Whispering Woods

CHAPTER 2

Small, stupid, and squabbly they might be, but Gull found that these gray-green goblins were fast.

Bounding like a fox, a fiend leaped onto Greensleeves's breast. Clutching at her shawl, the goblin bit at her neck. The girl screamed and beat with fluttering hands, and both fell.

Gull swore. He could hardly swing an axe at his sister. Instead he caught the goblin by the neck, tore the thing off the girl. He could smell the creature now, musty as an old haystack or worm-eaten carcass. Her hairline was dotted with fleabites. He waggled the goblin, twisted, tried to snap her neck like a chicken. But the goblin was tough as rawhide, and raked filthy claws down the woodcutter's arm. Shocked, he let go.

More goblins rushed, most from behind.

"Greensleeves, stay down!" he roared, and prayed she'd obey.

Whirling in a circle, the woodcutter swung his axe. The heavy blade sliced the air-and three goblins.

The first tried to dodge and had an arm nipped off. Rolling over and over, howling, the wretch sprayed greenish blood. The second ducked but lost the top of his skull. He reached up a questing hand and touched leaking brains. The third was cut clean in half, and left her legs standing while her trunk flopped behind.

The remaining four didn't pause. They ran like rats in all directions. One plunged straight into the thorn hedge, half-impaling himself.

Greensleeves trembled like a rabbit, whimpering. Gull didn't bother to console her, just jerked her upright and ran.

Noise and stink filled the valley. Warbling war cries rang out, and a horse's scream. Through a thorn hedge Gull heard more goblins squabbling, and a heavy, steady thumping he couldn't identify. He smelled blood on the wind, and the acrid tang of sweat. And everywhere, smoke that was not cooking fires.

Dashing along the thorn wall, Gull hoisted a leg over a stone wall around Beebalm's house. Thorns had buried one corner, but he hoped to slip behind the house and get out of sight. Fumbling with his heavy axe, he caught Greensleeves around the waist and lifted her over the wall.

And cursed. He'd interrupted a pair of goblins gutting a brown goat.

The animal's glazed eye blinked as the pair hacked out its dripping innards. Anger flooded through Gull. That goat had been a pet of Beebalm's, raised by hand when its mother was taken by wolves. The woodcutter kicked at the goblins, but his bad knee betrayed him and he crashed atop the wall. Stones rolled underfoot and he landed on his rump. He hoped he hadn't snapped his arrows and bow. Fuming, he struggled to his feet.

The goblins had grabbed their bloody dinner and run. Gull was so angry he spit. "Run, you thievin' bastards! Run, you louses!" What right did they have? These goblins and giants and soldiers and the bastardy wizards that fetched them? What right did they have to destroy a village that was home to so many good folk?

A thrashing, crashing, crushing of thorn bushes broke into his thoughts. The sky went black, as if a thunderhead passed.

A towering foot like a tree trunk stove in Beebalm's house.

Gull gawked. Rearing above him, tall and long as a barn, clomped a… wooden and sheet iron horse?

Was it alive? From underneath, it looked like a walking millworks. Instead of guts, the thing sported wheels and gears and leather straps over pulleys. A mechanical heart turned camshafts that rotated the legs at the hips, then fistfuls of couplings Gull couldn't follow. Nor did he see any power source: no steam, no fire, no falling water. Or anyone controlling it.

Yet the thing walked like a stiff-legged horse as it tried to pull free the leg trapped in the crumpled house. It must have been monstrously heavy, for its flanks were slabs of rusty sheet iron. Its head resembled a blunt-nosed horse, though the eyes were articulated cones. For the life of him, Gull couldn't tell if this clockwork beast had a brain locked in its boxy head or not. Could magic alone move something so massive?

Then he had to dodge, for the beast tore loose of the wreckage, sending shingles and dusty rafters flying. With clicks and whirs and hums, the mechanical monster stumped away toward whatever its part in the battle might be.

