Here be Monsters

by Christopher Stasheff

  “Did she truly dissolve all three ogres by herself?” Geoffrey asked.

  “I turned the first one to mush,” Gregory admitted, “but she did indeed disassemble the other two, and the third, due to the force of her anger, in a matter of seconds.”

  “What angered her so?” Geoffrey demanded, then answered his own question. “Of course, the blow that struck your thigh. Is she your fiancée, brother, or a mother bear?”

  “She will be a most formidable mother,” Gregory said proudly, “if we should be blessed with offspring.”

  “If you are, bid farewell to concentration and scholarship for some years,” Geoffrey warned. “This is not a lady to take all of such a burden on herself.”

  “Nor would I wish her to,” Gregory said placidly. “Still, I know, from the tales Magnus told of my infancy, that a mother who is also an esper has certain advantages in caring for babes.”

  “Yes, such as crafting toys upon the instant.” Geoffrey shook his head. “Her power over witch-moss is most disconcerting, brother. I had known she was a powerful projective telepath, but I had not known she also excelled in telekinesis!”

  “She does not,” Gregory answered, “but so powerful a projective with even mild competence at molding matter with her mind can be devastating when she wishes.”

  “I see the sense in that,” Geoffrey said slowly, “and can only acclaim such strength—when it is wielded in my defense.”

  “Or your brother’s?” Gregory asked with a smile. “I suspect that she will guard any who are dear to me with almost as much ferocity as my own person.”

  “I begin to think that she is your own person, brother,” Geoffrey said with a touch of sarcasm, and when Gregory’s only reply was a smug smile went on to ask, “Can she follow the spoor of this ominous mist that we seek?”

  “Why should she?” Gregory pointed to a range of hills ahead, their tops sending streamers of mist into the lowering clouds above. “Yonder lies our fog, does it not?”

  Geoffrey stared a moment, then nodded slowly. “I think you have the right of it, brother. Let us climb upward and seek.”

  • • •

  The roads slanting upward across the slope had been worn hard and smooth, so the companions had no difficulty riding a series of switchbacks into the foggy realm at the peak. They were almost to the summit when a ululating howl sounded ahead, echoed a second later on each side and behind. Alain and Geoffrey barely had time to draw their swords before the ambush closed upon them.

  There were no monsters this time, only men and women, though their eyes glared white in faces painted ochre and scarlet. They wore crudely tanned leather kilts and swathes of dun-colored homespun and screamed like berserkers, brandishing flint axes and wooden bucklers.

  Alain and Geoffrey met their onslaught with shield and sword, bellowing in answer to the howls and shearing through the handles of the flint axes by the handful—but as the heads fell off, they flew spinning at the ambushers behind, swooping and diving like hawks.

  Allouette’s face was taut with the strain of guiding so many weapons. Gregory’s was, too, as a series of warriors tripped over their own feet and went sprawling. Those behind stumbled over them and somersaulted to the ground.

  None of them stopped howling for a second.

  “Beware, my love!” Gregory shouted. “There are simply too many of them . . . Allouette? Allouette!”

  His answer was a scream. He whirled to see half a dozen mountaineers carrying off his true love, thrashing and kicking and biting. Axeheads flew at them, knocking one after another away, but for every one who fell, another leaped in to take her place.

  “Avaunt!” Gregory shouted, and earth and rock exploded before them. They hesitated but kept on going.

  “A rescue, a rescue!” Alain shouted.

  Gregory whirled, seeing four mountaineers descending on the prince. For a moment he wavered, then realized that he couldn’t go after Allouette alone. He shouted. “To blazes with you!”

  Gouts of fire shot from the earth, ringing the prince. The mountaineers’ howls slid into shrieks of fear as they fell back.

  Gregory spun, glaring at the kidnappers again. Three of them stumbled and fell, but three more leaped in to wrap arms around the struggling woman. One shrieked and fell, clutching at his leg, but a woman hurdled his body to seize Allouette’s waist in his stead. Then one of the mountaineers lost patience and swung a club at her head. Allouette went limp.

