Hell with it. He had gotten himself into this. He would ride it out.
“Hunh!”
He was an old man but his eyes were plenty sharp.
The high, clean air allowed him to see a long way. And up north, at the edge of discernment when he looked at them a fraction of a point off directly, were two dots at an altitude even higher than that of the windwhale. To be visible at all at that distance they had to be the size of windwhales.
Bomanz snorted.
This monster was the vanguard of a parade.
He chuckled then. There were rustles nearby, the natives disturbed by his amusement. He chuckled again and rose. This time he strolled the length of the windwhale before he alighted again, as far forward as he dared go.
The smoke was much nearer. It rose higher than the windwhale. He saw hints of the fires that fed the column, which had begun to develop a bend in its trunk down lower. Grim. Maybe the rock was right. Something had to be done.
This was the dozenth such city, though the first they had come to still in its death throes. The progress of the insanity was an arrow pointing due south, a craziness that could make sense only to the crazy himself.
The windwhale began rumbling with internal flatulences. The horizon tilted, rose. Mantas piped and squealed behind Bomanz. He got a death grip on his seat.
The monster was headed down.
Why? It was not time to drop a menhir. It was not feeding time.
Mantas hurtled past in pairs and squadrons, spade-headed darts spreading across the sky, headed toward the city and its coronet of circling carrion birds.
“There is a good wind running a mile below us, wizard.” Bomanz glanced back. His scar-faced stone friend. “If it holds we will overtake the destroyer shortly after nightfall. You have only that long to prepare.”
Bomanz glanced around again. The stone was gone. But he was not alone. Darling and Silent had come to stare at the stricken city. The dark man’s face was impassive but Darling’s was a study in empathetic agony. That touched the soft-headed, softhearted side of the old man. He faced her, said, “We will put an end to the pain, child.” He spoke carefully so she could read his lips.
She looked at Silent. Silent looked at her. Their fingers flew in the speech of the deaf. Bomanz caught part of the exchange. He was not pleased.
They were discussing him and Silent’s remarks were not complimentary.
Bomanz cursed and spat. That bastard had it in for him for no damned reason.
The manias decimated the carrion birds, used the up-draft from the fires to soar high, then returned to the windwhale carrying a feast for their young. They settled down to nap.
But there was no real relaxation for anyone. The windwhale had dropped till it was only half a mile high. It passed the city, scudding along at twenty miles an hour. Soon the monster had to climb back into less vigorous air so as not to catch up before nightfall.
The scar-face stone returned when Bomanz was not looking. When he did notice it, he said, “I feel it now, rock. It reeks of corruption. And I still have no idea what I could do to hurt it.”
“Worry not. There is a new decree from the god. You are not to reveal yourself except in extreme circumstance.
Our attack will be exploratory, experimental, and admonitory only.”
“What the hell? Why? Go for the kill, I say. Hit him with everything the one time he don’t know we’re coming. We’ll never get a better shot.”
“The god has spoken.”
Bomanz argued. The god won.
The windwhale began shedding altitude at dusk. Soon after nightfall Bomanz spied the campfires of an army ahead. A pair of mantas took to the air to scout. They returned, reported whatever they reported. The windwhale slanted down toward the encampment, cutting a course that would rip through its heart.
Mantas poured off the windwhale’s back, scrambled around and over one another in a search for updrafts.
Bomanz felt the old terror moving closer. It was restless but did not seem alert.
The ground came up and up. Bomanz clung to his seat and awaited certain impact, now unconcerned by the insult inplicit in the fact that a dozen menhirs had moved into position around him and Darling, and her thugs were spread out ready for trouble.
The windwhale leveled out. Campfires slid out of sight beneath it. The screaming down there was almost inaudible because of the creak and rumble and intervening bulk of the giant of the sky. Bomanz felt the shock of the old evil, caught completely unprepared. It went into a pure black rage.
Just as it began to respond mantas swooped in from every direction. They cut the heart out of the night with the glare of the lightnings they discharged from the store in their flesh. Bolts stabbed around by the hundred, keeping the old horror so busy guarding himself he had no chance to counterattack.
The windwhale dumped tons of ballast and began a slow ascent, struggling to gain altitude against the weight of plunder.
Bomanz could not see the monster’s underside and was glad. Its tentacles would be grasping men and animals and anything else it considered edible. It was an intelligent beast but it did not exempt other intelligences from its food supply if they were its enemies.
Many of the Plain races ate their enemies.
Bomanz found the idea repugnant in practice, yet it had a certain moral allure. How vigorously would men prosecute their wars if they had to eat those who fell before their swords?
Interesting. But how to impose the requirement?
The manias began returning. Near as the old man could tell, they were very pleased with themselves.
It was over. The windwhale was up and safely away and now preoccupied with its digestion. Bomanz rose. Time to turn in.
As he passed Darling, Silent, and the scarred menhir, he said, “Next time the bear is going to bite back. You should have stuck him while you had him.”
XXII
The “bear” was stunned, numb, immobile within the desolation of his camp, desperately trying to grasp the sense of his sudden misfortune.
