King Kobold Revived wisoh-3

by Christopher Stasheff

  “What of the High Cave?” Brom rumbled. “Hath he sign that the ones we seek do lair therein?”

  “They do.” Toby nodded. “Those lately come agree with those who ‘scaped two months agone—the Eagle’s High Cave now holds the Kobold and his priests.”

  “The Eagle—aye. What of him?” Tuan frowned.

  “He dwells near them, but not with them,” Toby answered, returning his frown. “Ever and anon doth Yorick go to speak with him, but he dwells not with his folk.”

  “Afraid?” Rod demanded.

  “Not of Yorick’s band. Yet he seems to think Mughorck might come in search of him, and doth not wish his loyalists to be caught in a net that might be laid for him.”

  “I think the Neanderthals aren’t the only ones who’re paranoid,” Rod noted with a lift of the eyebrow toward Tuan. “Well, Your Majesty, it sounds as though our partisans are in good shape, and definitely ready to pitch in on our side.”

  “I would so conjecture.” But Tuan still watched Toby. “Art thou certain there was no hint of treachery in his manner, nor in his thoughts?”

  The young warlock shook his head firmly. “Nay, my liege—and I did probe. There might be summat hid in the fast-nesses of his heart… but if there is, ‘tis beyond my comprehension.”

  “Mayhap there is,” Tuan said frowning, “but when there’s no sign, we would be fools to turn away their aid.”

  “Still,” Rod pointed out, “we could try to be ready for a last-minute change of heart.”

  “We must be so, indeed,” Tuan agreed. “Let us count the beastmen loyal only when the battle’s won.”

  “Which will not be easy.” Rod stood, frowning down. “We’ll be on the beastmen’s home territory this time. They won’t need lightning to bring them their extra power; they’ll have it right there at hand.‘’

  “Indeed, ‘twill be a most fell battle,” Tuan agreed. “Art thou certain of this ancient wizard’s aid?”

  Rod started to answer, then hesitated.

  “So I feared,” Tuan said grimly.

  Rod nodded unhappily. “But if he jumped in to save his ‘son’ once, he’s almost certain to do it again.”

  “Well, one can but pick the strongest ground and do one’s best,” Tuan sighed. “For, after all, no outcome’s certain in battle, commerce, love, or life. Godspeed ye, my commanders—and may we all meet again, when tomorrow’s sun hath dawned.”

  The Neanderthal village breathed uneasily in its slumber, bathed by the moon. The sentries on cliff-top and in small boats were bone-weary but not at all sleepy, for Mughorck had filled them with fear of the wild-eyed, ferocious Flatfaces who were so powerful as to be able to throw off the effects of the Evil Eye. What other powers did they have? How soon would they descend upon the hapless people, filled with vengeful blood-lust?

  But, countering these tales, was the rumor that filtered throughout the village now—that the Flatfaces’ anger was blunted; that Yorick had pled with them and brought them to see that this madness of raiding and invasion was only Mughorck’s doing, and that when the Flatfaces came they would be satisfied with only Mughorck, and his lieutenants. And, of course, the Kobold…

  The sentries shuddered. What race of wizards was this, who could dare to strive against a god?

  Thus their thoughts ran through the hours while the moon slowly drifted down toward the horizon, then slipped below it—and the land lay shadowed, its darkness lightened only by the stars. The sentries, weary to begin with, began to grow sleepy. The night was almost past; the Flatfaces had not come. For a few more hours, they were safe…

  Then they started, staring. What were those dark shapes that scuttled over the water toward the beach, so many as to seem like a field of darkened stars? In disbelief, the sentries squeezed their eyes shut, shook their heads—but when they looked again the squat, dark shapes still drove toward the beach. Surely these could not be the Flatfaces, flooding in so silently…

  But the dark shapes plowed up the beach, grinding to a halt, and scores of smaller shadows dropped off their sides. Nightmare though it seemed, this was no dream! The sentries clapped horns and conch shells to their lips, and blew the alarm!

  Neanderthals tumbled out of their huts, pulling on helmets, hefting war axes, groggy but waking fast, calling to one another in alarm.

  The Gramarye soldiers formed their line and marched toward the village.

  The High Warlock rode back and forth behind the lines, cautioning, “No shouting yet! Remember, silence! The more noise they make, the more eerie we’ll seem.”