  Gregory went berserk. He screamed like a banshee, and dozens of mountaineers clapped their hands to their heads, stumbling and falling or weaving about, aware of nothing but the fire in their brains. Allouette’s bearers stumbled, too, four of them losing hold of her—but the remaining two blundered doggedly ahead. Fire erupted in their path; still they plowed onward. Boulders vibrated, rocked, then rolled down upon them; they dodged and kept going.

  Then, suddenly, all the mountaineers were running after them, pounding uphill after the hostage and her bearers.

  “They flee!” Alain leaned on his sword, gasping for breath.

  “Wherefore?” Geoffrey cried, then saw the bearers with their precious load disappear into a rocky maze. “Out upon them! Gregory, leap and seek!”

  With a double explosion, both young men disappeared. They reappeared a split second later, standing upon a boulder high on the hill, looking down into the maze—but wind-twisted evergreens overhung the rocky channels, hiding the mountaineers from sight, and a host of triumphant thoughts shielded those of the bearers from discovery.

  Gregory fell to his knees with a scream of anguish and loss.

  CHAPTER

  4

  With a bang, Geoffrey was beside him, hand on his shoulder. “Courage, brother! We shall find her, we shall hunt throughout these hills until we have her safe again!”

  “I shall tear this mountain apart if I have to!” Gregory’s face was twisted with anger and pain. “I shall rend each of them limb from limb if they seek to keep me from her! And if they dare to hurt her, each one shall die a slow and agonizing death!”

  Geoffrey blinked, staring in surprise. Never had his gentle little brother been so caught up in rage; never had the abstracted scholar been so wracked with emotion—and it wasn’t until that moment that he realized just how passionately Gregory loved. In fact, it wasn’t until that moment that he had known his brother was capable of passion.

  First Allouette became aware of a crushing headache. She tried to go back to sleep to escape it, but the pain was too severe and wouldn’t let her go. In desperation, she reached into her own brain and boosted her endorphin production. The pain didn’t go away, but it became oddly removed, as though on the far side of an invisible barrier; she knew it was there but no longer cared.

  That freed her mind to concentrate on causes. Moving through the endorphin-induced haze, she took inventory of her head and found the lump on her crown. No wonder she was in pain! She moved busily but deliberately, mending damaged capillaries, draining the blood that had pooled, and generally restoring the site to its normal condition.

  As the pain eased, she was freed to wonder what had caused the bruise—and memory came flooding back: a horde of painted, kilted, unkempt savages. But where were they? Come to that, where was she?

  Finally she turned her attention to the outside world—and recognized laughing, boastful conversation, and a general party atmosphere. The accent was thick but she knew she could puzzle it out. Even if she couldn’t, she could read their minds—when her headache was completely gone.

  But if she found herself in the camp of her enemies, how free could she be? She pushed with her arms and, sure enough, felt restraints. Another push with her feet told her that her ankles were lashed together—and, now that she thought of it, there was pressure on her mouth, considerable pressure, and a knot pressing the base of her skull—a gag, then.

  So they knew her for a witch and were taking no chances.

  But how alert were they? She let her eyelids flutter
, parting them just enough to peer through her lashes. One of the mountaineers was sitting beside her with a warclub on his knee—but he wasn’t looking at her, was instead laughing and raising a wooden mug in a toast to something someone else called out.

  Allouette looked to the side and saw his friends—silhouettes around a campfire. She could dimly make out faces on the other side of the flames.

  Now she bent her attention to trying to decipher their accent and let her endorphin level ebb so that she could concentrate a bit better. The headache increased, but it was nowhere nearly the crippling pain that had awakened her. Allowing for gutturals where there should have been H’s and K’s, for missing L’s and TH’s, and for some oddly distorted vowels, she deciphered their accent and realized they were saying:

  “Aye, Zonploka will be greatly pleased with us, that’s sure!”

