Crusader

  He resumed the shape of the handsome man dressed in grey and cream, although now he had huge black, clawed wings—far too large for his body—protruding from his back. Qeteb could not quite manage the perfectly congenial form in his current state of anger…and…and frustration!

  “Why will no-one stay still on this cursed piece of soil!” he screamed, still circling high in the air.

  “The Enemy were ever slippery,” Mot hissed at a point just below Qeteb, and the other four Demons cursed and howled and spat, spinning in tight circles through the air, yet still managing to fly with utmost speed towards the offending crack on the horizon.

  The crack through which their food was escaping.

  The entire populations of Tencendor that had not fallen under the sway of the Demons had now become the Enemy, whether they were humanoid or not, and whether they had a single drop of the Enemy’s blood in them or not.

  No doubt they think we will not follow, Qeteb said in the other Demons’ minds. What fools! Did they truly think we would simply stamp our feet sulkily about Sanctuary and just let them go?

  “Qeteb!” said Roxiah, and it jabbed a finger—that every heartbeat or so metamorphosed into a piece of intestine—to their left.

  Qeteb jerked his head about, reluctant to take his eyes off the escaping columns—such feeding that lay ahead!

  But, ah! There was some feeding to the left, too. Not much, but something to vent his frustration and fury on.

  Three white rabbits, bounding terror-struck across the blackened landscape of Sanctuary.

  All six Demons swung as one towards the rabbits.

  “Night is only a few hours away,” Axis said, and wrapped his cloak even tighter about himself. Azhure now sat in the cart, huddled under some blankets, and Zared and Axis had turned their horses so they stood with their tails to the freezing wind.

  The men looked back over the column.

  It stretched as far as they could see, which, truth to tell, was not that far, because a snowstorm was rapidly moving in from the extreme north, and Axis and Zared could only see some ten paces before them.

  And within minutes even that ten paces would be denied them.

  “Is everyone out of Sanctuary?” Azhure said.

  Axis shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know. I don’t know if Urbeth moved us all out at once, or if we had to traverse some doorway that half the column is still moving through.”

  “We’re all out,” a voice put in from behind the cart Azhure rested in. Ur, still dressed in her scarlet cloak and clutching her terracotta pot, emerged from out of the drifting snow.

  Azhure attempted to smile, although it was hard in this extreme cold. She had met Ur many years previously, when Faraday had been planting out Minstrelsea forest. In fact, Azhure had spent one long night helping Faraday transfer her daily batch of seedlings from Ur’s nursery, nestled around her cottage, back to Tencendor.

  Did Ur still have any power left? If Urbeth did…what of Ur?

  And why did she carry that pot? Nostalgia, or did she have something in it?

  Ur glanced at Azhure from beneath the folds of her hood, and spared her a brief toothless grin. What I have in here, girl, is no-one’s business but my own.

  And then Azhure gave a horrified gasp as she saw Katie, awkwardly wrapped in an overly-large blanket, standing behind Ur and gripping the old woman’s cloak.

  Stars! She’d forgotten all about Katie in the debacle of Sanctuary’s collapse. What would Faraday think if she knew!

  Her face flaming with guilt—is this how she had treated her children as well? Forgetting them at every second heartbeat?—Azhure half-jumped, half-fell from the cart into the snow and gathered Katie into her arms.

  Katie accepted Azhure’s embrace happily, and let the woman envelop her underneath her cloak.

  Azhure looked up at Axis, hunched miserably on his equally miserable Sal. “We can’t stay like this. It’s not just us, or Katie, or even all the varieties of people we have. But the animals! Axis, some of these creatures are fragile! We must—”

  “Survive this coming night,” Ur broke in, “a long and horrible night, and then we will rest comfortably enough without fear of cold or Skraelings.”

  “Damn! The Skraelings!” Axis said, and pulled Sal about in a tight circle as he tried, unsuccessfully, to peer through the dense curtain of snow. “I forgot about them!”

  And then, on cue, almost as if they’d been waiting in (creeping gleefully through) the thickening snow, a whisper flickered in the spaces between them.

