The Lady hadn’t forgotten me. Not even a little. Shortly
after midnight a grim Elmo rousted me out. “Whisper is here.
Wants you, Croaker.”
“Eh?” I hadn’t done anything to arouse her
ire. Not for weeks.
“They want you over to Duretile. She wants you. Whisper is
here to take you back.”
Ever seen a grown man faint? I haven’t. But I came close.
I may have come close to having a stroke, too. My blood pressure
must have soared. For two minutes I was vertiginous and unable to
think. My heart pounded. My guts ached with fear. I knew she was
going to drag me in for a session with the Eye, which sees every
secret buried in a man’s mind. And yet I could do nothing to
evade her. It was too late to run. I wished I had been aboard the
ship to Meadenvil with Pawnbroker.
Like a man walking to the gallows, I went out to Whisper’s
carpet, settled myself behind her, and dwindled into my thoughts as
we rose and rushed through the chill night toward Duretile.
As we passed over the Port, Whisper called back, “You must
have made quite an impression back when, physician. You were the
first person she asked about when she got here.”
I found enough presence of mind to ask, “Why?”
“I suspect because she wants her story recorded again. As
she did during the battle at Charm.”
I looked up from my hands, startled. How had she known that?
I’d always pictured the Taken and Lady as uncommunicative
among themselves.
What she said was true. During the battle at Charm the Lady had
dragged me around with her so the events of the day would be
recorded as they happened. And she did not demand special
treatment. In fact, she insisted I write stuff as I saw it. There
was just the faintest whiff of a hint that she expected to be
toppled sometime, and, once she was, expected maltreatment by
historians. She wanted a neutral record to exist. I hadn’t
thought about that for years. It was one of the more curious
anomalies I’d noted about her. She did not care what people
thought of her, but was frightened that the record would be
bastardized to suit someone else’s ends.
The tiniest spark of hope rose from that. Maybe she did want a
record kept. Maybe I could get through this. If I could remain
nimble enough to avoid the Eye.
The Captain met us when we landed on Duretile’s northern
wall. A glance at the carpets there told me all the Taken were on
hand. Even Journey, whom I had expected to remain in the
Barrowland. But Journey would have a grudge to soothe. Feather had
been his wife.
A second glance told me the Captain was silently apologetic
about my situation, that there were things he wanted to say but
dared not. I fed him a tiny shrug, hoped we would get a moment
later. We did not. Whisper led me from the wall directly into the
Lady’s presence.
She hadn’t changed an iota since I had seen her last. The
rest of us had aged terribly, but she remained twenty forever,
radiantly gorgeous with stunning black hair and eyes into which a
man could fall and die. She was, as always, such a focal point of
glamor that she could not be physically described. A detailed
description would be pointless anyway, as what I saw was not the
true Lady. The Lady who looked like that hadn’t existed for
four centuries, if ever.
She rose and came to greet me, a hand extended. I could not tear
my eyes away. She rewarded me with the slightly mocking smile I
recalled so well, as though we shared a secret. I touched her hand
lightly, and was astonished to find it warm. Away from her, when
she vanished from mind except as a distant object of dread, like an
earthquake, I could think of her only as cold, dead, and deadly.
More on the order of a lethal zombie than a living, breathing, even
possibly vulnerable person.
She smiled a second time and invited me to take a seat. I did
so, feeling grotesquely out of place amidst a company which
included all but one of the great evils of the world. And the
Dominator was there in spirit, casting his cold shadow.
I was not there to contribute, that became obvious. The Captain
and Lieutenant did the talking for the Company. The Duke and
Custodian Hargadon were there, too, but contributed little more
than I. The Taken carried the discussion, questioning the Captain
and Lieutenant. Only once was I addressed, and that by the Captain,
who inquired as to my readiness to treat casualties from the
fighting.
The meeting had only one point so far as I was concerned. The
assault was set for dawn, day after the one coming up. It would
continue till the black castle was destroyed or we lost our
capacity to attack.
“The place is a hole in the bottom of the ship of
empire,” the Lady said. “It has to be plugged or we all
drown.” She entertained no protests from the Duke or
Hargadon, both of whom regretted asking her for help. The Duke was
now impotent within his own domain, and Hargadon little better. The
Custodian suspected he would be out of work entirely, once the
threat of the castle ended. Few of the Company and none of the
Taken had been at any pains to conceal their disdain for
Juniper’s odd religion. Having spent a lot of time among the
people, I could say they took it only as seriously as the
Inquisitors, Custodians and a few fanatics made them.
I hoped she went slow if she intended changes, though.
