For a moment, Halliwell was in total control. He could feel the grains of his substance, the swirl of sand, the wind whipping his cloak. Then pain raced up the back of his neck and a terrible weight crushed down upon his soul, trying to force him into the maelstrom again.
Kitsune stared at him.
“Run,” Halliwell told her. “He’s going to-”
The coyote hit him from the side, driving him down to the dirt and glaring down at him from its one, remaining eye, gore still dripping from the crater of the other. The impact jarred Halliwell, and when he tried to move, he could no longer feel the Sandman’s body-only his own bones, scoured by the maelstrom. He could see and now he could hear.
You wait and see, a voice in the maelstrom said, the Sandman talking directly to him, and perhaps to the Dustman, too. Your presumption will cost you dearly. Whatever spark of you remains, it will be extinguished.
Halliwell expected the Dustman to be troubled by this. Instead, he felt a grim satisfaction coming from him. “If he could have done so, he would have done it already.”
“All of a sudden you sound pretty sure of yourself.”
“Your spark survives. Your spirit’s continued existence is proof enough.”
So the Dustman had used him to see if the Sandman could be thwarted without repercussion.
“You’re an asshole,” Halliwell said.
The Dustman did not reply.
Halliwell concentrated on seeing out of the monster’s yellow eyes.
A being hung in the air, the center of a blossom of starlight that illuminated the entire riverbank. Halliwell saw the others, now, warriors with hammers and swords and axes, all racing toward him. Kitsune had stepped out of the water, copper fur glittering with droplets, and the coyote trotted to her side to face the Sandman.
Too many, the Sandman’s voice echoed into the maelstrom. I will take her another night.
They burst into a drifting, eddying mass of sand and floated off across the river, with the shouts of Kitsune’s comrades-Borderkind or legend or whatever they were-chasing them into the dark.
You dislike being a killer, tasting the blood that stains the sand of my fingers. There is a village nearby with many young children. Perhaps we should pay a visit to each and every one. I can almost feel the pop of their small eyes between my teeth now. Can you feel it, Detective?
“I’ll stop you,” Halliwell replied.
No. I felt it just before you stepped into me. Now I know what it feels like, and I will be on guard. You are a little puppet, mimicking my every move.
Ice gripped Halliwell’s heart. Courage seemed far away, now. Where was the Dustman? If he could combat the Sandman, why had he withdrawn so deeply into the maelstrom that Halliwell could no longer even sense his presence?
No. Not the village. A far more satisfying punishment occurs to me, the Sandman thought, resonating inside Halliwell’s head. It will kill what’s left of you, extinguish that spark, and you will surrender your soul willingly. You will beg for oblivion.
Her troops shone with pride and renewed vigor that stemmed from their victory in the battle of the Oldwood, and Damia Beck indulged them such feelings, for now. Her fleet-footed messenger, Charlie Grant, raced from one detachment of the king’s army to the next, delivering and retrieving information. In an hour, Charlie could travel ground that would take a soldier on horseback a day or more, and never seemed to tire.
The southern invaders had been routed. King Hunyadi’s forces had turned them back at every step, in spite of the Atlanteans scattered in amongst the Yucatazcan army. Now the army of Hunyadi was driving them further and further south, and the soldiers believed that victory had arrived.
Damia tried to dispense with such illusions, but could not bring herself to be brutal with them. Not yet. There would be time enough for that later, when the army of Atlantis began its own incursions into Euphrasia. A few Atlanteans in amongst ordinary troops was one thing, but the army of Atlantis merged with Yucatazcan forces, and the reinforcements that were even now crossing the Isthmus of the Conquistadors-that would be a very different sort of war.
Her cavalry units rode at the front of their southern march. They had suffered a number of casualties at the Oldwood, but more for riders than horses. Half a dozen infantry men and women had been promoted to cavalry. The infantry hiked tirelessly southward, singing soldiers’ songs and calling out to one another with ribald jokes and braggadocio.