  “Well, he should be! The young wizard’s lover? The lad will dare not move against us while we have her—and will keep his whole family at bay!”

  “Aye, the High Warlock, the High Witch, and all their brood! Then, too, mind you, this one is a doughty witch in her own right.”

  “Not with that gag on her mouth, she’s not! How’ll a witch work a spell without speech, eh?”

  Very well, actually, Allouette thought, but she wasn’t about to let her captors know that espers didn’t need to be able to talk to read thoughts, make objects move, make people think they saw things that weren’t really there, or feel emotions they’d never known. In fact, the more helpless they thought she was, the greater her advantage.

  So she lay still, listening to the mountaineers crow over their victory.

  “Not just keeping the Crown’s witches and wizards away!” one boasted. “If Zonploka is right, we’ll be able to bid them clear the county of all the folk around these mountains, peasants and nobles alike!”

  “Aye! Then we’ll rule the lands our ancestors held!”

  “We, and Zonploka’s people,” another reminded.

  “True, but he only means to gather his army here. They’ll not stay, they’ll move out to conquer the land—but we’ll hold the county! Zonploka has promised it!”

  Some renegade sorcerer, then, who had promised them dominion for helping his treachery against the Crown and the people—and they expected him to keep his promise? Allouette could have pitied these poor naive peasants if it hadn’t been for the pounding in her head.

  But who, she wondered, was Zonploka?

  There was no way to tell, and not enough information to work it out, though she did puzzle at the matter while she waited for the celebration to wind down and the mountaineers to fall asleep. She tried to project a thought to Gregory to reassure him she was well, but found the effort made her head ache worse and seemed to do no good. She would have to wait for the minor concussion to heal, then. She did manage to read the minds of the people near her and gained a good deal of information about their daily lives, including who lusted after whom and who had promised her favors to whom else, but she had to stop because even that slight effort increased her headache again.

  So she lay still, working at lulling the headache into absence as, one by one, the mountaineers sought their beds of bracken. Some went two by two but were too thoroughly drunken to stay awake—and at last, Allouette was the only one conscious, hearing nothing but the breeze in the leaves and the noises of the small animals who inhabited the heights.

  She reached out with a tendril of thought, exploring the lashings that held her hands. Yes, they were knots she knew. The effort wakened her headache again but this time she ignored it, making thong slide against thong as she lifted her head, opening her eyes to watch the knots untying themselves. When the leather fell away, she chafed her wrists to restore circulation, then flexed her fingers until the pins and needles had stopped. Finally she sat up—slowly, carefully, so as not to make the headache worse—and untied the thongs that bound her ankles. It took longer than telekinesis but didn’t increase the pain in her head. Then she chafed her ankles, flexing her toes and making circles with her feet. She almost groaned aloud as the prickling began but clamped her jaw shut, waiting and massaging until she was sure her legs would bear her. Then, finally, she pushed herself to her feet and crept off into the night.

  She would have made it and done no harm to anyone, but as she stepped over one man, he happened to turn in his sleep, tripping her. She fell heavily, then scrambled up—but a rough basso voice called, “Who moves?”

  Allouette cursed; one sentry had stayed sober. She ran for the trees, but he saw her and ran after, shouting, “Waken! Catch her! Don’t let her get away!”

  Half the camp woke; ten of them made it to their feet and blundered after her in the dark, shouting and bellowing, for all the world like hounds on a scent.

  Allouette kept stumbling toward the trees, but her legs still weren’t working properly. When she heard the heavy thudding of feet behind her, she turned. The sentry shouted with triumph, swinging a warclub at her head. She pivoted, caught the arm and a handful of tunic, shoved out her hip, and threw him headlong into the bracken.

  But it had delayed her long enough for the pack to catch her. A woman in the forefront swung her own warclub; Allouette blocked, but pain seared through her forearm. She caught the weapon with her other hand, twisted as she kicked the woman’s feet out from under her, and turned to fend off another blow left-handed. She knocked it aside and recovered to crack the man’s pate, but saw a quarterstaff swinging down at her right side and another warclub swinging from her left and knew with despair, even as she whirled aside from the staff and swung her own weapon to block the warclub, that they would bear her down by the weight of sheer numbers.