Like so slow the Company would be headed elsewhere before she
started. You mess with people’s religion and you mess with
fire. Even people who don’t much give a damn. Religion is
something that gets hammered in early, and never really goes away.
And has powers to move which go beyond anything rational.
Morning after the day coming up. Total war. All-out effort to
eradicate the black castle. Every resource of the Lady, Taken,
Company and Juniper to be bent to that end, for as long as it
took.
Morning after the day coming up. But it did not work that way.
Nobody told the Dominator he was supposed to wait.
He got in the first strike six hours before jump-off, while most
of the troops and all the civilian laborers were asleep. While the
only Taken patrolling was Journey, who was the least of the
Lady’s henchmen.
It began when one of those bladder-like things bounced over the
wall and filled the gap remaining in the Lieutenant’s ramp.
At least a hundred creatures stormed out of the castle and
crossed.
Journey was alert. He had sensed a strangeness in the castle and
was watching for trouble. He came down fast and drenched those
attackers with the dust that melted.
Bam! Bam-bam-bam! The castle hit him the way it had hit his
one-time wife. He fishtailed through the air, evading the worst,
but caught the edge of every crack, and went down smouldering, his
carpet destroyed.
The banging wakened me. It wakened the entire camp, for it
started the same time as the alarms and drowned them entirely.
I charged out of the hospital, saw the castle creatures boiling
down the steps of the Lieutenant’s ramp. Journey hadn’t
stopped more than a handful. They were enveloped by that protective
glow One-Eye had encountered once before. They spread out,
sprinting through a storm of missiles from the men who had the
watch. A few more fell, but not many. They began extinguishing
lights, I suppose because their eyes were more suited to darkness
than ours.
Men were running everywhere, dragging their clothing on as they
rushed toward or away from the enemy. The laborers panicked and
greatly hampered the Company’s response. Many were killed by
our men, vexed at finding them in the way.
The Lieutenant charged through the chaos bellowing orders. First
he got his batteries of heavy weapons manned and trained on the
steps. He sent messengers everywhere, ordering every ballista,
catapult, mangonel and trebuchet moved to a position where it could
fire on the ramp. That baffled me only till the first castle
creature headed home with a body under each arm. A storm of
missiles hit him, tore the bodies to shreds, battered him to a
pulp, and nearly buried him.
The Lieutenant had trebuchets throw cannisters of oil which
smashed on the steps and caught fire when flaming balls were thrown
after them. He kept the oil and fire flying. The castle creatures
would not run through the flames.
So much for my thinking the Lieutenant was wasting time building
useless engines.
The man knew his job. He was good. His preparation and quick
response were more valuable than anything done by the Lady or Taken
that night. He held the line in the critical minutes.
A mad battle began the moment the creatures realized they were
cut off. They promptly attacked, trying to reach the engines. The
Lieutenant signaled his under-officers and brought the bulk of his
available manpower to bear. He had to. Those creatures were more
than a match for any two soldiers, and they benefited from the
protective glow as well.
Here, there, a brave citizen of Juniper grabbed a fallen weapon
and jumped into the struggle. Most paid the ultimate price, but
their sacrifice helped keep the enemy away from the engines.
It was obvious to everyone that if the creatures escaped with
many bodies, our cause was lost. We’d soon be face-to-face
with their master himself.
The ball pairs began coming over from Duretile, splashing the
night with terrible color. Then Taken dropped from the night,
Limper and Whisper each depositing an egg which hatched the fire
that fed on the stuff of the castle. Limper dodged several attacks
from the castle, swooped around, brought his carpet to ground near
my hospital, where we were swamped by customers already. I had to
retreat there to do the job for which I was paid. I kept the uphill
tent flaps open so I could watch.
Limper left his aerial steed, marched uphill with a long, black
sword that glimmered evilly in the light from the burning fortress.
He radiated a glow not unlike that protecting the castle creatures.
His, however, was far more puissant than theirs, as he demonstrated
when he pushed through the press and attacked them. Their weapons
could not reach him. His sliced through them as though they were
made of lard.
The creatures, by that time, had slaughtered at least five
hundred men. The majority were workers, but the Company had taken a
terrible beating, too. And that beating went on even after the
Limper turned the tide, for he could engage but one creature at a
time. Our people strove to keep the enemy contained till the Limper
could get to them.
They responded by trying to swamp the Limper, which they managed
with some success, fifteen or twenty piling on and keeping him
pinned by sheer body weight. The Lieutenant shifted the fire of the
engines temporarily, pounded that seething pile till it broke up
and the Limper regained his feet.
