutting axe. "Best be prepared, though I don't know what for."

He turned to find Greensleeves close behind him. Maybe packing his weapons scared her. "Stay, I tell you!"

He wanted to run but forced himself to walk, stretching his legs for the mile and a half trek to the forest's edge. He couldn't run more than a hundred feet anyway. Three years ago an elm tree had jumped off the stump: elm was a man-hating tree that let go without a warning crack. It had crushed his right knee. All winter had passed before he could walk again, with a permanent limp. His knee ached in damp weather, too, so he could predict storms.

It didn't ache now, despite the thunder. What could it mean?

Nor was a limp his only wound in a lifetime of wrestling trees. An oak had pinched off the last three fingers of his left hand. Though he was barely twenty years old, his legs and arms were scarred from branches and his own misguided axe cuts, but they were huge and brawny too, for what the forest had taken away it had replaced elsewhere. Because he was forever tearing through brush and chopping branches, Gull wore no cloth, but only leather, kilt and tunic. Even his long chestnut hair was drawn back with a rawhide thong. He wore clogs of hickory he'd carved himself, good protection for his toes, though they clumped mournfully on wood or stone floors.

Life in the forest had hardened Gull in other ways, though he scarcely knew it. Working alone, cutting and felling and solving problems the day long, he'd developed his own way of doing things, and was apt to ignore advice or compliments. In fact, the village wags said, working with mules had made him muleheaded. And as for keeping company with a simpleton, it was hard to tell which was which.

Now Gull veered down a brushy deer trail that would take him to the meadows sooner. And keep him hidden. All this strangeness meant trouble.

They'd been expecting it.

One moon ago, the villagers of White Ridge had tumbled out of bed to a ferocious warbling hiss. Dashing outdoors, everyone had seen the streak of yellow-white fire burn the night. Then a crash to the faraway northwest had shaken the ground, and flames had lit the horizon. A distant reach of forest had burned for days, a column of smoke blackening the sun. Finally late winter rains had doused the inferno and the smoke stopped.

Folks had not spoken of the event and had silenced the children's queries-everyone recognized an omen, a portent of disaster. And day by day, people cast glances over their shoulders, waiting for it to arrive.

Today was the day. Two thunderbolts close together, a weird floating bladder of jibbering rascals. What…

Gull whirled at a slithering behind him. A snake…

No, his sister.

Greensleeves clutched her ratty shawl and chirruped like a raccoon, a question full of fear.

"Damn it!" her brother snapped, for the noise had startled him. "I told you to stay!"

The simpleton bobbed her head, flinched as if he'd struck her. Tears ran down her cheeks and wet her lips.

"Oh, very well. Come along. But quick, now!" Gull never could resist her crying. But half the time he couldn't guess what she wanted.

Gull brought Greensleeves to the woods each day to keep her from the village. Between her uprooting gardens, shielding animals from harm and work, poking in the bread ovens, filching babies from their cradles, and otherwise being a pest, everyone agreed the woods were best for her. There she was happy, could poke and pry and play with animals to her heart's content while Gull watched over her-as best he could. By unspoken agreement, and the brawn of the brother's arms, no man in the valley would molest her, and strangers were rare, but sometimes Greensleeves would be gone for hours, and Gull worried. Otherwise, he found his sister no trouble, welcomed her company as he would a dog's.

Yet, that the two prospered in the Whispering Woods was another sign of queer natures. No one else in White Ridge ever ventured near. The leaves and trees were too full of talk, of "whispering," for normal folk to abide: they hinted the voices came from monsters or devils or elves or other dark beings. The unending mumble and chatter and hush of the leaves had bothered Gull as a boy, but now he scarce heard it. It touched Greensleeves with less effect than rain.

Now, seizing his sister by the hand, he led her from the woods to see what was after their village, the only home they'd ever known.

Brush and briars grew thickest along the edge of the forest where the sunlight was strongest. Standing at the end of the trail, they were flanked by bracken taller than their heads. Shielded, Gull thought, and a good thing.

