"Well, we tried," King Dor said regretfully. He signaled the general, who had dodged the first arrow and now was taking cover behind the boulder.
The general gave the order. The Xanth archers sent their first shafts flying. Most of them missed, either because the archers were long out of practice or because their hearts weren't in it. For over two decades they had opposed monsters, not men, or indulged in elaborate war games whose relation to actual warfare was questionable. One arrow did strike a Mundane, more or less by accident.
"Blood!" the harpy screeched hungrily.
The Mundanes finally realized they were under attack. They retreated across the river, protecting their bodies with their shields. A couple of them tripped as they stepped backward through the water, fell, gulped, and became fish.
Now the Mundanes were angry, as perhaps they had reason to be. They lined up along the river and shot off a volley of arrows. But these did not have much effect, because of the embankments and brush that protected the Xanth troops.
Then Hasbinbad, the Carthaginian leader, appeared at the front, splendidly armed and armored in the grand Punic tradition. He was a considerable contrast to the motley assortment of archers and spearmen he commanded. Imbri could not overhear his words, but the effect on the Mundanes was immediate. They formed into a phalanx, shields overlapping, and marched back across the river. The Xanth defenders were astonished, but a few of them knew of this type of formation, and word quickly spread. The Mundanes were now virtually impervious to arrows.
But the Xanth commander knew about this sort of thing. At his orders, crews of strong men heaved at boulders that had been scouted and loosened earlier, starting them rolling grandly down the slope. One crunched directly toward the phalanx. The Mundanes saw it coming and scattered, their formation broken. That threat had been abated.
Maybe the Nextwave would be contained, Imbri thought. They had to pass this spot to get to Castle Roogna, and they weren't making headway yet. Soon night would fall, and the nocturnal creatures would emerge, forcing the enemy to seek cover.
But the Mundanes who remained beyond the river had been busy. They had a big fire going--they certainly liked to burn things!--and now were poking their arrows into it. Were they destroying their weapons? That did not seem to make much sense!
Then they stood and fired their burning arrows at the brush barriers of the defenders. Trouble!" Chet Centaur muttered. "We should have anticipated this."
Trouble indeed! The dry brush blazed up quickly, destroying the cover. Men ran to push out the burning sections, but during this distraction the entire Mundane army charged in a mass. The Xanth archers sent their arrows more seriously now, bringing down a number of the enemy, but this was only a token. Soon the Mundanes were storming the barricades, brandishing their weapons, and the Xanth troops were fleeing in terror. A rout was in the making.
"I won't put up with this!" King Dor cried. "Take me there, Chet!"
"But you could be killed!" the centaur protested.
"I have faced death before," the King said seriously. "If you don't carry me, I'll go afoot."
Chet grimaced, then drew his sword and galloped forward. "Idiocy!" Chem muttered, taking her coil of rope and pacing her brother, carrying the golem. Imbri agreed with her-and bore Smash right behind them. One thing was certain, there were no cowards in the King's bodyguard, but plenty of fools.
They charged to the burning barricades, where the Mundanes were making their way through. Suddenly the flames began talking, as the King exerted his talent. "I'm going to destroy you, Mundane!" one cried as it licked close. "I'll really burn you up!"
A number of Mundanes whirled, startled. "Yes, you, armorface!" the flame taunted. "I'll scorch the skin off your rear and boil you in your own fat! Beware my heat!"
Some Mundanes hastily retreated, but others leaped out the near side. They closed on the King's party. "Get him!" one cried. "That's their King!"
But now Smash the Ogre went into action. He swelled up monstrously, bursting out of his human trousers, until he was twice the height and six times the mass of a man.
He no longer sat astride Imbri; he stood over her. He roared, and the blast of his breath blew the leaves off the nearest trees and bushes and shook the clouds in their orbits. He ripped a small tree from the ground and swung it in a great arc that wiped a swath clear of enemy personnel. It seemed the Mundanes had not before encountered an angry ogre; they would be more careful in the future.