  But the beastmen pulled a ragged line together and stumbled toward the Gramarye soldiers with querulous, ragged war cries.

  “Now!” Rod bellowed, and the soldiers charged with a hundred-throated ear-splitting shriek.

  The lines crashed together, and the long pikes did their murder. Axes chopped through their shafts, but the beastmen died. Then, here and there, a beastman began to catch a soldier’s eyes, and the Gramarye line slowed as its members began to freeze.

  In the flagship’s cabin, the witches and warlocks sat in a circle, hands joined, staring at the ceiling.

  The Gramarye line gained speed again as the numbing darkness lifted from the soldiers’ minds.

  Frantically, the beastmen reached for the power of the Kobold.

  A second wave of Gramarye soldiers charged up the beach, and new pikes poked through the line. The first wave retreated, minds dizzy from the Evil Eye.

  “We are come, Lord Warlock,” Tuan called, as he reined in his steed next to Fess. “Do as thou must; Sir Maris and I will care for our men.”

  “All thanks, my liege!” Rod called back. He ducked down, lying flat on Fess’s back. “Now, Steel Steed! Head for the low scrub!”

  The robot-horse leaped into a gallop, heading for the brush and low trees at the edge of the beach. “Rod, this subterfuge is scarcely needed! My thoughts were not even growing fuzzy yet!”

  “For once, I’m not worried about you having a seizure in the middle of a battle.”

  “Then, why this retreat?” Fess slowed and halted behind a screen of brush.

  “Just wait. Trust me.” Rod parted the bushes and peeked out toward the beach. The battle was raging nicely, he noticed. But that wasn’t his prime concern. He scanned the beach—more especially, the brush. It was very dark, so of course he couldn’t be sure. The Gramarye soldiers had lighted torches to see their enemy by, and the light spilled over, dimly illuminating the edges of the beach; he thought he could just barely make out some dim, amorphous mass, bulging very slowly, and growing larger—but he couldn’t be sure.

  The second wave of soldiers had carried the charge almost into the Neanderthal camp before sheer reflex had made individual beastmen begin seeking out the eyes of single opponents. Power flowed into the beastmen; their eyes burned more brightly. The Gramarye line slowed to a grinding halt.

  In the flagship’s cabin, Agatha and Gwen squeezed the hands of the witches to each side of them and shut their eyes, bowing their heads.

  Pikes, spears, and swords began to move again, slowly, gathering force to block the beastmen’s swings.

  The beastmen chopped hysterically in the desperation born of superstitious fear—but wildly, too, dropping their guards. The pikes drove in, and blood flowed out.

  Coming down the gangplank, Brother Chillde tripped, stumbled, and fell, sprawling on the sand with a howl of dismay.

  Puck chuckled, tossed aside the stick he’d jabbed between the monk’s feet, and scurried to his side, moving his hands in arcane, symbolic gestures, and chanting under his breath,

  “Chronicler, whose zeal doth blind thee To the truth’t‘which sight should bind thee, Be thou bound in falsehood’s prison! For an hour, lose thy vision!”

  “What… what doth hap?” Brother Chillde cried, pushing himself up out of the sand. He glanced about him, then squeezed his eyes shut, shook his head, and opened them again. “What! Is the night become so dark? Is there no light a
t all?” Then his face twisted into a mask of terror as the truth hit him. “I am blinded! Heaven forgive me—my sight is lost!”

  “Here, now, fellow,” Puck growled in a deep and throaty voice as he strode up to Brother Chillde, “what ails thee? Eh, thou’rt o’ the cloth!”

  “Oh, kind sir!” Brother Chillde flailed about him, caught Puck’s shoulder, and grasped it. “Have pity on me, for I’m struck blind!”

  “What sins are these,” Puck rumbled, “that must needs meet such desperate punishment?”

  “I cannot say.” Brother Chillde bowed his head. “Pride, mayhap—that I should dare to scribble down all that did hap within this war…” His head snapped up, sightless eyes staring. “The battle! Oh, stranger, take pity! I have labored all these months to record in writing each separate event of this war! I cannot miss the knowledge of the final battle! Pray, have mercy! Stay, and speak what thou dost see! Tell me the course of the day!”

