The Demon Awakens (54 page)

“Get on me back, man, and hurry!” the centaur ordered, and Chipmunk did just that. On they charged, Bradwarden singing a rousing song and Chipmunk forcing away his tears, locking them behind a wall of sheer anger.

Avelyn crouched behind a tree, barely ten feet from the side of the trailing catapult. The monk’s frustration mounted, for though two of the giants had run off toward the fighting up front, the third had remained defensively in place, with a host of powries staying up on the catapult, some of them with crossbows.

Avelyn would have to get closer, he knew, for his fireball to have any real effect, but if he went out in the open, he figured that he would be grabbed or shot down before he ever loosed the magical blast.

The monk understood the situation up front, understood that Elbryan could not buy him very much more time without endangering many lives. He called up his serpentine shield and, purely on instinct, he rushed out of the brush and dove to the ground, rolling right under the catapult.

He heard the powries crying out, knew that he hadn’t much time, and tried to focus on the ruby, on its mounting energy.

Then the giant was kneeling beside the catapult, its face down to the ground, its long arm reaching under for poor Avelyn.

He had to roll away, but then stopped suddenly as a small crossbow bolt skipped off the ground right beside him. He glanced back to see a pair of powries crawling under the war engine, coming for him with prodding spears.

Avelyn closed his eyes and prayed with all his heart. He felt the tingling power of the ruby, as if it were begging or release; he imagined the sudden stabbing pain when the powries drew near.

Avelyn’s eyes popped open, the man staring into the ugly face of the giant.

“Ho, ho, what!” the monk howled in glee, and
boom!
a ball of flame engulfed the catapult, incinerated the powries crawling in behind the monk, and blinded the giant in front of him. The great wooden structure went up like a huge candle; those unsuspecting powries standing atop it cried out and dove for the ground, rolling to extinguish the flames. One unfortunate dwarf dove right in the path of the howling giant. The fire on that particular dwarf was indeed extinguished as a huge booted foot crushed the diminutive creature flat. The burning giant continued on with hardly a thought for the dwarf, running blindly, swatting futilely at the flames. It slammed into a young tree, snapping branches and stumbling, but held its balance—stupidly, for the ground offered its only chance of smothering the flames—and ran on.

Avelyn clutched the serpentine tightly as burning chips of wood sizzled down around him. The gem wouldn’t protect him from smoke, he knew, and so he realized he had to get out from under the burning war engine. He started to work himself to one side, but then a wheel succumbed to the flames and the gigantic catapult creaked and rocked to the side, pinning the monk.

“Oh, help me,” Avelyn breathed, trying to squeeze back the other way. “Ho, ho, what?”

Avelyn’s blast did much to even the odds, leaving only two giants and a score of powries against Elbryan’s thirty. The ranger could not accept such an even fight, though, for if he lost a fifth of his force, it would be too many for the gains of this one encounter. He started to call for a retreat, holding Pony back as she galloped up beside him on her strong roan, but then Bradwarden came by, singing again, a rowdy tune, with a growling Chipmunk on his back, daggers in hand.

“Halt!” Elbryan called to the centaur, but even as he spoke there came a sudden humming sound, a noise the ranger recognized as the thrumming of many delicate but deadly elvish bows.

Several powries tumbled from the lead catapult.

Bradwarden bore down on the closest giant, Chipmunk leading the way with a hurled dagger, then a second, third, and fourth in rapid succession, all aimed perfectly for the behemoth’s face, all hitting the mark and digging in deeply with the strength of the man’s rage driving them.

The giant howled in agony and clutched at its torn face with both hands, and Bradwarden hit it in full stride, bowling it to the ground.

Elbryan could not halt the flow of his furious forces then, certainly not wild-eyed Paulson, who dodged the thrust of a powrie spear, lifted the dwarf into the air, and tossed it a dozen feet, to crack its head against a tree trunk.

The remaining giant ran away into the woods; those powries out of the immediate rush scattered, wanting no more of this wild band.

“Take apart the second catapult!” Elbryan commanded his forces. “Feed its logs to Avelyn’s fire.”

“Where is Avelyn?” Pony asked as her roan trotted past Symphony.

“In the forest with the elves, likely,” said Elbryan. “Perhaps in pursuit of the giant.”

As if on cue, the burning catapult creaked again and slanted over farther. Elbryan stared at it, sensed something amiss.