King Dor and Chet trotted on, and where they went the ground yelled threats at the Mundanes, and the stones made crunching noises as if a giant were tromping near, and dry sticks rattled as if poisonous. The Mundanes were continuously distracted, and more of them retreated in disarray. Any who sought to attack Dor were balked by the sword and rope of the two centaurs, and many of the rest were terrified by the charging ogre. The Punics seemed daunted as much by the strangeness of this new opposition as by its ferocity.
The Xanth troops rallied and came back into the fray. Blood had been shed; now they knew for certain that this was serious business. Long-neglected skills returned in strength. Soon the Mundanes were routed, fleeing across the river and north as dusk came. King Dor called off the chase, not wanting to risk combat at night.
The harpy had her heart's desire: there were some fifty Mundane corpses left on the battlefield. But there were also twenty Xanth dead and twice that number wounded. The brief action had been mutually devastating. This was every bit as bad as the terrible dreams Imbri had delivered during the campaign of the Lastwave! Still, it was a technical victory for the home team, and the pain of the losses was overbalanced by the satisfaction of successfully turning back the Nextwave.
"This is internecine warfare," Chet said. "It does great harm to both sides. I wish there were some more amicable way to deal with this problem."
"It isn't ended," King Dor said. "They'll return tomorrow, and they still outnumber us. We have barely forty men in fighting condition. We must set up new boulders and make a rampart that is impervious to fire. We'll haul up supplies of river water, which no one must drink, and drill on targets for bow and arrow accuracy. We can hold them if we work at it, but it still will not be easy."
"And if we hold them for another day or so," Chem added, "they should lose interest in fighting and gain interest in feeding themselves. Then it may be possible to negotiate an end to hostilities, and the Wave will be over."
Imbri hoped it would be that easy. She had a deep distrust of the Mundanes and knew how devious they could be.
The troops were allowed to eat and sleep in shifts, while others labored all night on the defenses. The walking wounded were encouraged to walk south, back across the bridge over the Gap, as this was safer than remaining for tomorrow's renewed battle. If the Mundanes were hurting as badly as the Xanthians, they would not renew the attack, but that was uncertain.
The two centaurs, the golem, the ogre, and Imbri ranged themselves about King Dor's tent and slept by turns also. There was no trouble; evidently the Mundanes were no more eager to fight by night than were the Xanthians.
"Did you notice," Chet said at one point, apparently having cogitated on the events of the day, "there are no Mundane horses here? They must all be with their reserves."
Imbri hadn't noticed, but realized it was true. She should have been the first to make that observation! If the Punics had wanted to move rapidly, why hadn't they used their horses? "Maybe they did not have enough horses for every man," she sent, "and could not take time to let the horses graze, so could not use them here. An all-horse mounted party would have been too small to capture Castle Roogna. But surely those horses will be used later."
"Quite possible," Chet agreed. "But I also wonder whether the missing horses and the missing men can be doing an encirclement, planning to attack where we least expect, while our attention and all our troops are concentrated here."
"We had better tell the King in the morning," Imbri sent. "He will want to set a sp
ecial guard about Castle Roogna in case the Mundanes do try that! Fifty horses and riders could take Castle Roogna if our forces were elsewhere."
Reassured that they had anticipated the Mundane ploy, they relaxed.
The Mundanes, amazingly, attacked again at dawn. They formed another phalanx, this time maneuvering skillfully to avoid the rolling boulders.
"Your Majesty!" Grundy called. "The enemy is attacking!"
There was no response from the tent. Chet swept the flap aside and they all peered in.
King Dor lay still, his eyes staring upward. But he was not awake.
Chet drew the King to a sitting posture. Dor breathed, but did not respond. His eyes continued staring.
Imbri nicked a dream at him and encountered only blankness.
"He has gone the way of King Trent!" Chem exclaimed, horrified.
