There was a distant sort of whistle that no one paid much attention to. Could be anything: wreckage of a car, the last gasp of Spirit House, any one of a dozen different forms of magic. It was easy to ignore, but growing louder and becoming less covert.
Abe looked around warily and checked his gun for the millionth time. “I get a horrible sort of feeling every time anyone says something like that.”
3.
The whistling was the flight of Rooftop, abandoning his high-up home in the most expeditious way possible. He cut invisibly through the air, the only sign of his passage a distortion of the view of the stars behind him and an eerie whistle like that made by a cannon ball in flight.
The accuracy of his aim gave the disconcerting impression that Rooftop had spent a considerable amount of time practicing leaping from the tops of massive buildings in the area. Or perhaps he had just practiced this particular leap again and again, well aware that his plan hinged entirely on keeping his opponents from reaching the clock tower. Either way, it was well done.
Somewhere around the midway point of his plummet he threw his voice to the foot of the path leading to the door of the clock tower. “You can't win, Woods.” The Woodsman, standing by the door as the last line of defense, waiting to open it for The Lady and her entourage, turned toward the sound. He had just enough time recognize his error, and none to do anything about it.
He was just starting to turn his head toward the whistling sound when Rooftop let himself become visible, huge fists extended before him, a shrinking yard from the Woodsman's head.
Rooftop would have measured his weight in hundreds of pounds, likely 20 or more of them. He was an elephantine mountain of ugly muscle and snarls, his skin pitch black from all the warmth he had absorbed, making him nearly invisible in the inky night even when he willed himself opaque. He had jumped off of a building that was over a quarter-mile tall. The impact was, even in a night overflowing with the impossible, awesome.
Like a meteor, like a bomb, Rooftop hit the Woodsman.
The Lady and Tym threw up hasty shields as the explosion sent rocks and trees flying out in all directions. The stony edifice of the clock tower pushed the bulk of the power expended out into the yard. Out toward the bulk of Lady Darbyshire's Gifted Youth, who had been walking blithely toward the door.
Abe covered his face with his arm despite being far from the impact. He could still see Tym and The Lady when he dared to look, both of them with glowing shields erected to protect Sarwell as much as themselves... and Merry was beside him. The Begonia Monster was fine as well. Everyone else...?
Chapter Twenty-eight: The ominous tract
1.
Rooftop was as black as pitch, but it wasn't the black that everyone is familiar with. It was not the absence of light. Rooftop was black with a pulsating black light that illuminated as surely as white light, but more malevolently. He stood in the bottom of a crater nearly as deep as he was tall, the edges of it cutting beneath the walls of the clock tower where the ugly white bricks were starting to crumble. He looked around through the dense cloud of vaporized dirt and stone illuminated by his power and brushed his shoulder off sheepishly. “Might've overdone that a bit.”
“I would say not,” said a dull and emotionless voice from the dirt at his feet. Like a bullet from a gun the Woodsman shot up from the rubble, lashing out with his hand to strike Rooftop in the ribs. Compared to the troll, the Woodsman looked positively tiny, and yet the first blow staggered Rooftop and the kick that followed, a whip-quick blow to the troll's knee, felled the creature with a cry.
Rooftop was not staying down, though. In fact, the cry could have come from somewhere else for all the reaction he seemed to give. As he fell he used the momentum of his drop to smash his head into the Woodsman. The sound of literal splintering was awful.
It was nothing more than sound, though, to most of those nearby. The dark of night combined with the dust to make it virtually impossible for anyone to see a thing. That changed when there was a sudden burst of bright white light overhead. A glowing, slowly pulsating light started shining bright, like a star exploding... it wavered and flickered as it began to descend. Abe blinked and shielded his eyes once more. “Magic?”
“It's a flare!” shouted Sarwell as if the concept of a flare were entirely self-explanatory.
