And the little man was leaping a fathom with every stride, his little legs flung out before and behind in a comical fashion, and he bounced like a track and field star on a track made of trampolines. Little sparks and blinks of light came from his feet and calves.
He was able to twist his head around in a half-circle like an owl, and so, without slowing, the redcap stared at his pursuit as he ran. “Slow-foot and slower-foot! Trip on a root!”
“That does not even rhyme!” growled Ruff through clenched teeth, angrily.
“Watch me flee! Just watch me! No mortal hand can catch me!”
“That doesn’t rhyme either!” Ruff growled again, even more angrily. “You stink!”
But a swirl of little lights and sparks like fireflies gathered around the legs of the little man. “Rush and hush, the baby sleeps! The boldest redcap whirls and leaps!”
And in a wash of twinkling lights, the redcap left the ground and flew up in a long parabolic arc to a point halfway up the pine tree, far out of reach, and the baby with him.
Gil from below looked up in shock and frustration, seeing the creepy little man so easily escape him. But then he noticed a low-hanging branch with a red-nosed reindeer ornament hanging from it, which would allow him to reach the next branch. His eye marked the path of quickest ascent.
But before he could take a step closer to the tree, Gil heard Ruff bark. “Wow! Wow!” Gil’s gaze leaped up.
The little man was about to land on the tree, but before his green slipper could touch the evergreen branch, the branch swayed in the breeze, and an ornament shaped like a singing angel, hanging by the thread attached to its halo, turned toward the little man. It arms were flung out in a T, and its little mouth was open in an O. The white angel had a red cross on its surcoat.
The little man twisted in midair, shrieking in panic, and the sparks carried him backward and away from the tree. He fell headfirst, but landed lightly as a thistledown on the grass. The baby fell as well, but the end of the lowest tree branch caught the baby right where the knot of the big pink handkerchief into which she was tied was placed, so the bundle merely swayed on the end of the branch, rocking the baby.
The redcap yelled, “I thought this was a Kwanzaa tree! I thought it was safe! Wherever elfs and imps have sway, holy trees are outlawed out and done away!”
Gil jumped headlong, dropping his helm, and tackled the little man. The little man was slippery and quick, but not quicker than a fish. Gil caught him in both hands, lifting him to his mouth to grip him with his teeth.
The redcap yowled in woe and horror.
7. Capture
“I yield! I surrender! I give! Eat me not! Spare me, and I will grant a boon of equal worth as I prize my very life!” shouted the redcap in his tiny, high voice. Then he muttered, “Er, live.”
Ruff said, “Oh! Oh! I know this one! I know how this works. Make him swear by his name! His name!”
The little man wailed all the more loudly, mournfully, and terribly. “Thornstab! Thornstab of Lichlamp son of Zahack the Necromant! By my very name I vow the boon you ask to grant! Cruel am I but don’t want to die!”
Ruff said, “You can let him down. If he breaks his oath, he loses his name.”
Gil, kneeling, spat the little man out onto the grass. Ruff put his nose into Gil’s hand and gave him the miniature cap with its feather. “Hold on to that! Give it back when he gives you the boon.”
Gil had no pockets in his armor, but his war belt had a pouch of tooled leather adorned with swans, where he kept his whetstone and pliers and tin of polish, and here the tiny thumb-sized hat went.
The little man, Thornstab, was picking himself up, brushing off his green doublet, his ghastly vulture-face screwed up in a scowl. “No Son of Adam erenow has ever bit on me! I have man-spit on me! I will get man-germs! Verily!”
Ruff said sharply, “That is a myth! Human slobber is good for you!”
Gil stood, picked up the baby from where she hung, dangling, from the pine tree branch. He doffed his cloaked and wrapped it around her. “First things first. Not as part of whatever boon you owe me, but simply as common decency, you must remove whatever enchanted sleep you put on this child, and the illusion you put on the root you put in her place.”
Thornstab said, “If, of whatever boon, it is not part, why should I? Why undo my art?”
Gil said, “Why should I not throw you into this Christmas tree? The boon was only for not biting you in half like a raw fish.”
“You eat raw fish? Ugh and yuck. A ghastly dish.”