That ploy having failed, a band of the creatures clotted up and
tried to break out to the west. I don’t know whether they
planned to escape entirely or meant to swing around and strike from
behind. The dozen who made it through encountered Whisper, and a
heavy fall of the melting dust. The dust killed a half-dozen
workers for every castle creature, but it stopped the charge. Only
five creatures survived it.
Those five immediately encountered the portal from elsewhere
that expelled the cold breath of the infinite. They all
perished.
Whisper, meantime, was scrambling for altitude. A drum-roll
procession of bangs pursued her up the sky. She was a better flyer
than Journey, but even so could not evade injury. Down she came,
eventually touching down beyond the fortress.
Within the castle itself creatures were out with the
cats-o’-nine-tails, extinguishing the fires started by
Whisper and the Limper. The structure had begun to look pathetic,
so much of its substance had been consumed. Gone was the dark,
dreadful grace of weeks before. It was one big, dark, glassy lump,
and it seemed impossible that creatures could survive inside it,
yet they did, and continued the fight. A handful came out on the
ramp and did something which gnawed black chunks out of the
Lieutenant’s conflagration. All the creatures on the slope
ran for home, not a one forgetting to scoop up at least one
body.
The ice door opened again, its breath dumping on the steps. The
fires died instantly. A score of the creatures died too, hammered
to powder by the Lieutenant’s missiles. The things inside
took a tack I had anticipated fearfully since I had seen Feather
crash. They turned their booming spell on the slope.
If it wasn’t the thing that had pursued the Lieutenant,
Elmo, One-Eye and me that day, it was a close cousin. There
wasn’t much flash or smoke when they used it on the slope,
but huge holes appeared, often with bloody pulp smashed into their
bottoms.
All this happened so swiftly, so dramatically, that nobody
really had time to think. I don’t doubt that even the Company
would have run had events been stretched out enough to allow
thinking time. As it was, in their confusion, the men had a chance
only to pursue roles for which they had been preparing since
reaching Juniper. They stood their ground and, too often, died.
The Limper scampered around the slope like an insane chicken,
cackling and hunting creatures who hadn’t died on the steps.
There were a score of those, most surrounded by angry soldiers.
Some of the creatures were slain by their own side, for those knots
made tempting targets for the booming spell.
Teams of creatures appeared on the ramparts, assembling devices
like the one we’d seen them try to use before. This time
there was no Taken above to drop and give them hell.
Not till fool Journey came rushing past the hospital, looking
cruelly battered, and stole the Limper’s carpet.
It had been my notion that one Taken could not use
another’s vehicle. Not so, apparently, for Journey got the
thing aloft and dove upon the castle again, dumping dust and
another fire egg. The castle knocked him down again, and despite
the tumult, I heard the Limper howling and cursing him for it.
Ever see how a child draws a straight line? None too straight.
Something as shaky as a child’s hand scribbled a wobbly line
from Duretile to the black castle. It hung against the night like
an improbable clothesline, wriggling, of indeterminate color,
irridescent. Its tip threw sparks off the obsidian material, like
the meeting of flint and steel magnified ten thousand times,
generating an actinic glare too intense to view directly. The
entire slope was bathed in wild bluish light.
I put aside my instruments and stepped out to better observe,
for down in my gut I knew the Lady anchored the nether end of that
scrawl, having entered the lists for the first time. She was the
big one, the most powerful, and if the castle could be reduced at
all, hers was the might that would do it.
The Lieutenant must have been distracted. For a few seconds his
fires dwindled. A half-dozen castle creatures went up the steps,
dragging two and three corpses apiece. A rush of their compatriots
came out to meet the Limper, who was in hot pursuit. My guess is
they got twelve bodies inside. Some might not have lost the spark
of life entirely.
Chunks flew from the castle where the Lady’s line touched,
each blazing with that brilliant light. Thin cracks, in crimson,
appeared against the black, spreading slowly. The creatures
assembling the devices retreated, were replaced by others trying to
lessen the effects of the Lady’s attack. They had no luck.
Several were knocked down by missiles from the Lieutenant’s
batteries.
The Limper reached the head of the stairs and stood limned
against the glow of a section of castle still afire, sword raised
high. A giant runt, if you will pardon the contradiction. He is a
tiny thing, yet stood huge at that moment. He bellowed,
“Follow me!” and charged down the ramp.
To my everlasting amazement, men followed him. Hundreds of men.
I saw Elmo and the remnants of his company go roaring up, across,
and disappear. Even scores of gutsy citizens decided to take
part.
Part of the story of Marron Shed had come out recently, without
names or such, but with heavy emphasis on how much wealth he and
Raven had garnered. Obviously, the story had been planted against
this moment, when a storm of manpower would be needed to subdue the
castle. In ensuing minutes the call of wealth led many a man from
the Buskin up those steps.