After that, it was disaster. The Mundanes rapidly overran the Xanth defenses. The surviving home troops fled, and this time there was no one to rally them. The centaurs tied the King to Imbri's back, then guarded her as she carried their fallen leader back to Castle Roogna. Seeming victory had become disaster.
And what would they tell Queen Irene, Dor's brand-new wife and widow?
Chapter 8
The Zombie Master
“Somehow I knew it," Irene said. "A nightmare told me Dor would not come back." She was dressed in black. "I blotted the dream from my mind, thinking to escape the prophecy, but when I saw your party coming, I remembered." She looked at King Dor, suppressing her expression of grief for the moment. "Take him to the King's chamber."
They took King Dor up to join King Trent, and Irene remained there. There was nothing more to say to her at the moment.
"Who is the next King?" Grundy asked. "It has to be a Magician."
"That would be the Zombie Master," Chet said. "Magician Humfrey is too old, and he doesn't participate in contemporary politics. When King Trent was lost in Mundania eight years ago and King Dor had to go look for him, the Zombie Master reigned for a couple of weeks quite competently. When there was a quarrel, he would send a zombie to break it up; pretty soon there were very few quarrels." Chet smiled knowingly.
"But the Zombie Master is off in the southern unexplored territory," Chem protested. "He likes his privacy. I don't even have him on my map."
"And the magic mirror's still out of commission," Grundy said. "We can't call him."
"We should have had that mirror fixed long ago," Chem muttered. "But it seemed like such a chore when we didn't have any emergency."
"Life is ever thus," Chet said. "We've got to reach him. He's got to be King again, at least until King Dor gets better, and he'll have to stop the Nextwave from crossing the Gap Chasm."
"Dor's not getting better," Grundy said. "Queen Iris tried everything to bring King Trent around, but the healer says it's an ensorcellment, not an illness, and we don't know the counterspell."
"I can reach the Zombie Master," Imbri projected. "I have been to his castle before, delivering dreams to his wife."
"His wife is Millie the Ghost!" Chet protested. "Surely she doesn't have bad dreams!"
"She worries about the mischief her children may get into," Imbri sent.
"Now that's worth worrying about!" Chem agreed. "They visited Castle Roogna some years back, and I'm not sure the place has recovered yet. Those twins must drive even the zombies to distraction!"
"We have to get news to the Magician that the onus has fallen on him again," Grundy said. "He won't believe Imbri alone. He doesn't know her, and will think it's just another bad dream."
"He'll believe Irene," Chet said. "But I don't know whether she--"
"She's all broken up right now," Chem said. "I don't think she can handle it."
"There's Chameleon," Chet said. "But she's lost her son--"
Chem shook her head. "There's more to Chameleon than shows. But she's not yet out of her pretty phase. That means--"
"We all know what that means!" Grundy cut in. "But maybe it's better for her to be busy while her husband is away in Mundania."
"Cynically put," Chem said. "Still, we could ask her. The need is pressing."
They asked her. Chameleon, pale from reaction to her son's sudden fate, nevertheless did not hesitate. "I'll go."
Just like that, Imbri and Chameleon were traveling again, this time without other companions. They had delayed three hours until nightfall, for that was the night mare's best traveling time, and with the gourds, the distance did not matter. Imbri filled up on hay and oats, and Chameleon forced herself to eat, too, preparing herself for the excursion.
At dusk they went out, going to the nearest patch of hypnogourds. As darkness thickened, Imbri phased through the peephole and galloped across another segment of the gourd world. She regretted she couldn't stop to check in with the Night Stallion and report on her recent activities. But he surely knew, and he could send another night mare to contact her any time he needed to.
The gourds ushered any ordinary peeper into a continuing tour, locked to the particular person. If someone broke eye contact, he reverted immediately to the world of Xanth, but if he looked into any gourd again, he would find himself exactly where he left off. Imbri was not bound by that; she was passing strictly from one gourd to another, and the terrain was incidental. But she was carrying Chameleon, and this influenced the landscape; they were in the region they had left before--the burning iceberg.
