Cloudfyre Falling - a dark fairy tale (52 page)

At first he saw naught but snowy
grounds stretching out into the gloom toward Sanctuary’s curved
perimetre wall. Anything beyond the complex were lost to the mists.
Yet, he caught glimpses of faint shadows moving about the fog
banks.

‘
What be this?’ he murmured to
himself, leaning closer to window.

And when he saw it his bones
turned cold.

Pale-skinned
figures. Bizarre, unsettling things, with pale
plasteec
limbs that held neither
blood nor feeling; with long matted locks of hair, and
plasteec
alabaster
faces, dark soulless eyes, fixed unmoving lips, bare grubby
plasteec
and their
clothes in the forms of torn dresses and skirts. They did not laugh
nor smile, they did not freeze yet held no warmth. They existed
only for their masters and hated as their masters
hated.

The Bewitched.

3

It had been many a year since
Hawkmoth had set his eyes upon these damned creatures and he did so
now with a sense of dread fascination.

He pulled out his spyglass and
watched them come. They moved like ghosts. One moment here, the
next there. And every voice in his mind screamed at him to flee the
tower, to put Sanctuary with haste at his back. But he hesitated,
waiting… needing to see this. For, somehow, in the days and hours
before Hawkmoth and his company had arrived in the Bonewreckers,
the witches had executed a vicious attack upon Sanctuary,
infiltrating the stronghold without suffering the wrath of the
Shadow Guard. Signs showed they had stormed the complex in a
frenzied attack, evidently catching the sorcerers off guard. And
judging by the amount of frozen bodies beneath the snow, the
sorcerers had suffered enormous casualties. A counter attack had
obviously taken place after that, the sorcerers having rallied, no
doubt gathering their wolves, perhaps their ranks even strengthened
by Snow Beasts, and the witches slaughtered or chased off. But one
question still intrigued Hawkmoth above all others: how had the
witches found passage into the complex?

Thus it were here Hawkmoth
witnessed it.

Vast numbers of Bewitched bore
down on Sanctuary. The Shadow Guard rose up from their dens to meet
them. An instant later their far reaching spikes shot forth,
skewering the dolls through chest and belly, neck and limb.
Hawkmoth knew that it would not matter if the Bewitched could feel
no pain for the spike of a Shadow Guard could remove limbs, could
turn a being to ice, or to flame, or to dust.

But none of that happened. Despite
being punctured and penetrated and stabbed, the Bewitched were not
rendered to fire nor ice nor dust, they were not dismembered nor
torn apart. Instead they advanced, slowly but surely, a wall of
moving pale skin with their vacant, staring eyes, their long grubby
fingers void of weapons. And as they bore down on the Shadow Guard,
a hundred swords piercing them at each moment, a curious thing took
place. And Hawkmoth were certain it were some foul
magic.

The dolls appeared to bewitch the
Shadow Guard.

The attacks were suddenly without
potency, without speed, as if an extreme fatigue had gripped the
Guard, as if they were but ensnared in some temporal trap, where
time for them had slowed. It did not affect the dolls; in their
ghostly ethereal way they pushed on through the Guard like young
women dancing amidst beds of flowers, flitting, shifting, like
wraiths. And then as they reached the wave wall, jerking like
insects, they began clambering over the top, dropping down into
Sanctuary’s grounds.

At the sound of his blaring
warhorn somewhere below, Hawkmoth finally broke from his reverie,
turned quickly, remounted Razor and took him galloping down
stairway.

4

Melai had reached the top of the
Eighth Tower. It were scooped out like an eagle’s nest, though
shallow. Here, as if merely nesting, were four giant metallic black
birds, their bodies hollowed along their backs like rowboats, each
with room enough to accommodate two or three riders of Gargaron’s
and Hawkmoth’s size.

Hawkmoth’s instructions had been
to prepare but two of them. His thoughts had told her there ought
be a steel rack containing vials of chemical matter. Liquids of
red, yellow and blue. She were to take the blue chemical, pour it
into the yellow. Mix. She were then to pour this mixture into each
bird at the same time as she poured the red. As to where to pour
it? Hawkmoth’s mind had shown her pictures of a receptacle in the
top of each bird’s metal skull. The liquid were to be poured into
each one.