Down on the far side of the castle Whisper reached
One-Eye’s camp. One-Eye and his men, of course, had stood to
arms, but had taken part in nothing yet. His mine operation had
stalled once he was certain there was no way to get around or to
breech the substance of the castle.
Whisper brought one of those eggs of fire, planted it against
the obsidian exposed by One-Eye’s mine. She set it off and
let it gnaw at the fortress’s underbelly.
That, I learned later, had been in the plan for some time. She
had done some fancy flying to bring her crippled carpet down near
One-Eye so she could carry it out.
Seeing the men pour into the castle, seeing the walls abandoned
and being broken up by the Lady, seeing fires burning unchecked, I
decided the battle was ours and was all over but the crying. I went
back into the hospital and resumed cutting and stitching, setting
and just plain shaking my head over men for whom there was nothing
I could do. I wished One-Eye weren’t on the far side of the
ridge. He’d always been my principal assistant, and I missed
him. While I could not denigrate Pockets’ skill, he did not
have One-Eye’s talent. Often there was a man beyond my help
who could be saved with a little magic.
A whoop and howl told me Journey was back, home from his latest
crash and rushing his enemies once more. And not far behind him
came those elements of the Company which had been stationed in the
Buskin. The Lieutenant met Candy and prevented him from rushing
over the ramp. Instead, he manned the perimeter and began rounding
up those laborers who could be found still close to the action. He
started putting things back together.
The bam! weapon had continued pounding away all along. Now it
began to falter. The Lieutenant loudly cursed the fact that there
were no carpets to drop fire eggs.
There was one. The Lady’s. And I was sure she knew the
situation. But she did not abandon her rope of irridescent light.
She must have felt it to be more important.
Down in the mine the fire gnawed through the bottom of the
fortress. A hole slowly expanded. One-Eye says there is very little
heat associated with those flames. The moment Whisper considered it
opportune, she led his force into the fortress.
One-Eye says he really considered going, but had a bad feeling
about it. He watched the mob charge in, workers and all, then hiked
around to our side. He joined me in the hospital and updated me as
he worked.
Moments after he arrived, the backside of the castle collapsed.
The whole earth rumbled. A long roar rolled down the thousand feet
of the back slope. Very dramatic, but to little effect. The castle
creatures were not inconvenienced at all.
Parts of the forewall were falling too, broken by the
Lady’s incessant attack.
Company members continued to arrive, accompanied by frightened
formations of the Duke’s men and even some Custodians rigged
out as soldiers. The Lieutenant fed them into his lines. He allowed
no one else to enter the castle.
Strange lights and fires, fell howls and noises, and terrible,
terrible odors came out of that place. I don’t know what
happened in there. Maybe I never will. I gather that hardly anyone
came back.
A strange, deep-throated, almost inaudible moaning began. It had
me shuddering before I noted it consciously. It climbed in pitch
with extreme deliberation, in volume much more rapidly. Soon it
shook the whole ridge. It came from everywhere at once. After a
while it seemed to have meaning, like speech incredibly slowed. I
could detect a rhythm, like words stretched over minutes.
One thought. One thought alone. The Dominator. He was coming
through.
For an instant I thought I could interpret the words.
“Ardath, you bitch.” But that went away, chased by
fear. Goblin appeared at the hospital, looked us over, and seemed
relieved to find One-Eye there. He said nothing, and I got no
chance to ask what he had been up to recently. He returned to the
night, parting with a wave.
Silent appeared a few minutes later, looking grim. Silent, my
partner in guilty knowledge, whom I had not seen in more than a
year, whom I had missed during my visit to Duretile. He looked
taller, leaner and bleaker than ever. He nodded, began talking
rapidly in deaf speech. “There is a ship on the waterfront
flying a red banner. Go there immediately.”
“What?”
“Go to the ship with the red banner immediately. Stop only
to inform others of the old Company. These are orders from the
Captain. They are not to be disobeyed.”
“One-Eye . . . ”
“I caught it, Croaker,” he said. “What the
hell, hey, Silent?”
Silent signed, “There will be trouble with the Taken. This
ship will sail to Meadenvil, where loose ends must be tied off.
Those who know too much must disappear. Come. We just gather the
old brothers and go.”
There weren’t many old brothers around. One-Eye and I
hurried around telling everyone we could find, and in fifteen
minutes a crowd of us were headed toward the Port River bridge, one
as baffled as another. I kept looking back. Elmo was inside the
castle. Elmo, who was my best friend. Elmo, who might be taken by
the Taken . . .
