Whispering Woods

CHAPTER 12

The magic horse blazed across the sky like a comet.

Body and face were gray as a slate tombstone. Feet were white hot and spilled yellow flame. Flaming mane and tail trailed out behind like a burning paper kite.

It had risen from the other wizard's bonfire as if launched from a catapult. Now it arced across the sky, painful to watch with eye-smarting brilliance, paddling its hooves above the treetops. They drummed on the ears and air, though they touched nothing. Nostrils snorted fire and snuffled gouts of black smoke.

Was it alive or dead? Gull wondered. Was it even a horse? "Riding the night mare" was what a mother called bad dreams, yet never had Gull imagined that a real demon haunted the dark hours.

Then there was no time for supposing, for the flaming monster dived straight at Towser's ruptured wagons.

"Greensleeves!" yelled the woodcutter.

He clutched Lily around the waist, kicked the horse toward camp. But the flesh-and-blood animal balked, either at the fire or the brassy alien smell of the phantom horse. After three tries to force it forward, Gull gave up, slid from the saddle, and dragged Lily stumbling along.

"Come on!" But what he expected to do in camp he couldn't guess. He'd even tossed his axe away, was completely weaponless. The most he could hope was to grab Greensleeves and run like hell.

Whistling from the sky, like a hawk upon chickens, the nightmare swooped in a tight circle over the tumbled wagon train. The camp was clearly illuminated by its light. Gull saw women and bodyguards cringe. Even brash Kem and Chad curled into balls and covered their heads, like children afraid of a parent's wrath.

All of them, within the wagons and without, screamed for dear life.

Terror, Gull thought. The thing spreads terror. It causes bad dreams you can't wake from.

Without realizing it, he slowed, as if fear were a plunging tide to wade.

Concentrating, he almost fell as Lily suddenly gasped and yanked his hand. They were still hundreds of feet from camp. "What-"

Then he saw. By the flickering light of the nightmare, he discovered twisted shapes littering the forest floor at their feet.

The Zombies of Scathe, Lily had called them.

They lay like reaped corn stalks, every which way. Facedown, heads back, on top of one another. Threescore or more, unmoving except for fistfuls of writhing maggots.

Their rotten, bloated stink was almost palpable, like a fist in the face. Gull caught his nose and backed up. Gasping, gagging, he and the dancing girl stumbled wide around.

Despite the horror, Gull found the scene familiar. People sprawled like jackstraws. As in White Ridge.

Villagers, including his parents and siblings, had fallen near the end of the wizards' duel. A mysterious weakness, unseen, unheard, only felt, had leached the strength from their bodies. Gull himself had collapsed. Only the hale and hearty survived. Young, old, weak died. Many others had never recovered their strength, had lain unconscious until they expired, wilted like cut flowers.

And if that weakness spell-if this was it-felled zombies here, then the same wizard must have cast it in White Ridge.

Towser.

Gull stopped in shock. Towser had felled his family and neighbors?

Or did every wizard know such a spell?

If it were Towser, he grated, he'd pay with his life. Gull would kill him. Gull would break his bones one by one, all the while reciting the name of every White Ridger who'd fallen to his magic.

"Damn all wizards! And damn me for working for one!"

Screaming arose from the distant camp.

Gull waggled his head. Lily's red nails cut into his arm. "Let's get away from these-dead!" Yet camp would be little sanctuary, beset by a flaming phantom "Look!" called Gull. "Something's stopped it-"

Dancing on air higher than anyone could reach, the nightmare stopped circling. Instead, it stamped the air skittishly, swished its fiery tail so globs of flame spun off like sparks from a grindstone. Where the blobs landed, they burned and winked out amidst new greenery, for nothing was left to burn in this twisted nightmare forest.

Yet it seemed the nightmare might dash off, for something held it at bay. By spitting crackling light, Gull saw Towser's lateral stripes standing on the wagon seat.

The wizard wasn't attacking much tonight, Gull thought savagely. He was hard put to defend the camp, keep his followers alive from the varied assaults.

