by Daniel Fox
They kept coming, these half-fleshed things, rolling up out of the castle's moat. Their smell alone was enough to unnerve him. The putrescence painted the air and clung to the skin, made its way down his throat. The moat circled the castle completely, and the enemy was coming from all sides. Idwal stumbled back, but there really wasn't a "back" to speak of, because they were surrounded. Idwal banged against Wolf soldiers who were running for the main gates, bounced off them and got tangled up with a line of archers making for the tops of the walls. He had no sense of place in this mess, no idea what he should be doing. He didn't know if he could help, or if he should even try. He might just end up interfering, making things worse.
But then there was Anisim, the Wolf King. His voice cut through the clamour. He commanded soldiers to their posts, arranged archers on the walls. The next moment he was at the gate, swinging a great broadsword, smashing his way through the undead. Fighting alongside his soldiers, urging them forward, showing them the way. They moved the enemy at the gates back, step by step, the dismantled undead splashing down off the sides of the drawbridge. Anisim filled them with hope. Hope that they could make it through this horror. Faith that they could wake up from this nightmare.
But then Anisim stopped dead in his tracks. His arms went limp, he dangled his sword from his side. The Wolf King had stopped fighting.
***
Willuna stood in the middle of the great room, watching the battle through the mirrors arranged around the walls. "How?" she said. "We broke all the mirrors!"
Bodolomous stood next to her, hands behind his back, rocking on his feet. He was beaming, like a proud father watching his young son accomplish something especially manly. "It's not mirrors," he said, in the tone that reminded Willuna of one of her old tutors, "it's the reflections. It's always been the reflections. Everything is a reflection. Think about every good story you've ever heard, every song that stayed in your memory. Are they really about the people in them, or are they showing us what's in ourselves? You'd be amazed what I could do with a single drop of water lying still on a leaf. Ah!" he said, ushering Willuna closer to the nearest mirror, "speaking of turning our insides out. I do believe I have something to show your friend the king." He stuck his nose right up to the glass. "Goodness me, he really is a handsome fellow, isn't he?"
They watched as a single figure of the undead parted from the mass of the enemy, shuffled its way to the foot of the drawbridge. Willuna frowned. She couldn't see the figure's face, but the cape, the armour, the sword, they were all achingly familiar. She knew this skeleton, but not by its bones.
And then she realized, the armour, the colours of the cape, they were the colours of the Family Wolf. She looked over to the young king standing stricken on the drawbridge, defenseless and pained. "Oh Anisim," she whispered.
***
"Father?" said Anisim.
***
Willuna rounded on the wizard. "You are a very bad man!"
"Did you all catch that?" The wizard turned, addressing his soldiers that were still in the room. "'A very bad man.'" There was no reaction. "Honestly," he said, completely disappointed, "It's like talking to-"
"Yes!"
Bodolomous spun back around and saw…
***
Idwal pulled on Anisim's arm again, harder this time. The Wolf soldiers were doing their best to protect their king, but the undead were so many that they were piled high enough in the moat to start climbing over the sides of the drawbridge. They had only moments to get inside the open gates before the courtyard would be overwhelmed.
And more still were pouring out of mirrors that the original arrivals had brought with them. Idwal glanced over and saw some dark room or cave through the glass, looking like it went on forever.
Sweat ran down his back. The smell of the undead pressed down on them like sewer water. Idwal's mouth tasted metallic, and he supposed this was what honest and true fear tasted like. He didn't know, because he had never in his life been this terrified before.
He tugged on the king's arm again, but he would have had as much luck trying to move one of the statue people at the Castle Owl. "Please, your Majesty, it's really time to go. Just a few steps backwards, that's a good king."
Anisim hadn't heard him. "Look at him," he said, staring as the remains of his father moaned and slumped their way towards him. "Even when he's dead he's far more the king than I."
Idwal looked over. "That's your father? He did that to your father? It's not like I loved the wizard before but this, this is despicable and wretched and…"
***
The wizard smiled as Idwal went on.
"…horrid and he's probably a eunuch."
The wizard's smile dropped.
***
Idwal had an idea. He wasn't at all sure it was what anyone would call a good idea. But being as it was the only one he had he thought he'd follow it through. He unlimbered his bow for the first time in the battle and zipped an arrow right into the late king's chest.
Anisim jolted. "You shot my father!" he said.
"Yes, terribly sorry. It's just that, well, I've of course heard a very great deal about the old boy and, um, from what I've heard, not that I'm saying I knew him personally at all of course, but if the stories were true about his temper then if a body did go and shoot and arrow into him your father-"
"Would have been angry." Anisim climbed out of his slouch and stood tall again. "Yes, he would have been furious. Whatever that thing is, it's no longer my father."
"Hooray!"
"If he was my father he'd have had your head off by now."
"Um, hooray?"
"He'd be kicking it around like a ball."
"Can we go inside now?"
"Oh," said Anisim, "absolutely. Back!" called the king. "Behind the walls!" And with Idwal at his side, he retreated into the courtyard, the portcullis slamming down behind them.
***
"As queen of the Family Owl I demand that you stop at once!"
