Crusader

  Why?

  In Sanctuary, SpikeFeather had spent much of his time with Adamon and his wife, Xanon, and the other Star Gods. He’d wanted to see if, somehow, they might give him a direction, even a clue, but he’d learned nothing from them. Without exception (and apart from Axis and Azhure), the once-gods were colourless and apathetic, unable to come to terms with the destruction of Tencendor and with their exile—as mere mortals!—in Sanctuary.

  They’d been kind, and patient, but SpikeFeather had learned nothing of himself from them. And now, they’d disappeared, undoubtedly off on their own well-intentioned purpose, but that did not help SpikeFeather in his current despair.

  “Gods!” SpikeFeather muttered, with no rancour, only desperate wishing. “What is my purpose? What am I to do?”

  If only Orr hadn’t died so precipitously in the chamber of the Star Gate. Perhaps if he sought out DragonStar…

  But SpikeFeather sighed, and let his eyes linger on the immobile ice pillars before him. Urbeth’s daughters apparently knew exactly who they were and what was expected of them.

  Meanwhile, here he sat, not knowing what to do or how to help.

  Suddenly, both pillars melted back into the forms of women, and they stared into the storm that raged beyond the avenue.

  One of them hissed, and she swung around, stopping with a jerk as she saw SpikeFeather.

  “You!” she cried.

  Axis was startled out of his conversation with the Ravensbund chief, Sa’Domai, by a shout from the head of the convoy.

  He leaped onto Sal’s back and galloped forward to find Urbeth transforming back into her womanly self, and DragonStar—DragonStar!—emerging from the storm on his white stallion, the Alaunt milling at Belaguez’s feet.

  The expression on DragonStar’s face said it all.

  “Trouble,” Axis stated.

  “Oh, aye,” DragonStar said, and halted Belaguez by Sal. His eyes widened very slightly at the sight of Axis’ brown mare, but he made no remark about her.

  Not when disaster threatened.

  “The Demons are not far behind me,” DragonStar said. He looked in wonder at the avenue of trees, then looked in query at Urbeth.

  Ur, she told him in the mind voice, her thoughts carrying more images than spoken words. Skraelings. Souls of trees. An army.

  DragonStar nodded, accepting. “Urbeth, can you hold here for the moment? I must—”

  “Yes. Go.”

  DragonStar nodded, then reached across and let his hand rest momentarily on Axis’ arm. “I must see to Azhure’s and Katie’s safety,” he said.

  “How can we fight against the Demons?” Axis said, grabbing at DragonStar’s own arm as his son pulled back.

  Again DragonStar glanced at Urbeth. “Support Urbeth and her daughters, and support the trees,” he said. “Even I can do no more.”

  Axis nodded, and let him go.

  DragonStar rode Belaguez deep into the column until he found Azhure, Katie and StarDrifter. They were standing by a collection of Ravensbund tents, and looked up in stunned surprise as DragonStar rode up.

  For the moment DragonStar ignored Azhure and StarDrifter, sliding off Belaguez’s back to lift Katie into his arms.

  She smiled and snuggled in close to him.

  The Demons are about to attack.

  I know, DragonStar.

  You must stay safe.

  At that Katie smiled bitterly. For the moment.

  DragonStar’s arms tightened about her, and he could not help the sudden dampness in his eyes. You have a way to travel before you, my girl. This is not the place.

  DragonStar felt her nod, and he let her down.

  “Azhure?” he said. “Katie must be protected at all costs. Whatever happens, whoever else dies in this attack, Katie must be protected.”

  Azhure did not speak, merely wrapping her own arms about Katie and nodding, her eyes determined.

  “The Ravensbund will prove as good a guard as any,” DragonStar said. “Stay inside their tents, away from what prying eyes might penetrate these trees.”

  Again Azhure nodded, then she leaned forward, briefly kissed DragonStar’s cheek, and ducked inside one of the tents, Katie still locked in her arms.