His entire existence was a headlong assault upon adversity. Having something go sour was never a surprise. But a disaster of these proportions, with its implication of vast, previously unconsidered forces in motion, had for the moment obliterated his initiative. He lacked even his usual insane volition driven by the engine of rage.
The beast Toadkiller Dog was less stricken. Its memories of the son of the tree were fresh. It had not deceived itself when it came to that sprig’s connection with its sire. It had been but a matter of time till Old Father Tree showed an interest.
Toadkiller Dog had been to the Plain of Fear. He had come face-to-face with the god. His memories of the confrontation were not sweet. He had been lucky to escape.
But that had been a profitable adventure. He had seen the Plain firsthand. Now what he knew might become a useful tool. If the wicker man would listen.
Unlikely.
It was not now the half-rational thing that had been the Limper before. It had become so self-centered, so self-involved, as to be the hub of a solipsistic universe.
The beast prowled the camp, past men and the remains of men. Shock lay upon the survivors like a smothering quilt. Only a few understood what had happened. He heard mutterings about the wrath of the gods. Those men did not know how truly they spoke.
It would be hard to hold them together if that theory gained credence. Problems of conscience were endemic already.
There was faint hiss, a crack, and a blinding flash. The beast’s fur stood straight out. Little blue sparks pranced and crackled amidst it, though the bolt had missed.
Soldiers scurried around like hens in a panic.
That sniper had attained a tremendous speed, falling from several miles high. It came and went too quickly for any response. Even in daylight there would have been little chance to get it.
Flash. Crack! Screams. A man pranced in a shroud of will-o’-the-wisp fire.
So there it was. Having ma
de its presence known, the windwhale was embarking on a program of terrorism and attrition that would not stop till the wicker man proved he could stop it.
Toadkiller Dog snarled at the wicker man till the glaze left his rheumy eyes and he nodded once, sharply. He began to shake so hard he creaked and squeaked. He was trying to control his rage.
To yield might prove fatal.
One of those bolts, accurately delivered, could destroy his toy body, leaving him next to powerless, his army at the mercy of the monster above. Somewhere out there, planing around the camp, were manias watching for a chance at the quick kill missed during the surprise attack.
The shaking faded. In a controlled whisper the wicker man said, “Kill those campfires. They light us as targets.” Then he began the slow, painful process of surrounding himself with spells against the mantas’ bolts.
Toadkiller Dog limped around snapping and growling to make the soldiers hurry.
Dousing the fires did not help. The mantas came in all night. Their accuracy did not decrease. Neither did it improve.
The things seemed more interested in harassment than killing. In keeping everyone awake and frightened of the moment the next blow would fall. It was a weakling’s way to fight. Though no tears fell from the sky when a bolt did splatter a soldier.
The minions of the tree god were trying to panic and disperse the Limper’s army. That puzzled Toadkiller Dog. They were not that tender of heart. Men slipped away by twos and threes. He galloped as fast as he could on three real legs and a wooden one, yelping and nipping and driving them back, and in interim moments trying to get a feel for that monster in the sky. Some of the deserters objected to his bullying. He had to kill a dozen before everybody got their minds right.
Something familiar about a few of the lesser life sparks up there.
The beast sensed the wicker man’s summons. He trotted over. Spells now enfolded the wicker man in layers of protection. Pain leaked out.
Toadkiller Dog was amused. The more surely the old shadow guarded himself, the greater was his pain. To make himself absolutely safe the Limper would have to subject himself to an agony that would rob him of all reason, to the point where he might not be able to get back out from behind the layered defense. The beast wondered if they knew that up there. The wicker man knew the answer. “The one they call the White Rose is riding the windwhale, shaping their tactics.”
Toadkiller Dog woofed in exasperation. The White Rose! Soft of heart but bitterly lethal of maneuver. It all fell into place. She had locked them into no-win positions already. Without doing her conscience an injury. The Limper could suffer protecting himself or ease the pain and get blown off his withy steed. They could watch their army evaporate through desertion or terrorize the men into staying and have them mutiny.
And, from what he recalled of the White Rose, there would be a third and subtler option, which she would push them toward. But she could not comprehend the kind of murderous obsession driving the Limper. She would leave opportunities and openings. She would give second chances when the only workable choice would be to go for the throat.
It was a night when hell was in session. No one rested. The Limper hid so deeply in his defenses he could do nothing to stay the harassment. The pace of the attacks increased as dawn neared, as though the White Rose wanted them to know she could make their day more horrible than had been their night.
The army was half-gone when the sun rose. The tree god had won the first round.
His creatures refused a second round by day. The mantas cleared the sky. The windwhale floated miles up and miles to the south. The Limper collected his ragtag horde and began marching toward his next conquest.
The time of easy killing was over. Now those who stood in the Limper’s path were warned of his coming. Always that monster out of the Plain of Fear hung overheard, a sword of doom ready to fall at the slightest lapse in attention.
The White Rose made no mistakes. Whenever the Limper launched an attack the manias came fast and hard, trying to force him to cower inside his spells of protection. He fought back, brought a few down. Increasingly, he held back in hopes the windwhale would stray too close. He looked for new weapons in the ruins of his conquests.