The valley called White Ridge was a crazy quilt of colors. Where the forest broke, running in strips here and there was meadow, tall yellow-green grass dotted with blue and yellow wildflowers. Between and all around were stretches of mossy rocks and hardscrabble ledge. Down the center were the only fertile tracts, pockets of rich riverbed loam left from when the valley's stream had been a mighty river. The stream ran still, circling rocks and rippling over streaks of lime that gave the divided village its name. Thirty cottages stood far apart, each surrounded by hip-high rock walls that protected the scanty gardens from animals. The cottages were stone, with roofs of thatch or shingles or sod. A mill astraddle the stream creaked to the south, and an alehouse trickled a plume of white smoke. A bony road ran from the northern ridges, crossed the stream on the one-cart bridge, then sank into the bogs to the south. Along its eastern edge, the valley sported another forest called the Wild Woods, yet one the villagers would visit.

All of Gull's twenty years, White Ridge had been a quiet place, where the biggest fight all year would be from Seal's sons stealing one of Bryony's hogs. No one knew what today would bring. The woodcutter saw his hunched father, Brown Bear, his back broken by the same tree that had crippled Gull, and the thin shape of his mother, Bittersweet. Ranged alongside were his brothers and sisters. Gull waved his axe, but his family didn't see. They watched the northern ridge, as did Gull.

Atop the lime-streaked ridge where the road dipped, perched like a herd of wolves, was a collection of colorful characters such as Gull had only heard of in legends.

Foremost was a stout woman in a robe of brown with jets of yellow along the sleeves and hems. Her head was bare, black glossy hair combed straight back. The woman raised beringed hands and pointed to an empty reach of meadow on her right.

Though Gull had never seen one before, he knew what this woman was. As the elders prayed, "May the gods keep us hale and hearty, and spare us the ravages of any…

"… wizard."

Alongside the wizard, lining the ridge, were two dozen soldiers in armor like fish scales. They wore tunics and kilts of red, and red-plumed helmets. Each carried a round burnished shield and short sword, and a javelin slung at his back. Gull had only seen three soldiers in his life: a motley diseased trio that passed through the village when he was young. The elders had hefted clubs to keep the rogues moving, but even so, a piglet and two chickens had gone missing. These red'garbed soldiers on the heights were different, looking strong and quiet and capable, deadly as snakes.

A force like that, Gull realized, could kill every person in White Ridge before they drew three breaths.

Yet odder still was what appeared in the meadow.

At first Gull saw nothing. Then Greensleeves chirped. Something… grew… amidst the grass.

Grew very quickly.

As Gull watched, a figure no taller than a child flickered among the nodding blue wildflowers. Then it was shoulder-high to them, then waist-high.

And in seconds, the figure was-Gull tried to guess-twenty feet high? A giant, something from the old stories. Fat around the middle, thick-legged and flat-footed, the giant wore clothing stitched of faded patches, most yellowed, but some painted with stripes and even a red dragon. In each enormous knotty hand, the giant carried a scarred tree branch for a club. Two clubs, thought Gull, to go with its two heads.

The heads were bald, sallow, slant-eyed, veined. One head frowned at the wizard. The other watched a murder of crows take off from the Wild Woods. Gull could see that this being was slow to think.

Yet there were more wonders, appearing all over the valley, until Gull thought he'd been brained by a widowmaker and dreamed it all. Yet no dream could match this amazing scene.

Cantering from the Wild Woods, in matching strides, came a pair of half-horse, half-humans. Centaurs, the word came. Their flanks were roan, reddish white, and warpainted with handprints and runes. Their torsos were hidden by fluted, painted breastplates and helmets. They carried feathered lances longer than their long loping bodies.

High above the army on the ridge, drifting on the wind, went the round bladder-and-basket thing and its jabbering crew. Screaming like monkeys, the rowdies let loose a rain of missiles, iron spikes. They jutted into the ground well short of the ridge, and red-clad soldiers hooted and waved their swords. The bladder sailed on, sinking lower, until it struck trees to the north. The minute warriors quarreled as they spilled through the trees. Even Gull could see they contributed little beyond amusement.