  Several Ravensbund warriors quietly surrounded the tent, and DragonStar spoke softly to them.

  Then he turned to go, but was halted by StarDrifter.

  “I know this is not the time,” StarDrifter said hurriedly, “but Zenith is in danger.”

  DragonStar sent a rushed glance back towards the head of the convoy, but let StarDrifter hold him back.

  “Danger?”

  StarDrifter took a deep breath, and DragonStar was horrified to see the emotion in his grandfather’s eyes. “WolfStar has her,” he said.

  DragonStar opened his mouth, but for the moment could not answer.

  “WolfStar has captured Zenith’s soul,” StarDrifter hurried on. “Stolen her will! Dammit, DragonStar! WolfStar has convinced Zenith that she has no future apart from him!”

  “But…how…” DragonStar said.

  StarDrifter threw up his hands in despair. “DragonStar, if you have the time…help her, please…”

  “I’ll—” DragonStar began, then got no further, for the sounds of a frightful battle crashed down through the trees.

  That the helpless millions who’d escaped Sanctuary had somehow found a source of enchantment to protect them had not surprised Qeteb.

  After all, the heart still beat.

  As he and his approached the column from high overhead, they’d observed the tens of thousands of trees lining and protecting the people and animals inside.

  “Enchantment,” Sheol had murmured, and Qeteb was pleased to hear no anger or amazement in her voice.

  “I smell that old woman about this,” Qeteb had said, and the others had silently agreed with him.

  Below, the trees waved their branches, lifting leaved tentacles high into the sky as if to grab the Demons down into their twigged depths.

  None of the Demons needed to be told that that might be somewhat inadvisable.

  “When DragonStar is dead,” Qeteb said, “the trees will become useless. I can wait.”

  “And so…?” Raspu said. All of the Demons circled some hundred paces above the highest of the tentacles waving above the avenue, Qeteb very slightly above the others.

  They had now assumed different forms: wingless, although they managed to remain aloft easily.

  Muscled forms, and garbed in heavy checked-cloth jackets with thick leather belts and trousers.

  All, save Sheol and Roxiah, sported thick heads of hair and beards, and even the two female Demons had their femininity almost completely hidden behind their outward facade of resolute determination and muscled strength.

  The Demons had taken on the forms of woodsmen, and in their hands they gripped shiny metal axes.

  They might not mean to battle the trees here and now, but they did mean to give them a scare. And there were three other targets in mind.

  Whittle down DragonStar’s support one by one, Qeteb whispered through their minds. First…

  First the three who taunted and then trapped us, said Sheol.

  Oh yes, Qeteb agreed. First those three…

  But his mind was wandering elsewhere. He could sense DragonStar down there, and, more, he could sense that there was the sixth—a child! a girl!—that he wanted to protect.

  Qeteb smiled. The sixth was a girl. A child!

  Knowledge was power, and power was victory.

  Urbeth and her daughters had regained some strength during their few hours of rest, but they were still abysmally tired. In particular, Urbeth had seriously depleted her strength, first by creating the rip in Sanctuary that had enabled the peoples and animals hidden there to escape and, second, leading her daughters in the mad dash to draw the Demons away from the still vulnerable convoy.

  Now, all three found themselves attacked by murderously calm and determined Demons who had split into
two groups to target both ends of the avenue.

  At the front of the avenue, Urbeth turned in the snow to find two woodsmen walking towards her.

  Both had grins splitting their faces, both had axes raised.

  Urbeth growled, and tried to transform into her bear persona, but found her power so seriously exhausted that she could not manage it.

  Yet she had to defend her end of the avenue, for otherwise the Demons could walk right in!

  Behind her people scrambled further back into the avenue, terrified by the sense of evil emanating from the two strutting woodsmen, Qeteb and Barzula.

  They were within five paces of Urbeth.

  “Go back,” she said, and drew herself up straight and imperious. On her finger the Circle of Stars flared…and then died.