The Lady hadn’t forgotten me. Not even a little. Shortly
after midnight a grim Elmo rousted me out. “Whisper is here.
Wants you, Croaker.”
“Eh?” I hadn’t done anything to arouse her
ire. Not for weeks.
“They want you over to Duretile. She wants you. Whisper is
here to take you back.”
Ever seen a grown man faint? I haven’t. But I came close.
I may have come close to having a stroke, too. My blood pressure
must have soared. For two minutes I was vertiginous and unable to
think. My heart pounded. My guts ached with fear. I knew she was
going to drag me in for a session with the Eye, which sees every
secret buried in a man’s mind. And yet I could do nothing to
evade her. It was too late to run. I wished I had been aboard the
ship to Meadenvil with Pawnbroker.
Like a man walking to the gallows, I went out to Whisper’s
carpet, settled myself behind her, and dwindled into my thoughts as
we rose and rushed through the chill night toward Duretile.
As we passed over the Port, Whisper called back, “You must
have made quite an impression back when, physician. You were the
first person she asked about when she got here.”
I found enough presence of mind to ask, “Why?”
“I suspect because she wants her story recorded again. As
she did during the battle at Charm.”
I looked up from my hands, startled. How had she known that?
I’d always pictured the Taken and Lady as uncommunicative
among themselves.
What she said was true. During the battle at Charm the Lady had
dragged me around with her so the events of the day would be
recorded as they happened. And she did not demand special
treatment. In fact, she insisted I write stuff as I saw it. There
was just the faintest whiff of a hint that she expected to be
toppled sometime, and, once she was, expected maltreatment by
historians. She wanted a neutral record to exist. I hadn’t
thought about that for years. It was one of the more curious
anomalies I’d noted about her. She did not care what people
thought of her, but was frightened that the record would be
bastardized to suit someone else’s ends.
The tiniest spark of hope rose from that. Maybe she did want a
record kept. Maybe I could get through this. If I could remain
nimble enough to avoid the Eye.
The Captain met us when we landed on Duretile’s northern
wall. A glance at the carpets there told me all the Taken were on
hand. Even Journey, whom I had expected to remain in the
Barrowland. But Journey would have a grudge to soothe. Feather had
been his wife.
A second glance told me the Captain was silently apologetic
about my situation, that there were things he wanted to say but
dared not. I fed him a tiny shrug, hoped we would get a moment
later. We did not. Whisper led me from the wall directly into the
Lady’s presence.
She hadn’t changed an iota since I had seen her last. The
rest of us had aged terribly, but she remained twenty forever,
radiantly gorgeous with stunning black hair and eyes into which a
man could fall and die. She was, as always, such a focal point of
glamor that she could not be physically described. A detailed
description would be pointless anyway, as what I saw was not the
true Lady. The Lady who looked like that hadn’t existed for
four centuries, if ever.
She rose and came to greet me, a hand extended. I could not tear
my eyes away. She rewarded me with the slightly mocking smile I
recalled so well, as though we shared a secret. I touched her hand
lightly, and was astonished to find it warm. Away from her, when
she vanished from mind except as a distant object of dread, like an
earthquake, I could think of her only as cold, dead, and deadly.
More on the order of a lethal zombie than a living, breathing, even
possibly vulnerable person.
She smiled a second time and invited me to take a seat. I did
so, feeling grotesquely out of place amidst a company which
included all but one of the great evils of the world. And the
Dominator was there in spirit, casting his cold shadow.
I was not there to contribute, that became obvious. The Captain
and Lieutenant did the talking for the Company. The Duke and
Custodian Hargadon were there, too, but contributed little more
than I. The Taken carried the discussion, questioning the Captain
and Lieutenant. Only once was I addressed, and that by the Captain,
who inquired as to my readiness to treat casualties from the
fighting.
The meeting had only one point so far as I was concerned. The
assault was set for dawn, day after the one coming up. It would
continue till the black castle was destroyed or we lost our
capacity to attack.
“The place is a hole in the bottom of the ship of
empire,” the Lady said. “It has to be plugged or we all
drown.” She entertained no protests from the Duke or
Hargadon, both of whom regretted asking her for help. The Duke was
now impotent within his own domain, and Hargadon little better. The
Custodian suspected he would be out of work entirely, once the
threat of the castle ended. Few of the Company and none of the
Taken had been at any pains to conceal their disdain for
Juniper’s odd religion. Having spent a lot of time among the
people, I could say they took it only as seriously as the
Inquisitors, Custodians and a few fanatics made them.
I hoped she went slow if she intended changes, though.