  The rabbits bounded, their tiny bodies heaving painfully with the strength of their terrified breathing, blood-flecked saliva flying from their open, panting mouths, thin, horrible wails emerging from their throats.

  The Demons felt very good. They chased the rabbits, delaying the kill, wanting to drive them insane with fear, wanting them to die from their fear; swooping and whooping a few paces above the terrified rabbits, catching at their tender bodies with their claws and then letting them go, driving them on and on and on, delighting in their fright, wanting to hear them scream, beg, plead for mercy, needing to see them—

  The rabbits, as one, dived down a hole in the ground.

  The Demons were too overcome with anger to even shriek. As smoothly as the rabbits had made their escape, all six Demons transformed themselves into wriggling, writhing razor-toothed ferrets, and scrambled down the same hole, biting at each other in their need to be the first one down and at the furry prizes below.

  Once the Demons had managed to get below, they found themselves in a rabbit warren as twisting and as confusing as a Maze.

  Apart from their lingering (terrified) scent, there was no trace of the rabbits.

  “Where the fuck have the bunnies gone?” said Qeteb.

  Chapter 39

  Night: I

  As night fell, DragonStar once again climbed to the top of the pile of rubble that had once been the mighty Star Finger complex. It was cold—Stars! It was freezing!—but DragonStar had cloaked himself well, and had donned scarves and gloves against the night air.

  Something was happening, and he needed to know what.

  And so he climbed to the very topmost rock, and there he sat, huddled against the night, sending his far-senses scrying out into the night, and wondering: What?

  Behind DragonStar, Sicarius huddled underneath the overhang of his cloak. He, too, could smell the night air.

  There would be a hunt tonight.

  Leagh had not moved from the tree stump. She’d lain there, physically sickened by the horror of being almost caught by Qeteb in Spiredore and then by seeing him descend with his companion Demons into Sanctuary.

  What was happening down there? Crouched close to the earth all afternoon and evening, Leagh imagined at times that she could feel the destruction roiling up through the earth to her hand.

  Was Zared safe? And Axis? What about Katie?

  Leagh closed her eyes, forcing her mind away from the fate of her husband and friends, and wondered if she should find somewhere safer and warmer for the night.

  And then something grabbed her from behind.

  Leagh was too frightened and shocked to scream. She rolled away, but whatever had grabbed at her had too firm a grip for her to escape.

  Leagh turned her head and managed to see what had seized her. An old and completely demented woman, naked and covered in sores. Leagh took a deep breath, then drove her free foot into the woman’s face.

  There was a horrible crackling sound, and the woman’s grip loosened enough for Leagh to drag herself free.

  She scrambled to her feet, catching at the blackened stump of a tree for support, and looked frantically about.

  At the top of the ridge, outlined by the last of the light, another three or four maddened people appeared, crawling forward on their hands and knees, gnashing their teeth, drooling horrible liquids—perhaps their partly digested last meal—down their chins and chests.

  And, behind them, more:
maniacal livestock as well as people.

  Leagh twisted about, looking for an escape. There was no shelter to be seen, apart from the fire-ravaged stumps of what had been the daughters of the Minstrelsea forests, who had grown down the slopes of the crater towards Fernbrake.

  A few paces in front of the gathering crowd, the old woman crept closer to Leagh.

  More and more of the creatures poured over the edges of the crater, and now black shapes spiralled down from the sky to hunch speculatively on a dozen or so of the tree stumps.

  Hawkchilds.

  “Help me, damn you!” Leagh whispered, but the Hawkchilds merely cocked their heads, and whispered to themselves.

  They might not harm her, but neither would they help her. Among them was StarGrace, and the Hawkchild looked at Leagh curiously, wondering at both her obvious pregnancy and the power that emanated from her.

  StarGrace felt no urge to destroy, but neither did she feel any urge to help.