Yet Towser held aloft a stone crock as for ale or moonshine. He gabbled some spell, honking lilting music.

Gull had seen this before, too.

From the mouth of the crock spewed a cloud that puffed and billowed, yet kept a shape like an inflated bladder. Gradually, it swelled like a soap bubble, snapped together to hover in the air.

And take the shape of a man.

A tall man, blue, so muscled he appeared fat, with a black topknot of hair and a tight vest and wide bloomers like the dancing girls'. Like a bubble in water, the blue man rose and faced the nightmare, which now stamped just outside the wagon circle.

The entourage stopped screaming. That alone, Gull noted, was a good reason to conjure the cloud-man. "A djinn," Lily breathed.

Like an animated cloud, the blue djinn wafted forward, slow as a fogbank. The nightmare swished its flaming tail, skipped on burning hooves -bared yellow teeth and charged.

Gull and the girl held their breath as the phantom leaped at the blue cloud.

And through it.

The results were nothing they could have predicted.

Fire met water, it seemed. A tremendous whoomph! shook the air, beat upon the ears as if boxed.

The djinn exploded into errant puffs of steam. They dribbled upward like smoke from a doused fire.

The nightmare skidded to a halt, shook itself like a dog from a pond. Its fire had dimmed until the night was almost black, but now it reignited.

High above, the dribs and drabs of smoke re-formed, coalesced, became a magic man again.

Snorting fire, the nightmare attacked. The very air sizzled from the fierce blaze. Where its hooves tipped burned trunks, the wood crackled and caught fire.

Its power increased as it attacked, the woodcutter saw. So did its flame. So far, only the fact the forest had already burned saved them from a conflagration. But if the flaming beast burned hot enough, the heat might scorch even these charred trunks of fire-resistant bark, ignite their heartwood.

"Come, Lily!" he tugged her. "We need to get inside the circle!"

She didn't resist, just hesitated. Over the noise of burning wind she asked, "But… what's happening over there?"

Gull gaped. He'd forgotten the other wizard's camp. Now the bonfire burned higher. He stepped past a trunk to see better. Silhouetted before the blaze, the siver-armored figure issued orders.

Only now it was bigger. Closer.

Striding great lengths, swinging gold-chased armored limbs, the wizard was so massive and heavy, it sank to its ankles in the soft forest loam.

And around its legs capered a horde of skeletons.

The skeletons were small, no taller than children, of slight build. Their jaws were long and lined with pointed teeth. The spiny silhouettes jiggered before the distant bonfire, impossibly thin and disjointed, yet alive.

Skeletons of goblins, Gull realized. Those vicious, conniving, skulking thieves. Alive, they were useless. Perhaps they served better dead…

With a shrill neigh, the captured cavalry horse reared, jerked the reins from Gull's hand. He let it go. "We should run too! For the camp! And don't stop!"

They heard the skeleton army now. Piercing piping cries, like a colony of bats, carried on the thick night air. Overhead, the nightmare rushed the cloud-man again.

Of a sudden, Gull's mind couldn't encompass the strangeness. Phantom horses, armored titans, squeaking skeletons, cloud-people, dead and undead zombies, all haunting a blasted forest. If he dwelt on them, he'd panic or go mad. He forced them from his brain. Get Greensleeves, he told himself. Get his sister and run as if devils pursued. For probably they did, somewhere in this vast mad landscape.

Towing Lily, he lurched for the camp, until he could make out sweat-shiny faces that gaped up at the phantom battle and out at the armored wizard and his bony horde.

Overhead, the nightmare again plowed through the blue cloud-man. This time, however, the shredded blue mist dribbled away on the night air, faded to nothingness. It did not re-form.

Clearly, the nightmare ruled the night.

Triumphant above the treetops, the horse-thing snorted and stamped, stronger and brighter than ever. It was so hot that sparks spit from it like steel burning in a forge. They landed in the camp and winked out like fireflies.