Soon, when they drew closer to the new battlefront, Damia would gather her troops and give them a speech that would sober them up quickly. She would give them an idea of the odds that they were facing. Hunyadi had sent notes with Charlie Grant, coded messages that detailed their troop strength and indicated where the king felt the true battle would unfold. The facts were clear. With Atlantis joining the war, the odds would be stacked against the king’s army.
Damia missed Blue Jay. She wished she could hold him in her arms and stroke the length of his lean, muscular back. The smell and feel of him seemed so distant to her now and she did not want to forget. In his eyes, she’d always seen mischief, but she had also seen adoration. Men had always lusted after her, and sometimes feared her, but no one had ever looked at her the way Blue Jay did.
A shout rang out.
Her fingers tightened on the reins and she spurred her horse on, breaking away from the rest of her mounted troops. Somewhere a bugle sounded-celebratory and playful-and she decided she needed to speak to her troops sooner rather than later.
A single figure stood on the road ahead; a tall, stooped, ugly thing-one of the ogres from her Borderkind platoon.
She snapped the reins, and her mare surged into a gallop. Damia sat forward on the saddle, letting the rush of the moment wake her up from her musings.
“Report!” she said as she approached the ogre.
The ugly northlander did not salute, but Borderkind were not regular army. Such protocol was not required of them.
“We’ve caught and killed three outriders, Commander.”
Damia frowned. “Not together?”
As she spoke, the ogre glanced at the trees alongside the road. Two of his brothers lumbered out from the shade beneath the branches. The Nagas, Old Roger, and Howlaa had been sent in other directions, spread out to search for any Yucatazcan or Atlantean riders who had been left behind or sent back to the north as spies.
“No, Commander. Over the past several hours, we’ve caught two headed north and one, a messenger we think, headed south.”
“Were you able to decipher the message?”
“Afraid not,” one of the other ogres said.
Something was wrong. Damia frowned as she studied the three of them.
“So you brought the messenger back, of course,” she said hopefully. Their orders were very clear. If a spy had been caught with a communique, they were to attempt to decipher it, or to coerce the messenger to decode it. And if neither of those things was possible, they would bring the messenger to her.
The ogres shifted nervously, glancing at one another.
“Not exactly.”
The rest of her troops had almost caught up with her. Damia lifted a hand to signal that they should keep going and the cavalry began to thunder by. Damia shifted in her saddle. The mare danced to one side, just a bit, as she looked around at the ogres.
“Where is Gaka?”
A grunting laugh came from the woods. “Slow,” came a rasping voice.
The Japanese oni stepped from the trees, a snarl on his face. He carried a corpse in Yucatazcan battle dress over his shoulder. All three of his eyes stared at the ogres for a moment and then he turned to Damia.
“I could not move as quickly as these ugly donkeys, or I would have told the story a bit differently,” the demon said, hefting the corpse on his shoulder. “I questioned her, but she would not cooperate. My efforts to coerce her were unsuccessful. I’m sorry to say that I broke her.”
Gaka tossed the woman to the ground. Inside the armor, s
he was a bloody mess of broken limbs, which flopped at terrible angles when she landed.
Damia stared at her a moment, then looked at the ogres. Their eyes were on the passing troops-infantry now, the cavalry had already gone by. The commander turned and saw that her soldiers were staring at the broken, shattered corpse.
“Get her out of here,” she told Gaka.
He narrowed his three eyes, but nodded. “Yes, Commander.”
As he lifted the corpse, she addressed all four of the Borderkind. “Dispose of the body. When you’re through, spread out again. We’ve got a ways to go and I want all outriders stopped. This was ugly and unnecessary, but they’re better dead than free to roam. Next time you find a messenger, though, I expect you to bring her to me alive.”
The three ogres actually saluted her.
Gaka nodded solemnly, shouldered the dead soldier once more, and turned to go back into the forest.
Damia watched them vanish into the shadows of the woods, steadied herself, then spurred her horse on. Killing in battle was one thing. Torturing to death a girl who only fought because she’d been commanded to do so by generals tricked into doing the bidding of Atlantis was something else entirely.