"As the Evilest Magician Ever I say unto you 'nuts'."
"You'll fail," said Willuna. "You'll be defeated. And then you'll be mocked, and berated, and really made fun of and… and…"
"Yes?" said Bodolomous, leaning forward, hands clasped behind his back, enjoying himself thoroughly.
And that was it, wasn't it? Willuna took in the wizard's grin, and realized that he was looking forward to all that infamy. To all that chatter about him, even if it was to paint him as vile. All that attention…
"And then," said the princess, "we'll forget all about you."
The magician's face lost its amusement.
Willuna dug in. "You, magician, are nothing but a footnote-to-be."
"You said you wanted to hear my story," said the magician, his voice chilled. "You asked me why I'm doing all of this."
Willuna's triumph changed, turned sour. She had truly angered the wizard. She backed away a step, then two. "I've changed my-"
The magician's quick hand snaked out and grabbed her wrist. He dragged her along to the far wall of the room, up a set of winding stone stairs. "There's a single room," he said between his teeth, "a single room in all the kingdoms, a room made by infinite hands, hands that were in turn made by a man who was made by a girl, long ago." He brought her up onto a landing, brought her to the very edge to look out across the giant dark room, to take in how many more troops he still had to send. Hundreds. "Right now the contents of the room, the room made by the man made by the girl, those contents are rushing out to change everything."
And then Willuna knew. She knew who the magician was and who he had once been. She remembered a much younger magician, little more than a boy, who had made some name for himself with his amazing sleight-of-hand. She remembered him coming into her father's court and amazing all assembled. He had been fast, the very young man, and dazzling. All eyes had been glued fast to him, all ears tuned to the young magician's nervous patter. And that had been unacceptable to the very young princess who could never abide someone stealing
her attention.
She remembered sneaking up behind the young magician and, as he had been launching into yet another illusion, finding in his stack of props and paraphernalia a rabbit, white with bright red eyes. The young magician had been a liar! He didn't know magic, he knew tricks. Tricks that were taking attention away from where it was supposed to be fixed, on her.
So she had set the rabbit free. And a dove. And a snake and a rat. They had jumped and flew and slithered and hopped away in every direction, unwinding the young magician's performance. The gasps and applause had turned to laughter. Willuna remembered that young magician dropping his head in humiliation and shame.
Her, this had all been about her. She had always wanted attention, and she had gotten it now in spades. And that attention had destroyed her world.
Bodolomous had seen the recognition in her eyes. He moved behind her and grabbed her shoulders, making sure she couldn't turn away from the scenes taking place in all those mirrors down below. "Right now," he said, "a farmer is tending his field, a miser is counting his coins, a mother is singing her child to sleep. None of them know that what they are doing right now will never matter again, not after this moment in time. All of them undone by what's coming out of the room created by the man created by the girl. I'm nothing? I'm nobody? I'm a foot-note to be? No, Queen Willuna of the Family Owl, I'm exactly what you made me."
"Please," said Willuna, tears dripping from her cheeks, "I was just a child."
From below something surged up, blocking their view. It was a man, a giant man, made of many dead men strung and sewed and roped together, heaving and moving as one. It was powerful and terrifying.
It lunged through a mirror big as a house, ducking as it made its way through, heading out to crush the defenders of the Castle Wolf.
***
The portcullis twisted, screeched like a banshee as the undead giant plucked it out of the wall. Skeleton soldiers oozed through the opening, bone feet clicking against the stone of the courtyard. The defenders pressed back and back again.
Idwal aimed and fired, aimed and fired. Arrows weren't much use against the rank and file of the enemy, the arrowheads clattering uselessly in rib cages and empty eye sockets. But the giant was held together by straps, moved by pulleys, and Idwal found those to be fine targets. He fired again and a sling of leather snapped free of the beast. A hand disintegrated, the individual fingers tumbling down to the ground. Some smashed apart, others clambered up and joined the mob of their undead brothers and sisters.
But then he was out of arrows. He scrambled around, looking for more. He knew the archers on the walls above had extras, but the stairs were cut off. There had to be more somewhere on this level though, what kind of self-respecting war-oriented castle didn't have surplus pointy things lying about?
And then someone did something rather naughty with the sun. The space all around Idwal went dark. He looked up. The giant's foot was sailing down at him, the individual cadavers that made up the foot reaching down for him, mouths open and groaning. Well, thought Idwal, that's that then.
Anisim charged into him, picking the farmer up, knocking the wind out of him, tumbling them both to the ground to roll out of the way. The giant foot touched down beside them, surprisingly quiet, it didn't seem quite proper for a giant foot to hit the ground without some kind of bone-shaking boom. Half-fleshed heads turned to look at them from inside the collective shape of the foot. As the giant leg lifted, pulleys and straps creaking and groaning, the skeletons making up the sole of the foot had Idwal's magic bow in their hands. They snapped it, bit at the string, broke it again and again into smaller and smaller pieces.
Idwal watched it go with regret. One of the mere two things that made him special in this world had just been destroyed. He was that much closer to being plain and normal again, and he found that he didn't like the thought of that at all.
