One for the Morning Glory (19 page)

As they tried to advance farther, Psyche gave a glad cry. A moment later she had jumped from the back of the Twisted Man's horse and was embracing someone in the crowd.

Amatus and Sir John exchanged baffled glances, but the Twisted Man seemed to regard it as perfectly normal, and merely brought his huge warhorse over to Psyche's side to ward off any trouble.

Unable to move in any other direction, Amatus, Calliope, and Sir John followed along.

The person whom Psyche had seen, and greeted with such a cry of joy, was Sylvia, whom they had rescued from Goblin Country years before. A few moments' conference settled that Sylvia, for some reason, must come with them; Sir John grumbled, and Amatus seemed disposed to argue, but something about the way the Twisted Man accepted it as natural told them that something unnatural—and therefore important—was about to happen.

In a short time, Sylvia was mounted behind the Twisted Man, and Psyche had climbed up behind Amatus.

"I don't understand anything," Amatus complained, as they worked their way forward again, at a snail's pace. Everywhere the city was going up in flames, but so little movement was possible that it seemed best to just move in whatever direction they could find. "We're nowhere near the fighting, our breaking the spell on the sky seems to have made no difference, and most of all I don't see what Sylvia has to do with anything. There's no reason for her to turn up like this, and even if it's merely coincidence, you're acting as if it were some great stroke of luck, and the Twisted Man seems to agree with you."

"Well," Psyche said, and he could feel mischief in her smile through the back of his neck, "you have to remember that you are a hero, and that this is the Kingdom. Things don't happen without meaning here. And since that's the case, it's a good sign to have someone from so long ago turn up. That speaks of a coming closure, and if the closure should be soon, then, no matter what must be endured along the way, by the nature of things Waldo's days are numbered."

Afterwards, Amatus was fairly sure that he had some question on the tip of his tongue at that moment, but it was never spoken and he never could remember what it had been. Instead there was a great roar from a house across the square from them, and people ran out of it screaming. Without knowing what was happening yet, Amatus and Sir John turned toward the uproar, and the Twisted Man swung with them.

Before they could even hear the panicked shrieks of "Goblins! Goblins! They're eating the children!" the goblins themselves were bursting out of the windows and doors of the big house. At the first sight of them, the few militiamen in the crowd who were carrying their omnibuses and pismires began to shoot, and the gunfire frightened the crowd almost as much as the goblins. In no time at all the square was a screaming melee, with Amatus and his little band trying to get across it to get into the fight with the goblins.

The militia fell in—there seemed to be a sergeant or two to hand—and began to give some account of itself, but then the walls of the house fell outward, and they were forced to back up. As the dust and rubble settled, hundreds of goblins surged forth.

The militia did their best to form a hollow square and keep firing, but it was a poor best, for few of them had drilled together or indeed ever seen each other until that moment. When the crowd at last cleared from in front of him, Sir John rode forward and took command, and got their fire coming in solid volleys, which began to tell on the foul things pouring from the great hole where the house had been, but too little and too late. The militia were forced to fall back, in good order, a few steps at a time.

At that moment, one of the houses behind them went up as well, and dozens of goblins began to leap out of the public well in the square. "They must have undermined the whole city!" Sir John shouted.

They brought the militia about and backed toward the one side of the square that as yet held no goblins, hoping to make their escape that way, but as they neared the entrance to the alley there, with a great roar, both houses came down, and a great, shaggy head, with teeth as long as a tall man's body, heaved up out of the ground.

Cedric's luck had been good enough, for he had little trouble in getting the King's body back through the streets to the castle. He had gone up the street that had the clearest view of the gate, and sure enough, few people had chosen to be in it. For an honor guard he had only two horse soldiers, and the King's body traveled in a simple tumulus they had grabbed from behind a vegetable-seller's stall.