  “I should be gone,” Puck growled, “to aid in tending other wounded.”

  “Hast thou hurt, then?” Brother Chillde was suddenly all solicitousness, groping about him. “Nay, let me find it! I shall bandage…”

  “Spare thy trouble,” Puck said quickly, “for the flow already hath been stanched. Yet I’ll own I have no occupation now…”

  “Then, stay,” Brother Chillde implored, “and speak to me of all that thou mayst see.”

  “Well, I will, then,” Puck sighed. “Attend thou, then, and hear, for thus it doth occur.”

  “May Heaven bless thee!” Brother Chillde cried.

  Puck took a deep breath, recalling the main thrust of Rod’s prompting. “The beastmen and our brave soldiers are drawn up in lines that do oppose. They grapple, they struggle; battle axes flail; pikes hover and descend. The clank of arms doth fill the air, and soldiers’ groans and horses’ neighs—eh, but that thou canst hear of thine own.”

  “Aye, but now I ken the meaning of the sounds!” Brother Chillde clutched Puck’s shoulder again. “But the High Warlock! What of the High Warlock?”

  “Why, there he rides,” Puck cried, pointing at empty air. “He doth rise up on’s huge black horse, a figure strong and manly, with a face that doth shine like unto the sun!” He grinned, delighted with his own cleverness. “Nay, his arms are corded cables, his shoulders a bulwark! He fairly gleams within the starlight, and his piercing eye doth daunt all who do behold him! Now rides he against the center of the line; now doth it bend and break! Now do his soldiers rush to widen the breach that he hath made!”

  In the scrub brush, Rod eyed the heaving lump of jelly apprehensively. He’d watched smaller lumps of fungus ooze over to merge with it; the whole mass had grown amazingly. Now it was bulging very strangely, stretching upward, higher and higher, coalescing into a giant double lump. It thrust out a pseudopod that began to take on the shape of a horsehead, and the top narrowed from front to back and broadened from side to side. A piece split off on each side to assume the shapes of arms; a lump on top modeled itself into a head.

  “I can scarcely believe it,” Rod hissed.

  “Nor I.” Fess’s voice wavered. “I know of the fungus locally termed witch moss, and its link to projective telepaths—but I never suspected anything on this scale.”

  Neither had Rod—for he was staring at himself. Himself the way he’d always wanted to be, too—seven feet tall, powerful as Hercules, handsome as Apollo! It was his face; but with all the crags and roughness gone, it was a face that could have dazzled a thousand Helens.

  “Terre et ciel!” the figure roared, hauling out a sword the size of a small girder, and charged off into the battle on a ten-foot war-horse.

  “Brother Chillde,” Rod sighed, “is one hell of a projective!”

  “He is indeed,” Fess agreed. “Do you truly believe he does not know it?”

  “Thoroughly.” Rod nodded. “Can you really see the Abbot letting him out into the world if he knew what Brother Chillde was?” He turned Fess’s head away. “Enough of the sideshow. He’ll keep the beastmen busy—and anybody who’s looking for me will see me.”

  “Such as Yorick?” Fess murmured.

  “Or the Eagle. Or our own soldiers, come to that—‘my’ presence there will sure lend them courage—especially when I look like that!” He sort of hoped Gwen didn’t get a close look at his doppelganger; she might never be satisfied with reality again. “Now we can get on with the real work of the night—and be completely unsuspected, too. To the cliff-face, Fess—let’s go.”

  The robot-horse trotted through the starlight, probing the brush with infrared to see the path. “Is this truly necessary, Rod? Surely Yorick has an adequate force.”

  “Maybe,” Rod said with a harsh smile, “but I’d like to give him a little backup, just in case.”

  “You do not truly trust him, do you?”

  Rod shrugged. “How can you really trust anybody who’s always so cheerful?”

  On the beach, Brother Chillde cried, “Why dost thou pause? Tell me!”

  But Puck stared, stupefied, at the giant shining Rod Gallowglass who galloped into the fray.

  “The High Warlock!” Brother Chillde chattered, “The High Warlock! Tell me, what doth he?”

  “Why… he doth well,” Puck said. “He doth very well indeed.”

  “Then he doth lead the soldiers on to victory?”

  “Nay… now, hold!” Puck frowned. “The soldiers do begin to slow!”