Red soldiers sent up a shout. They splintered their phalanx, for there were no more blue barbarians, only blue bodies leaking red blood.

With mounting horror, Gull watched the soldiers charge anew. Straight for the villagers on the eastern shore.

"Noooooo!!!!"

Villagers shrieked and scattered, some to the Wild Woods, some toward the village, others to random houses. Howling soldiers slashed at the first to come near, cutting them down without regard for sex or age. An elderly man, a child, a goodwife collapsed like wheat before scythes. A young woman who tried to defend them was yanked off her feet by her yellow hair, then belted senseless. Gull recognized her too: Cowslip, Badger's daughter. He yelped and roared helplessly.

Gull craned to glimpse his family, but saw only panicked people dashing every which way. He prayed for his father, who couldn't run with his damaged back, and prayed for his mother, too, who would never leave her husband's side.

And what could he do? He still had Greensleeves, and no place to hide her. And he himself couldn't run, for his bad knee was apt to cave in. Yet he must aid them. Desperately, he looked for shelter. Would Beebalm's root cellar be intact?

He spotted a hole torn through the wall of thorns by the clockwork. Whole bushes had been uprooted, forming shallow pockets. One would do.

"Come, Greensleeves!" He tried to think of something to reassure her, but even her befuddled brain noticed shrills across the river. "Come, Sister! We'll play hide-and-seek! Here!"

Cursing, juggling his axe, yet gently lest she bolt like a deer and run to slaughter, he guided his kin to a gap in the wall. The smell of thornbush sap was bitter and green in his nostrils, the smell of fresh earth like an open grave. Pushing and cooing, he folded Greensleeves into a pocket like a baby rabbit.

Oddly, he noted the soil here was red, red as a sunset.

He caught her chin to make her focus. "Stay here! Understand? Don't come out until you hear my voice! Or Mother's. Or Father's. Understand?"

The eyes stayed vacant as a cow's. Gull could have wept, but there wasn't time. "Stay!" he finished, and turned.

Back to battle, whatever it brought.

Trying to watch everywhere at once-he'd seen more monsters and myths in a day than he'd heard of in a lifetime-Gull scuttled from' house to house. He knew them all, and their families: Catclaw's, Snowblossom's, Toad's. He'd played in these houses as a child, slept and eaten in most of them, fought boys and chased girls and been taught by their parents. The people of White Ridge were more than a village, they were almost a tribe, where debts and allegiances and feuds ran back generations.

Yet all this history might be wiped out today at the hands of wizards and their minions. Red soldiers fanned out after the villagers. Their only goal could be rape and slaughter, for the villagers owned little but their bodies and lives.

Gull raced to another house, his knee twanging at every jolt, stopped by the house of Snowblossom. Through an unshuttered window he heard a girl hissing and cursing. And a man's laugh.

In the dooryard before the tiny house he saw the scale-armored back of a soldier. He held a girl's hands aloft while another soldier tore at her clothing. The girl kicked, writhed, tried to bite, but the men were too strong for her to wriggle free. Growling in anger, Gull made up his mind.

He settled his long mulewhip in his weaker, finger-lacking left hand, for he'd learned to rein with his right. He caught a fresh grip on his slick-sweaty axe handle.

He'd never killed a man before. He prayed for the strength to do it now.

Rehearsing in his mind, he spun around the corner, hopped to get the proper distance. Two paces behind the rearmost soldier-the stretch from his sledge to Knothead's ear. Right, then…

"Hya-yah!" He shouted his muleteer's cry to bring the man's head up, and slashed his whip. Braided blacksnake sliced the air, looped around the man's neck. As the tail wrapped a second time, Gull set his brawny wrist and yanked.

Taken by surprise, suddenly strangling, the soldier was hoicked clean off his feet. Loosing the captive, he clutched for his throat, then Gull jerked him onto his back. He crashed with a metallic jangle.