“No,” the ranger murmured, slipping down from his horse. He started walking toward the burning things then began running, scrambling to the ground as close as he could get to the catapult’s highest edge. Elbryan peered through the thick smoke. There were two bodies near him, and he was relieved to recognize them as powries.

“But what were the powries doing
under
the catapult?” the ranger asked with sudden horror.

“Bring a beam!” he shouted, standing tall and hopping excitedly. “A lever! And quickly!”

“Avelyn,” Pony breathed, catching on to the source of her lover’s distress.

Most of the fighting was finished—several men and the centaur had already begun taking apart the intact catapult Bradwarden, working at the catapult’s long arm and great counterweight, heard the ranger’s desperate call.

Chipmunk popped out the last fastening peg, and, with the strength of a giant, the centaur lifted free the huge beam. Men scrambled to help him, but even with all of the hands, the best they could do was drag the beam to Elbryan and the burning catapult.

“Ropes to the other side,” Elbryan commanded, as he and several others began setting one end of the long pole under the highest side of the burning catapult. “It must be pulled right over, and swiftly!”

They tugged, they lifted with all their strength. Pony got Symphony and her roan around the back, ropes looped about the war engine and tied to the tugging horses. Finally, with one great heave, the group uprighted the catapult, which fell over with a tremendous groan of protest and a huge shower of orange-yellow sparks.

There lay Avelyn, motionless and soot covered.

Elbryan rushed to him, as did all the others, Pony pushing her way through to be beside this man she had come to love as a brother.

“He does not breathe!” Elbryan cried, pushing hard on the man’s chest, trying to force the air into him.

Pony took a different tack, going for the monk’s pouch, fumbling with the stones until she at last brought forth the hematite. She had no idea how to proceed—Avelyn had not formally trained her with this most dangerous of stones—but she knew that she must try. She sent her thoughts into the stone, remembered that Avelyn had done as much for her, and indeed, for Elbryan.

She prayed to God, she begged for help, and then, though she did not believe that she had accessed the stone’s power in the least, she felt a soothing hand above her own, and looked down to see the monk staring up at her, smiling faintly.

“Hot one,” Avelyn said between coughs that brought forth black spittle. “Ho, ho, what!”

“The design was impressive,” Elbryan admitted to Belli’mar Juraviel and Tuntun, the elves sitting with the ranger at Avelyn’s bedside much later that night.

Avelyn opened a sleepy eye to regard his newest companions. He had known the elves were about, of course—everyone in the camp did—but he had never actually seen one of the Touel’alfar before. He stayed quiet and closed his eyes once more, not wanting to scare the sprites away.

Too late; Elbryan had noticed the movement.

“I fear that your prophecies of doom hold much truth,” the ranger said, shaking Avelyn a bit to show that he was speaking to him.

Avelyn opened one eye, locked stares not with Elbryan but with the elven pair.

“I give you Belli’mar Juraviel and Tuntun,” the ranger said politely, “two of my tutors, two of my dearest friends.”

Avelyn opened wide his eyes. “Well met, what,” he said boisterously, though he wound up coughing again, not yet ready for such exertion.

“And to you, good friar,” said Juraviel. “Your power with the stones is encouraging.”

“And great will that power need to be,” added Tuntun. “For a darkness has come to the world.”

Avelyn knew that all too well, had known it since the days immediately after his departure from St-Mere-Abelle—had known it, in retrospect, since his journey to Pimaninicuit. He closed his eyes again and lay still, too weary to speak of such things.

“We know beyond doubt that these monsters are not simple raiders but a cohesive and organized force,” Elbryan stated.

“They are guided,” Tuntun agreed, “and held together.”

“We need to speak of this another time,” said Juraviel, indicating the monk, who seemed as if he had drifted off to sleep once more. “For now, we have the immediate battles before us.”

Both elves nodded and slipped quietly out of the tent, past the sleeping soldiers and the alert guards without a whisper, seeming to all about as no more than windblown leaves or the shadow of a bird.

Elbryan sat with Avelyn for the rest of the night, but the monk did not stir. He was deep in thought, in sleep at times, recalling all that he had heard of the darkness that was on the land, of the demon dactyl and the blackness within men’s hearts.

“Our master will not be pleased,” Gothra the goblin whined, the one-handed creature hopping frantically about the small room.