  One of the woodsmen laughed, and Urbeth knew it was Qeteb.

  “You are a sorry bitch,” he said in an amiable tone, “to stand guard at the head of this pitiful column. Why don’t you run, pretty rabbit? Why don’t you run?”

  And he laughed again, low and nasty. He and Barzula took three small, rapid steps forward, and they now swung their axes back and forth in sweeping, whistling arcs.

  There was a slight movement behind Urbeth.

  “I am with you,” Axis said, and Urbeth heard the hoof-fall of his brown mare.

  “Go back,” she said, without turning to look at him, “for you can do nothing.”

  “I can support you,” Axis said. “I can do my best.”

  Qeteb laughed again, and, in concert with Barzula, swung his axe faster and faster.

  The metal blades screamed through the air, and the two Demons strode into the attack behind the murderous blades of their axes.

  “Watch out!” SpikeFeather screamed at the rear of the avenue, and the two women whipped back to face the four Demon-woodsmen who now strode towards them from out of the storm.

  As one, the four wore incongruously cheerful, smiling faces, even while their hands wove their axes through the air.

  Both the ice women crouched, their hands extended as if claws, but as their mother was weak, so were they, and they could not transform into their deadly bear forms.

  The four Demons advanced in a semicircle, now laughing openly, the tempo of their axes increasing with the strength of their merriment.

  The rabbits were trapped.

  Urbeth raised her hand, and the Circle of Stars finally flared into life, transforming itself into a rod of thin, shimmery metal.

  She flung it before her just as an axe sliced through the air. The blade screeched along the surface of the rod, finally sliding off in a shower of sparks.

  Axis unsheathed his sword, wishing he had his axe of old, and wishing he had a trusted warhorse under him when…

  …when suddenly he was clothed again in the familiar black, and the sword had transformed itself into his battleaxe, and the horse beneath him, while not Belaguez, showed the same heart and courage in leaping forth into the fray…

  Pretty Brown Sal was angry. She was bred as a dancer and a slider, not a fighter, but her light-footedness and litheness served her as well in battle as it did on the dance field, and her anger turned her dainty pirouettes into battle manoeuvres.

  The two Demons had forced Urbeth to one knee, their axes striking ever harder against the metal rod, notching and bending it, when suddenly both were hit from behind—one by a mighty axe blow to his head, the other by two-steel-edged hooves crashing down about his shoulders.

  Axis laughed, and swung again, delighting in the feel both of Pretty Brown Sal and the axe in his own hand.

  Qeteb and Barzula swung about, irritated more than angry, and not hurt—this man and horse had no weapons or magic which could harm them—and simultaneously swung their axes, one aiming to cut the mare’s dainty legs out from under her, the other aiming to bury his axe in the rider’s side.

  Both missed.

  Sal had skittered (slid) lightly to one side while Axis had merely laughed—gods, how good it felt to be in the heat of battle again!—and twisted away from the blade.

  Qeteb and Barzula stumbled and almost fell with the momentum of their missed swings, then regained their balance. They growled, their beards bristling out to three times their previous length and thickness, and swung their axes once more.

  Pretty Brown Sal and Axis slid lightly out of the way.

  Barzula screamed and lunged, using his axe as a pike now, rather than as a weapon to swing through the air.

  Sal and Axis evaded effortlessly, moving through the snow as its lover, rather than its foe.

  Qeteb and Barzula turned to horse and rider; enough was enough, and while axes were pretty, the sheer destructiveness of their power would be enough to dispose of this—

  Both screamed as fingers of ice wormed their way into the napes of their necks, and then into their very spines.

  Urbeth: her arms were ice from the elbows down. Her fingers had turned into razor-sharp needles, prying and worrying themselves into the Demons’ flesh, slicing through bone and arteries—

  Both Demons tore themselves off her claws, and swung about to face her.

  Instead, their eyes were riveted on the man sitting the Star Stallion three paces behind the ice woman.