The captive was Cowslip of the yellow hair, snatched across the river and dragged here, for her gown's hem was wet to the knees. Red-faced from screaming and snapping at the soldiers, she looked as stunned as they at the rescue. Then the red soldier behind her, black-bearded, bronzed by a distant sun, snatched at her hair and his sword pommel.

Gull could guess his plan. Use Cowslip as a shield. The woodcutter shouted, " 'Slip, get down! Drop!"

Recognizing a friend, Cowslip threw herself flat. The soldier's hand closed on empty air. He roared an obscenity and squatted for his shield, propped against a hitching post.

But Gull was ready. Flicking his heavy axe over his shoulder, he pegged it square. Blade and haft whirled end over end, then one face of the double bits thudded into the soldier's chest.

Under different circumstances, Gull would have grinned. Tossing his axe was a favorite trick, something to while away rainy hours in a barn, something to awe children.

Never had he imagined he'd kill a man with it.

Incredibly, the soldier was not bowled over. He stood stunned and immobile, put a hand to the steel blade that split his armor and breastbone. Confused, he pushed at the blade and only shoved himself sideways.

A jerk pulled Gull half-over.

He'd forgotten the soldier at the end of his whip.

Like a monstrous scaly pike dying on shore, the man tugged wildly to free his throat. Gull had been so absorbed in the axe trick, he'd slacked his sweaty grip. But mostly he was astonished at having killed a man. The idea took getting used to.

The soldier didn't give him time. Thrashing, he rolled to his knees. Strong fingers had loosened the whip. Rasping, he rose and unsheathed his short sword, murder on his blackened face.

And Gull stood empty-handed.

Could he kick the man with his hickory clogs? His knee would buckle and he'd fall. Would that save him?

The soldier grinned evilly, drew his arm back for the stab, that quick death stroke that had felled the blue barbarians.

But the soldier never finished his stroke.

Instead he grunted, half turned, and fell.

Cowslip stood over him, grunting herself. She'd snatched up the other sword and plunged it two-handed into the man's back. The man twitched, cried out, clawed to get away, but Cowslip leaned on the pommel, shoved it sideways to slice his liver and lights. The soldier dropped like a poleaxed steer. Cowslip ripped the blade free and whacked him alongside the ear, splitting skin to the bone. But he was dead.

Behind her, the axed man had finally fallen. Stepping around the protruding haft of Gull's axe, Cowslip took aim and chopped his throat. A farm girl who'd slaughtered pigs and chickens and cows had no qualms about spilling the blood of a rapist.

Blood ran off the sword like a butcher's blade. Cowslip faced Gull, then clutched her shorn gown together, blushing. She and Gull and all the village youngsters had always bathed nude in the swimming hole below the ledge, had seen each other naked a hundred times, but Cowslip was suddenly shy. She asked, "Are you all right?"

Gull averted his eyes from her torn bodice. "I, uh, should ask you that…" Funny, he'd known Cowslip all his life, yet had never noticed how pretty she was, how strong and capable and smart. He had the odd thought: She'd make a fine wife.

"I'm fine. Better than them." She spit on the whipped man, but Gull thought she did it rather than face him. "But what shall we do now?"

Gull blinked again. Oh, yes, he remembered, there was a battle on. Two battles: wizards' army against army, and the villagers against all. Shaking his head, he retrieved his whip and axe. There was a nick in the blade's edge, and he felt again that irrational anger. He'd forged this axe himself, and the soldiers had spoiled it. And rats were digging in Snowblossom's barn! Where were the dogs that should have killed them?

With a start he recalled his family. His mind was wandering, like Greensleeves's.

"We must…" he tried to sort through confusion, "I don't know, gather who we can and hie for the woods, I suppose." Cowslip clutched her new-won sword and ragged dress and waited. Why, he wondered, did she attend his ideas? He didn't know what to do. "These wizards will ravage the village, fill it with death."

A sizzling in the sky cut him off. Both craned to look.