Like so slow the Company would be headed elsewhere before she
started. You mess with people’s religion and you mess with
fire. Even people who don’t much give a damn. Religion is
something that gets hammered in early, and never really goes away.
And has powers to move which go beyond anything rational.
Morning after the day coming up. Total war. All-out effort to
eradicate the black castle. Every resource of the Lady, Taken,
Company and Juniper to be bent to that end, for as long as it
took.
Morning after the day coming up. But it did not work that way.
Nobody told the Dominator he was supposed to wait.
He got in the first strike six hours before jump-off, while most
of the troops and all the civilian laborers were asleep. While the
only Taken patrolling was Journey, who was the least of the
Lady’s henchmen.
It began when one of those bladder-like things bounced over the
wall and filled the gap remaining in the Lieutenant’s ramp.
At least a hundred creatures stormed out of the castle and
crossed.
Journey was alert. He had sensed a strangeness in the castle and
was watching for trouble. He came down fast and drenched those
attackers with the dust that melted.
Bam! Bam-bam-bam! The castle hit him the way it had hit his
one-time wife. He fishtailed through the air, evading the worst,
but caught the edge of every crack, and went down smouldering, his
carpet destroyed.
The banging wakened me. It wakened the entire camp, for it
started the same time as the alarms and drowned them entirely.
I charged out of the hospital, saw the castle creatures boiling
down the steps of the Lieutenant’s ramp. Journey hadn’t
stopped more than a handful. They were enveloped by that protective
glow One-Eye had encountered once before. They spread out,
sprinting through a storm of missiles from the men who had the
watch. A few more fell, but not many. They began extinguishing
lights, I suppose because their eyes were more suited to darkness
than ours.
Men were running everywhere, dragging their clothing on as they
rushed toward or away from the enemy. The laborers panicked and
greatly hampered the Company’s response. Many were killed by
our men, vexed at finding them in the way.
The Lieutenant charged through the chaos bellowing orders. First
he got his batteries of heavy weapons manned and trained on the
steps. He sent messengers everywhere, ordering every ballista,
catapult, mangonel and trebuchet moved to a position where it could
fire on the ramp. That baffled me only till the first castle
creature headed home with a body under each arm. A storm of
missiles hit him, tore the bodies to shreds, battered him to a
pulp, and nearly buried him.
The Lieutenant had trebuchets throw cannisters of oil which
smashed on the steps and caught fire when flaming balls were thrown
after them. He kept the oil and fire flying. The castle creatures
would not run through the flames.
So much for my thinking the Lieutenant was wasting time building
useless engines.
The man knew his job. He was good. His preparation and quick
response were more valuable than anything done by the Lady or Taken
that night. He held the line in the critical minutes.
A mad battle began the moment the creatures realized they were
cut off. They promptly attacked, trying to reach the engines. The
Lieutenant signaled his under-officers and brought the bulk of his
available manpower to bear. He had to. Those creatures were more
than a match for any two soldiers, and they benefited from the
protective glow as well.
Here, there, a brave citizen of Juniper grabbed a fallen weapon
and jumped into the struggle. Most paid the ultimate price, but
their sacrifice helped keep the enemy away from the engines.
It was obvious to everyone that if the creatures escaped with
many bodies, our cause was lost. We’d soon be face-to-face
with their master himself.
The ball pairs began coming over from Duretile, splashing the
night with terrible color. Then Taken dropped from the night,
Limper and Whisper each depositing an egg which hatched the fire
that fed on the stuff of the castle. Limper dodged several attacks
from the castle, swooped around, brought his carpet to ground near
my hospital, where we were swamped by customers already. I had to
retreat there to do the job for which I was paid. I kept the uphill
tent flaps open so I could watch.
Limper left his aerial steed, marched uphill with a long, black
sword that glimmered evilly in the light from the burning fortress.
He radiated a glow not unlike that protecting the castle creatures.
His, however, was far more puissant than theirs, as he demonstrated
when he pushed through the press and attacked them. Their weapons
could not reach him. His sliced through them as though they were
made of lard.
The creatures, by that time, had slaughtered at least five
hundred men. The majority were workers, but the Company had taken a
terrible beating, too. And that beating went on even after the
Limper turned the tide, for he could engage but one creature at a
time. Our people strove to keep the enemy contained till the Limper
could get to them.
They responded by trying to swamp the Limper, which they managed
with some success, fifteen or twenty piling on and keeping him
pinned by sheer body weight. The Lieutenant shifted the fire of the
engines temporarily, pounded that seething pile till it broke up
and the Limper regained his feet.