Gil knelt and placed the baby carefully upon the brown grass of winter. Then, he snatched up the little man with a lightning-swift motion of his hand. “Look! There is a nativity scene! Maybe if I put you into the crib next to baby Jesus….”
“No! Not the child! That will burn and scald!”
Ruff said, “Worst rhyme ever.”
Thornstab said, “I will be defiled!”
“Much better,” Ruff nodded. Then, to Gil he said, “Bite his head off.”
“I agreed not to hurt him.”
Ruff said, “I didn’t. Let’s play fetch. Throw him!”
“Harm me no harm! Look! I do undo the charm! The babe will wake without fail, without a wail, when she is once more in her mother’s arm.” Thornstab rubbed both hands together, producing a palm full of sparks, which he blew with the breath from his mouth to where the baby was wrapped in Gil’s cloak.
Gil knelt and put the little man back on the ground, “Thank you.”
Thornstab grinned a wicked grin and plucked a blade of grass. “Here is your welcome!” He put the blade of grass to his lips and blew a high, shrill whistle.
Ruff said, “That is not good.” And his ears drooped.
Gil buckled the chin strap of his helm.
Chapter Ten: Abominable Snowmen
1. Battlecry
The doors of the courthouse swung open. Two furry shapes taller than a man and wider than an ape came lumbering with lurching, sideways steps down the stairs, flourishing great truncheons.
Seen up close, they were horrifying. The hair of their neck and shoulders was thick and dark like a mane, and their skulls were slanted, with receding brows and jutting great jowls.
Behind came a giant white wolf. The red-eyed pale-furred wolf padded down the stairs, claws clicking on the stones, growling and tossing his hairy head. Gil saw the monster’s snout was muzzled, and great teeth were biting at the bit.
In a saddle on his back was a hunched and hairy shape greater than the other two, but he was armed with a great double-headed ax, and a cap of bronze metal was on his head.
Gil felt his skin crawling as all his nape hairs stood. A shivering sensation of loathing and hate passed through his body upon seeing the three shaggy ape-faced semi-humans.
“Bigfoots!” he snarled. And, raising his shield, he drew the sword of his father and flourished the blade on high.
“MERRY CHRISTMAS!” he shouted at the top of his lungs.
2. Heretic
Seeing Gil, the mounted woses grinned, showing great yellow teeth. His right fang was broken off short.
“Surprised?” the rider threw back his head to laugh without mirth. Then, tilting his head forward, he intoned in a voice rich with menace, “My brothers and I are in the service of the Winterking, Sir Knight. In his name we gather from the human herd. Beware of us, and stand away!”
The one to the left said, “None stands between the Yeti and their prey.”
And the third said, “You are an enemy who greets us so! That word you must not say!”
Gil started toward the huge apelike things and the even more huge wolf, his armor ringing with each step. He met them in the road separating the courthouse from the common green where the Christmas tree was.
Anger crackled in his voice. He pointed the naked sword first at the one, then the next. “I don’t care in whose name you do this evil! If you are behind the theft of this child, and her mother’s tears, you die! And what’s wron
g with Merry Christmas?”
It was not one of the three apelike woses who answered him, but the great wolf. The monster snarled and spoke through clenched teeth. “God does not rut! He is neither begotten nor begets! There is no Christmas because there was no Christ!”
Gil was so amazed that he stopped and stared at the wolf. “No Christ? How did we get on this topic? Leave the baby alone!”
The wolf said, “The false prophet died in Palestine, two ages ago, forsaken, as he himself confessed in tears, by his heartless God, and never rose again! We wolves know! Our fathers, the wolves of that day, pulled the corpse from the cave of Joseph of Arimethea and gobbled down the rotted meat and cracked the marrow bones! The Roman soldiers stood aside, friends of wolves, for were not Romulus and Remus suckled by a she-wolf?”
Gil felt a moment of sickness and horror overcome him. “You lie!”
The rider said in a slow voice, puzzled, “Are you– are you talking to my wolf?”
The wolf clenched its jaws so that the bit groaned in his teeth, and the eyes of the giant beast were like fire. “No one has ever drunk the blood nor taken the flesh of Jesus, save wolf and wolf alone!”
