“We already have reported it,” said Caz worriedly. “To our own commandant.”
“And who might that be?” came the unrelenting, infuriating question.
“Colonel Puxolix,” said the driver.
“I know of no such officer.”
“How can one know every officer in the army?”
“Nevertheless, perhaps you had best report the incident to my own command. It never hurts one to be thorough, citizen. And I would still like to see the supplies you are to deliver.” He turned as if to signal to several chattering soldiers standing nearby.
“Here’s one of ’em!” said Flor. Her sword lopped off the officer’s head in the midst of a never-to-be-answered query.
For an instant they froze in readiness, hands on weapons, eyes on the troops nearest the wagon. Yet there was no immediate reaction, no cry of alarm. Flor’s move had been so swift and the body had fallen so rapidly that no one had yet noticed.
While their driver did not believe in divine intervention, he had the sense to make the decision his passengers withheld.
“Hiiii-criiickk!” he shouted softly, simultaneously snapping his odd whip over the lizard’s eyes. The animal surged forward in a galloping waddle. Now soldiers did turn from conversation or eating to stare uncertainly at the fleeing wagon.
The last few troops scrambled out of the wagon’s path. There was nothing ahead save rock and promise.
Someone stumbled over the body of the unfortunately curious officer, noted that the head was no longer attached, connected the perfidy with the rapidly shrinking outline of the racing wagon, and finally thought to raise the alarm.
“Here they come, friends.” Caz knelt in the wagon, staring back the way they’d come. His eyes picked out individual pursuers where Jon-Tom could detect only a faint rising of dust. “They must have found the body.”
“Not enough of a start,” said Bribbens tightly. “I’ll never see my beloved Sloomaz-ayor-le-Weentli and its cool green banks again. I regret only not having the opportunity to perish in water.”
“Woe unto us,” murmured a disconsolate Mudge.
“Woe unto ya, maybe,” said the lithe black shape perched on the back of the driver’s seat. Pog lifted into the air and sped ahead of the lumbering wagon.
“Send back help!” Jon-Tom yelled to the retreating dot.
“He will do so,” Clothahump said patiently, “if his panic does not overwhelm his good sense. I am more concerned that our pursuit may catch us before any such assistance has a chance to be mobilized.”
“Can’t you make this go any faster?” asked Flor.
“The lanteth is built for pulling heavy loads, not for springing like a zealth over poor ground such as this,” said the driver, raising his voice in order to be heard above the rumble of the wheels.
“They’re gaining on us,” said Jon-Tom. Now the mounted riders coming up behind were close enough so that even he could make out individual shapes. Many of the insects he didn’t recognize, but the long, lanky, helmeted Plated Folk resembling giant walking sticks were clear enough. Their huge strides ate up long sections of Pass as they closed on the escapees. Two riders on each long back began to notch arrows into bows.
“The Gate, there’s the Gate, by Rerelia’s pink purse it is!” Mudge shouted gleefully.
His shout was cut off as he was thrown off his feet. The wagon lurched around a huge boulder in the sand, rose momentarily onto two wheels, but did not turn over. It slammed back down onto the riverbed with a wooden crunch. Somehow the axles held. The spokes bent but did not snap.
Ahead was the still distant rampart of a massive stone wall. Arrows began to zip like wasps past the wagon. The passengers huddled low on the bed, listening to the occasional thuck as an arrow stuck into the wooden sides.
A moan sounded above them, a silent whisper of departure, and another body joined Talea. It was their iconoclastic, brave driver. He lay limply in the wagon bed, arms trailing and the color already beginning to fade from his ommatidia. Two arrows protruded from his head.
Jon-Tom scrambled desperately into the driver’s seat, trying to stay low while arrows whistled nastily around him. The reins lay draped across the front bars of the seat. He reached for them.
They receded. So did the seat. The rolling wagon had struck another boulder and had bounced, sending its occupants flying. It landed ahead of Jon-Tom, on its side. The panicky lizard continued pulling it toward freedom.