The White Rose made no mistakes. Not once. But the maniacal determination of the Limper kept his army moving, gaining on his quarry. Till he gained his revenge, even the enmity of the tree god was just an annoyance, the whine of a mosquito.
But after the kill … Oh, after the kill!
XXIII
Smeds said, “There’s something wrong.”
“I’m beginning to get your drift,” Tully said. “You think there’s something wrong.” Smeds had said so five times. “So does Timmy.” Timmy had agreed with Smeds three or four times.
“They’re right,” Fish said, venturing an opinion for the first time. “There should be more industry. Carts on the road. Hunters and trappers.” They were out of the Great Forest but had not yet reached cultivated country. In these parts the tide of civilization was on the ebb.
“Look there,” Timmy said. He pointed, winced. His hand still hurt him.
A burnt-out cottage lay a little off the road. Smeds recalled pigs and sheep and wisecracks about the smell when they had been headed north. There was no smell now. Fish lengthened his stride, going to investigate. Smeds kept up with him.
It was grisly, though the disaster lay far enough in the past that the site was no longer as gruesome as it had been. The bones bothered Smeds the most. There were thousands, scattered, broken, gnawed, mixed.
Fish examined them in silence, moving around slowly, stirring them with the tip of his staff. After a while he stopped, leaned on his staff, stared down. Smeds moved no closer. He had a feeling he did not want to see what Fish saw.
The old man settled onto his haunches slowly, as though his own bones ached. He caught hold of something, held it up for Smeds.
A child’s skull. Its top had been smashed in.
Smeds was no stranger to death, even violent death, and this was old death for someone he’d never known. It should have bothered him no more than a rumor from the past. But his stomach tightened and his heartbeat quickened. He felt a surge of anger and unfixed hatred.
“Even the babies?” he muttered. “They even murdered the babies?”
Fish grunted.
Tully and Timmy arrived. Tully looked bored. The only death that concerned him was the one awaiting him personally. Timmy looked unhappy, though. He said, “They killed the animals, too. That doesn’t make sense. What were they after?”
Fish muttered, “They killed for the sake of the blood. For the pleasure of the deed, the joy in the power to destroy. For the pure meanness of it. We know too many like that already.”
Smeds asked, “You think it was the same bunch that killed everybody back up there?”
“Seems likely, don’t it?”
“Yeah.”
Tully grumbled, “We going to hang around here all day? Or are we going to get hiking? Smeds, you decided you like it out here with the bugs and furry little things? Me, I want to get back and start enjoying life.”
Smeds thought about wine and girls and the scarcity of both in the Great Forest. “You got a point, Tully. Even if five minutes ain’t going to make any difference.”
Fish said, “I wouldn’t go living too high too sudden, boys. Might set some folks to wondering how you got it and maybe some hard guys to figuring how to get it away from you.”
“Shit,” Tully grumbled. “Quit your damned preaching. And maybe give me credit for a little sense.”
He and Fish went off, Tully grousing and Fish listening unperturbed, with a patience Smeds found astounding. He was ready to strangle Tully himself. Once they hit the city he didn’t want to see his cousin for a month. Or longer.
“How’s the hand, Timmy?”
“Don’t seem like it’s getting any better. I don’t know about burns. You? My skin’s got black spots where it was the worst.??
?
“I don’t know. I saw a guy once burned so it looked like charcoal.” Smeds hunched up a little, imagining the heat of the spike in his pack burning between his shoulder blades. “We get to town, you go see a doc or a wizard. Don’t fool around. Hear?”
“You kidding? The way this hurts? I’d run if I didn’t have to carry this damned pack.”
The road was festooned with old butcheries and destructions. But the disaster had not been complete. Nearer the city there were people in the fields, and more and more as the miles passed, backs bowed with the weight of tragedies old and new.
Man is born to sorrow and despair … Smeds shuddered his way out of that. Him wallowing in philosophical bullshit?
They crested a rise, saw the city. The wall was covered with scaffolding. Despite the late hour, men were rebuilding it. Soldiers in gray supervised. Imperials.
“Gray boys,” Tully grumbled. “Here comes trouble.”
“I doubt it,” Fish said.
“How come?”
“There’d be more of them if they were looking for trouble. They’re just making sure the repairs get done right.”
Tully harumphed and scowled and muttered to himself but did not argue. He had overlooked the obvious. Imperials were sticklers for getting things done right, obsessive about keeping military works in repair.
The only delay was occasioned by the construction, not by the soldiers. Tully was not pleased. He was sick of Fish looking smarter than him. Smeds was afraid he would start improvising, trying to do something about that. Something stupid, probably.
“Holy shit,” Smeds said, soft as a prayer, half a dozen times, as they walked through the city. Buildings were being demolished, rehabilitated, or built where old structures had been razed. “They really tore the old town a new asshole.”
Which left him uncomfortable. There were people he wanted to see. Were they still alive, even?
Wonderstruck, Tully said, “I never seen so many soldiers. Least not since I was a kid.” They were everywhere, helping with reconstruction, supervising, policing, billeted in tents pitched where buildings had been razed. Was the whole damned city inundated with troops?