  “Aaargh!” SpikeFeather screamed, waving his arms and leaping and twisting about like a maniac. “Aaargh!”

  All four Demons hesitated, their eyes slipping from the prey before them to the birdman capering and screaming just to one side of the two women.

  “Aaargh!” SpikeFeather screamed again, and dashed madly, foolishly, and utterly desperately at the Demons.

  All four raised axes that had momentarily drooped in surprise, and simultaneously swung them at SpikeFeather, who was dashing straight towards the centre of their line.

  In that instant before the blades sank home, SpikeFeather dropped flat to the ground, and there was a soft “Ugh!” of surprise as the middle two Demons buried their axes in each other rather than in the birdman.

  The other two Demons stumbled and fell, as Qeteb and Barzula had, pulled to the ground by the targetless momentum of their axe swings.

  The two wounded Demons wrenched their axes out of each other, cursing softly even as their flesh smoothly mended itself, and raised their axes to do SpikeFeather to death when suddenly they found their forms bristling with spears and pikes.

  Behind Urbeth’s daughters stood a line of some three score Ravensbund warriors, already aiming their next phalanx of spears at the Demons.

  SpikeFeather reached up, hardly able to breathe through the force of his terror, yet still committed to action, and grabbed one of the spears, twisting and wrenching it until the Demon toppled onto him.

  SpikeFeather found himself in an inferno of hatred and vengeance. Fires and teeth lapped and gnashed at his arms wrapped protectively about his head, and he could feel talons slicing down deep into his belly and upper thighs. He screamed, knowing death was only a breath away, when—

  —when suddenly the Demon rolled off him and he saw instead the hand of one of Urbeth’s daughters reaching down, her face hovering behind it: beautiful, distant, and utterly, utterly lovely.

  SpikeFeather could hear the Demons screaming somewhere in the distance, but for him his entire world consisted of that hand, now touching his, and the almost disembodied face floating behind it.

  He blinked, took her hand—

  —and found himself standing to one side of what he could only describe as a desperate scrum in the snow. Arms and legs and heads appeared and then disappeared, axes flew, blood spattered about, and howls of rage and frustration wrapped the entire fracas.

  SpikeFeather looked about, desperate to find someone to help him in aiding Urbeth’s daughters.

  And saw them, standing slightly to one side, their arms folded, their faces smug.

  SpikeFeather, one said in his mind, we have thrown our shadows in for the Demons to chase.

  What will happen, he said, astounded to find himself a
ble to reply in the same manner, when they realise the trick?

  Both ice women shrugged, and their smiles deepened, but they did not reply.

  SpikeFeather turned back to the fray, and then stumbled several steps towards the safety of the avenue.

  The Ravensbund were still there, lined up with spears at the ready.

  “Hello, Qeteb, Barzula,” DragonStar said, and he nodded behind them. “I believe you have met my father?”

  Qeteb hefted his axe.

  “No,” DragonStar said, and his voice darkened and became heavier. “No. You cannot hurt what is protected by these trees.”

  “Not until you are dead,” Qeteb said.

  “Quite,” DragonStar agreed. “If you can kill me.”

  Qeteb’s eyes slid towards Urbeth. She had somehow grown stronger in the last few minutes, and now she stood straight and tall, her eyes hard, her figure implacable.

  Her hands, so recently ice, now turned into the furred claws of the ice bear.

  Suddenly Urbeth’s mouth opened in a vicious snarl, and she completed the transformation and crouched to spring.

  “The war is between you and me,” DragonStar said, “and between yours and mine.”

  “Ah, DragonStar,” Qeteb said, his voice even now. He, as Urbeth had, raised himself to his full height and assumed his true form of black, invulnerable armour. “You cannot begrudge me a pre-dinner nibble or two, can you?”

  DragonStar shrugged. “Your nibble has done you no good. What matters is the Hunt through the Maze. That is what you and I both know.”