  Then a double scream split the night, female voices howling in rage, and two furies leapt in among the mountaineers, one whirling a quarterstaff like a windmill, the other laying about her with a sword and smashing her shield into a bearded face.

  Allouette froze for a second’s disbelief, then realized that she still had a chance of escape and leaped into the fight with elation.

  In minutes, the three women were back to back in a tight triangle. The mountaineers charged them en masse—once. Allouette felled one with her warclub, but another’s fist cracked against her cheek. She staggered, the night suddenly filling with sparks, but through the roaring in her ears she could hear the furies’ scream. When her vision cleared, she found herself staring at the woman who had struck her—now lying flat on the ground.

  Another mountaineer bellowed; Allouette looked up, but the attacker was to her right. She gave a quick glance, saw a staff blur, heard it crack on the man’s skull, and saw him falling. Three women screamed with rage on her left; Allouette turned to look and saw them charging her defender. She swung, hard and quick. Her club struck a shoulder and its owner staggered with a howl, clutching her hurt—but the other two fell back, their shields gouged with massive cuts.

  Suddenly there was silence, the ring of mountaineers glaring at the women with hatred, looking for an opening, a weakness. Allouette cast a thought at a woman’s ankle, tugging, but she still hadn’t recovered from the blow that had knocked her out, and the mountaineer only glanced down in irritation.

  Then one of the mountaineers’ clubs swung to her left, hard, striking the cheek of the man beside him. “Owoo!” the man howled. “What did you do that for, Castya?”

  “I didn’t,” the woman protested, “I only—”

  But another man howled as a club struck his shoulder and a third bellowed as still another club struck a knee.

  “ ’Tis witchcraft!” a woman cried, her eyes huge. “Flee!”

  They all turned and ran—except one hulking brute who snarled and waddled toward the three women, club swinging high—and higher and higher, jerking out of his hand, then tumbling end over end in front of his face. His eyes went round as platters and he turned and ran too, his own club chasing him.

  “Enough, sister-to-be,” one of Allouette’s rescuers panted.
“He will not come back.”

  Allouette recognized the voice. With foreboding, she turned to face her rescuers. “I . . . I must thank you . . .”

  “Must you indeed!” Quicksilver cried. “Does that mean you would not if you did not have to?”

  “Oh, don’t badger the poor woman, Quicksilver!” Cordelia said. “Can’t you see that lump on her head? And the way her arm is hanging! Here, Allouette, let me see!” She stepped forward to take hold of Allouette’s limp arm and bend it, moving her hand toward her shoulder gently, tentatively, slowly . . .

  “There!” Allouette gasped.

  Cordelia held the arm still, gazing off into space as her thoughts probed the bruise; then she nodded. “Only some little damage to the muscle and a swelling in the cartilage of the elbow. Hold still, Allouette.” She gazed at the elbow.

  Allouette caught the distinction—that Cordelia called her by name, but Quicksilver “sister-to-be.” Still, what could their would-be assassin expect?

  Cordelia released the arm and stepped back. “It will serve you now. Use it lightly if you can—the tissues must still do some healing of their own.”

  “I—I thank you,” Allouette stammered. “How—how could you have so much compassion as to save me from those brutes?”

  “We shall all be of the same family soon,” Quicksilver said with a shrug, “and kin guard kin.”

  “So I shall,” Allouette promised fervently.

  “Why then, you owe us a life now,” Quicksilver said with a smile, “or at least, your liberty.”

  “I owe you far more than that!”

  “We shall collect in good time, I doubt not.” Quicksilver looked around the campsite with a frown. “How came you here, and in such bondage?”

  “Gregory and I learned from a peasant family that three ogres had come out of a most strange mist,” Allouette explained.