But if they were attacking the red soldiers, then who had loosed them?

Greensleeves bleated, and Gull gaped elsewhere. The festival on the ridge was only half the show.

Southward, nestled against the Whispering Woods, was another entourage equally as strange.

At the forefront was another gaudy wizard. This one had a head of stiff yellow curls and a brushy mustache, and a robe sewn in layers, dark blue at the bottom shading to yellow at the waist, then flowing like a rainbow to pink and red at the stiffened shoulders. Gull had the random thought: Where did wizards have their clothes made?

Behind this wizard was a wagon train like a gypsy camp. Five wagons formed a circle with retainers huddled at the center. Gull could pick out a fat woman, slender girls bright as birds, and hard men, armed, who leaned against the wagon seats to watch the action.

The muleteer noticed something had gone wrong. The horse and mule teams had been loosed from the traces, probably so they wouldn't panic and dash off with the wagons, then led out of harm's way farther along the wood's edge. Yet there were two smoking craters where the thunderbolts had struck. Stony soil and moss had been blasted clear down to bedrock. At the lip of one crater lay a dead horse, white, and the hindquarters of a bay. Of the other mounts there was no sign. Bolted, probably. Or blown out of existence.

There was more strangeness to come. In fact, Gull guessed, it had barely begun.

One of the floating bladder teams had already left the ground. Three more vehicles bobbed just above the ground, tethered like balky horses. Around them squabbled two dozen green-gray jokers with shocks of black or gray hair.

A weird cry ululated across the valley. The striped wizard held aloft a stone jar from which spiraled a vapor that slowly, slowly coalesced into a figure, a big one like the giant to the north. Yet this figure refused to take solid shape, remaining cloudlike, misty. And as the sky blue figure wafted over the stony mossy ground, it sprinkled cloud drops from its fingertips. Where they landed, there arose bluish warriors, male and female, with long white hair and curious curved swords or black-studded clubs: barbarians. A dozen, two dozen, three.

Beside Gull, Greensleeves made a chittering noise like a question. She had noticed a mousehole at their feet and bent to investigate.

Still, Gull answered her, framing his thoughts. "A fight. There's going to be a big fight. A war. That's what wizards do, war on one another. And death and destruction follow in their shadow."

He caught Greensleeves by the shoulder and tugged her upright. "And we've got to cross to our family before all hell breaks loose. Come on!"

Clutching his axe in one hand and his sister's arm in the other, he loped from the woods. In the distance, his family finally noticed them, and villagers cheered encouragement and hope. Dashing, panting, they cleared the meadows and rocky reaches, gained the edge of the village, the first houses.

Too late.

With a roar, twoscore or more red soldiers mustered on the ridge, reinforcements brought to the fore. They raised their short swords, bellowed again, and charged down the ledge slope. The centaurs paced them at a gallop. To Gull's left, the blue barbarians sent up a hiss and surged forward, curved blades and clubs slashing like sickles after grain.

Gull and Greensleeves were caught square in the middle.

The woodcutter skidded to a halt, too breathless to curse. They'd gained the village, but the only place to safely cross the stream was the bridge, and within minutes the red soldiers would pass it.

Nor could they stay in the village long, for the blue fighters closed.

"Bells of Kormus! Back! We've got to get back!" The woodcutter whipped around, aiming for the sheltering woods. Greensleeves skipped and jogged alongside, half-flying.

It wasn't a hundred yards back to the woods, and Gull pounded flat out. Yet something twinkled in the air before him, like rain dropping through sunshine. A wall of it, glittering brighter, then turning dark and murky. Brown, like muddy water.

Before his eyes, a wall of thorns cut off their retreat.

It wasn't an orderly wall. It was more a mound such as overgrew a ruin or barrow. But it was high, taller than Gull could reach with his axe, so thick he could not see through it. Brambles, they were, gray-brown and dead near the roots, curling green and soft in the upper branches. Impassable to anything larger than a chipmunk.