That ploy having failed, a band of the creatures clotted up and
tried to break out to the west. I don’t know whether they
planned to escape entirely or meant to swing around and strike from
behind. The dozen who made it through encountered Whisper, and a
heavy fall of the melting dust. The dust killed a half-dozen
workers for every castle creature, but it stopped the charge. Only
five creatures survived it.
Those five immediately encountered the portal from elsewhere
that expelled the cold breath of the infinite. They all
perished.
Whisper, meantime, was scrambling for altitude. A drum-roll
procession of bangs pursued her up the sky. She was a better flyer
than Journey, but even so could not evade injury. Down she came,
eventually touching down beyond the fortress.
Within the castle itself creatures were out with the
cats-o’-nine-tails, extinguishing the fires started by
Whisper and the Limper. The structure had begun to look pathetic,
so much of its substance had been consumed. Gone was the dark,
dreadful grace of weeks before. It was one big, dark, glassy lump,
and it seemed impossible that creatures could survive inside it,
yet they did, and continued the fight. A handful came out on the
ramp and did something which gnawed black chunks out of the
Lieutenant’s conflagration. All the creatures on the slope
ran for home, not a one forgetting to scoop up at least one
body.
The ice door opened again, its breath dumping on the steps. The
fires died instantly. A score of the creatures died too, hammered
to powder by the Lieutenant’s missiles. The things inside
took a tack I had anticipated fearfully since I had seen Feather
crash. They turned their booming spell on the slope.
If it wasn’t the thing that had pursued the Lieutenant,
Elmo, One-Eye and me that day, it was a close cousin. There
wasn’t much flash or smoke when they used it on the slope,
but huge holes appeared, often with bloody pulp smashed into their
bottoms.
All this happened so swiftly, so dramatically, that nobody
really had time to think. I don’t doubt that even the Company
would have run had events been stretched out enough to allow
thinking time. As it was, in their confusion, the men had a chance
only to pursue roles for which they had been preparing since
reaching Juniper. They stood their ground and, too often, died.
The Limper scampered around the slope like an insane chicken,
cackling and hunting creatures who hadn’t died on the steps.
There were a score of those, most surrounded by angry soldiers.
Some of the creatures were slain by their own side, for those knots
made tempting targets for the booming spell.
Teams of creatures appeared on the ramparts, assembling devices
like the one we’d seen them try to use before. This time
there was no Taken above to drop and give them hell.
Not till fool Journey came rushing past the hospital, looking
cruelly battered, and stole the Limper’s carpet.
It had been my notion that one Taken could not use
another’s vehicle. Not so, apparently, for Journey got the
thing aloft and dove upon the castle again, dumping dust and
another fire egg. The castle knocked him down again, and despite
the tumult, I heard the Limper howling and cursing him for it.
Ever see how a child draws a straight line? None too straight.
Something as shaky as a child’s hand scribbled a wobbly line
from Duretile to the black castle. It hung against the night like
an improbable clothesline, wriggling, of indeterminate color,
irridescent. Its tip threw sparks off the obsidian material, like
the meeting of flint and steel magnified ten thousand times,
generating an actinic glare too intense to view directly. The
entire slope was bathed in wild bluish light.
I put aside my instruments and stepped out to better observe,
for down in my gut I knew the Lady anchored the nether end of that
scrawl, having entered the lists for the first time. She was the
big one, the most powerful, and if the castle could be reduced at
all, hers was the might that would do it.
The Lieutenant must have been distracted. For a few seconds his
fires dwindled. A half-dozen castle creatures went up the steps,
dragging two and three corpses apiece. A rush of their compatriots
came out to meet the Limper, who was in hot pursuit. My guess is
they got twelve bodies inside. Some might not have lost the spark
of life entirely.
Chunks flew from the castle where the Lady’s line touched,
each blazing with that brilliant light. Thin cracks, in crimson,
appeared against the black, spreading slowly. The creatures
assembling the devices retreated, were replaced by others trying to
lessen the effects of the Lady’s attack. They had no luck.
Several were knocked down by missiles from the Lieutenant’s
batteries.
The Limper reached the head of the stairs and stood limned
against the glow of a section of castle still afire, sword raised
high. A giant runt, if you will pardon the contradiction. He is a
tiny thing, yet stood huge at that moment. He bellowed,
“Follow me!” and charged down the ramp.
To my everlasting amazement, men followed him. Hundreds of men.
I saw Elmo and the remnants of his company go roaring up, across,
and disappear. Even scores of gutsy citizens decided to take
part.
Part of the story of Marron Shed had come out recently, without
names or such, but with heavy emphasis on how much wealth he and
Raven had garnered. Obviously, the story had been planted against
this moment, when a storm of manpower would be needed to subdue the
castle. In ensuing minutes the call of wealth led many a man from
the Buskin up those steps.