  Leagh backed up against a tree stump, thinking as fast as she could. The only thing that would keep her safe, and keep her child safe, was to use her Acharite power. But she’d had so little practise! Opening and closing glowing doorways was all very well, but…

  The maniacal creatures, drooling, spitting, howling and whimpering, covered with self-inflicted wounds and the crusty remains of their excreta, crept closer.

  The old woman was almost upon her.

  Leagh stilled, and she remembered all she had learned over the past few weeks, and she smiled, and rested a hand on her belly.

  She was at one with the earth, a part of the landscape itself, and the child she carried within her…

  Leagh raised her head and looked at the approaching crowd.

  “Do you not see the beauty surrounding us?” she said, and waved a slow hand around.

  The once-humans and animals hesitated, eyes darting about uncertainly, and then resumed their creep towards their prey as nothing leaped out to bite them.

  Wave after wave of their blackness rose over the lip of the crater.

  “You may think the landscape wasted and barren,” Leagh said, and now held out a hand in appeal, or perhaps invitation, “but see its true beauty!”

  And she flung her hand out in a wide arc, and suddenly flowers and herbs washed over the devastated walls of the crater in a torrent of beauty and fragrance.

  The Hawkchilds rose into the air, squawking in surprise.

  “See!” Leagh cried again, and half stepped forward, one hand still swept out, one resting on her belly. “See!”

  Summer fragrance exploded about them, and the initial ranks of the creatures screamed and capered. More than the beauty of the flowers was the hope that had infused the entire landscape.

  “See…” Leagh whispered, and the hand on her belly tightened.

  Flowers reached skyward, and those that grew close to the mass of demonic creatures waved forward, as if they wanted to embrace them.

  The creatures panicked.

  StarGrace, circling far overhead, frowned in thought.

  Far away DragonStar smiled, his eyes unfocused. “Good girl,” he whispered. “Lovely Leagh. You deserve your place among the lilies of the field.”

  She had not created the Field of Flowers, nor taken the creatures through to the field, but had instead shown the creatures the beauty and hope that still (after all the Demons had done to the land) rested within the blasted landscape.

  Even amid death, hope still survived.

  “Now,” he whispered, and behind him Sicarius whimpered with eagerness.

  The old woman and the front ranks of creatures, perhaps some three score of humans, cows, pigs and assorted wildlife, tried to turn back and flee from the reaching, grasping flowers.

  Get back! Get back!

  They tried to flee, but could not, trapped between the horrid flowers and the hundreds of creatures that continued to rise up over the ridge and press down towards their prey.

  The mad had their orders, and their thoughts were not ordered enough to rethink them.

  Death dropped out of the sky. At first Leagh thought it was the Hawkchilds, either forgetting the fragile alliance they had with DragonStar and his witches, or actually deciding to aid her.

  But these were not the black, fearsome Hawkchilds.

  They were ethereal, beautiful, seemingly fragile creatures of silver and vivid colour.

  Beautiful, and deadly. Arrows rained down, each one finding its mark in the throat or eye of a human or animal.

  The Strike Force, or, at the least, a few hundred of them.

  For a moment Leagh raised her head and watched the Icarii, then she lowered her eyes…and could not restrain a sob of sorrow.

  Before her hundreds upon hundreds of humans and animals lay dead and dying, some still clawing frantically at arrows that protruded from their eyes or the base of their throats.

  They might have been in the employ of the Demons, but they had once laughed and sang and cried as Leagh could still do. They had once served their masters with good will and willing backs.

  They had once been a part of Leagh’s world, a loved and respected part, and she now found it hard to watch their dying before her.

  She lowered her head and wept, and as she did so the flowers faded and disappeared.

  It made no difference to the dying before her. As successive waves of creatures crested the ridge, so they fell.

  The Icarii wraiths had, it appeared, limitless amounts of arrows.

  Eventually it was done, and an Icarii birdwoman settled to the ground before Leagh.

  She was exquisitely beautiful, with her ethereal form and sapphire wings and eyes. “My name is FireCloud,” she said, and rested one hand comfortingly on Leagh’s arm. “And I, as my fellows, are here to help protect you at DragonStar’s command.”