But the amorphous entities that reached for Chameleon no longer frightened her. "I have lost my son," she said simply. "What worse can the likes of you do to me?"
Imbri realized that the woman was smarter than she had been. She was also less lovely, though still quite good-looking for her age. Every day made a difference with her, and several days had passed since their last journey together.
The amorphous shapes gaped and grabbed, but were helpless against the woman's disdain. Also, Imbri and her rider were not completely solid here; nothing in the gourd could touch them physically.
Imbri galloped on over the iceberg and down the far slope. Now they came to the stonemasons' region. The stonemasons were made of stone, and worked with wood and metal and flesh, as was reasonable. Some were fashioning a fancy backdrop set painted with horrendous fleshly monsters, the stage scenery for some of the worst dreams. There was, of course, no sense wasting effort bringing in real monsters when they weren't going to be used; the pictures were just as good in this case.
Chameleon stared at these with dull curiosity. "Why do they work so hard to make dreams people don't like?" she asked.
"If people didn't suffer bad dreams, they would never improve their ways or prepare for emergencies," Imbri explained. "The dreams scare them into behaving better and warn them about possible calamities. There's a lot of evil in people, waiting to take over unless they are always on guard against it."
"Oh. Like not fixing the magic mirror."
Well, that was close enough. Probably a warning dream should have been sent about that, but of course it was hard for the Night Stallion to keep up with every minor detail of a crisis. People did have to do some things on their own initiative, after all.
They moved on past the stonemasons and into a region of boiling mud. Green and purple masses of it burst out in messy bubbles, and bilious yellow currents flowed between them. Imbri's hooves didn't even splash, however; she didn't need a mud bath. "What's this for?"
"This is the very best throwing-mud," Imbri explained. "It is impossible to hurl a glob of it without getting almost as much on yourself as on your target. Most people, after a messy experience with this, start to mend their ways."
"Most?"
"A few are addicted to mud. They wallow in it constantly."
"They can't have many friends."
"That's the funny thing! They have almost as many friends as the clean people. The trouble is, the friends are all the same kind of people."
"But who would want that kind of friend?"
"Nobody. That's the
beauty of it."
Chameleon smiled. She was definitely getting smarter.
They raced on through a tangle of carnivorous vines and out another peephole. They were back in Xanth proper, in sight of the Zombie Master's new castle.
It looked just about the way an edifice constructed by zombies should look. The stones were slimy green and crumbling; the wood was wormy and rotten. The hinges on the door and the bars on the windows were so badly rusted and corroded they were hardly useful or even recognizable. The moat was a putrid pool of gray gunk.
"This is certainly the place," Chameleon remarked.
Imbri picked her way through the surrounding gravesites and across the bedraggled drawbridge. She remained phased out, so that she had virtually no weight; otherwise it could have been a risky crossing.
A zombie guard met them at the main entrance. "Halsh!" it cried, losing part of its decayed epiglottis in the effort of breath and speech.
"Oh, I never liked zombies very well," Chameleon said. But she nerved herself to respond to the thing. "We came to see the Zombie Master. It's urgent."
"Thish waa," the zombie said. It turned, dropping a piece of its arm on the ground. Zombies had the ability to lose material continually without losing mass; it was part of their magic.
They followed it into the castle. Once they got past the decrepit outer wall, an amazing change occurred. The stone became firm and clear and the wood solid and polished. Healthy curtains draped the hall. There was no further sign of rot.
"Millie must have laid down the law," Chameleon murmured. "He has his way outside, she has it her way inside. A good compromise, the kind men and women often arrive at."
"Eh?" something inquired.
They both looked. A huge human ear had sprouted from the wall, and a mouth opened to the side.
Chameleon laughed. “Tell your mother she has visitors, Hi," she said.
Imbri remembered now: the Zombie Master had twin children, eleven years old, named Hiatus and Lacuna.