by Jane Yolen
If Snarl can go on, then I can, too. Aspen nodded at them and got up into a crouch. “To me!” he shouted. “And to the top!”
The warriors rose first, and then the civilians, the latter ducking behind the soldiers and their shields until all were protected as well as they could be. They charged forward again, arrows coming steadily now, whistling past their ears or thumping into their shields.
Two more of Aspen’s already small company were left on the hillside. Fortuna lay cursing the archer who had put an arrow through her other calf. She would live—at least till the battle was over.
Fal the woodsman was not so lucky. He had shared Alicanson’s shield but was much taller than the boy and hadn’t been able to crouch fully behind it. A foul arrow had taken him in the eye.
No tree, Aspen thought angrily, will ever again feel the bite of his ax.
But he had no time to mourn the friends he was leaving on the hillside or the ones who would certainly die soon, for before his mind and heart were ready for it, they had reached the Unseelie defenses.
“Now!” Aspen shouted, somehow certain that Croak and Snarl would know what he meant.
They did, shifting their shields aside to leave a gap for him to leap through. The Border Lords before him had wooden targets held high and broadswords at the ready, but those could not protect them from the gout of fire that Aspen shot at them. It was long and red as blood. Even Aspen felt the heat of it running from his fingers outward as well as up his wrists and racing up the blue rivers of veins, for he had put all his fear and anger into the flame. And all his hope, too.
With his sword, he cut the nearest archer down while he was still afire, and Croak and Snarl did the same to the ones on either side. Then the rest of Aspen’s troop followed, and the real battle was joined.
For a moment—for many moments—it went well. The Border Lords scattered under this new assault of fire and steel, and both Aspen’s group and the changelings pressed forward to the next level of defense, a short wooden palisade.
But this time, when Aspen let loose with his flame, there were no screams of pain and fear from behind the barricade. Instead, there was an angry hissing and then long lizardly shapes the size of ponies poured over the barricade, black and red and gold, with vestigial wings flapping though they could not fly, smoke curling from their nostrils.
“Dragonlings!” Aspen shouted. He knew his flames were useless against them. They fed on fire and were cloaked in their own armored scales. They were many. He was alone with his flame.
“Close ranks!” Croak shouted, but only the soldiers knew what that meant, and there weren’t enough of them for the ranks to mean much. Still, they locked shields together, and Aspen found himself between Alincanson and Snarl, with Croak behind him shouting at the civilians to try to get them into some kind of order.
The dragonlings hit them like a battering ram, jaws snapping at their faces.
Alincanson and Snarl had obviously been trained for this kind of fight, because they fed the dragonlings their shields sideways to occupy them, then jabbed at the beast’s eyes.
Aspen joined in, stabbing his long sword over the top of his companions’ shields and scoring a hit on a red dragonling. The creature screeched in pain and spun wildly in the air, like a crocomorph taking prey in the water. It wrenched the shield from Snarl’s grasp, almost taking his hand with it. The Wolf Clan soldier grimaced in pain but still finished the dragonling off with a thrust to its exposed belly. Then he was pulled back, and Croak stepped into his place, shield high.
The soldiers were holding against the dragonlings, but the sheer weight of the creatures was slowly forcing them backward. Aspen tried to lean into the shields, add his weight to that of his soldiers, but there simply were not enough of them to push the beasts back uphill.
The Seelie warriors took a step back, and then another, and it felt to Aspen as if the hill itself were fighting them as well, turning steeper as the battle began to go against them.
They had given up all the ground they’d gained, and still the dragonlings pressed them back. The warriors were no longer protecting the changelings’ flank, and the Border Lords were creeping back into place for another assault.
Worse still, a group of Red Caps had flung grappling hooks around one spider’s legs and dragged it to the ground, so now they knew the spiders were not invincible.
When Jack Daw commits more troops, Aspen thought desperately, he’s going to sweep us right off this hillside. That gave him pause. Why hasn’t he committed more troops? He can plainly see . . .
Aspen stopped and chuckled out loud, which earned him a confused look from Croak.
Mishrath protects us still. He glanced over his shoulder and saw Mishrath’s soldiers arrayed on the hilltop under the queen’s canopy, looking martial and fierce and more important, numerous. He thought smugly, Daw thinks this is just a feint. He is waiting for me to commit my troops.
They were forced back another step. This can actually work to our advantage.
“Stay together!” he shouted. “But fall back!”
Croak shot him a fierce glance. “Sire?”
“Fall back to the stream, Croak.”
“If they charge us . . .” For the first time, there was fear in his eyes.
No soldier likes to go backward. Aspen almost changed his mind. But he looked over at the changelings and saw that the spiders were hesitating to move forward now as they saw the downed one get its carapace cracked open by Red Caps and its driver dragged out. He could not make out who the driver was. But now, without the spiders’ support, the changelings’ mad charge was faltering.
If they do not retreat calmly, he thought, they will surely soon run off in a panic.
“The Unseelie horde will not charge,” he said to Croak. Then he shouted toward the changelings, not sure if they could hear him or if the professor was even there. “Odds! Pull your people back!”