  Leagh nodded, her sorrow still not enabling her to speak, and she patted FireCloud’s arm.

  “DragonStar? DragonStar?”

  DragonStar closed his eyes momentarily in impatience, and then turned slightly to the figure which had climbed to join him.

  “What are you doing here, StarLaughter?”

  She sat down beside him, encased in a thick wrap, but with her head bare and her hair flying in the wind. Gods, DragonStar thought, isn’t she cold?

  StarLaughter truly did not appear to notice the extreme of the temperature.

  “Something has happened!” she said, and grabbed at DragonStar’s arm. “I can feel it!”

  “Yes?”

  “WolfStar has escaped Sanctuary! He is safe!”

  “Careful,” DragonStar said, “for this wind might carry your gladness to the Hawkchilds.”

  But he nodded to himself anyway. DragonStar had felt the rift in the matter of existence when Urbeth had torn a hole from Sanctuary into the northern wastes. He had no idea how they were managing to survive, or if the Demons had followed them through…but he had felt the escape.

  “WolfStar must still manage his survival,” he said. “He is not so much ‘safe’, as currently beyond the Demons’ reach.”

  “Safe enough,” StarLaughter said, determined not to let DragonStar’s pessimism ruin her joy. She sighed happily, her fingers kneading uncomfortably into DragonStar’s arm. “And soon we will be reunited. DragonStar, where is he? Where?”

  DragonStar jerked his arm away, annoyed not only at her inane and persistent belief that WolfStar could not wait to see her again, but also at her irritating presence. This would be a long night, and he would prefer not to spend it with StarLaughter at his side.

  “North,” he said, not wanting to give StarLaughter the happiness of a more specific answer.

  “North? North? What? In the depths of the Iskruel Ocean? DragonStar, I must go to him! I can’t leave him to the fishes and the—”

  “Oh, for the gods’ sakes, woman! Leave it alone! He is in the northern tundra, and—”

  “The tundra? But there are Skraelings out there and—”

  Despite the
trouble a harsh word might bring him, DragonStar’s temper snapped. He twisted around and grabbed StarLaughter’s shoulders. “Leave him be, you demented woman!”

  “I cannot!” she responded, her eyes flashing in the clouded night light and pushing his hands away. “He is mine, and I will not let him go!” Dear stars in heaven, DragonStar thought wearily, but he moderated his tone when he replied to her. “StarLaughter, he is with those who can protect him, and besides, I doubt they will stay in the northern tundra. They will come south soon enough, and you can wait for them at the foot of the eastern Icescarp Alps—where they met what was once the Avarinheim. You can’t miss them from there.”

  And gods help them, he thought, when the meddling and completely crazed StarLaughter turns up. But whatever their difficulties (or, more specifically, WolfStar’s) at least StarLaughter would be out of his hair.

  StarLaughter narrowed her eyes as she thought it out. “But they might swing west along the Icebear Coast,” she said. “And if I were waiting at the foot of the eastern Icescarp Alps then I would miss them completely. How do you know they will come directly south?”

  “Because I believe that my father Axis is leading them, and Axis is a sensible man, and he’d damn well take the shortest bloody route to come south! Does that answer your question?”

  “My, my,” StarLaughter murmured, “you are testy, aren’t you?”

  “It is cold and I am tired of your company,” he said. “Go find your WolfStar if you will, but leave me alone this night.”

  She leaned back very slightly, her face angry. “Tonight will be a night of terror,” she said. “I hope you enjoy it. Nay! I hope you survive it!”

  And then she was gone.

  DragonStar looked after her retreating form with relief…and some regret that he’d not thought to ask her to leave her cloak. Terror-ridden or not, this night was going to be a cold one.

  When the column of creatures that had wormed their way north from the Maze to the Lake of Life appeared, Gwendylyr initially contented herself with throwing rocks at them from her well-protected fortress within her cave. She’d arrived here just as dusk was falling, and it had taken her only a cursory glance about to know she’d found herself an easily defensible and fortifiable shelter.