She rode to catch up with the cavalry units, not meeting the eyes of the infantry who she knew would be gazing up at her as she passed. All of them would be thinking the same thing.
Ogres ate carrion.
That dead soldier girl couldn’t be considered anything but.
Damia could have ordered them to give her a decent burial, but not if she wanted the ogres to continue to fight under her command and in the army of King Hunyadi.
She tried not to think about it as she rode south. After a while, she noticed that the sense of excitement and joy and victory had dispersed. It seemed that her battalion did not feel like celebrating anymore.
The fox and the coyote crossed the Atlantic Bridge side by side, and the old gods of Rome and Greece followed behind. Shaken by the Sandman’s attack, Kitsune had transformed not long after they had set off again, preferring animal instinct and the relative isolation of the fox to the questions and concerns she would no doubt have encountered in her more human facade.
When she had begun the long crossing over the bridge, she had been touched to discover that Coyote had also taken animal form. The change that the past weeks had wrought upon him had been subtle at first, but now he seemed a different creature entirely. Her cousin had thrown off the cowardly guise he had worn for so long. He had sacrificed an eye trying to protect her. Though he had cleaned it, the wound was hideous to behold. Yet Kitsune would always see it as a mark of his valor, and a reminder of what he had lost. For a short time, the knowledge that he would be half-blind from then on had weighted her with guilt. But despite his pain, Coyote expressed no regret. He seemed only grimly determined, and so she took his demeanor as her inspiration. Had anyone ever suggested she might look to him for example, she would have laughed. But Coyote had changed. War had changed them all.
He fell into step beside her without a glance or a nudge, offering the comfort of his presence. A kind of relief went through her. In all her life, she had never felt such terror as she had when the Sandman had come for her. Coyote had been there for her then, and he shared the burden of the aftermath with her now.
A strong wind gusted across the bridge. The morning had dawned gently, soft white light on the horizon. Now the sun began to rise in earnest and the sky deepened to a glistening azure. Breathing the sweet air off of the river seemed to ease some of the tension and fear that lingered in the fox, and the further they traveled from the eastern bank, the better she felt.
The pilings of the bridge were set on tiny islands that dotted the river, many of them thick with trees. When the fox came to one particular island she paused a moment to peer into the branches of the many cherry trees that grew there. Once upon a time-not long ago, and yet it seemed distant in her memory-she and Frost had nearly died there at the hands of the demon of the cherry trees. Oliver Bascombe had saved their lives. The demon had been destroyed, but the memory came back to her powerfully. It might have been on that island that she had first begun to realize-even if only in her heart-that Oliver was something more than just an ordinary man.
The coyote nudged her.
The fox glanced at him. She smiled a smile that only an animal would recognize, gave a twitch of her tail, and trotted on. After a few steps she glanced back to see the gods trailing behind. Cronus came last, as always, huge and lumbering with his almost simian gait. Kitsune felt a fondness toward him she would never have imagined. The others were all so aloof, whether grim or giddy, but the simplicity of the Titan bonded her to him.
As the morning wore on, that formidable band of somber ancients arrived on the western bank of the Atlantic River. The moment they stepped off of the bridge, Kitsune altered her form again. With a thought, her fur slipped around her shoulders as a cloak and parted around her face as a hood. When she turned to look, the rangy little coyote had changed as well. He nodded to her, his missing eye a dark pit.
“You feeling any better?”
Kitsune nodded, scanning the bank of the river and the wide expanse of the Truce Road, which rose up the hill to the west.
“He could have killed me,” she said without looking at Coyote.
“I thought you told me he was dead?”
“He was. I saw him die. Him and the Dustman and a human called Halliwell.”
Coyote pushed his hands into his pockets, glancing back at the gods as the last of them marched to the riverbank. “Then what did we just fight? What did this to me?” He pointed to his missing eye. “And what made him pause like that? He could have broken you apart before any of us could help.”
She shivered. A sick grin touched her lips. “Thanks for the image.”
Coyote shrugged. “It’s just the truth.”