Down on the far side of the castle Whisper reached
One-Eye’s camp. One-Eye and his men, of course, had stood to
arms, but had taken part in nothing yet. His mine operation had
stalled once he was certain there was no way to get around or to
breech the substance of the castle.
Whisper brought one of those eggs of fire, planted it against
the obsidian exposed by One-Eye’s mine. She set it off and
let it gnaw at the fortress’s underbelly.
That, I learned later, had been in the plan for some time. She
had done some fancy flying to bring her crippled carpet down near
One-Eye so she could carry it out.
Seeing the men pour into the castle, seeing the walls abandoned
and being broken up by the Lady, seeing fires burning unchecked, I
decided the battle was ours and was all over but the crying. I went
back into the hospital and resumed cutting and stitching, setting
and just plain shaking my head over men for whom there was nothing
I could do. I wished One-Eye weren’t on the far side of the
ridge. He’d always been my principal assistant, and I missed
him. While I could not denigrate Pockets’ skill, he did not
have One-Eye’s talent. Often there was a man beyond my help
who could be saved with a little magic.
A whoop and howl told me Journey was back, home from his latest
crash and rushing his enemies once more. And not far behind him
came those elements of the Company which had been stationed in the
Buskin. The Lieutenant met Candy and prevented him from rushing
over the ramp. Instead, he manned the perimeter and began rounding
up those laborers who could be found still close to the action. He
started putting things back together.
The bam! weapon had continued pounding away all along. Now it
began to falter. The Lieutenant loudly cursed the fact that there
were no carpets to drop fire eggs.
There was one. The Lady’s. And I was sure she knew the
situation. But she did not abandon her rope of irridescent light.
She must have felt it to be more important.
Down in the mine the fire gnawed through the bottom of the
fortress. A hole slowly expanded. One-Eye says there is very little
heat associated with those flames. The moment Whisper considered it
opportune, she led his force into the fortress.
One-Eye says he really considered going, but had a bad feeling
about it. He watched the mob charge in, workers and all, then hiked
around to our side. He joined me in the hospital and updated me as
he worked.
Moments after he arrived, the backside of the castle collapsed.
The whole earth rumbled. A long roar rolled down the thousand feet
of the back slope. Very dramatic, but to little effect. The castle
creatures were not inconvenienced at all.
Parts of the forewall were falling too, broken by the
Lady’s incessant attack.
Company members continued to arrive, accompanied by frightened
formations of the Duke’s men and even some Custodians rigged
out as soldiers. The Lieutenant fed them into his lines. He allowed
no one else to enter the castle.
Strange lights and fires, fell howls and noises, and terrible,
terrible odors came out of that place. I don’t know what
happened in there. Maybe I never will. I gather that hardly anyone
came back.
A strange, deep-throated, almost inaudible moaning began. It had
me shuddering before I noted it consciously. It climbed in pitch
with extreme deliberation, in volume much more rapidly. Soon it
shook the whole ridge. It came from everywhere at once. After a
while it seemed to have meaning, like speech incredibly slowed. I
could detect a rhythm, like words stretched over minutes.
One thought. One thought alone. The Dominator. He was coming
through.
For an instant I thought I could interpret the words.
“Ardath, you bitch.” But that went away, chased by
fear. Goblin appeared at the hospital, looked us over, and seemed
relieved to find One-Eye there. He said nothing, and I got no
chance to ask what he had been up to recently. He returned to the
night, parting with a wave.
Silent appeared a few minutes later, looking grim. Silent, my
partner in guilty knowledge, whom I had not seen in more than a
year, whom I had missed during my visit to Duretile. He looked
taller, leaner and bleaker than ever. He nodded, began talking
rapidly in deaf speech. “There is a ship on the waterfront
flying a red banner. Go there immediately.”
“What?”
“Go to the ship with the red banner immediately. Stop only
to inform others of the old Company. These are orders from the
Captain. They are not to be disobeyed.”
“One-Eye . . . ”
“I caught it, Croaker,” he said. “What the
hell, hey, Silent?”
Silent signed, “There will be trouble with the Taken. This
ship will sail to Meadenvil, where loose ends must be tied off.
Those who know too much must disappear. Come. We just gather the
old brothers and go.”
There weren’t many old brothers around. One-Eye and I
hurried around telling everyone we could find, and in fifteen
minutes a crowd of us were headed toward the Port River bridge, one
as baffled as another. I kept looking back. Elmo was inside the
castle. Elmo, who was my best friend. Elmo, who might be taken by
the Taken . . .