The Stricken Field (40 page)

Her feet seemed to move in all directions at once. She stumbled forward, almost falling. She missed the tongue.

The point of her rapier struck the beak, and the whole bird vanished with a sort of plop! noise.

Oh.

How unusual.

Blood Beak slashed again unsuccessfully, retreated before the next stab, caught his foot, sprawled over on his back. Fast as a whip, the raven's head flashed down and gripped his leg. He shrieked. It began pulling and lifting him.

Kadie lunged again, felt a hit, and the bird had gone. She knelt down. "You all right?"

He stared up at her with wide square eyes in a face the color of green cheese. "What happened?"

"My sword. It's magical, you see. Good against magic birds. Of course I didn't know that until recently. How is your leg?"

"Broken."

She looked and saw white bones in the red stuff. It wasn't broken, it was crushed. She looked away quickly. Blood Beak would never run again.

"I'll make a bandage," she said, removing her cloak. A shadow warned her-she spun around just in time. As the monster lunged at her, she lunged right back. It vanished like a soap bubble. Another bird was right behind, so she took a step to meet it and dealt with that one, also. The men had all gone. There was only Blood Beak and herself under the platform. She glanced around and saw no goblins upright anywhere.

She did see an awful lot of giant ravens feeding, though, tearing at the corpses, and about as many again still hunting, most of them heading for her.

She reeled back to Blood Beak, who was whimpering and trying to sit up.

"You had better bandage your leg yourself," she said. "I'll keep the chickens off."

Suddenly she felt a thousand years old. Her arms were so heavy she could barely lift them, and the cloak lay forgotten at her feet. If the monsters came at her from all sides, she wasn't going to be able to get them all.

There were thousands of them.

Cowering in her vantage on the high Mosweeps, Thaile wept in horror. The Keeper had known, or had guessed. He plans a fiendish mischief, she had said. Thaile had never anticipated an evil so great. She could do nothing to stop it. No matter how powerful, one sorceress could not resist the Covin.

Very soon it was over. The dragons had destroyed the legions.

But then came the second message from the Almighty, and the second atrocity. Raw, naked power squirted out from the heart of evil in the center, enveloping the helpless mundanes of the opposing army and ripping them to bloody fragments. The illusion of black birds provided for the mundane spectators did not deceive Thaile. She saw a single overall iniquity like a thundercloud, emitting random flashes of destruction. It was mindless and brutal and coldblooded, a callous display of the usurper's might.

She could not identify the victims. None of the books she had seen had described such a race, but they were human, and they were dying, rent apart.

Again she could do nothing, and this time the butchery took longer. It ended when the horde had died and their corpses been reduced to gory pieces. Nauseated, she looked down upon the stricken terrain. All gone. She sensed others seeing and recoiling, also. Any sorcerer not alerted by the dragons would certainly have heard this slaughter. The Covin had made its point: None can resist the Almighty.

The last few stragglers were being hunted down and destroyed when Thaile detected a tiny flicker of sorcerysorcery of a different hue. The distinction was so subtle that she thought no other sorcerers would notice, unless they were very close, but someone was putting up an occult resistance; one man must be still alive among the dead. That pitiful spark of defiance caught her sympathy and her attention.

It was a woman? A girl! What had a girl been doing among so many thousand men? She was not even of their race.

A prisoner? Thaile wondered. Kidnapped? Kidnapped as she herself had been kidnapped from the Leeb Place? The spell of horror that had held her frozen shattered like ice on a pond.

She flashed to the rescue.

Yes, it was a girl, a woman just a little younger than herself. She had taken refuge under a sort of heavy wooden canopy. She was one of the dark-haired demons, but not quite an imp. Imps did not have green eyes, or those delicate features. Green eyes were found only on jotnar, the books said, and very rarely even then. How odd that the books should be so unreliable! Perhaps the races had changed in the last thousand years.

She was purely mundane, not a sorceress, because she did not show at all in the ambience. Her sword did. It was a minor piece of sorcery, but very cleverly crafted, and it was deflecting the stabbing flashes of power that the girl would be seeing as giant birds. It was wearing out, though. It would not last much longer.

Thaile conceived a bubble of protection around them both. The illusory birds seemed to peck at it angrily. The girl looked around and saw she was not alone.

"Oh!" she said. Her face was haggard with shock and exhaustion. Then she managed a rictus of a smile. "You have come to rescue me!" She spoke in impish.