But Gull couldn't see much of the camp now. A fog was rising, as mist issues from a swamp. Panting, running into it, his eyes stung. This was smoke. Ground-hugging smoke such as campfires spilled when the weather turned dirty.

No one had touched the cookfire, no trees burned much, yet the smoke thickened as if the night itself smoldered.

"More damned magic," Gull wheezed.

Squinting, half-blind, the woodcutter and dancing girl stumbled past the overturned men's wagon, tripped over the jutting tongue. Somehow, Gull realized, the wagon had been dumped over again, or slewed around: the top was toward the center. A good thing, for the bottom formed an outside wall.

Someone challenged them, and they gasped their names. Guided to Morven, they hunkered behind the tipped wagon seat. By now the smoke was so thick the campfire was an orange smudge. Gull couldn't see any more than Morven's gray-white hair.

"What happened to the wagon?" rasped Gull.

"We tried to hoist her, got spooked, and dumped it the other way," muttered the sailor. "It's a cock-up for certain. This smoke don't help none. One of Towser's less thoughty spells. Smoke's good for driving off animals and people, but it won't hamstring that armored bastard or his bony buckos. Might kill the fleas in me blanket, though."

"How can-" Gull hacked, sneezed. "How can you jest?"

He felt more than saw the sailor shrug. "Ye get used to it after a while. Tow waves his hands and shit falls from the sky. Just keep your chin down and mouth closed. None of us've been scuppered yet."

"The old freightmaster died."

"Oh, aye." Another shrug. "But he left the circle of protection. Poor Gorman was more for shovelin' dung than thinkin'. I just hope Towie can pull something out of his sleeve. That armored monster looks like he'd eat through a wagon in three bites."

"What would he do to us?" Gull snorked. Like the rest of the entourage, he breathed through his hands or clothing while watching the oncoming horde. Through billows of gray smoke, they saw it wasn't a hundred feet off.

At least the terror had abated among Towser's followers, for the nightmare hovered at treetop height to the south, opposite the armored wizard, as if marking a beacon in the sky. Towser had slipped into his wagon.

Morven rubbed watery eyes. "Oh, probably they wouldn't eat us or torture us to death. Steer clear and you don't run afoul, usually. We're just ants to wizards. We'd be scattered to the winds, like happened at your village there. Oh, sorry. But I'll bet this pirate's after that coral box. If it's brimful o' magic energy, like Towie said, it's a magnet for handwavers all 'round the compass."

"Maybe Towser will just give it up," murmured Gull.

Morven and Lily snorted.

Gull clasped and unclasped empty hands. Without a weapon he felt helpless, naked. He was, mostly, clad in a leather kilt and nothing else. He told Lily to stay put, then clambered past them to the toppled chuck wagon.

He didn't get far. The wagon was a tumbledown mess. Heaped together against one canvas wall were boxes, crocks, bowls, loaves of bread, cooking tools, bedrolls, spilled flour and beer and wine and butter. Perched atop the mess, with a shawl over her head, was a besmudged Felda clutching Greensleeves tight, with Stiggur huddling behind. Gull's sister slept. One advantage to being half-witted, he thought, was few worries. She clutched something gray, like a tassel of horsehair, and he wondered where she had found it.

The fat cook asked him what transpired, but he ignored her. He'd come to check on his sister and to fetch his small axe, stored with his saws and other tools behind some crates. But he'd have to unload the wagon to get it now. He asked Felda for a weapon and received a poker of heavy steel and a butcher's knife which he slid carefully into his belt.

He told them, "If there's any need to get out, I'll come fetch you. Otherwise, stay here." No one argued.

Gull climbed out in time to see the skeletal goblins disappear.

The smoke had lessened, settling, leaving a burned tang in their mouths and a rash like sunburn on their faces.

Capering around the armored wizard, like sparrows before a raven, the skeletal goblins had spun, shrilled, waved stick-arms-generally acted like useless idiots, as in life. Gull was unsure if they were a threat or not: what could they do but bite you? And one swift kick would knock them to skittles.