King Anisim had no trouble at all finding a new quiver of arrows and a spare bow to go with them. In fact they were both just lying on the top of a closer barrel no more than three steps away, which Idwal figured was just the kind of luck he was having these days. Anisim held them out to Idwal.
"I can't," Idwal shouted over the clamour. "I'm no archer. My bow was magic."
"That magic had to draw from somewhere!" Anisim shouted back. He pointed up at the giant. There, in the mass of rotting waving arms and legs was a great knot of leather, the size of a child. All of the other ropes and pulleys and straps radiated out in sloppy, uneven waves like the work of a drunken spider. "Do you see it?" cried the king. "That's for you! That target is the reason for the turnip, the reason why you met the magician, all of the things that have happened to you to bring you to this very moment to shoot that one knot! The bow wasn't magic farmer, the magic was you!"
"Me?"
"Trust me!"
Idwal accepted the bow. He pulled an arrow from the quiver. It just seemed like the right arrow for the occasion. He notched the arrow to the string, took aim. The giant's knot looked big as a boulder, as easy to hit as air. He could do this. He aimed. He told himself to just let the rest of the world fade away. There was just the arrow and bow, which were extensions of him, and in his mind the knot was already split, the giant's demise a done deed. He fired.
Sort of.
The arrow dribbled over his fist to stick in the ground by his foot.
The king scratched his head. He shrugged. "Or maybe it was the bow."
"It was completely the bow."
And then, as if things weren't really just absolutely rotten enough, the ground in the middle of the courtyard began to cave in.
***
Willuna saw it all through the mirrors. Saw the Wolf soldiers pressed back toward the castle's last refuge, the keep. Saw Anisim staggering, growing tired from the fight. Saw the farmer's really awful effort with the bow and arrow. They were all going to die, all because of her.
So she turned to the wizard and said, "I will marry you."
Chapter 20
The magician turned. Looked at her. Emotions chased each other around his face, disbelief and glee and amazement vying for control of his eyes and mouth. "What?" he said, like there was no possibility at all that he might have heard her correctly.
Her heart drowning inside of her, Willuna carried on. "I will marry you, join with you. "I will become your better half, I will be your wife. You wanted attention? Well here it is, all you want and more, waiting for you on the other end of a simple 'I do.' Now call off your army."
"After."
"But they'll be dead!"
The wizard didn't hear her. He clapped his hands. The hairless, and quite often fleshless, skulls below turned up to look at the pair of them on the stone landing high above. "Hi, everyone?" said the wizard, suddenly chipper. "Hi there, hi hi. Um, yes, right, before you toddle off to maim and kill and destroy et cetera, I was just wondering if any of you might have been a priest before, you know, well… Now I of course realize that you all have rotten jelly for brains but if you could just bare down for the tiniest of moments and give it a really good think."
There was silence down below as the cadavers worked this request through as best they could. Finally a hand raised up in the middle of the mob.
"Oh, yes? You were?" The wizard leaned forward. The hand, missing three fingers, see-sawed in the air. "Most of you was a priest? Good enough. Wonderful! If you could join us up here, thanks ever so much. The rest of you make way, make way!" As the undead mostly-priest made his slow way up the stone stairs the wizard turned to Willuna. "And I thought I was excited about destroying everything everyone holds dear." He gave a childish clap of his hands. "Hooray!"
***
The blacksmiths picked up hammers, the stable-boys found pitchforks. Cooks came from the kitchens, stewards brought out polished knives and forks. Everyone in the castle joined together now for this last moment before the Wolf Kingdom died, withered, and was blown away.
The rotting army poured through the gates, ove
r each other, through each other, like mud through a child's fingers.
The ground behind them continued to crumble, caving in.
"Go down swinging," said the king.
"Will cowering do me any good?" said Idwal.
"I'm afraid not."
"Then swinging it is." Just then, Willuna's dreams of being in songs and stories whispered through Idwal's memories. He wondered if he would be remembered at all. Probably not. Even though he was fighting beside his friend who was a king, he himself was just a country boy after all, and nothing very exciting rhymed with "farmer".
He wondered if dying would hurt very much.
Anisim raised his great sword into the air. One final rally. "Let them come, sons and daughters of the wolf! Let them know the price of your castle and kingdom!"
They charged, so few against so many, like pebbles thrown against whitecap waves. Everything was motion and noise around Idwal. He was sure every flash or flicker he saw was the deathblow meant for him.
A pick-axe whirled past Idwal's shoulder. It smashed into a skeleton so hard that the undead soldier flew apart, arms and legs and rib-bones twirling white and yellow every which way. And then there were more missiles - sledge-hammers, kerosene lanterns, chisels and logging axes and shovels.
Idwal spun around.
The dwarves had come. First came the familiar seven, climbing up out of the hole in the courtyard, blinking like moles in the sunlight. Dirty and beautiful. Then more sprung up, bellowing, broad shoulders flexing, thick fingers clinging the handles of their tools.
Cosimo laughed at Idwal's stunned expression. "Did you think there were only seven of us?"
***
"Oh. Um, right. Well I promise to try and be a good husband and not kill too many people unless they really deserve it which, you must admit, quite a few do."