by Jane Yolen
We can go home, he thought. I can take Snail and my mother and my brave, brave warriors home. If we die, we die where we lived. He ignored—and knew he ignored—the fact that he had lived most of his life as a hostage in the Unseelie palace. For him, Astaeri was home.
Everyone cheered to see them, even the illusory soldiers.
“Snail!” he shouted over the noise. “Find Odds. Tell him to form up to our rear. It’s time to go home. I would like some walls between us and Old Jack Daw sooner rather than later.”
Snail nodded, looking around for the bowser. But he was dirty and hiding under the cart. She turned back to say something, and Aspen saw her expression change from joy to horror as she pointed behind him, at the changelings. He turned around and saw what she saw. Instead of marching sensibly toward the Seelie encampment, the changelings seemed to have stirred themselves up into a killing frenzy. Not realizing that their allies were mostly illusion, they were charging right toward the Unseelie lines.
Toward certain death.
“You did not tell him how few we were,” he said, not accusing, just stating a fact.
“Would he have come if I had?”
They both knew the answer to that. Odds was no fool. He looked to play the greater game. The better Odds, he would have said, if asked. If he had thought for a moment that Aspen’s army was only thirty or so strong, he would have left the Seelie to the teeth and claws of their enemies.
A bigger spider than the rest appeared on the hill now, and Aspen—guessing Odds was at the helm—waved his arms frantically. He had no idea if he could be seen from such a distance. He did not know how to signal the professor to call his men back. Did not even know if Odds could do any such thing. Battle rage was upon the changelings, and Aspen knew how powerful such a thing was.
“I won’t be able to get the bowser into the air,” Snail said. “He’s too filthy and cold from the rain. I’d no time to wash him.”
Aspen didn’t hesitate. “Take one of the horses.” They were all kept saddled and bridled, just in case.
Snail nodded and chose the smallest of the horses, a black with a white blaze on its nose. As Aspen watched, Snail put her hands on either side of the horse’s head and whispered something in each ear. Then she blew softly in the horse’s nostrils.
He did not ask. He had seen some of the soldiers do the very same thing and assumed she had been taught by one of them.
Leading the little mare over to the cart, Snail climbed up—careful not to disturb the dozing queen. Using the cart as a mounting platform, she vaulted onto the horse, the motion hardly graceful as she landed on the mare’s back with a huge outtake of breath.
“Oufffff!” she said, and the queen stirred at the noise.
Using the reins to turn the horse so that they faced the far-off charging changelings, Snail kicked her into a gallop.
Aspen was surprised. Though he knew her courage, he had not known the extent of her riding ability. But surely she knew the danger. Though this time she had not glared at him, which was her usual way of signaling that she was furious or that he had done something absolutely stupid. She had to know—that she would never make it in time.
He hoped he was wrong. However, after a night of doubts and worry, he finally understood exactly what he needed to do. It was most likely futile and almost certainly fatal, but all his other options had fled down the hill with the charging changelings.
“Croak!” he shouted, though the soldier was right next to him. “Gather your warriors. No one sleeps today but the dead.”
“What are your orders, sire?”
Aspen drew his blade and felt the fire building inside of him. His allies sped toward slaughter, but he would not abandon them to it. I will shed no tears today.
“We attack.”
Croak grinned. As if excited. As if delighted. As if relieved. “Yes, Majesty,” he said. “We attack!
28
SNAIL FALLS
The little mare ran the long distance between the encampment and the hill and meadow where the changelings were charging. She never made a misstep. She never faltered, not even when the iron spiders came close enough to be identified, their strange metal filling her nostrils with their alien smell. However, her gait was not as smooth and gentle as Goodspeed’s had been, and Snail found herself wishing she had that old pony back.
Still, she had to pay attention to this nameless mare, so she gathered the reins and gave her an extra kick, hoping it would smooth the ride out.