  “ ‘Tis the Evil Eye!” Brother Chillde groaned, “and that fell power that doth bolster it!”

  It did seem to be. The soldiers ground to a virtual halt. The beastmen stared a moment in disbelief, then shouted (more with relief than with bloodlust) and started chopping.

  In the witches’ cabin, the young folk grimaced in pain, shoulders hunching under the strain as a huge, black amoeba strove to fold itself over their minds.

  Rod and Fess galloped up the series of rock ledges that led to the High Cave, and found Brom waiting.

  Rod reined in, frowning up at the dwarf where he stood on a projection of rock a little above Rod’s head.

  “Didn’t expect to find you here, Brom. I’m glad of it, though.”

  “Someone must see thou dost not play the fool in statecraft in the hot blood of this hour,” the dwarf growled. “I fail to see why thou wilt not trust these beastmen allies by themselves; but, if thou must needs fight alongside of them ‘gainst the Kobold and, mayhap, against them, when the Kobold is beaten, I will fight by thy side.”

  “I’m grateful,” Rod said, frowning. “But what’s this business about beating the Kobold? It’s only a wooden idol, isn’t it?”

  “So I had thought, till I came here,” Brom growled. “But great and fell magic doth lurk on this hillside, magic more than mortal. Mughorck is too slight a man for the depths of this foul power, or I mistake him quite. I feel it deep within me, and…”

  There was a yell up ahead of them within the cave, then the clash of steel and a chaos of howling.

  “It’s started,” Rod snapped. “Let’s go.”

  Fess leaped into a gallop as Brom hurtled through the air to land on the horse’s rump. Rod whipped out his sword.

  They rode into a mammoth cave more than a hundred feet deep and perhaps seventy wide, coated with glinting limestone, columned with joined stalactites and stalagmites, and filled with a dim eldritch light.

  Three Neanderthals lay on the floor, their throats pumping blood.

  All about the cave, locked pairs of Neanderthals struggled.

  But Rod saw none of this. His eyes, and Brom’s, went straight to the dais at the far end of the cave.

  There, on a sort of rock throne, sat a huge-headed, pot-bellied thing with an ape’s face, concave forehead, and bulging cranium. Its limbs were shriveled; its belly was swollen, as though with famine. It was hairless and naked except for a fringe of whiskers around its jowls. Its eyes were fevered, bright, manic; it drooled.

  Two slender cables ran from its bald
pate to a black box on the floor beside it.

  The spittle dribbled from its chinless mouth into its scanty beard.

  Behind it towered three metal panels, keys and switches, flashes of jeweled light, and a black gaping doorway.

  At its feet, Yorick and a short skinny Neanderthal strained, locked in combat.

  Its eyes flicked to Rod’s.

  Icicles stabbed into Rod’s brain.

  The monstrosity’s eyes flicked to Brom’s, then back to Rod’s.

  Brom moved slowly, like a rusted machine, and the Kobold’s eyes flicked back to him. Brom moved again, even more slowly.

  The Kobold’s jaw tightened; a wrinkle appeared between its eyes.

  Brom froze.

  In the witches’ cabin, the air seemed to thicken next to Agatha, like a heat haze. It began to glow.

  A young witch slumped unconscious to the ground. A fourteen-year-old warlock followed her into a blackout, then a fifteen-year-old. A few moments later, a seventeen-year-old witch joined them, then a young warlock in his twenties.

  One by one, the young psis dropped, to sprawl unconscious.

  Agatha and Gwen caught each other’s free hands, bowing their heads, every muscle in their bodies rigid, hands clasped so tightly that the knuckles whitened.

  Then Gwen began to sway, only a centimeter or so at first, then wider and wider till suddenly her whole body went limp and she fell.

  Agatha dropped Gwen’s hands, clenched her fists; her face tightened into a granite mask and a trickle of blood ran down from the corner of her mouth.

  Above her, the heat haze brightened from red to yellow. Then the yellow grew brighter and brighter.

  A blast shook the tent, a hollow booming, and Galen knelt there before Agatha. He clutched her fists, and his shoulders heaved up, hunching under some huge, unseen weight. He bowed his head, eyes squeezing shut, his whole face screwing up in agony.

  The heat haze’s yellow dimmed, became orange.