When the first balls of corpses swept in over the city, he was already most of the way to the castle, and was getting some time to think. Any ruler like Waldo had an all but endless supply of corpses, and that explained the undead component of his army—and for that matter the goblin component, for goblins love man's flesh above all other, and though they prefer to eat it live and suffering, once it is dead they do not much care whether it is fresh. But where had Waldo found so many living warriors, and why, for that matter, were they so nearly faceless for the most part? There had to be some explanation for this . . .

For that matter, they had been fierce and dangerous opponents at first, but not long after the tide of battle had turned, it had seemed that they became slower and weaker. Of course, in the service of anyone like Waldo, it might be that an army that wasn't about to win and get its hands on loot and women was always on the brink of desertion.

He wished mightily that he could still be talking about all this with Boniface. It had not occurred to him until now that entirely aside from his being a fine monarch for whom Cedric had been delighted to be Prime Minister, the King had been Cedric's best friend. He knew he would need time to weep, and soon, but for the moment there was so much to get done that he could not.

He still found he was choking, and then realized that it was on his beard, for he had begun to chew it, a thing he had not done in many years. It tasted no better than it ever had before; he dragged it out of his mouth and wiped frantically with his sleeve. He knew that when King Boniface had been younger, he had found it disgusting that his dignified, efficient Prime Minister had such a habit, and often reprimanded him about the condition of his beard and sleeves. "Majesty," Cedric whispered to the bundle on the tumulus before him, "you cannot know how much I wish you were scolding me right now." And then, time for it or not, he wept, the sobs filling his chest completely and tears gushing down his face.

The tumulus rolled through the big castle gates, and all the ladies of the court were there. They gasped to see the King dead; Cedric did not even wipe his face, but commanded them sternly to "dress his body and build a pyre here in the courtyard, for he must be burned lest his bones fall into foul hands."

The women scurried to obey him, and he strode on into the tower. The barest shreds of a defense were available. Most of the guards who had been left on duty on the West Battue, which faced the city, were the too old or the too young. The East Battue, which joined the city wall and towered above it, was so strong that they had nearly stripped it of defenders, so though the men who held it were good enough, they were few in number. Still snuffling and feeling alone, the old Prime Minister, occasionally bellowing for messengers, climbed up the tower to the High Terrace where not long ago he had sat and drunk tea with Amatus and Calliope. From here he could see the parataxes of both battues, as well as most of the city. It would do as a command post, and perhaps the Duke would be able to fall back here with enough forces to make a stand.

As he looked out, he could see the city given to the flames. The streets began to fill with people trying to flee to anywhere that was not burning, and new fires erupted every moment. The smoke was getting dense, and bitter on the tongue, even up here. Even if miraculously they won tonight, the city would never again be what it had been.

Down below him in the courtyard, the women gestured upward; he gave them a sweeping motion of his arm, indicating that they were to light the pyre. There was great power in the body of a king, and Waldo had shown himself to be a skilled resurrectionist. King Boniface's body must not be turned to such an end.

The pyre flared; the Prime Minister whispered "Goodbye, Majesty," and the women of the Court keened, the sound rising to him. Such was all the funeral that could be accorded to Boniface the Good.

The castle went unattacked for a long while; Cedric ordered that anyone who could reach it be granted refuge, for supplies and weapons there were far in excess of what he and his tiny forces could use, but few enough came through the gate. He saw houses fall and goblins boil up from below, so Cedric set women to guard the drains and wells with pikes and halberds, but no goblins came through. Apparently the castle rested on tougher rock than the rest of the city.

After a long while, there was a stir in the streets below, and with a slightly lightened heart, Cedric saw that it was Duke Wassant and a sizable body of troops. They thundered in over the drawbridge, and the Duke bellowed at once for it to be raised behind them. In no time at all the parataxes of each battue were fully manned, and now, bleak and bitter as the situation might be, at least they were in a place designed to stand a siege.

Beside him, the Duke gasped out, "We were nearly cut off. The city is now in such panic with goblins boiling out of every well and cellar that nothing can move in the streets, and citizens are being eaten where they stand, or changed to undead en masse. The city is dying, sir, it will never be the same."