Ulg Tik’narn regarded his fellow general sourly. The powrie had little love of goblins and found Gothra a pitiful whining creature. The powrie could not deny Gothra’s statement, though, and gave the goblin more credit than he gave Maiyer Dek, for the giant was perfectly oblivious of their increasingly desperate situation. The villages had been captured, that was true, but too few humans had been killed, and this mysterious Nightbird and his friends were wreaking havoc on every supply group that came down from the north, something the merciless dactyl had certainly noticed—the arrival of the spirit who called himself Brother Justice confirmed that fact.

And Ulg Tik’narn knew that he, most of all, would be blamed for the interfering humans. But the powrie was not without allies of its own, and was not without a plan.

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CHAPTER 43

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A Place of Particular Interest

“Tearing and scarring!” the centaur wailed, stomping about, splashing in the mud and puddles and smashing his heavy club against the ground. A drenching rain fell all about the region, turning the last of the snow to slush and softening the ground.

“They are cutting the evergreens in the vale north of Dundalis,” Elbryan explained grimly to Pony. “All of them.”

“Then the day is all the grayer,” she replied, looking in the general direction of what had once been her home. Of all the places in the area, only Elbryan’s private grove was more beautiful than the pine vale and the caribou moss, and none elicited more wistful memories from the young woman.

“We can stop them,” the ranger said suddenly, seeing the profound pain on Pony’s fair features. He sighed as he finished, though, for he and Bradwarden had just concluded a similar conversation in which the centaur had called for an attack, but Elbryan had reasoned that the clear-cutting might be no more than a trap set for their band. They had become a large thorn in the side of the invading army, and no doubt the monstrous leaders in Dundalis and the other villages wanted to get the secretive band out in the open and deal with them once and for all. Goblins were stupid things, but powries were not, Elbryan knew, and he understood that these dwarvish generals would recognize the importance of beauty to the humans.

“Too close to Dundalis,” Pony lamented. “They would have reinforcements upon us before we could do any real harm to their clear-cutters.”

“But if we sting them and send them running,” Bradwarden argued again, “might that they’ll be thinking twice before going back in that valley!”

Pony looked at Elbryan, the Nightbird. This was his game, his force to command. “I would like to hit at them,” she said quietly, “if for no other reason than to show my respect for the land they despoil.”

Elbryan nodded grimly. “What of Avelyn?”

“He is in no state to entertain thoughts of battle,” Pony replied with a shake of her head, the movement spraying little droplets of water from her thick, soaked hair. “And he is busy with his gemstones, looking far, so he said.”

Elbryan had to be satisfied with that; any work Avelyn was doing was likely vital, for the monk was at least as dedicated as Elbryan himself, or any of the others out here. “Symphony can bring us only a handful of horses,” the ranger stated, improvising, thinking out loud. “We’ll take only as many as can ride, and only volunteers.”

“My roan will bear me,” said Pony.

“I ride when I’m walking.” The centaur laughed.

Elbryan replied with a smile, then fell within his thoughts, calling out through the rain and the trees to Symphony, the black stallion not so far away. Within the hour, seven riders, Paulson and Chipmunk among them—both still fuming over the loss of Cric—and Bradwarden beside them, set out through the forest, making their winding way toward the evergreen valley. The elves were with them, as well, Elbryan knew, shadowing their every move, serving as silent scouts.

They arrived at the northern slope of the valley without incident, to look down upon a score of powries, a like number of goblins, and a pair of giants, clearing away the trees. This was one of the few times of the year when the ground in the vale was brown, for the caribou moss wasn’t in season and the snow was all but gone. Still, the sight of the low, neat evergreens was impressive, a reminder to the ranger and Pony of the beauty of this place, this valley that they had so treasured in their youth.

“We stay close, we hit fast, and we get away,” Elbryan explained, addressing them all but eyeing Paulson directly. The big man, so pained by the loss of his friend, was likely to ride right out the other end of the valley, the ranger realized, and charge into Dundalis, killing everything in his path. “Our mission here is not to kill them all—we’ve not the numbers for such a task—but to scare them and sting them, to chase them away in the hope that they will fear to leave the shelter of the village.”

Pony, Paulson, and Chipmunk went with Elbryan, moving down to the left, while the other three followed Bradwarden down to the right. The rain intensified then, as did the wind, sheets of water blowing past, making them and their mounts all thoroughly miserable. But Elbryan welcomed the deluge. The monsters were as miserable as they, he knew, and the noise of the storm would cover their approach, perhaps even their first attacks. The one drawback was that the elves, even then moving into position lower on the slope, would have a difficult time with their bows.