If we can retreat in good order from the hill, we may yet live through the day.
Quickly they established a rhythm to their retreat.
Step back. Stab. Step again. Stab.
Falling back was easy with the dragonlings pushing on their shields.
Aspen’s sword arm began to ache and his legs trembled with fatigue, but he kept up the rhythm. And so did his people.
Step back. Stab. Step again. Stab.
They were halfway down the hill when a horn blew from above, and suddenly the weight was off their shields. Everyone in the front line stumbled, and Aspen had a glimpse over their shields of the dragonlings slithering back up the hillside.
“They run,” one of the kitchen maids said happily.
“No,” Aspen said quickly, before she got it in her mind to chase them. “They regroup.”
He glanced over at the changelings who were being herded downhill by several spiders. They had left too many of their number dead on the hilltop, but they were retreating in a far more organized manner than their charge.
There is hope, Aspen thought. But when he looked back to their own hilltop, he felt that hope shrivel and die.
It must have started as a single, small tear. Just a piece of canopy out toward the edge that perhaps was not as magic as the rest. Perhaps the queen had been exhausted when she spun that part, or perhaps after a long day and night of keeping the rain off, any canopy, no matter how magic, was going to sag a little.
It was just a small tear, but it was right underneath a big puddle of rainwater. And when the water started to flow, it was not going to be denied. The tear turned into a rent and the rent into a hole, and soon that whole section of canopy simply burst open and dumped water onto the fire below it.
And with that, two dozen of Mishrath’s soldiers winked out of existence.
Aspen turned back to the Unseelie army. The sun was fully up now and breaking through the clouds, while a sligh
t wind cleared away the smoke from the burning bodies and the dragonlings’ lungs. A tall figure moved through the ranks and pushed to the front.
Old Jack Daw.
Aspen watched in horror as the old drow looked out across at Aspen’s suddenly smaller army and then his gaze turned down the hillside searching for Aspen. Even at this distance, Aspen shivered when he met Jack Daw’s eyes. A thin line of white split the grey of the old drow’s face, and Aspen knew he was smiling.
Daw flung his arm forward, and his troops exploded from their positions, charging downhill on claws and hooves and booted feet.
Aspen turned to Croak. “Run!”
They ran. And behind them, the straggle of his army ran after.
30
SNAIL MAKES A DECISION
“We must go, now,” Snail said to Casper, the blacksmith. “If we are to catch him in time.”
“Odds are—” Casper began, but Snail interrupted him.
“I am not interested in the odds. Only in the professor.” She turned and miraculously saw her little mare up and cropping the few bits of grass that had managed to break through the trampled ground. Not dead, then? Blaze no longer even seemed winded. “Do you ride with me?”
“That’s too small a beast for the two of us,” Casper said. “You go, and I’ll follow along as best I can.”
Snail nodded, then went over to mare and breathed into her nostrils. “Just us two, again.”
Blaze nodded as if she understood, and Casper helped Snail mount. Then with a slight tap of her heels, Snail encouraged Blaze to go toward the tag end of the charge of changelings up the hill. She turned for a moment in the saddle and saw the blacksmith laboring behind her.
He’s fast enough, she thought. Or else my pony has suddenly gone slow. Then she turned back as they cantered along the broken ground, dodging the gouged-out places where the iron spiders had trod. There was a small wind, and the rain clouds seemed to be in retreat like a badly trained army.
Ahead of her the changeling men and women—a few on horses, most on foot—were shouting and screaming their challenges to the Unseelie folk who waited for them at the hill’s top. Following the charge and towering above them all was the largest of the iron spiders. She knew that in its domed driving chamber would be Odds thinking himself safe, invincible. But she feared that—like Maggie Light—the spiders had some secret flaw and could be downed. Maybe by fire, maybe by a large ramming device, or maybe—she could see it clearly in her mind’s eye—by something wrapped around their legs, which seemed to her the most vulnerable part of the spiders’ bodies.
And if I’ve had that thought, surely some Unseelie drow—she refused to even think his name—might have that thought, too.
But as she got closer she heard a horn blowing, and coming closer still, saw the Unseelie unaccountably retreating back behind their defenses, when moments before they had clearly been pushing their opponents downhill.
She could hear a mumble and then a loud roar as the changelings and their Seelie companions cheered the victory. And then she watched without quite understanding as they turned and trudged back down the hill, their faces jubilant with the outcome of their charge.
Turn around! she shouted at them. Don’t turn your backs on them! But few of them were soldiers, and even fewer had the belly for more hand-to-hand combat. She rode among the earliest retreaters now, trying to warn them, but they were laughing, and laughing at her as if she were a trickster spoiling their fun.
So, only she and Casper—both still going uphill to meet their compatriots, saw the danger. Snail watched in horror as above them the hilltop became alive once more with Unseelie warriors, cloaked and uncloaked, on claws and hooves and booted feet. They boiled down the mountainside, and the changelings had but a moment to try to wheel about and get set for the countercharge. And the ungainly iron spiders, their most potent weapon, had no room and little ability to turn quickly at all. In fact, one was already down, its legs buckled and entangled in some kind of snare.