Up on the ridge, above the new thorn wall, the brown-and-yellow-robed wizard raised a curved horn like a ram's. The wizard called something, then blew into the mouthpiece. From the bell belched a fireball big as a melon. The sizzling sounded again. Gull and Cowslip tracked the burning path. Gull recalled two earlier fireballs had blasted dirt from bedrock, killed a brace of horses. Where would this fall?

A whiff of smoke floated to his nose. Sap, bitter and green, burned. A crackling sounded close.

Gull dashed around the house.

The wall of thorns was afire in three places.

"Greensleeves!"

Gull dashed headlong for Beebalm's house, galloped around to the mangled thorn hedges. Fire crackled amidst brambles. He felt its heat on his sweating cheeks and forehead. Smoke choked him, burned his eyes. He kept his axe aloft lest he blunder into his sister fleeing the fire.

"Greensleeves! Greenie, where are you?"

Thorns scratched his hands and arms and legs. They stung on his forearm where the goblin had raked him. Cursing, fumbling, he swatted at smoke and shorn branches to find the hollow where he'd hidden his sister.

She was gone.

It was the right hollow, for stooping showed her footprints. But where she'd gone he couldn't tell. There weren't even drops of blood from thorn pricks.

Gull backed from the smoke, wiped streaming eyes. What now, by the gods? Where to look? What to do?

As if the gods answered, thunder rolled. Gull glanced up. Clouds had swept in, thickened, deepened. This thunder was real. Maybe the rain would douse the fires. Maybe the town could yet be saved.

Yet the gods today were mischievous, vindictive, out to bedevil him. The earth under his feet jumped.

Distant screams, close-by crackling, the bleating of a goat all ceased.

Gull breathed low in the quiet. He'd felt this before. Once, as a child.

Groaning sounded all around. Pebbles by his feet jittered and danced. The groaning became a grinding, and the world trembled.

Earthquake!

The ground trembled so hard Gull could barely keep his feet. He felt his guts rumbling, his teeth chattering, imagined his spine crumbling and brain swimming. Then the earth bucked harder and he fell. Yet as he landed, the soil stopped moving.

How long could the earth shiver like this before it crumbled entirely?

Shaking all over, Gull scrambled upright. Of all the frights he'd ever endured, this was the worst. If the very earth could turn traitor, what could be counted upon?

Silence rang in his ears. A child cried out once and was hushed. Was there more, or…?

The full force of the quake hit.

The ground jumped as if someone had snapped a carpet. Gull flipped completely over onto his rump. He dropped his weapons and clutched the quivering soil. A roar like a waterfall threatened to drown him. The stone wall around Beebalm's smashed house spilled apart. A crack opened near his foot. Another crack rippled by his hand along the edge of the thorn hedge.

In a flash Gull understood something of magic: the wizard had not merely conjured the thorn hedge, he'd actually transported a stretch of brambled earth from some distant place to here. Part of another village, another valley, had been shoehorned into his. Thus a crack erupted where the local black soil met the hedge's red soil. What power these wizards controlled!

Including the power to move the earth.

Gull could do no more than cling like a fly to a cowpat. He looked around for anything solid, but even the sky shook. Or perhaps his eyes jiggled in their sockets.

Above the primeval roar came the splintering of house beams and the ringing of roof slates crashing on stone. The woodcutter recognized them: house beams rending. Stones rumbled, roof slates shattered like glass.

Then it was quiet and still.

A temblor or two rippled by, but that was all.

Gull rose, but had to clutch his thighs. His legs shook as if the earthquake still lingered in his bones.

He cast about, to see how the village had fared, what damage there was.

But the village was gone.

Of thirty cottages scattered throughout the valley, only one or two still stood. A few more made of wood had their roofs stove in. But most were heaps of rubbish, stone and wood and thatch mashed together. Stone walls were scattered over gardens and pathways and dooryards. Cracks in the earth ran everywhere, some a handspan wide, some long and deep enough to swallow a cow. Even the river was gone, the watercourse dried to a trickle. The quake must have split the riverbed somewhere north of the ridge. And they needed water badly. Cooking fires shaken by rubble set many houses smoldering, then fanned by a rising breeze, ignited.