Without a word, in reckless rage, Gil rushed in straight toward the wolf and struck. The monster reared, his fore-claws tearing at the white swan of the tall shield. Gil stabbed up from beneath the shield, passing the blade neatly between the ribs and into the heart.
Immediately, the blade ignited with a white flame, bright as a lightning-flash. The wolf’s blood caught fire; fire roared in the chest-wound; fire billowed from the maw. The wolf screamed a horrid scream, threw his rider, and rolled, trying to smother the terrible burning.
The woses to the left cowered back, squinting and dazzled, his elbow before his eyes. “It is Dyrnwen! The true white blade! It is the lost blade come again!”
The one on the right fell to his face, groveling and crying. “Elfinking! Erlkoenig! Lord of Unseelie! Come to save your loyal slave, for greatly has he need of thee!”
Gil smote the wolf through the neck, and the fiery head rolled free. The burning jaws snapped open and shut with the creature’s dying spasms.
The rider with the ax scrambled and clawed himself free from the wreckage of his saddle, bruised and burned where the great monster had rolled atop him in its dying madness. The rider came to his feet and stared in anger at the broken axhandle in his hand, which he cast to the asphalt of the road with a clatter. He roared at Gil, “Why did you kill my wolf?”
“I had to!”
“That was Bolmagnir son of Svartmagnir!”
“Well, his name is Baked Meat now! My Mom told me to kill heretics!” Gil laughed, delighted at the strange bright flames leaping and dancing along the blade thrumming in his hand. The letters of strange writing were clear to see, painfully bright. Never before had Gil had permission to answer a liar as he secretly had always wished.
The wide-eyed woses stared at the laughing boy, whose mirth was ringing and echoing eerily from his helm. The hairy man shouted at Gil, “Are you mad?”
“Fighting mad!” Gil shouted back.
3. Skirmish
With these words, Gil drove in at the tall, one-fanged woses in the iron cap, lunging point-first from beyond the creature’s reach. But the point of the blade skittered off the creature’s fur, as if it had struck a steel plate.
Suddenly, the other two came at him from behind to his left and right and swung their truncheons. One he parried with the sword, and the other he deflected with the shield, but the shock of the blows left both arms tingling and half-numb. He ran, trying to get out of the middle of the triangle of enemies, but the woses on their crooked legs were more lithe and limber than a boy in armor, and he could not break free of the circle.
No matter which way he turned, there was one behind him. One struck him on the shoulder; another on the helm; the third clawed him on the legs so that he bled freely. He cut the thick wand of wood in half with a great stroke of his fiery sword. But the woses to whom he had turned his back, the one in the iron cap, now grabbed him from behind, twisting one arm in a wrestler’s hold, and the white-hilted sword went spinning from his hand. The blade dropped to the road, and its light went out.
Just then Ruff landed on the back of the woses grappling Gil, barking, jaws slashing. Gil felt the grip weaken, and he twisted free, grabbed the creature by the hair of his calf, and pulled his leg overhead, sending him toppling. Ruff grabbed the sword by the hilts in his jaws and ran. Gil pelted after him, armor ringing. But the woses were swifter than he and leaped after, trying to circle him again.
The three woses halted suddenly, noses twitching. Gil ran back on to the common green. A glance showed him the baby was still safe, still asleep. He ran toward her.
At that moment, a great wind came from behind the courthouse, and two wings of white mist poured across the road into the town square, thick and opaque as a stage curtain. Through this curtain a thick and huge shape moved, coming closer. Gil felt the ground tremble at its footfalls, and he heard the sounding of trumpets.
4. The Lord of Winter
The mist parted. An albino woolly mammoth walked through the clinging swirls of mist, and the trumpet calls were coming from its trunk. On the neck of the white mammoth road a slight and slender girl in a black jerkin, skirt and red-peaked cap. She had a narrow face and a wicked smile, wings like an immense dragonfly. Two feathery antennae a yard long issued from her pretty head. In her hand was a goad to drive the mammoth.