“I know. But I don’t have any answers.”
The gods surrounded her, then. Assurances were exchanged and the march began again. They kept to the middle of the Truce Road and did not encounter a soul along the way, neither Lost One nor legend. In the trees on the roadside, animals foraged and capered, and a trio of hawks circled in the sky perhaps a mile off.
At the top of the hill, Kitsune stopped again.
Below them, the road turned slightly southward. Thick groves of apple and pear trees lay on either side, and other fruits grew there as well. Past the orchards was a broad expanse of crops-corn and wheat and barley and a hundred other things.
“What is it?” Bellona asked, impatience in her voice.
Kitsune turned to look into the dark eyes of the goddess of war. Behind her, Hesperos and Salacia seemed troubled, gazing down across the orchards and crops.
“You’ve never traveled this way before?”
Bellona shook her head. “But I feel something-a powerful presence here.”
“The gods of the Harvest,” Kitsune explained. “They linger, gathered together from a hundred cultures. They travel afar, but they have made a kind of home here.”
Bellona flinched. She glanced back at Hesperos and Salacia, the closest of her companions, and Kitsune saw anxiety in their eyes. It could not have been called fear-not for beings of their power and history-but their hesitation was plain.
“What is it?” the fox-woman asked.
The goddess of war did not reply, so Kitsune glanced at the others.
“If this is the sanctuary of other gods,” Salacia said, “we should not enter without being given leave.”
Most of the other gods kept to themselves. Ares, in particular, made no move to approach the conversation the Borderkind were having with his kin. Coyote reached into his pocket and produced a hand-rolled cigarette and then a match with a flourish that drew all eyes to him. He lit the cigarette and drew a lungful, then shook out the match. It vanished in his hand like some parlor trick. Smoke plumed from his nostrils.
“Kitsune and I will go. If there’s a concern ab
out going into their territory without permission, it’s best you all stay here. Tricksters are expected to break the rules.”
Slowly, Bellona nodded. Kitsune thought she might be reluctant to admit Coyote was right, but she had no choice.
“All right,” the fox-woman said, glancing at her cousin. “With me, then.”
She started down the hill.
“You’re the boss,” Coyote said, following.
Kitsune wondered when that had happened. Once she’d been nothing but mischief, a little trickster in copper fur, capering in the forests and dallying with men and legends. Now the last of the bitter old gods followed her lead, and the never-reliable Coyote watched her back.
Together the tricksters followed the Truce Road, accompanied only by the sound of the breeze rustling the trees on either side and their own soft footfalls on the hard earth. A loud bark came from behind them. Only when Kitsune turned did she realize it had been the voice of Cronus. He made as if to follow them, perhaps taking her safety as his mission, but Bellona and Ares had halted him.
Kitsune smiled softly. It could not hurt to have a Titan watching over her.
The air filled with the sweet smell of apples and pears at their fullest ripeness. Orange nectar drifted on the breeze. Kitsune shivered with the heady pleasure of those and a dozen other scents all in impossible simultaneous bloom. Her mouth watered.
Coyote began to stray toward a peach tree.
“No,” she said, grabbing his arm. “Not without an invitation. Stay to the road.”
He nodded, still smoking his cigarette. Its herbal smell mixed with the aromas of fruit, and she realized this was his way of offering peace to the gods of the Harvest even before they had encountered those earth deities. Silently, she approved.
Long minutes passed.
When they at last reached the end of the orchards and the sides of the road turned to field upon field of crops that rippled and swayed in the breeze, they saw the first of the gods moving in amongst the corn. Stalks danced aside as it passed.
On the road ahead, figures began to emerge. Some of them she recognized. There were lovely, ethereal females and animals whose bodies were made entirely of stalks and husks and branches. Twice while traveling with Oliver she had encountered a group of these gods-once upon this very spot-and now she saw the Kornbocke step from the rows, its head high despite the heavy rack of antlers upon its head. The Appletree Man ought to have been back in the orchards, but he was there as well, and shuffled upon thick, knotted roots to the edge of the road.
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