A moment later another appeared in the sky and then there were clicks as massive sun-bright lights lit up around the periphery of the clock tower lawn. The lights were mounted on large vehicles with over-sized black wheels and the ominous rivets-and-polish look of armor about them. There was a similar look to the men driving them and riding on them, a dozen or so serious looking fellows dressed and armed very much like the men who had greeted Abe when he got off the elevator.
Sarwell seemed pleased. He stopped and straightened up from his previous posture of ducking and cringing and said, “Cavalry's here,” which sounded absurd to Abe because there wasn't a single horse in sight. “Can you make my voice loud?” Sarwell asked. Whether he was asking The Lady or just asking anyone who might be able to help was unclear.
“I think he's loud enough, already,” said Abe... but too quietly for anyone to hear except Merry.
“Winchell?” The Lady looked around for her student.
“Over here, M’lady.” It was the driver, only a few feet away but obscured by the miasma of dust from the battle still raging at the foot of the clock tower. She was kneeling beside Winchell, or a Winchell-sized person too covered in dirt to be discerned positively as Winchell. The only parts of this person not obscured by dust were those parts where it, he, was bleeding.
“Winchell, broadcast Mr. Sarwell.”
“M’lady,” said the driver, “I don’t think—“
Winchell coughed loudly and struggled to sit up. “No,” he said. Another cough, spraying out a cloud of dust this time that, from where Abe stood, looked a little reddish. “I can…” he didn’t finish what he was saying, but he did flop over onto his stomach and gesture toward Sarwell. The gesture was feeble (everything about Winchell was feeble), but Abe could see a faint green shape in front of Sarwell’s lips suddenly, a shimmering suggestion of a bullhorn.
“Soldiers!” said Sarwell. His voice was so loud that Abe and all the students clasped their hands to their ears and cowered. It boomed out, not from his mouth (which was speaking rather conversationally, actually) but from a space about a foot beyond… the end of that magical bullhorn. “This is Rastpert Sarwell, your future mayor! We; our city, our clock tower, myself and these innocent children; are under attack by trolls!”
A half a dozen different voices from near the vehicles responded in shouts of things like ‘trolls!’ and ‘get the canisters,’ and ‘go, go!’ A moment later, almost in unison, every man tossed a metal sphere about the size of a fist out into the dust, each one’s arc described through the night by the trail of smoke behind it. They landed on grass or bounced off of trees and then burst with a hiss. For a moment, everything near the soldiers shorter than ten feet was obscured in white, and then all the dust settled to the ground, now changed into fat chunks of white powder and landing like glowing snow on the grass. And where before there had been nothing but dirt and a few trees, now there stood, outlined bright against the darkness of the night, a dozen hulking trolls, all caught in midstride as they tried to flee the canisters.
“Fire!” someone shouted, and all the Highmark people had to clasp their hands to their ears as what sounded like a hundred rapid-fire canons all obeyed the command. Abe, somewhat deafened by his recent gunplay, was shocked at the noise, but not so crippled by it as the others. He watched as the huge white shapes rushed toward the vehicles, ignoring the bullets that he knew were hitting them by the sudden dark spots on their glowing white bodies. They roared terribly, a sound being drowned out by the blazing guns, but despite the enormous amount of damage the guns had to be doing, the trolls were closing the gap.
“Huzzah!” said Sarwell, his voice still ampl
ified. Upon hearing how loud his voice still was, he added, “have at them, lads! Show them Darbyshire’s for men, not beasts!” And then he turned to Winchell and said, as quietly as he could (which was, because of the magic, amazingly loudly), “can you turn it off?”
A gesture from Winchell and Sarwell said, “ah,” at his normal volume. “Right, never gotten to watch a military action.”
“No time like the future,” The Lady said as she grabbed Sarwell’s arm. “Come along, your honor, we’ve got to get to the door.”
“What, that door?” Sarwell pointed to the clock tower. “I’m not going near there.”
2.