All that did was encourage the mare to stretch further and run faster. There was no smoothness in either gait.
Suddenly Snail remembered what Alith had warned. The horses will keep going if you ask them to. They will burst their hearts for you. But then they will be dead, and you will have no way to move quickly. She thought perhaps she should rein the black in, but they were closing the gap quite swiftly, and so she hesitated. After all, Alith had been talking about all-day runs. Not a sprint across a long meadow. The horse didn’t seem at all winded, even seemed to be enjoying herself. Probably annoyed with having had such a long rest between outings.
Besides, what good would one live horse be, Snail asked herself, if everyone else died because we didn’t get there in time?
Then she scolded herself roundly, first for the hesitation, next for the sentimentality and how little she understood about horses, then because she’d dismissed the horse’s probable death with such offhandedness, and finally because she really didn’t know what she should do.
How can I hope to advise the king when I have such small knowledge? she thought, without once ever letting herself think that if everyone died, there’d be no one left to rule and no one around to advise anyway.
All the while she argued with herself, the little mare blazed across the landscape, the wind of their passage flinging her black mane in all directions. The horse alone seemed to be without fear of consequence.
Blaze, Snail thought. Whatever her soldier name is, she will always be Blaze to me. She bent over Blaze’s shoulder and told the horse her new name.
Pricking her ears back and forth as if she understood, Blaze ran faster still, the sound of her hooves on the wet meadow grass a soft drumming.
But as fast they went, the spiders and the changeling warriors—“Berserkers,” Snail said under her breath—went faster. For they were going running downhill now, and Blaze was laboring sideways and then uphill to meet them.
Laboring, Snail thought, remembering how women in labor sounded. The harsh breathing that quickened as the exhilaration of birth neared. The Whoops! some of the apprentices called it, when an overexcited birth mother—usually a first timer—actually threw up.
But Blaze was no laboring mare about to bring forth a foal. She was, as Alith had cautioned, breaking her heart for Snail.
In return, Snail’s heart was breaking as well. Breaking for the valiant mare and all the brave folk—human and fey—who would die this day. Because in war, people and animals always died. Afterward, the still living felt the guilt.
They were going so quickly now, the rain was slanting sideways, stinging her eyes and mixing with her tears. Tears, bah! Being a hero doesn’t include blubbering. And a hero was what they all needed this day.
Too bad I’m not one. She was too angry and too frightened and too slow to be a hero.
But Blaze was. She galloped without ceasing, seeming to take nourishment from the air. It was as if she read each leaf, pebble, stone as she ran. As if her hooves understood unseen paths, could find the perfect turning point, note the smoothest stretch of grass. As if she ran only for Snail’s approval, and Snail’s encouragement.
Until she dropped to her knees, and Snail fell over the mare’s head, right into the path of a very large iron spider, three male changelings carrying sharp objects, and a woman dressed in a man’s trews and shirt who wielded only a larg
e milking stool.
Snail tucked and rolled and came up with only bruises—but then the woman swung the milking stool at her head.
Managing to raise her left arm to block the blow, Snail regretted it almost immediately, for she felt a jolt of hot pain and heard a crack as the stout wood hit her left forearm.
“Vrest!” she swore, remembering that it was what Dagmarra had said when they were on the bowser, an oath of great power and passion. Her arm went limp, and the woman reared back for a blow that was sure to cave her head in.
“Wait!” one of the men shouted, a tall, broad-shouldered fellow with a beard the color of oak bark. “It’s the doctor.”
But the warning came too late, for the stool—already in its downward arc—hardly hesitated.
Snail heard the crack of the stool breaking—or maybe it was her skull that broke. The woman gasped, saying, “I’m so sorry! I thought you was . . .”
Then Snail fell backward into a dark and lasting abyss.
It could have been hours, days later that she swam back to the surface, as if rising out of some murky pool. She was like a fish lured up into the light.
The light!
She heard something. Her name? A song?