Now, one by one, each gave a queer sort of hop, spun around, shriveled into a twist like a beech leaf, and flickered toward the sky like chaff caught in a dust devil.

From Towser's wagon came a crow of delight and triumph. Sleeves shot to the elbows, the wizard dusted his palms as the last of the skeleton horde whisked away like ashes in a wind.

"One summons, one unsummons," Morven commented. "Doing and undoing to get the better of each other. Would I had a hundredth of the energy these wizards waste…"

Then even the laconic sailor shut up, for the armored wizard arrived. Towser could not unsummon him, it seemed.

The warrior wizard halted twenty feet from the wagons. Halting, he sank even deeper into the forest floor. He must weigh as much as a stone barn, thought the woodcutter. By the fitful light of the hovering nightmare and the campfire, Gull studied the enemy for weaknesses.

There seemed to be none. The wizard stood seven feet tall in spectacularly ornate silver armor. The breastplate, leg armor, and even sleeves were sculpted like the muscles underneath. Red piping or reinforcing straps crossed the armor at stress points. Where there wasn't plate armor there was chain mail, enwrapping the throat and groin and wrists. Wide wings lined with spikes jutted over the shoulders, and spikes jutted from the back of the gauntlets. Twin horns of silver tipped with red stuck outward from the bucket helmet, and the planes of the face were coated red around silver whorls. Nothing fleshy showed, not even the lower part of the wizard's face. It was a fantastic, unreal sight, something no nightmare could conjure. The armor looked solid and unmovable as a granite wall. Yet he carried no weapons that Gull could see, making him look unbalanced and unprepared.

Towser posed atop the wagon seat. Gull was surprised-no one could stand toe-to-toe in combat with this armored vision, but Towser calmly folded his arms into his sleeves. He showed no fear, in fact feigned boredom.

The warrior lifted a hand, clamped a fist, and the light above suddenly dimmed. The nightmare twisted into an ash leaf and wafted upward, away. Only the meager cookfire gave any light, for the smoke had dissipated. And in the east, Gull realized, glowed the gray of false dawn. The duel had stolen most of the night, and suddenly the weight of sleep loss and fighting and wounds settled on Gull like a yoke of stone. Despite his aches and pains, his eyelids drooped. He yawned so hard his jaw cracked.

But Towser's words jolted him. He called across the span, "You waste your time and effort, sir wizard. You'll not steal what you've come for, for it works for me."

"Magic works for no one, but we for it." Oddly, the warrior's voice was not a deep boom or harsh drawl, but the easy speech of a middle-aged man. Gull wondered if the being inside actually filled that giant suit of armor. "Until you learn that, you know aught." He added something in a strange cant of grunts and growls.

A snort came back. "I've no desire to discuss thaumaturgy before breakfast, certainly not with a lout who abuses my hospitality by sundering my wagons. You'll not get what you seek, so you may as well depart."

Again the warrior growled and grunted, but halted when Towser reached behind him into the wagon. He plucked out the pink stone box. By dim light it resembled, as Kem had said, pig guts strung tight. As if it would rot in the morning sun.

The warrior spoke again, but Towser lifted his free hand and pointed, then clenched his own fist.

The armored warrior staggered as his knees buckled. With an amazing display of strength, he propped himself upright and waved a clenched hand. Gradually, he righted. Probably he'd blocked Towser's spell- more weakness?-with a counterspell, Gull thought. But who knew what wizards did: mortals could only watch and wonder.

The woodcutter wondered what came next. If the warrior couldn't stand up to Towser's mana vault, then what?

Wood splintered and cracked. Towser's wagon groaned, jiggled, and tilted, pushed from underneath. Gull craned to see in the dim light. White swords, from the cave floor, multiplied under the wagon. Rising, they shoved the wagon off its wheels. And continued to grow, and push.

Towser cursed, grabbed for a grip, struggled to hang on to the mana vault.