If the birds were still fully
functional they would then come to life. His thoughts had told her
to stand back. The birds would stand, walk to the edge of the
platform, and await further commands. Here Melai would hold her
position and wait for the others to reach her.

5

Gargaron blew the so-called war
horn again, once more looking at it puzzled when it produced no
sound. ‘Hope he heard it!’ he said, hooking it over his belt and
reaching for his great sword.

Pale forms were scrambling over
the distant wall, rushing toward them. Nightmarish humanoid
creatures with long knotted hair and faces like dolls.

Locke removed his blow-flute. And
taking in the situation he said, ‘Right then,’ as if facing the
prospect of naught but some fairly robust gardening.

Their attack were almost
imperceptible. It were the way they moved that caught the giant and
crabman off guard. For they could shift almost unseen, sweep across
a stretch of ground as quick as a gale. Gargaron were almost
unaware of the mouths of teeth at his ear and neck. He brushed
aside what he thought were a bee but when his hand hit something
solid he gasped and whirled about, finding doll creatures attached
to his flesh.

He snatched at
them, yanked them free, chunks of his skin still knotted in their
teeth. They hissed, mewled, scrabbling at him with their
plasteec
claws, dragging
skin from his arms and face. He managed to toss them to the snow
and as they clambered back to hands and knees he cut them to
pieces.

There were no blood but a creamy
yellow ooze that seeped from the centre of their limbs. Still, he
had not the time to catch his breath for they were upon Grimah,
clinging to his horse’s hide, biting out chunks of meat.

Gargaron hacked at them, stabbed
at them, kicked at them while Grimah himself did a fine job of
tearing them from his flanks with his two mouths.

Nearby, Locke
were well inundated. Zebra whipped her large body, sending dolls
flying. But Locke had been dragged off his mount and his helmet
snatched free and he had been set upon like a rabbit by hounds.
Buried beneath them Gargaron heard him laugh and yell,
‘
Ha, come and have me you accursed
fiends!
’ and he saw Locke’s moonblade
swishing back and forth dicing these creatures to bits and when
Locke found his arms pinned down he dug his horns into his
attackers, head-butting and puncturing them… head-butting and
puncturing, repeatedly, whenever he had the chance. He stabbed at
them too with the spiny tips of his crab feet.

6

Hawkmoth emerged at last from the
tower and saw his friends were in some peril. He snatched a Hornet
from his pocket, an item he had only just snatched from Skitecrow’s
office and let it loose.

Gargaron happened to see it.
Something leapt from the sorcerer’s hand, a tiny green fairy and a
mighty squeal erupted from its jaw and a concussive thud swept over
all before her, taking Gargaron’s hearing for a moment, and every
non-living critter about them blasted away as if hit by a
thunderous wall of water. It left Gargaron, Locke and their steeds
suddenly free of attackers. With that the fairy
crumbled.

‘
Right then,’ Hawkmoth called.
‘Let us away from here!’

6

Melai watched them from the top of
tower. They had several hundred yards to cover. She scoured the
perimetre wall. More of those strange fiends were clambering over
the top. She unslung her bow but she were too high for her arrows
to be any use.

Hawkmoth, Gargaron and Locke made
their charge for the tower. ‘More Bewitched,’ Hawkmoth called.
Gargaron had already spotted them. Piling over the walls like bugs.
‘Behind us too,’ Locke reported.

Gargaron glanced over his shoulder
and saw a mighty horde a hundred feet behind them.
‘Marvelous.’

In front of them, the Bewitched were swarming
about the base of the tower, surging toward them.

‘
They shall cut off our path,’
Gargaron observed.

‘
So don’t lose your pace,’
Hawkmoth called. ‘Charge them, cut them down, bash through
them!’