No matter, the ranger mused as he picked his way among the low pines, wide of the area where the monsters hacked away. Today was a day for swords, then, and Elbryan felt comfortable indeed drawing Tempest and laying the magnificent sword across his lap.

The blade came up swiftly as the ranger passed around one bushy spruce, to see the branches jostled by something within.

Belli’mar Juraviel popped his head out in plain view; Elbryan heard Paulson and Chipmunk suck in their breath behind him, their first real sight of the ever-elusive elves.

“They are behind the ridge in great numbers,” Juraviel said to the ranger. “Many giants among them, and those with stones for throwing! Be gone from this place, oh, be gone!”

Before Elbryan could begin to respond, the elf disappeared within the thick boughs, and then a rustle across the way told Elbryan that Juraviel had exited the back side of the tree and was probably long gone already.

“Trap,” the ranger whispered harshly to his three companions, and he kicked Symphony into a run. The four widened their line, weaving about the trees, coming suddenly upon a group of powries and goblins, the monsters too startled to react.

Elbryan leaned low in the saddle and slashed one across the face, then drove Tempest into the chest of another as Symphony thundered past. Chipmunk took one in the eye with a dagger and cut the ear off another as it tried to dive aside, while Pony scattered a trio of goblins, the whining creatures more than willing to run away.

Paulson’s maneuvers were more direct, the bearish man running down one powrie, trampling it under his mount, then splitting the skull of another with his heavy axe. Roaring and charging, looking for another target, the big man guided his horse out to the side of the others, cut a close circuit, of one tree, and ran smack into a fomorian giant, the horse and rider bouncing more than the behemoth.

Paulson fell from his mount into the mud and looked up to see the giant, a bit dazed but far from defeated, shove his horse aside, then take up its monstrous, spiked club.

He knew that he would soon be with poor Cric.

He was weak and sore, but he could wait no longer. Brother Avelyn understood that he and his friends, that all the world, needed answers, needed to know the exact cause of this invasion. And so he fell into the enchantment of his powerful hematite, let his spirit walk free of his battered body, and then let it fly upon the winds.

He looked to the south, to Dundalis and the fight in the vale. He saw the monsters readied on the hill, beginning their charge, organized as an army and not a simple collection of marauding tribes.

Avelyn could do nothing except pray that Elbryan and his riders were swift enough and lucky enough to get away.

The monk’s thoughts turned him back to the north, and there he went with all speed. Soon he was far beyond the sounds of battle, the forest rushing past beneath his floating spirit. How free he felt, as he had on that long-ago day—that day a million years ago in another life, it seemed—when Master Jojonah had first let him walk outside of his corporeal form, when he had floated above St.-Mere-Abelle to see the carvings on the monastery roof.

Yet another caravan of monsters, laden with engines of war and moving inexorably south, washed those peaceful thoughts from Avelyn’s mind.

He came past the storm, out of the rain, but though the sky was brighter, the scene before the monk, the towering outline of the Barbacan, was not. Avelyn felt the evil, feared the evil, and knew suddenly that if he went in that dark place now, he would not get out.

Still, his spirit moved toward the Barbacan, drawn by the monk’s need to know. He floated up past the towering spires of natural stone, over the southern lip of the barrier mountains, and looked down upon a blackness more complete than any moonless night.

If ten thousand monsters had marched south, five times that number were gathered here, their dark forms filling the valley from this southern mountain wall all the way to the plain between the black arms of a singular, smoking mountain some miles to the north.

A smoking mountain! It was alive with the magic of molten stone, the magic of demon dactyls.

Avelyn didn’t need to go any closer, and yet he felt compelled to do so, driven by curiosity, perhaps.

No, it wasn’t curiosity, the monk realized suddenly, nor was it any false hope that he might do battle with the creature then and there. Yet he could not deny the tug of that lone, smoking mountain, calling to him, compelling him . . .

He had been noticed; there could be no other answer! The demon dactyl had sensed his spirit presence and was trying to draw him in, to destroy him. That realization bolstered Avelyn’s strength, and he turned away, the southlands wide before him.

“You have come to join with us,” came a soft call, more a telepathic message than an actual voice, though Avelyn recognized the tone of the speaker. His spirit swung about again, and there, coming over a rocky bluff, was the ghost of the man who had trained beside him all those years in St.-Mere-Abelle, the man who had gone to Pimaninicuit to share in the glory of their God, and who, so it now seemed, had fallen so very far.