Spitting sand and blood, Jon-Tom struggled to his feet. He’d landed on his belly. Duar and staff were still intact. So was he, thanks to the now shattered hard-shelled disguise. As he tried to walk, a loose piece of legging slid down onto his foot. He kicked it aside, began pulling off the other sections of chitin and throwing them away. Deception was no longer of any use.
“Come on, it isn’t far!” he yelled to his companions. Caz ran past, then Mudge and Bribbens. The boatman was assisting Clothahump as best he could.
Flor, almost past him, halted when she saw he was running toward the wagon. “Jon-Tom, muerte es muerte. Let it be.”
“I’m not leaving without her.”
Flor caught up with him, grabbed his arm. “She’s dead, Jon-Tom. Be a man. Leave it alone.”
He did not stop to answer her. Ignoring the shafts falling around them, he located the spraddled corpse. In an instant he had Talea’s body in a fireman’s carry across his shoulders. She was so small, hardly seemed to have any weight at all. A surge of strength ran through him, and he ran light-headed toward the wall. It was someone else running, someone else breathing hard.
Only Mudge had a bow, but he couldn’t run and use it. It wouldn’t matter much in a minute anyway, because their grotesque pursuit was almost on top of them. It would be a matter of swords then, a delaying of the inevitable dying.
A furry shape raced past him. Another followed, and two more. He slowed to a trot, tried to wipe the sweat from his eyes. What he saw renewed his strength more than any vitamins.
A fuzzy wave was funneling out of a narrow crack in the hundred-foot-high Gate ahead. Squirrels and muskrats, otters and possums, an isolated skunk, and a platoon of vixens charged down the Pass.
The insect riders saw the rush coming and hesitated just long enough to allow the exhausted escapees to blend in with their saviors. There was a brief, intense fight. Then the pursuers, who had counted on no more than overtaking and slaughtering a few renegades, turned and ran for the safety of the Greendowns. Many did not make it, their mounts cut out from under them. The butchery was neat and quick.
Soft paws helped the limping, panting refugees the rest of the way in. A thousand questions were thrown at them, not a few centering on their identity. Some of the rescuers had seen the discarded chitin disguises, and knowledge of that prompted another hundred queries at least.
Clothahump adjusted his filthy spectacles, shook sand from the inside of his shell, and confronted a minor officer who had taken roost on the wizard’s obliging shoulders.
“Is Wuckle Three-Stripe of Polastrindu here?”
“Aye, but he’s with the Fourth and Fifth Corps,” said the raven. His kilt was yellow, black, and azure, and he wore a thin helmet. Two throwing knives were strapped to his sides beneath his wings, and his claws had been sharpened for war.
“What about a general named Aveticus?”
“Closer, in the headquarters tent,” said the raven. He brushed at the yellow scarf around his neck, the insignia of an arboreal noncommissioned officer. “You’d like to go there, I take it?”
Clothahump nodded. “Immediately. Tell him it’s the mad doomsayers. He’ll see us.”
The raven nodded. “Will do, sir.” He lifted from the wizard’s shell and soared over the crest of the Gate.
They marched on through the barely open doorway. Jon-Tom had turned his burden over to a pair of helpful ocelots. The Gate itself, he saw, was at least a yard deep and formed of massive timbers. The stonework of the wall was thirty times as thick, solid
rock. The Gate gleamed with fresh sap, a substance Caz identified as a fire-retardant.
The Plated Folk might somehow pierce the Gate, but picks and hatchets would never breech the wall. His confidence rose.
It lifted to near assurance when they emerged from the Pass. Spread out on the ancient river plain that sloped down from the mountains were thousands of camp fires. The warmlanders had taken Clothahump’s warning to heart. They would be ready.
He repositioned his own special burden, taking it back from the helpful soldiers. With a grimace he unsnapped the insect head and kicked it aside. Red hair hung limply across his shoulder. He stroked the face, hurriedly pulled his hand away. The skin was numbingly cold.
There were two arrows in her back. Even in death, she had protected him again. But it would be all right, he told himself angrily. Clothahump would revive her, as he’d promised he would. Hadn’t he promised? Hadn’t he?