Behind and above her, on a tower on the back of the beast was a throne of pallid crystal, and here was a kingly figure wrapped from chin to ankle in a black cloak. A rack of antlers reached from his brow, wider than his shoulders, and little lights danced in them. His hair was a hood as black as night. It reached past his shoulders and, as the night, had small, cold sparks in it. In his hand was a back scepter. The only paleness of him was his face-mask.
“Who calls me? Who calls the King of Winter Darkness, the High King and Caesar over all the Nocturnal World? Who calls Erlkoenig son of Oberon, the King of Elf and Shadows, Lord of Air and Darkness?”
Only one of the three woses still had a club in his hand. It was he that saluted the figure on the mammoth, and crouched, and said, “Sire, this man-at-arms hinders our wooing and slew the wolf, whom you raised from a whelp, to whom you fed unclean meats from your own imperial hand, and over whom you chanted many strange runes and wove them fast! He slew Bolmagnir, the Great Wolf, whom you gave to my brother Guynglaff!”
Gil was now near the Christmas tree, but he stopped, hearing that name. Now he understood the red rage that was thrumming through his body and pouring into his muscles like fire.
Guynglaff was the name of the woses that had kidnapped and terrified his mother before he was ever born. And now Gil stood before him, dressed in the same armor, bearing the same shield, and armed with the same sword as the Swan Knight who had defeated him.
Gil drew a shaking breath. The task of defeating the monster now was Gil’s, whether he was ready to meet it or not, strong enough or not.
At his gesture, Ruff passed the white sword to him. Gil petted the dog, straightened, stepped forward boldly, saluted with his sword, and called out, “Your Imperial Highness! I have a quarrel with that creature, who says he is doing your work. These three sent their agent Thornstab to steal and kidnap that child there and replace her with a root. I had not heard erenow that the Emperor of All the Elfin Kind makes war on helpless babies!”
“Thornstab, attend me! Come forth!” called Erlkoenig. But there was no answer. The king kicked the slender driver with his foot. “Glisterwing! Let it be noted that Thornstab is tardy and absent without leave. Send the Winged Nightmare to retrieve his soul in the dream realm, and let the venoms of torment be prepared. Let them be of the ordinary strength; my displeasure is but small as yet.”
“Yes, my lord,” said the elfin girl, pouting and rubbing the spot where her wing met her shoulder.
Seen
this close, Gil could now see the figure did not wear a white mask, or, at least, it was not a mask. It was a slab of ice growing out of his flesh. There was a mouth slit, and a second slit above where the ice was just transparent enough to allow the distant and cruel glitter of the inhuman eyes to gleam through.
“What would you have of me?” asked the figure in the pallid mask and dark cloak, peering down from his white crystal throne.
Gil pointed his sword at Guynglaff. “That one, sire! I seek to meet him in honorable combat to slay him so that he dies the death.”
“That one is hard to kill. His name is Guynglaff Cobweb. Here are his two brothers Gulaga and Doolaga, also of the Cobweb clan. What business do you have with Guynglaff? Who are you?”
“Sire, I mean no discourtesy, but I cannot say my name.”
The mammoth now stepped with a remarkably delicate motion closer to Gil and lifted its great trunk. The nostrils snuffled and sniffed at Gil, and Gil smelled a warm scent of hay from the breath of the giant creature. With a stab of pity, Gil saw that the mammoth’s eyes were coated with a filmy growth. The mammoth was blind.
Erlkoenig said, “Are you human or elfin?”
“Sire, I cannot say.”
The ice-covered face of Erlkoenig turned toward the woses. “Guynglaff! Attend me! Is this the same Swan Knight? Or be he another?”
The hairy man louted low. “Sire, I cannot tell.”
“Not by voice nor stance?”
Guynglaff said, “He is near enough that it does not matter. We will tear him limb from limb with glee.”
Erlkoenig said, “What say you, Gulaga, brother to Guynglaff?”
The one who still held an unbroken club said, “We need the Daughters of Eve as drudges and slatterns, slaves and concubines, for no woman or our kind will wed us, seeing us as hideous, or bear our monstrous get in their wombs. Our race will dwindle and die if we have no mortal women to impregnate! This knight meddles with our very survival! All creatures are allowed to slay others to preserve themselves. And since he must die in any case, it will not matter if the death is merciless, slow, and lingering.”
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