Come to me, child, out of the night,
Swim to the shore, take hold of the light . . .
It was a song. At least she figured out that much. The notes of the tune cut through the pain, in her arm, in her head. It gave her courage. It made her . . . whole.
Whole?
Take my hand, my heart, my sight,
Take my song, come into the light.
She knew that voice, though she couldn’t yet give it a name, but she swam as it directed, as it insisted, into a river of light, gulped air, becoming fully human and fully something else as well.
A memory?
A change?
A changeling?
Thinking was giving her a headache.
Or maybe the blow to her head had given her that.
The blow! Now she remembered. There had been a blow to her head, and a backward fall and something before that.
Her left arm seemed useless from the elbow down. Broken for sure.
She sat up, cleared her throat. “Give me something to wrap my arm.” The words came out in a bubbly froth, as if she’d been underwater for real.
The milkmaid—now Snail remembered the milkmaid—ripped strips from her skirts, and Snail managed to direct her in fashioning a sling. With her left arm still throbbing and her vision hazy with the pain, she said, “Tell me . . .” Catching that frothy breath again, she finished the thought. “Tell me what happened.”
The milkmaid bowed her head. “I’m sorry, Doctor.” She paused, face reddening. “I’m a milkmaid, not a soldier, and I didn’t think . . .”
“That’s the problem with war,” Snail said through gritted teeth. “No one takes the time to think.”
The oak-bearded man frowned. “What do we do with her?” he asked, pointing behind Snail.
Snail turned, but slowly, the pain of arm and head making her dizzy with too much motion. She saw a figure clothed in a shimmer of light lying on her back, eyes staring up at the sky.
“When you fell, she was suddenly there,” the man said. “She lay down next to you, put a hand on either side of your head, began singing something.”
The milkmaid interrupted. “Singing! In the middle of a battle! How could she?”
The man ignored her outburst and continued. “It could have been a prayer.”
“Or a spell,” the milkmaid interrupted. “I couldn’t make it out. Was it a spell?”
“Shut it, Mollie,” the man said, but Mollie was in full spate now, like a river, and couldn’t stop. “You woke up soon after, even though I’d clocked you a good ’un, begging your pardon, m’lady doctor. Hope she brings down some of them berserking lords with her spells. I mean if we can wake her up.” She’d said it all in one long rush and had to take a new breath.
In the moment between Mollie’s breaths, the man broke through. “She’s an odd one,” he gestured to the woman on the ground. “Never mixing with the likes of us’ns.”
“Maggie Light.” Snail breathed the name, wondered why Maggie was just lying in the crushed and ruined grass. And while she was wondering, she suddenly realized that she felt better than she’d any reason to. Looked at her good right arm, then at the broken one, which seemed to be glowing with the same shimmer of light that now encased Maggie.
For a moment she recalled when the land had chosen Aspen as king. How he’d glowed gold all over. Maybe this was the same sort of magic. She got up slowly, walked over to Maggie, leaned down, and touched her cheek. It was cold and stiff. But, she wondered, had it ever been otherwise? She’d never actually touched Maggie’s cheek before. Maggie often said she was a made thing, and maybe a made thing’s cheeks were always cold and stiff.
Like the iron spiders?
“Oh, Maggie,” she whispered under her breath, “what have you done? What have we all done?” She didn’t expect an answer, nor did she get one. Aloud she said, “We can’t just leave her here.” She was thinking about the bogles and Red Caps, the ogres, the drows. She was trying to figure it all out. But now the sounds of battle suddenly burst over her, like a wave in a furious sea.
This isn’t the time, she thought, to consider what it all means. This is the time to be doing something about the war.
The milkmaid said, “I’ll keep a guard, m’lady.” She sat down on her milking stool, which was, astonishingly, still intact.
“Thanks, Mollie. And you,” Snail said, addressing Oak-beard.