White Ridge, his home, was no more.

In white-hot, impotent anger, Gull clutched his axe haft so hard it should have broken. Wizards had done this, destroyed his home in their senseless battle.

Raising his tool-turned-weapon, Gull swore, "On my honor, I will kill any wizard I meet, without pause, without mercy! You hear me, you mercenary bastards?"

As if in answer, lightning split the sky, yellow forks scattered 'round the compass. Rain slashed down, cold and hard, drops denting the ruined earth.

Yet the battle raged on.

Through a gap in the thorn hedge, uprooted and tumbled and jumbled as everything else, Gull heard a frightful banging and clanging. Dazed, he turned to see through the haze of hard rain.

The two-headed giant had run into something its own size, the clockwork beast. Rain soaked the giant's clothes and ran rust down the iron flanks of the construct. A club in each hand, the giant pounded the sheet iron and wooden monster as if flailing grain. The beast ignored, or did not feel, the blows. With no offensive weapons of its own, it could only march at the giant and butt with its boxy head. It mashed its nose against the giant's middle, where particolored sails were clumsily stitched, and shoved. With two legs against four, the giant gave ground, both heads frowning, clubbing all the while. He bashed off a jutting wooden ear, splintered a beam along its spine, but did little other harm. The mechanical beast pushed and pushed, four legs churning and clumping, internal gears whirring, and the giant was steadily backed toward the Whispering Woods. Every blow of the tree-club on the iron flanks rang like a gong.

Then the clumsy giant slipped on mud or wet grass. Off-balance, he crashed heavily. The clockwork beast mindlessly walked over him, heavy wooden hooves mashing. Struggling to rise, the giant latched onto a leg just above the fetlock, near a complicated joint. Wrenching, he tried to pull himself out from under. But the joint broke and the leg came free.

Rain running in his eyes, Gull watched, fascinated, as the clockwork beast stepped off the giant. Three-legged, it clumped away. Mindless, it described a vast circle like a beheaded chicken. The giant, a foot trapped in a cleft, tried in vain to get up.

It was set upon by a six-headed dragon that swooped from the concealing rain.

The woodcutter gasped, unconsciously moved to a heap of rubble for shelter. The dragon was all gray, as if carved from stone. It was fat-bodied and spraddle-footed, and slow. Gull had always heard dragons were called worms, or wyrms, or even snakes, for they had long sinuous bodies. And only one head.

Then he recalled the old story. Barktooth Warbeard had fought a multiheaded beast. A hydra.

Fat and slow, the beast was still deadly as three pythons. The trapped giant had time for one cry before a fanged head struck. One enormous hand disappeared into the hydra's maw. The giant screamed from both mouths. Another head sank fangs into his wrist. Another bit higher, into his biceps. The powerless giant howled as its arms were shredded.

Gull shuddered. He felt sorry for the giant, for he could sense no malice in it. Anything that thick-witted could hold but little hate in its heart. Yet it had agreed to fight for a wizard, and now would die by another conjured monster.

Rain intensified, and the combatants were lost to sight behind the dense wet curtain. Gull turned, scanning. He had his own problems. How to find his sister? How to help his fellow villagers, now that the village was gone?

A great despair settled, like a yoke of stone dropped on his shoulders. He almost asked, Why bother? With the village wiped out, whither the villagers? Yet he ignored the gloom and plodded away. Find his sister. Plenty enough to do.

He called against the darkness and rain, "Greensleeves! Greensleeves, where are you?"

Hissing and the drip of rain sang in his ears.

"Greennnnsleevvvvvessss!"

"Here! Here I am!"

Gull stopped in surprise. What? His sister couldn't talk.

Hobbling-his bad knee had been wrenched twice and now there was rain too-he limped around the ruins of another house.

Square into a pack of soldiers.