"Yes," Thaile said, wondering why she was being so crazy. Who was she to oppose the monstrous evil of the usurper? If she lingered she would be noticed. She must move the child to safety on the far side of the river, and then leave at once.

"Thank you." The girl calmly sheathed her sword. "Can you rescue Blood Beak, too?" she asked hopefully. "He's hurt."

"He's dead."

"Oh." The girl looked down and then said, "Oh!" again. "Was he your goodman?" Thaile asked, thinking that the girl was very young to have the long hair of a goodwife. "My what? Oh, no. Just a friend, sort of. He wanted to rape me."

The child was obviously delirious.

"Ready? I'll put you where the magic won't hurt you." "You're a pixie?"

Thaile started. Impossible! "How do you know that?" "My mother visited Thume once." The girl leaned back limply against a tree, rubbing her eyes. "Years and years ago. She almost got raped there, I think, but she sort of glossed over the details when she told me. I didn't think they spoke impish in Thume. You have a funny accent, if you'll excuse my mentioning it, er, your Highness. I mean, it's a nice accent, just a little unfamiliar. Gods, I'm tired! Beg your pardon-I'm Princess Kadolan of Krasnegar. Please call me Kadie."

"I'm Thaile of the ... of the Leeb Place." The big green eyes blinked. "Not a princess?" "No."

"Oh. Well, a sorceress, of course. I knew someone would come and rescue me eventually. I wish you'd been a little sooner ... Oh, I'm sorry! That does sound ungrateful, doesn't it? I am extremely pleased to see you, truly I am! You are going to take me to Thume, I suppose?"

Thaile shook her head. She was not at all sure what she was going to do now. All she did know was that she was being very foolish and must hurry away, but the girl was not regarding her as a freak, a ghost from an extinct race, and now premonition was telling her that this meeting was important.

"I was kidnapped by the goblins," Kadie said, wiping her forehead wearily. "Months ago! I kept hoping Papa would come and rescue me, 'cause he's a sorcerer, but he's off trying to fight the usurper with the new protocol he invented, so he can't know what happened to me. And my mother's with the imperor, the real imperor, not the fake one, and I don't know what's happened to Gath, he's my brother, and I'm awfully afraid I'm going to start weeping like a silly kid."

Madness, surely? Thaile probed in a way she had not known she could, wiping away the shock and exhaustion. She could find no trace of madness, or what she thought madness would look like. She did see the ravages of weeks and weeks of terror and hardship, like scar tissue on the soul, but some of that was part of growing up and would have come eventually anyway. Could all that strange babbling story have been true?

Kadie blinked again, straightened her shoulders, and smiled.

"Oh, that's a great improvement! Thank you!" She glanced down briefly, and shuddered. "Poor Blood Beak! It wasn't his fault, was it, the way he was brought up? I mean, none of us can help that. He didn't know any better."

"Your father is really a sorcerer? And you know the imperor?"

Kadie grinned, and nodded. "It's rather a long story." Thaile nodded, but did not grin. Did the Keeper know all this about fake imperors? New protocol?

Kadie glanced around nervously. She would be seeing massed black birds, of course. Thaile was aware that the power outside her shielding was changing. The Covin would detect this local disturbance very soon.

"If you're going to take me away from all this," Kadie said diffidently, "then shouldn't we maybe go now? We can talk on the way if you like." She grinned again. "This is a very strange conversation, isn't it? I'm awfully glad you've come."

Suddenly-astonishingly!-Thaile found herself returning the second grin. How long since she had smiled? How wonderful it felt to be talking with a simple mundane instead of all the scheming sorcerers of the College! She detected no concealment in the girl, no guile. No demon, just an unfortunate victim like herself. "I expect you are glad! Where do you want to go?"

"Anywhere! Take me home with you." "I haven't got a home."

Kadie's green eyes widened. "Oh, that's awful! How terrible! Well, let's go to my home. You'll be ever so welcome there. Stay as long as you like!"

"Where's that?"

"A little place called Krasnegar. Way up north. It's hundreds of leagues from anywhere, and dull as mud." She paused, frowning. "I will be glad to see it again, though." "A little Place?" Thaile said hopefully.

"Very little. Very rustic, I'm afraid. Oh! The birds have gone!"

"Quickly!" Thaile shouted, holding out a hand. "Let's go! Think hard about where your Place is and I'll take us there!"

"Poor Blood Beak!" Kadie took the offered hand, but her eyes were on the dead boy. "I always told him I would be rescued."