“Casper,” he said, “blacksmith by trade.” Indeed, his hands had the worn look of an iron- and steelmaker. His fingernails were nearly black.
“Casper, you’d better take me to Odds,” she said, the frothiness entirely gone now from her speech.
Casper turned away, looking out across the small valley. “I could do that, m’lady,” he said, “but the professor looks a bit busy right now.”
Snail followed his gaze and saw the changeling army was nearly into Jack Daw’s camp, screaming their battle cries and waving their assortment of weapons wildly. Giant iron spiders were scattered amongst the horde, and the most giant of them all—piloted by Odds, of that Snail was certain—was pushing through to the front.
The Unseelie horde was ready, bows raised, arrows notched, lances held steady, hiding behind their barricade that bristled like a hedgehog, all spines out.
The two armies were almost joined in battle.
A battle we’re sure to lose, Snail thought, her arm still aching but her head now totally clear.
29
ASPEN GOES TO WAR
Aspen charged into the stream, his few warriors following behind. Screams of rage and pain, and the clack and clang of weapons clashing rolled down from the hill above: the sounds of battle being joined. The changelings, he thought. That will be us soon.
The rain had swollen the stream. It was now knee-deep and swift, and he had to slow to maneuver over the rocky bottom. It wouldn’t do to trip and fall, hit his head on a rock, and drown in the shallow waters.
No, much better to die up there. He glanced uphill.
The changeling charge was quickly being repelled by the Border Lords that Old Jack Daw had chosen to man the initial defenses of wooden spikes and shallow ditches.
But even before Aspen was out of the stream and onto the grass, he could see that the first of the spiders had now reached the Border Lords and was tearing holes in their lines by simply grabbing both the sharpened logs and the plaid-clad soldiers, and throwing them off to the rear.
Aspen could hear the screams and curses as the Border Lords hit the ground. It seemed to make the others less than enthusiastic about filling the gap, especially with more iron spiders on the hori
zon. Aspen could see that the Border Lords were holding back, reforming, but not racing forward.
How many more spiders? he wondered, hoping that the answer was: as many as are needed. He was winded from the difficult river crossing, and for a moment he stopped to catch his breath.
Now he was close enough to see that though the changelings were not skilled, they were certainly enthusiastic, and a new wave of ill-equipped changeling infantry quickly flooded the hole in the enemy lines the first spider had made. They began flailing at everything in range with their odd mix of weaponry. Farmers wielded scythes and other reaping tools, workmen handled axes and mauls. Kitchen workers held long knives. But many of the changelings only had pointed sticks for weapons, or clubs that had more recently been chair legs or the spokes of a wagon wheel. Several held nothing more than rocks they had picked up in the stream. A few had actual swords, but they were very few, and Aspen had no idea whether the men flailing them about had any skill or training.
He caught his breath and watched as they hacked and slashed, poked and pounded, and did some damage. But for every Border Lord they killed, it seemed that three or four changelings fell.
And he knew that the truly frightening members of the Unseelie army had yet to join the fray.
No longer winded, Aspen climbed out of the stream and began running uphill when suddenly someone shouted, “Sire!” and Snarl dragged him to the ground.
There was a whooshing in the air. Aspen looked back to see a dozen arrows clang off rocks and bury themselves in the ground ten yards past him. His troops were on the ground as well, all except Bite, who had been just a touch too slow. He stood tall, staring numbly at the three arrows that stuck out of his chest. Then he toppled wordlessly to the ground.
Aspen gasped and hesitated, caught between wanting to tend to the fallen soldier and the need to get up the hillside before more arrows arrived.
Croak didn’t hesitate. He was the first one up. “Shields before the king!” he shouted, and sprang forward despite how badly his foot flopped around on his wounded ankle. He placed his shield before Aspen, and then Snarl was up as well, his shield at the ready in front of his liege. He didn’t look back at his fallen clan brother. That would come later, if he was not slain himself.