Unnatural Issue (34 page)

Revenants were a necromancer’s stock-in-trade. Many were little more than unthinking rage, and it was easy for a necromancer to turn that rage against any target he chose. Even one could sicken and injure, and they could certainly weaken and terrify the living enough to allow the walking dead to overwhelm them. A swarm like this could be as deadly as gunfire.

Michael and Charles had changed to another set of loads, this lot made of lead from a church roof. Peter remembered how Michael had gotten it—by the simple expedient of replacing an entire roof on the excuse of “charity” and claiming the salvaged roof slabs as they were replaced. The lead shot was taking care of the boggarts, and making the trolls howl with pain. But this was an army, and no mistake, and without an army of their own, they couldn’t hold out for much longer.

He dared to glance in the direction the call was coming from. He saw undines waving frantically at him—from where? He called up a mental map of this part of the estate—

There was a brook there! And anyplace there was water, Water Elementals could go!
There’re my allies!
Water could be an antagonist of Earth as well as an ally, and it was quite clear from where he stood that the undines were prepared to fight for him and for Branwell.

“Retreat toward the brook to my left!” he shouted over the roar of the guns; he sensed Michael nodding rather than saw it, and they began the step by step retreat toward the water.

The boggarts took this as a sign of victory and shrieked their happiness. They surged forward ahead of the walking dead, which were still being decimated by the blessed salt rounds Peter and Garrick were shooting.

The boggarts got closer, darting about like insects, moving too fast to get a good shot at, either with a shell or magic. They were horrid little things. They had mouths full of nasty, yellowed, pointed teeth, tiny eyes like black beads, and they drooled. No two of them were alike, but they all looked misshapen, and all were colors that just seemed unhealthy.

The kobolds were bigger, tougher, and uniformly clay-colored. They moved just as fast, though, and as the group continued to retreat, they began using slings to pelt the humans with sharp-edged rocks.

Peter took a hit to the forehead that cut a gash there that started to bleed. He yelled with the unexpected pain, and the kobolds howled with glee. He blasted them with the salt; they skittered out of the way and resumed their barrage.

And then—then his left foot splashed into the brook. And a sheet of water sprang up around all of them, deflecting the incoming stones.

A troll lumbered forward and was set upon by undines. They tore at him with long fingers and swirled around him like a swarm of angry bees. To Peter’s shock, the creature began to melt, dissolve, howling the entire time.

And that was when their own army arrived. The Earth Elementals of the land of Branwell Hall had rallied, and they were not going to concede without a fight.

Slung stones whizzed over the humans’ heads from behind. The fauns had gotten their hands on their weapons. and now they were angry and on the offensive. And they weren’t afoot where they would be vulnerable. They were riding the backs of some of the most magnificent stags Peter had ever seen. He hadn’t even known that there
were
deer on the grounds of Branwell, in fact.

The deer bounded toward the mass of kobolds; the kobolds tried to swarm them, but the deer fought like the horses of mounted knights, lashing out with their wicked little hooves and slashing with their antlers.

The undines pulled down another troll, now joined by dryads; the fauns and deer had fully occupied the kobolds and boggarts. That just left the walking dead.

There didn’t seem to be an end to them. Where had Whitestone found all the bodies? And the power! It took a tremendous amount of power to raise that many dead! Where was he getting that?

Michael and Charles switched back to the salt loads, and still they kept pouring over the wall. The stench was a horrific wave, drowning them, weakening them as they tried to keep their concentration.

And they were running out of ammunition.

“That was my last shell, my lord,” Garrick said calmly, as he reversed his grip on his shotgun to hold it by the barrel, the better to use it as a club.

Peter felt in his bag and came up with only two more. He rammed them home, brought the gun up, and fired, point-blank, into the three that were advancing on Garrick. Now he flipped his own weapon around to follow Garrick’s example. “Have I ever mentioned how much I hate shootin’?” he asked, taking a swing at a mostly-naked skull and knocking it off the shoulders it sat on.

“From time to time, m’lord,” Garrick replied, breaking the arms off a liche that tried to grab Charles.

“Well, I take it all back.” He bashed in another skull. Unfortunately, losing their heads didn’t seem to affect these horrors. Only being shot with the salt or reduced to broken fragments kept them from continuing to attack. “I’d be damned happy to be shootin’ right now.” He spared a moment to glance at the revenants pushing against the arcane boundary above the wall. “Michael, if your shield gives way, we’re going to be in a bit of a bother.”

“Then we’d better hope it doesn’t!” Michael Kerridge shouted back.

Another pair of trolls and a wave of goblins came over the top of the wall. Peter’s arms burned with fatigue. The walking dead pushed the four of them back a little farther, until they were standing in the middle of the brook. Michael and Charles had reversed their guns as well, and they all stood back-to-back, with the water rushing against their legs. The undines and fauns were doing their best, but they were virtually helpless against the walking dead.

“Now would be a very good time for Alderscroft to materialize,” Peter said, hopefully.

And just as the words were out of his mouth, the necromantic army suddenly froze.

Abruptly, what was left of the trolls tore themselves loose from their undine captors and lumbered away. The boggarts and kobolds dove down into the turf as if they were diving into a pool of water, and vanished.

The revenants scattered, flying off too fast for the eye to follow.

And most importantly of all, the walking dead suddenly stiffened and collapsed.

Silence descended.

For a very long moment they all just stood there, back to back, waiting for some new, worse horror to rise up and descend on them. Their allies milled restlessly, looking for the next wave. But it never came. Finally, they relaxed the slightest bit; Peter was finally able to concentrate on something other than staying alive to create a ball of magical light. It illuminated faces haggard with exhaustion. “What just happened?” Charles wondered aloud.