Gargaron held
high his sword, and Locke spat more impotent darts from his
blow-flute. Though Razor did something Gargaron had never witnessed
from the horse: its glowing eyes shot bolts of searing green fire
punching holes straight through the
plasteec
torsos of those dolls,
melting them from the inside out.

Both fronts crunched into each
other: horse, serpent, giant and crabman piling headlong into this
horde of Bewitched. And from there it were utter bedlam. The dolls
were ravenous, frenzied, cutting, scratching, biting; chewing off
chunks of horse flesh and of serpent, of giant and crabman and
sorcerer. The horses squealed and kicked and stomped, the serpent
hissed and gnashed and sent swathes of fiends flying with wild
slashes of her mighty tail.

They dragged Hawkmoth from his
saddle and gone were he in an instant, buried beneath them, his
staff torn from his grip. Gargaron, believing Hawkmoth’s magic were
likely their best chance of ridding themselves of this mess,
struggled getting to him, hacking at the dolls with his great
sword, pushing Grimah through the pack of dolls who were like
ravenous rats on a corpse. Grimah bit at them with both his heads
and kicked at them, rearing up and stomping them down. But broken,
or bent or twisted, they rose again.

Locke slashed his moonblade,
measured but frenzied in fashion; at first from his saddle but
after Zebra had raked away huge numbers of the Bewitched and Locke
were hauled from his mount he found ground to stand and expertly
carved up the Bewitched as they clambered toward him.

Gargaron hauled
Grimah as close as he could to where he saw glimpses every now and
then of Hawkmoth struggling to free himself from beneath the
ravenous dolls. Razor became some sort of berserker steed,
springing about as wild as any horse Gargaron had ever seen, firing
off green bolts of flame that were so powerful, so searing hot,
they cut through dozens of Bewitched at a time. Gargaron
dismounted, his sword hacking at the enemy as they bit at him,
their
plasteec
mouths covered in blood and rent meat. They crowded him but
he outmuscled them, throwing them off as he would children, slicing
them up with vast two-handed sweeps of his sword. But they were far
too numerous and no matter how much he struggled, he got no nearer
Hawkmoth.

He caught sight of the wizard’s
staff and dove for it. Grabbing it but losing it again under the
mass of writhing fiends piling on top of him. Despite his strength
he were being pulled to ground. He grit his teeth and heaved his
way back to his feet, throwing off his offenders. Grimah were near
him, and he grabbed a handful of saddle and used the horse’s bulk
to help pull him free of the Bewitched.

But he were leapt
upon and clawed at. And Grimah now, despite his brute strength,
despite his bulk, were pulled down by both heads to ground. Then he
were lost beneath mounds of the swarm, and Gargaron lost the cloudy
sky from his sight as a mass of Bewitched closed over him, the
sound of hundreds of munching
plasteec
fangs all about him, like
dogflies at meat, a constant noise, eating at
him.

He struggled and kicked and
punched but he were tiring and he were outnumbered and ultimately
he were outmuscled. He no longer had his sword; lost to the
Bewitched it were. He were being turned over and pulled and hit and
bitten, he were thrown upside-down, and tossed this way and that.
Still, he were determined not to succumb, would not let them beat
him. He felt his anger rising, felt rage building in his chest. He
hadn’t come this far to be eaten alive by this horde of
abominations. He hadn’t fare welled his girls at the Great
Precipice just to be torn apart here without having done anything
to avenge their deaths, anything to reverse the Ruin that had
scorched the world’s living. In the mayhem, in all the mass of
writhing, ravenous dolls he caught glimpses of Grimah, heard him
squealing, saw him kicking his mighty legs. And he spotted the hilt
of Drenvel’s Bane still held in his pack, strapped to Grimah’s
saddle.

Even a hilt be
better than naught
, he
thought.

With enormous
effort he pushed his hand down amidst bodies of monsters. He
growled with the effort, his anger giving him strength.
If I die here, then I go down
fighting
, he thought furiously.
And I shall take as many of these devils with
me!
And as he curled his fingers about the
haft of Drenvel’s Bane and dragged it free something curious stole
over him.