“To join with us,” Quintall had said. To join with
us.

“You court demons,” Avelyn’s spirit cried out.

“I have learned the truth,” Quintall countered. “The light within the shadows, revealing the lies—”

“You are a damned thing!”

Avelyn sensed the spirit’s amusement. “I am with the victor,” Quintall assured him.

“We will fight you, every mile, every inch!”

Again, the amusement. “A minor inconvenience and no more,” Quintall replied. “Even as we speak, your mighty champion and your precious companion are dying. You cannot win, you cannot hide.”

The spirit stopped abruptly as Avelyn, boiling with outrage, attacked, his spirit flying fast against the nearly translucent outline of the evil ghost, locking with the creature, their battle as much one of wills as of physical strength.

They wrestled about, their power borne of faith, Avelyn’s for his God, and Quintall’s for the demon dactyl. They twisted and gouged, floating about and through the bare windblown rocks of the Barbacan. Quintall’s grasp was the darkness of the demon—cold, drawing the very life force from his opponent. Avelyn’s grasp was the sharpness of light, burning his foe.

They locked in agony, neither gaining an advantage, rolling and floating, and finally, they were apart, facing each other, circling, loathing.

Avelyn knew he could not win, not here, not with the demon dactyl so close, and the notion that the ghost knew something about Elbryan and Pony that he did not bothered Avelyn more than a little. Even worse, their fight would draw unwanted attention from the smoking mountain, the monk feared; and if the dactyl came upon him as he battled this evil spirit, he would surely be destroyed.

Avelyn was strangely unafraid of that possibility, would go willingly to his God’s side if his death came in a battle with this purest of evil. But the monk had to put his own desires aside, for the others back in the forest would need to know what he had learned, would need to know of the smoking mountain and the Barbacan, the confirmation of their dark suspicions.

Avelyn would get his fight, he decided, but not until the world was properly warned.

“You are a damned thing, Quintall,” he said to his dark foe, but the ghost only laughed and came on.

Avelyn resisted the urge to meet that charge and his spirit flew away, soaring fast for the south. He heard the taunts of Quintall, the ghost wrongly thinking the monk had fled in fear, and he ignored those barbs as meaningless.

Avelyn hoped that he and Quintall would meet again.

Pony and Chipmunk continued their wild ride, weaving about the pines, cutting sharp corners, Pony’s sword flashing, Chipmunk’s seemingly endless stream of daggers spinning out. Or, when either of them was too close for such weapons, they merely spurred their powerful steeds on, running down the helpless powries or goblins that ventured into their path.

Even those monsters not in panic, even those trying to get some angle on the riders, could do little against the sheer power and speed of the rushing horses.

“To me! To me!” Pony heard Bradwarden call, and she led the way to the centaur and his three companions, who were enjoying similar success.

Elbryan, though, did not follow. He was not surprised by the disappearance of Paulson; the man was too consumed by grief and rage, and in truth, the ranger feared that he should not have brought Paulson out here, not now, not so soon after Cric’s demise.

The ranger was surprised, however, when he saw the big man’s delay was not by choice, when he saw Paulson scrambling in the mud, trying desperately to stay out of reach of a giant’s smashing club. Elbryan kicked Symphony into a straight charge. He wished that he had Hawkwing readied, that he could lead the way with a stinging arrow. He let the horse serve as missile instead, rushing in right beside the engaged giant, slamming against the creature as it stooped low in its attempt to get at Paulson.

The giant slipped down into the mud; Symphony staggered and slid but held his balance.

“Run!” Elbryan cried to the man, and terrified Paulson didn’t have to be told twice. He scrambled about the pines, blinded by the rain and by sheer terror. He fell in the mud, but was scrambling up even as he hit the ground, his legs pumping desperately.

Elbryan tried to keep a rear guard, thought to go and scoop Paulson into the saddle behind him, but then realized that such a maneuver would cost them both too much time, would allow the stubborn giant to fall over them. And Elbryan had no time to spend in battling such a foe, not here, not now, for all the southern slope of the valley was thick with monsters, including many giants, most carrying sacks of heavy stones. Rocks began bouncing all about the valley floor, skipping in the mud, more likely to squash powrie or goblin than any of the eight attackers, though that possibility did little to dissuade the monstrous reinforcements.