He had a valid point about wanting to steer clear. Just at the moment, Rooftop was holding tightly to one of the Woodsman’s arms and swinging him by it. He smashed the Woodsman into the side of the crater and then swung him hard enough against the clock tower to leave a streak of brown residue… possibly sap. As Rooftop jerked the Woodsman like a rag doll toward the other side of the pit, the Woodsman went flying up toward the sky. The troll shook splinters from his hand and swatted the Woodsman out of the air as he fell, sending him careening across the lawn a dozen yards before he crashed into a tree and was still.
Off to the other side the trolls were tearing into the soldiers. Though the effects of their gunfire were evident from the few bodies, still caked white, that lay in the path of the headlights of their vehicles, it was obvious that the advantage had turned once the distance had decreased. Trolls swept the vehicles aside as they rushed toward the men who tried to stand their ground and keep firing even as the great white paws caught their guns and twisted them into useless metal.
One man cowered before the impending deathblow, his massive opponent raising his huge fist, but when it never came he looked up with surprise. The troll was stuck, the creature that had been Begonia, Mud, had wrapped around it’s fist and was stretched out like a rubber band with one grotesquely large hand-tentacle holding fast to a tree. It grunted, apparently stretched to its limit, and said, “well, soldier, whatcha waitin’ for?”
The man shoved the barrel of his gun against the trolls chin and pulled the trigger several times.
“What a waste,” said Tym.
“That was a troll,” Abe said.
“I mean it’s a waste of time.” Tym flexed his blue-glowing fingers. “The soldiers don’t matter, so long as they keep the trolls busy long enough for us to get to the door.”
“That door?” Abe pointed toward the clock tower, smugly expecting that the door would have been destroyed, but by the light of the flare he could see that the door was perfectly intact, standing upright with no visible supports left. Just a door, standing above a hole on nothing. The wall on either side of the door as well as above it was mostly gone, as well, part of a collapse from the crater created when Rooftop landed, and yet the door remained.
“Right,” said Tym. He reached out with his glowing fingers and there was a tell-tale shimmering that seemed to extend from them. As Abe looked, he suddenly got the feeling that there was something to stand on beneath the door, a sort of bridge over the crater that led right to where they wanted to go. He couldn’t actually see anything there beyond a glint here or there, not unlike looking at a troll when it was invisible, but it was there all the same… he could feel it.
And the bridge was confirmed a moment later when Rooftop grabbed a hold of it and hauled himself nimbly up, landing with unexpected grace to stand on what appeared to be absolutely nothing. The massive troll rolled his impressive, pitch black shoulders and licked his lips. He raised a hand to his mouth and ate something, then chewed it and spit it toward the group. Without thinking Abe reached out and caught it. “Woods got no flavor,” Rooftop said and smiled. “People, however…”
Abe opened his hand and looked. It was a wooden finger. “Dammit, Tym, the bridge!”
Tym closed his fingers and groaned and the flickering magic was gone.
And Rooftop fell…
… two feet.
The crater was really not all that deep.
“Is that it?” Rooftop stepped up out of the crater and Abe heard a strangely familiar sound underneath the gun fire and the grunts of dismemberment and other noises of combat: quick deliberate steps. Not as loud as he recalled, but here they’d be falling on grass rather than the roof of a train.
The Woodsman hit Rooftop like a battering ram, leading with his shattered arm that had been cracked off to form a jagged point. He drove the tip of his makeshift spear deep in Rooftop’s side and kept churning with his legs, hoisting the massive creature and carrying him out of the crater and away from the door.
Rooftop seized the Woodsman’s arm and started pulling it out of his wound. The Woodsman said, “Mud, M’lady,” with utter calm and then swiftly pulled his arm away from Rooftop and stabbed him again. The troll cried out and then punched the Woodsman hard. His fist was bigger than most children, and the blow sent the Woodsman reeling.
The Lady watched for a moment and then turned to face the group around her. “Winchell, megaphone. Tell Begonia to help with the troll. Tym, bridge.”
Tym nodded and raised his magic-casting hand once more while Winchell summoned his ghostly amplifier. “Oi, Begonia! Rooftop,” he shouted, the effect of his magic making his shout positively deafening.