Swearing bitterly, the woodcutter hunted a way around. But the wall zigzagged from the northern ridge to the river's edge. The wall even hooked along the ridge face, behind the red soldiers, cutting them off from their wizard. The southern striped wizard must have conjured it, Gull thought. He's boxed them nicely. And us.

Now where?

Gull cast about. He could hide in a stone house, but instinct told him that would be unwise-even a rabbit dug two bolt-holes. He could splash across the river, but he'd have to drag Greensleeves, and she hated swimming.

With a roar and clatter, the armies clashed not a hundred yards away.

Even Gull, who knew nothing of wars except what he'd heard in stories, could see that the red soldiers were professionals and the blue barbarians untrained savages. The red soldiers maintained a tight phalanx, two deep, that bristled with steel. They tramped to war, in unison, round shields forming a wall, and chanted a war song as they marched.

The blue fighters, who Gull saw were both dyed and tattooed blue, were long-jawed and tusked, with long white hair in various braids. Men and women alike wore tanned hides painted in fantastic patterns. Their mode of attack was to outshriek one another, slash the air and then their opponents with curved swords, or else bludgeon them with obsidian-headed war clubs.

Yet their blood ran scarlet. The red soldiers worked in teams, one partner covering the other. Gull saw a blue warrior lock on to a round shield, slice low for a red soldier's greaves covering his shins. The soldier's partner delivered a short stab to a blue throat that sprayed blood over all of them. At the same time, the first soldier shot his blade to keep back another blue warrior, who lost a hand to the partner's quick chop. That laid two blue fighters on the turf with no damage to the red.

So it went up and down the line. The blue valued bravery and bravado, the red cold-eyed teamwork. One blue barbarian leaped like a deer to clamber over the shield wall. Rather than resist, red soldiers in the front rank ducked, fobbed her high in the air, delivering her to the soldiers behind, who sank swords in her belly. Yet even dying the blue barbarian fought, and her black stone war club slammed a red-clad neck. The stricken soldier was propped by his fellows in the rear as blue barbarians fell like wheat.

Gull feared the red soldiers would dispatch the barbarians, then fall on whoever else was near. He didn't waste time gawping, but grabbed his sister again-she pointed at something in the sky, murmuring-and dragged her south along the wall of thorns. They could make for the river, try to cross, or perhaps find a gap in the thorn wall, a pocket to hide in.

Except Gull discovered what Greensleeves found so interesting up above.

Iron stakes rained on the ground before them. Spikes bounced off rocks with clangs, quivered in dirt, chopped thorns. Gull looked up.

Not thirty feet above were two flying bladders. Up close, Gull saw contraptions that were ill assembled, with the bladders much patched, the ropes badly spliced, the baskets dinged and splintered from rough landings. Gray-green titches with pointed ears, some bald, some gray-haired, dressed in crude hides from goats and raccoons and skunks and others, leered at them. Scrawny and ugly as they were, Gull couldn't tell if they were male or female or neither. They'd dumped a wicker basket full of spikes, which dropped straight as arrows to pierce a victim's skull-had they bothered to aim.

There were six or more goons in each basket. Goblins, Gull thought, mischievous villains from children's stories.

A basket immediately above found trouble. A pointy-headed goblin raised a stake to hurl down, but pierced the bladder overhead instead. Other goblins shrieked at him, slapped his head, wrestled for holds in the ropes, screamed as the bladder deflated.

Abruptly, it split, a long rent zipping to the top. The jury-rigged mess collapsed. It crashed half on the wall of thorns, spilling wailing occupants like chicks tumbled from a nest. The other bladder floated serenely away, its crew jeering their fallen companions. One even threw a stake into their midst with a laugh, and another leaned overside to piss on them. Yet that one screamed when someone behind booted him half out of the basket.

Gull could only gape in wonder. These idiots were more dangerous to their own side.

He changed his mind quickly.

Tough as wildcats, the handful of goblins bounced and recovered, then snatched weapons from their belts: flint knives and knotty clubs. One bony female pointed at Greensleeves and shrieked.

"Meat!"