Strength returned, the warrior dropped that attack, began another.

With long strides, he stamped toward the chuck wagon. Grabbing hold of the axle, he dragged it sideways. Inside, Felda screamed. Lily yelped, Morven cursed, and Gull hefted his poker.

It wasn't much to battle an armored magician.

He heard his sister shriek. Finally, she'd discovered terror.

Swinging his thin poker in his left hand, Gull hopped around the tongue of the overturned wagon.

"Fight me, you fiend!" he shouted. And he charged.

Things happened too fast for Gull to follow. Part of him said it didn't matter. He must protect his sister. That was enough. So he attacked.

The warrior-wizard snapped wood like kindling, ripped the wagon tongue and front axles from the frame. A wooden wheel bounced off his silver helmet. A metallic hand tore boards off the wagon's side. Canvas split, tangled. Splinters flew. Screams rang.

From the hole in the side of the wagon, like a woodchuck, popped up Stiggur. He flung a bottle at the warrior's helmet. It shattered, and Gull smelled vinegar. The wizard sliced with a metal hand that would have decapitated the boy, but he disappeared into his den.

By then Gull had dashed around to the wizard's back. He saw no chinks in the armor. And where the blazes was Towser with his bag of tricks?

The woodcutter wound up and slammed the poker at the back of the wizard's knee. Chain mail protected him, and the poker only bent.

The only sign the wizard gave was to slap backhanded, like swatting a fly.

Gull shot out his arm to protect his head, but the armored glove slammed his elbow, almost breaking it. Gull's own hand banged his rasped forehead, which bled anew. He felt he'd been crushed by a tree. Reeling, the woodcutter bounced on the turf.

Through a haze, he heard screams.

Vision whirling, he saw a spinning wizard drag his sister's gown, yank her from the wagon. The wizard pinned Greensleeves by one arm. She shrieked like a trapped rabbit at the cold touch.

Gull tried to sit up, but his muscles wouldn't respond. He couldn't find his arms or hands, as if they'd been wrenched off. Perhaps they had. He tried to kick, to sit up, but only twitched. Panic set in. Perhaps his back was broken, like his father's.

Another scream joined Greensleeves's. Kicking with an armored boot, the wizard knocked the wagon askew, reached behind, caught Lily by the waist- kidnapped for the second time this night. She tugged at the metal hand until her fingernails bled, but couldn't get free.

Morven the sailor leveled his crossbow and shot from ten feet away. The heavy steel-tipped bolt spanked off the wizard's helmet, ricocheted away. Chad ran up, racked the bow on his crossbow, but stopped: if one bolt had failed, surely another would. But it was all they had. Kem and Oles waved swords feebly. They saw no place to attack. Jonquil, one of the dancing girls, ran up with a torch, but halted too.

Gull shook his head, grew dizzy. Through a fog he saw the warrior turn toward his camp with two captives, heard Towser bellow some magical command.

About time, the woodcutter thought.

The command got results. The warrior-wizard paused, half turned, and -his helmet exploded.

One second it was there, the next his head sundered as if struck by lightning. Hot jagged metal flew in all directions. A piece nicked Greensleeves in the forehead and made her bleed. Lily yelped as a fragment pinked her bosom. Gull heard a piece flicker into dirt nearby.

All that remained was a fragment of molten collar. As the warrior took another step, this charred twisted strip sloughed off and crunched underfoot. Chain mail from the coif hung in tatters on the red-and-silver breast.

But the armored wizard kept walking.

With no head at all.

"An avatar!" shrieked Towser. "You cheat!"

Vaguely, Gull wondered what an avatar was. But not for long.

The titan-phantom or ghost or whatever it was- strode toward the distant bonfire with his captives.

Paralyzed, Gull lay in his path. But the armored giant couldn't see him.

A huge foot reared over the woodcutter. Eyes bulging, Gull remembered that the giant had sunk into the loam, heavy as a yoke of oxen.

He was about to step on Gull, crush him like a cockroach.

Then the world went white.