They were directed to a large three-cornered tent. The banners of a hundred cities flew above it. Squadrons of brightly kilted birds and bats flew in formation overhead, arrowhead outlines full of the flash and silver of weapons. They had their own bivouacs, he noted absently, on the flanks of the mountains or in the forest that rose to the west.
Wuckle Three-Stripe was there, still panting from having ridden through the waiting army to meet them. So was Aveticus, his attitude and eyes as alert and ready as they’d been that day so long ago in the council chambers of Polastrindu. He was heavily armored, and a crimson sash hung from his long neck. Jon-Tom could read his expression well enough: the marten was eager to be at the business of killing.
There were half a dozen other officers. Before the visitors could say anything a massive wolverine resplendent in gold chain mail stepped forward and asked in a voice full of disbelief, “Have ye then truly been to Cugluch?” Rumor then had preceded presence.
“To Cugluch an’ back, mate,” Mudge admitted pridefully. “’Twas an epic journey. One that’ll long be spoken of. The bards will not ’ave words enough t’ do ’er justice.”
“Perhaps,” said Aveticus quietly. “I hope there will be bards left to sing of it.”
“We bring great news.” Clothahump took a seat near the central table. “I am sorry to say that the great magic of the Plated Folk remains as threatening as ever, though not quite as enigmatic.
“However, for the first time in recorded history, we have powerful allies who are not of the warmlands.” He did not try to keep the pleasure from his voice. “The Weavers have agreed to fight alongside us!”
Considerable muttering rose from the assembled leadership. Not all of it was pleased.
“I have the word of the Grand Webmistress Oll herself, given to us in person,” Clothahump added, dissatisfied with the reaction his announcement produced.
When the import finally penetrated, there were astonished murmurs of delight.
“The Weavers… We canna lose now… . Won’t be a one of the Plated Bastards left!… Drive mem all the way to the end of the Greendowns!”
“That is,” said Clothahump cautioningly, “they will fight alongside us if they can get here in time. They have to come across the Teeth.”
“Then they will never reach here,” said a skeptical officer. “There is no other pass across the Teeth save the Troom.”
“Perhaps not a Pass, but a path. The Ironclouders will show them the way.”
Now derision filled the tent. “There is no such place as Ironcloud,” said the dubious Wuckle Three-Stripe. “It is a myth inhabited by ghosts.”
“We climbed inside the myth and supped with the ghosts,” said Clothahump calmly. “It exists.”
“I believe this wizard’s word is proof enough of anything,” said Aveticus softly, dominating the discussion by sheer strength of presence.
“They have promised to guide the Weaver army here,” Clothahump continued to his suddenly respectful audience. “But we cannot count on their assistance. I believe the Plated Folk will begin their attack any day. We confronted and escaped from the wizard Eejakrat. While he does not know that we know little about his Manifestation, he will not assume ignorance on our part, and thus will urge the assembled horde to march. They appeared ready in any case.”
That stimulated a barrage of questions from the officers. They wanted estimates of troop strength, of arboreals, weapons and provisioning, of disposition and heavy troops and bowmen and more.
Clothahump impatiently waved the questions off. “I can’t answer any of your queries in detail. I am not a soldier and my observations are attuned to other matters. I can tell you that this is by far the greatest army the Plated Folk have ever sent against the warmlands.”
“They will be met by more warmlanders than ever they imagined!” snorted Wuckle Three-Stripe. “We will reduce the populating of the Greendowns to nothing. The Troom Pass shall be paved with chitin!” Cries of support and determination came from those behind him.
The badger’s expression softened. “I must say we are pleased, if utterly amazed, to find you once again safely among your kind. The world owes you all a great debt.”
“How great, mate?” asked Mudge.
Three-Stripe eyed the otter distastefully. “In this time of crisis, how can you think of mere material things?”
“Mate, I can always th—” Flor put a hand over the otter’s muzzle.
The mayor turned to a subordinate. “See that these people have anything they want, and that they are provided with food and the best of shelter.” The weasel officer nodded.