Dreadnaught was drifting again, rolling uneasily, and her sails banged and flapped in the morning breeze. Some of the trolls had curled up in balls. A couple of others were smashing things in mindless fury-barrels, pin racks, davits. Most of the anthropophagi were close to berserk. Grunth and Thrugg and Tik Tok were trying to restore order, but the ship was a madhouse of emotion and monstrous flickering images.

Jalon, as the only mundane aboard, was frantic. "What's happening?" he asked yet again.

Rap grabbed him by the shoulders. "Get me Sagorn!" he yelled.

"What? I can't-"

"I need Sagorn! I can't tell you what's happening. I don't know what's happening. Zinixo's burned the legions and ripped up the goblins. I want to know what he's trying to do!"

The minstrel cringed before his anger. "But I can't call Sagorn. He called me!"

"Then get me one who can!"

Jalons' garments ripped to shreds as Darad's enormous form appeared in his place. The warrior stood there half naked, his hideous face turning pale. "Rap?" he mumbled, staring around the crowded deck.

"Not you!" Rap screamed. Idiot Jalon! "Call Sagorn!" Darad frowned and licked his lips. "But I called him the last time, Rap . . ."

"Call another!"

SORCERERS! NOW YOU HAVE SEEN THE POWER OF THE ALMIGHTY! NONE CAN RESIST HIM. ALL MUST BOW DOWN AND SERVE!

Anthropophagi shrieked in fury. Trolls moaned.

Darad vanished. Rags fluttered around the puny form of Thinal the thief. His spotty face blanched as he saw the company he was in.

"Not you!" Rap shouted. "Gods, not you! I want Sagorn!"

COME, SORCERERS! YOU ARE COMMANDED TO COME TO HUB AT ONCE AND ENLIST IN THE SERVICE OF THE ALMIGHTY, THE GOOD, THE BELOVED. COME NOW!

Rap wiped his streaming brow. "Thinal, I don't think we need you just at the moment. Please will you call Doctor Sagorn?"

"Who does he think we are?" Tik Tok screamed. His dark face was suffused with fury, his tattoos stood out in vivid color, and the bone in his nose was jumping. "Monster! He expects us to serve him after that?"

Thinal's teeth were chattering. "Rap, I can't!" "What do you mean, 'can't'?"

Thrugg rolled across the deck like a bullock. "Rap, this is serious! Some of my friends are going to answer that summons! "

"Stop them!" Rap screamed. If even one troll obeyed the Covin's command, then Dreadnaught and all her crew would be betrayed.

Thinal was shaking like a flag. "Rap, I haven't done enough time! I only just got away last time! I can't call anyone yet!"

Grunth's grotesque shape loomed in the ambience. "Rap, this is bad! What're we going to do?"

COME, SORCERERS! THE ALMIGHTY IS MERCIFUL AND HIS YOKE IS LIGHT. NONE CAN RESIST HIM! COME JOIN OUR HAPPY BAND. COME NOW, OR ELSE BE HENCEFORTH COUNTED AMONG THE ENEMIES OF THE ALMIGHTY.

"I will come with my spear!" Tik Tok screamed, and other anthropophagi cheered him. "If any of you oxen want to enlist, then speak up and I will kill you!"

"We fear the Covin more than you, Maneater!" bellowed one of the trolls.

Rap took Thinal by the throat. "I don't care how much it hurts, you are going to call Sagorn and call him now! If you don't call Sagorn, then I will choke the life out of you!"

Thinal gibbered. Strips of cloth were falling loose from him, leaving him almost naked. Sweat broke out on his face and his teeth chattered louder than ever. Uncaring, Rap began to squeeze. "Call Sagorn!"

ANY SORCERER WHO DOES NOT ANSWER THIS CALL IS HEREBY SENTENCED TO DEATH. COME NOW.

"Sorcerers! He lies!"

The pandemonium seemed to pause. Rap relaxed his death grip on the thief. Who said that?

"Sorcerers, hear the truth now!" The voice and face were faint, but in the ambience they could never be disguised.

Rap looked to Grunth. "Is that who I think it is?" Registering surprise and delight, she opened her muzzle in a blood-curdling grin, flashing her huge horse teeth. HEED NOT THE LIARS AND THE EVIL! HEED ONLY THE WORDS OF THE ALMIGHTY. The Covin was trying to drown out the opposition, but that was not feasible in the ambience.

"Sorcerers, there is yet hope!" the thin and distant voice said. "Rap the faun has returned!"