Immediately, across the lawn Mud peeled away from holding two trolls back from a trio of soldiers who were reloading. The trolls exchanged a look of surprise and then moved together, fists flying, to take out the unsuspecting men. Mud transformed into something more closely resembling a human, rather like Begonia but with extra long limbs, and loped across toward the fight that mattered.
Mud didn’t see the boxy car coming at all. It didn’t have its headlights on until after it smashed into the creature. Once it hit, though, it turned on the lights to allow a better view to everyone of the way the stretched out vision of Begonia was smeared across the broad flat hood. The vehicle raced across the lawn, bumping and occasionally leaving the ground entirely, and then it turned sharply to the left and a tall slender figure sprang out from behind the wheel just as the vehicle began to roll.
It managed at least one revolution before it hit a tree and turned, the velocity making it roll end over end before it finally stopped. It was in the process of falling back to rest on the grass when there was a whooshing sound and a small sparking rocket hit it. The vehicle exploded spectacularly, metal and smoke flying out in all directions as, the light of the flares eerily revealing the mushroom-shaped swell as the fuel ignited beside the clock tower.
There was a lingering trail of smoke that connected the rocket to the launcher, and at the end of the trail, holding the huge tube from which the rocket had flown, was McCallister Roods.
Chapter Twenty-Nine: The deplorable Mr. Roods
1.
“To hell with the soldiers,” Roods shouted toward the conflict where half a dozen trolls were fighting a losing battle against the dozen or so remaining men. “There’s only one way to win, boyos. The mayor and the lady, or you’re all fired!”
He knelt down and unslung a bag from his shoulder, pulling several things out, one of which seemed to be a fresh rocket. He loaded it into place and then raised a cupped hand to his face, from which he inhaled deeply. In the darkness there was a sparkle to it. Spirit.
“Oh, Abe,” he shouted. “Still alive and tryin’ to ruin a man’s recreation, I see!” He sounded jovially mad, and his face shimmered from the drugs. “Have to do something about that!” He barely even glanced through the sight of his rocket launcher before he pulled the trigger, a rocket flying toward the gathered students.
“Save Sarwell,” Merry said, and Abe ignored her instruction and grabbed her around the waist before throwing them both down into the crater and covering her body with his own.
Tym threw up his blue-tinged shield once more, but The Lady put a hand on his shoulder and said, “no. I’ve had more than enough of McCallister Roods.” She raised her
hand and the screaming rocket began to shimmer. Slowly, a sort of bubble formed around it and began to become more solid. The Lady bit down on her lip as she focused on the rocket, and it began to shift its flight path. It turned up, looping back on itself and then went straight for Roods.
Or it went for where Roods had been.
As soon as he’d fired the rocket he had picked up two of the other objects he had taken from his bag: a sharp curved knife and another identical sharp curved knife. He ran with them held straight down by his sides, the white-stained trolls massing behind him in a sort of charge. The trolls were slower, though, and disoriented from fighting (and were, in fact, still being hit with bullets even though they had destroyed most of the guns), so it was a smallish troll with the unfortunate name Sex Dungeon who was actually in the path of the rocket. The deviants would sure miss him.
Roods was a great deal closer.
Tym saw him coming and managed to reach out for him with his magic, but Roods spotted the tell-tale dancing of the fat boy’s fingers and threw a knife just as the magic took hold. He was stuck in the grip of the spell for the split second before the knife hit Tym’s shoulder, and then, his concentration broken, Roods dropped to the ground. He drew an old-fashioned flintlock from his belt before he even landed and fired it toward The Lady. He dropped it in the same motion as he grabbed the knife from Tym’s shoulder, twisting it savagely as he threw the boy aside.
The shot had been off-target, but the smoke from the shot was enough to make him hard to see. He spun past The Lady and raised his knife to her throat as she drove her elbow into his sternum. She pushed him back as she dived away from him, the knife breaking the skin of her neck but nothing more. Winchell rushed headlong into Roods, his attack almost comically clumsy, and Roods drove a knee savagely into his face without so much as blinking.
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