“It will be done, sir.” He moved forward, saluted crisply. His gaze fell on the form lying limply across Jon-Tom’s back. “Shall the she be requiring medical care, sir?”
Red hair tickled Jon-Tom’s ear. He jerked his head to one side, replied almost imperceptibly.
“No. She’s dead.”
“I am sorry, sir.”
Jon-Tom’s gaze traveled across the tent. Clothahump was conversing intently with a cluster of officers including the wolverine, Aveticus, and Wuckle Three-Stripe. He glanced up for an instant and locked eyes with the spellsinger. The instant passed.
The relief Jon-Tom had sought in the wizard’s eyes was not there, nor had there been hope.
Only truth.
XV
THE MEETING DID NOT take long. As they left the tent the tension of the past weeks, of living constantly on the edge of death and disappointment, began to let go of them all.
“Me for a ‘ot bath!” said Mudge expectantly.
“And I for a cold one,” countered Bribbens.
“I think I’d prefer a shower, myself,” said Flor.
“I’d enjoy that myself, I believe.” Jon-Tom did not notice the look that passed between Caz and Flor. He noticed nothing except the wizard’s retreating oval.
“Just a minute, sir. Where are you going now?”
Clothahump glanced back at him. “First to locate Pog. Then to the Council of Wizards, Warlocks, and Witches so that we may coordinate our magicking in preparation for the coming attack. Only one may magic at a time, you know. Contradiction destroys the effectiveness of spells.”
“Wait. What about… you know. You promised.”
Clothahump looked evasive. “She’s dead, my boy. Like love, life is a transitory thing. Both linger as long as they’re able and fade quickly.”
“I don’t want any of your fucking wizardly platitudes!” He towered over the turtle. “You said you could bring her back.”
“I said I might. You were despondent. You needed hope, something to sustain you. I gave you that. By pretending I might help the dead I helped the living to survive. I have no regrets.”
When Jon-Tom did not respond the wizard continued, “My boy, your magic is of an unpredictable quality and considerable power. Many times that unpredictability could be a drawback. But the magic we face is equally unpredictable. You may be of great assistance… if you choose to.
“But I feel responsibility for you, if not for your present
hurt. If you elect to do nothing, no one will blame you for it and I will not try to coerce you. I can only wish for your assistance.
“I am trying to tell you, my boy, that there is no formula I know for raising the dead. I said I would try, and I shall, when the time is right and other matters press less urgently on my knowledge. I must now try my best to preserve many. I cannot turn away from that to experiment in hopes of saving one.” His voice was flat and unemotional.
“I wish it were otherwise, boy. Even magic has its limits, however. Death is one of them.”
Jon-Tom stood numbly, still balancing the dead weight on his shoulders. “But you said, you told me…”
“What I told you I did in order to save you. Despondency does not encourage quick thinking and survival. You have survived. Talea, bless her mercurial, flinty little heart, would be cursing your self-pity this very moment if she were able.”
“You lying little hard-shelled—”
Clothahump took a cautious step backward. “Don’t force me to stop you, Jon-Tom. Yes, I lied to you. It wasn’t the first time, as Mudge is so quick to point out. A lie in the service of right is a kind of truth.”
Jon-Tom let out an inarticulate yell and rushed forward, blinded as much by the cold finality of his loss as by the wizard’s duplicity. No longer a personality or even a memory, the body on his shoulders tumbled to the earth. He reached blindly for the impassive sorcerer.
Clothahump had seen the rage building, had taken note of the signs in Jon-Tom’s face, in the way he stood, in the tension of his skin. The wizard’s hands moved rapidly and he whispered to unseen things words like “fix” and “anesthesia.”
Jon-Tom went down as neatly as if clubbed by his own staff. Several soldiers noted the activity and wandered over.
“Is he dead, sir?” one asked curiously.
“No. For the moment he wishes it were so.” The wizard pointed toward the limp form of Talea. “The first casualty of the war.”
The Hour of the Gate: A Spellsinger Adventure (Book Two) (The Spellsinger Saga) Page 22