Peter shrugged. He ached with fatigue and bruises. “I haven’t the foggiest. I doubt invokin’ the Old Lion’s name did it.”

“Unless the necromancer was within earshot, recognized the name, and thought that you were seriously expecting the Lodge, Peter,” Michael pointed out. “He knows Alderscroft. He knows how the Old Lion will regard this.”

“He’d better know a place where the Old Lion can’t find him,” Peter said grimly, and coughed. “Because this was a direct attack, and Alderscroft will rightly read that as a declaration of war. The kid gloves are going to come off, and when the Hunting Lodge gets hold of him, if he lives, he is never going to be out of magical bonds for the remainder of his life. Let’s get out of this stench before I disgrace m’self. Good gad, I want a bath and a brandy!”

One of the dryads glided over to Michael. “We will see this is cleansed, if you wish,” she whispered.

Michael hesitated a moment. “The bodies came from somewhere—shouldn’t we see they are returned to their proper graves?”

“Most of ’em are in bits,” Peter pointed out. “Besides that, how would you explain how they all got here?”

“You have a point.” Michael turned toward the dryad. “You can do this?”

“Willingly. It is our forest too, we would rather not endure . . . this.” She waved her hand at the remains of the carnage. “In the morn, it will be as if none of this had happened.”

“Then if you would be so kind, please take care of it,” Michael said gratefully. The dryad nodded, and faded into her tree. The four of them turned to go back up to the Hall.

But before they moved out of sight, Peter looked back a moment. The turf was heaving and churning, and the no-longer-walking dead were slowly being pulled under it, as if the grass were water and they were sinking into it, never to be seen again.

He hoped.

 

Back at the Hall, all four of the men, including Garrick, were enveloped in a different sort of swarm—a bevy of servants descended on them and carried them off separately. In no time at all, Peter found himself with that brandy in his hand, soaking his injuries in a hot bath.

There were rather a lot of them. Bruises mostly, and some big ones he didn’t remember getting. He had a couple of scalp lacerations and that one cut above his right eye from the kobolds’ slung stones. An experimental deep breath proved that the huge bruise across his chest that was already turning black was only that, just a bruise, and not broken ribs.
For small blessings, we are grateful.
He waved off further assistance and dressed himself in the clothing that had been brought up from the cottage. He wanted to find out what had happened at the Hall.

So, it seemed, did the others. Garrick popped out of the suite across the hallway when Peter opened his door, and they followed the sound of voices down to the cozy “little” (in a house this size, “little” was relative) sitting room Elizabeth preferred to use. There he found Michael and Charles, both with sticking-plaster over facial cuts, eating prodigious quantities of Welsh rarebit, and with them, Susanne and Elizabeth. Susanne was not in a uniform; it looked as if Elizabeth had supplied her with a spare gown in the form of a loose Artistic Reform dress. She was drinking tea, looking exhausted and a little pale.

“Join us, there’s plenty,” Charles said around a mouthful of bread and melted cheese. Nothing loath, Peter helped himself at the sideboard and brought his plate to sit with the others while one of the servants poured him a cup of black tea so dark it looked lethal. He sat down with the rest and looked attentively at Elizabeth.

“Michael already told us what happened to you,” Elizabeth said, passing him sugar and cream. “We’ve just been waiting to tell you what happened up here.”

“What did happen?” Peter asked. “I can’t imagine from the fire in your eye that you were left in peace.”

“Redcaps,” Elizabeth said grimly. “They jumped straight out of the dungpile at the stables. And they came straight for Susanne.”

“It was a good thing I had a pocket full of horseshoe nails,” Susanne said. “And a fireplace poker.”

“And she knows how to use it,” Elizabeth chuckled, then sobered. “She scattered the nails around her so they couldn’t get near enough to grab her, then broke the arm of anything that reached for her across the boundary of the nails. That was brilliantly done, Susanne. I would never have thought of that myself. I think that the attack down at the walls was a ruse so that Richard Whitestone could get inside the grounds elsewhere and conjure his redcaps to come after Susanne. Once he was inside the boundaries—”

“—he could do anything he liked,” Michael finished for her. “Damnation! I should have thought of that.”

“We did—well, we planned for something to get by you,” Elizabeth pointed out. “Even if he hadn’t turned into a foul necromancer, I would be exceedingly vexed with Richard Whitestone right now. I know I should be grateful that he so completely underestimated the ability of us womenfolk to defend ourselves, but I feel positively offended by the pathetic force he sent against us.”

“Well, I’ll be grateful for you,” Peter said, and frowned. “You know, there is not a single chance that he is going to allow himself to be caught. He abandoned every one of his walking dead, and he has to know that we know who he is now. He’ll go into hiding, and he used to
be
the one who tracked necromancers down. We’ll never find him unless he makes a mistake.”

“Unfortunate but true,” Michael replied, looking worried. “And he won’t try another frontal assault; he can’t afford to, with Alderscroft watching for him. We’re not as powerful as he is; like it or not, he was an Earth
Master,
and his power holds no matter that he’s taken the shadow-path.” He turned awkwardly to Susanne. “My dear young lady—”

“Na, tha’ needn’t say it,” she replied with resignation. “Tha’ canna keep me safe. I’d already reckoned that. I won’t be the cause of any more people getting hurt. Next time might be worse than just hurt.” She sighed and turned toward Peter. “I’ll be takin’ tha’ boat t’France, my lord.”

“Well done,” Peter said warmly. “Hang the other plans, those were made before we were attacked in force. Garrick and I will go with you the whole way, and Peter Scott if he can be spared. If your father can track you to the Ardennes, then there’s no place safe but the other side of the world.”

“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” said Charles.