It was a disaster. A rout. Snail watched in horror as changelings were cut down, ridden over, bitten, clawed, killed. She made a quick decision, and pulled so hard on the reins that she almost tore the bit from Blaze’s mouth. She looked over the side, and there was red foam dripping from the mare’s lower lip. She didn’t yank again.
Still, she was able to get to the side of the hill by leaning over and urging her horse with a combination of voice and legs. They made a wide turn to follow the stream back toward where she’d left Aspen and his ragtag army. She didn’t dare take the time to look over her shoulder to see what had happened to the changelings, spiders, Casper, Odds, or Milkmaid Mollie. She hoped she was making the right decision, though she suspected that no decision in war was the right one.
She shook her head at her stupidity. Or maybe at her innocence. Of course there’s a right decision. Her lips were now set in a grim line. It’s the one that wins the battle. Only you don’t know which one it is till long after.
The stream seemed extremely dark and sluggish, though it had been clear when she’d last seen it. She wondered if this meant a battle she hadn’t seen had been fought there. But she saw no bodies to indicate any such.
Perhaps, she thought, just soldiers marching through it left the muddle.
But she drew the mare away from the stream’s edge, letting her thread through the trees, far enough to remain hidden, close enough to see what was going on.
She strained to hear any unexplained noises ahead or behind, besides the quiet clip-clop of the mare’s feet through the underbrush. There was the swee-swash of wind across the tops of the trees, the gurgle of water over stones, and from far, far away, the battle cries of victors, the screams of the dying.
She was too focused on finding Aspen to be frightened, and too tired to weep.
Blaze plodded around a deep bend where the sound of the stream seemed stronger, almost as if it were singing to her. But there was another sound as well. She couldn’t quite make it out.
Reining in Blaze by pulling on her mane, Snail turned the little horse into a darker, more concealing copse of trees. Touching one of the trees for luck as they passed, she remembered Mistress Softhands, her midwife mentor, saying that at night birch trees gleamed enough so you could find your way home through the woods. Funny she should think of that story now.
She and the horse slipped like ghosts through mist, heading toward the unknown sound. As they got closer, Snail realized the sound was voices. One quite a bit like Aspen’s.
Because she wanted to be sure of what was happening before she rode headlong into it, and because she still held to the midwife’s creed—anticipate, alleviate, then await—she went slowly, silently. She’d have to find out who the voices were before she could anticipate what to do next. Only then she could she figure out how to alleviate the situation. And after . . . if there was an after . . .
The ground was so soft, Blaze made hardly any sound. Snail was proud of that.
But Red Caps don’t hunt by ear, they hunt by smell.
Neither Snail nor Blaze knew they were near until one laid a hand on her leg and grabbed the reins from her hands, and another pulled her off the horse, all the while giggling, his voice high-pitched and self-satisfied. The only good thing about the capture was that she landed on her feet and had not been pulled down by her broken arm. Though with her arm broken, she was unable to fight and was swiftly and firmly held by the biggest two of the little killers.
I’m so sorry, Aspen, she thought. She promised herself she wouldn’t beg, she wouldn’t weep. And she promised herself she wouldn’t think of how the Red Caps would afterward dip their caps in her blood.
She lied. Of course she’d think about that. Had already thought it. Could not get it out of her head. But instinctively, she glared at the Unseelie blood-hunter giggling at her and spat between his eyes. That didn’t make them let
her go, but it certainly made her feel better, more in control.
“The drow will want to see you,” he said. And giggled again.
Snail knew he meant Jack Daw.
“He will want to watch as we tear off your limbs.”
“Well,” she said, trying to sound brave and almost pulling it off, “he’s the one I want to see as well. Take me to him.”
“Yes, m’lady,” another of the Red Caps said, as if her title was no more than a casual curse.
She looked around and counted. There were seven of them. Of course. They always went about in seven, a murder of Red Caps, it was called. Like the dwarfs’ hule, only much darker.
Someone else gave her a shove from behind. She bit her lip to keep from crying out. At least she was successful in that.
31
ASPEN AT THE RIVER
Aspen made it down the hill with no arrows in his back, but he could tell by the yowls and yells behind him that his luck was about to run out.
Jack Daw’s army was closing in and his own was on the run.
A quick glance to his left confirmed that the changelings weren’t retreating in good order, either.
Add hundreds of dead humans to my butcher’s bill, he thought.
He would have wept, but it seemed the Weeping Warrior had no more tears left in him. He charged into the stream instead.
The waters were even higher now, up to his thigh, and he struggled into the middle, his only consolation that the waters would slow his pursuers just as much.
It won’t matter, though. The Border Lords will stomp through on their sturdy legs. The drow will ride around. The rest will swim or crawl or fly and catch us before we reach the far bank, let alone the palace. And with the changelings routed, we cannot defend the palace, anyway.