Cedric sighed. The flames of the King's pyre now roared and danced high, in what might almost have been defiance. "I had surmised as much. Nothing is moving in the streets near the castle as yet, so I would suppose they either have something special waiting for us, or they are waiting to clear the streets so that they can bring up forces in an organized way. I've issued swashes, with three pismires each, to all the women; most of them will be able to take two of the foe with them if they choose, and still reserve a ball for themselves."

Wassant shuddered involuntarily. He knew the sort of thing that would happen to women taken alive. "There is one marvelous thing that I should tell you," he said, "and we saw only one bit of it, but when that huge monster took off down in the press of the fighting—"

But he did not tell Cedric just then, for at that moment the great flock of vampires swept in out of the night. The battle was hard and furious on both battues, and the omnibuses with their charmed slugs wrought havoc among the oncoming vampires, but even so there were far too many of them. In very little time there was the clash of escrees and the roar of pismires on the parataxes, for they had not been able to keep the vampires off, and then, with a rumbling groan, the drawbridge fell open, as a few vampires seized the works tower. Waldo's army poured up the dark streets toward the opening gates.

Cedric and Duke Wassant tried to be everywhere at once, but all they managed to do was to keep finding places where more men were dying, slaying three and four for every life they gave up, but losing because they faced twenty or thirty times their own number. As Waldo's army poured in it seemed to lose force—to grow weaker, as if some ailment had struck all of them—but still it came on, and if they grew weaker, they grew in numbers more quickly.

A moment came when the Duke and the Prime Minister crouched, with Roderick, in the Royal Library. They had been driven steadily back and it had been their only route of retreat. For the time being the enemy had lost track of them, and they were in a place they all knew well, and so did not need candles or lights. "There is a back way from here," Cedric breathed, "but I am loath to take it while our people fight on."

Most of the shots being fired now were by the ladies of the court, to be sure; above, they would hear two quick bangs, and a third one slightly delayed; some other lady had taken her two shots at the foe before she cocked the chutney, placed her lips over the muzzle of the pismire, and took the lesser evil. Women had locked and barricaded themselves in, wherever they could, dying alone or in groups, always fighting. No doubt many more were hiding in places not yet found, and unquestionably sooner or later some of them would manage an escape. It was not much consolation, but anything that could be kept from Waldo's hands, now, was as much victory as they dared to hope for; and while the fight went on, even in that small way, and even though they could do nothing to assist it, the old Prime Minister and the Duke could not bear to flee.

"We may wish to escape," Wassant said, keeping his voice low in case something might be listening, "not to save our own hides, but to join the Prince. What I had wanted to tell you was that—"

The door burst in. More of Waldo's odd soldiers poured in. In the dim light it seemed even more to Cedric that they did not have faces of their own, that if you threw back the helmets you might see eyes and noses and mouths but it would not add up to a face. They all seemed curiously alike—except for two taller ones in the rear—

The three men's pismires boomed again and again in the dim library, always finding a mark, but all that happened was that more of the faceless men came in to replace the ones who had fallen. Then Roderick and Duke Wassant drew their escrees, but there was only room for one in the narrow passage, so the Duke stepped forward to hold it.

Waldo's men attacked as if they had never been trained, or had no minds of their own. But there were many of them, and the Duke was tired, and his own bulk was in his way in the narrow passage.

And, this time, when one of the foe fell, the rest seemed to acquire more courage and energy almost at once, as if it had crossed over to them from their dead comrade.

A thought struck Cedric, who was still frantically ramming home the balls in his pismires, and without knowing why, he cocked the chutney of one, raised it, and carefully shot past the Duke into the face of one of the two foe who were not faceless.

The man fell, and suddenly, all of the faceless ones sagged. At once the Duke cut two of them down, but he took a cut under his triolet as he did so. Cedric aimed and fired again, and the other man who was different collapsed.