Crusader (45 page)

First the three who taunted and then trapped us
, said Sheol.

Oh yes,
Qeteb agreed.
First those three…

But his mind was wandering elsewhere. He could sense DragonStar down there, and, more, he could sense that there was the sixth—
a child! a girl!—
that he wanted to protect.

Qeteb smiled. The sixth was a girl. A child!

Knowledge was power, and power was victory.

Urbeth and her daughters had regained some strength during their few hours of rest, but they were still abysmally tired. In particular, Urbeth had seriously depleted her strength, first by creating the rip in Sanctuary that had enabled the peoples and animals hidden there to escape and, second, leading her daughters in the mad dash to draw the Demons away from the still vulnerable convoy.

Now, all three found themselves attacked by murderously calm and determined Demons who had split into two groups to target both ends of the avenue.

At the front of the avenue, Urbeth turned in the snow to find two woodsmen walking towards her.

Both had grins splitting their faces, both had axes raised.

Urbeth growled, and tried to transform into her bear persona, but found her power so seriously exhausted that she could not manage it.

Yet she had to defend her end of the avenue, for otherwise the Demons could walk right in!

Behind her people scrambled further back into the avenue, terrified by the sense of evil emanating from the two strutting woodsmen, Qeteb and Barzula.

They were within five paces of Urbeth.

“Go back,” she said, and drew herself up straight and imperious. On her finger the Circle of Stars flared…and then died.

One of the woodsmen laughed, and Urbeth knew it was Qeteb.

“You are a sorry bitch,” he said in an amiable tone, “to stand guard at the head of this pitiful column. Why don’t you run, pretty rabbit? Why don’t you run?”

And he laughed again, low and nasty. He and Barzula took three small, rapid steps forward, and they now swung their axes back and forth in sweeping, whistling arcs.

There was a slight movement behind Urbeth.

“I am with you,” Axis said, and Urbeth heard the hoof-fall of his brown mare.

“Go back,” she said, without turning to look at him, “for you can do nothing.”

“I can support you,” Axis said. “I can do my best.”

Qeteb laughed again, and, in concert with Barzula, swung his axe faster and faster.

The metal blades screamed through the air, and the two Demons strode into the attack behind the murderous blades of their axes.

“Watch out!” SpikeFeather screamed at the rear of the avenue, and the two women whipped back to face the four Demon-woodsmen who now strode towards them from out of the storm.

As one, the four wore incongruously cheerful, smiling faces, even while their hands wove their axes through the air.

Both the ice women crouched, their hands extended as if claws, but as their mother was weak, so were they, and they could not transform into their deadly bear forms.

The four Demons advanced in a semicircle, now laughing openly, the tempo of their axes increasing with the strength of their merriment.

The rabbits were trapped.

Urbeth raised her hand, and the Circle of Stars finally flared into life, transforming itself into a rod of thin, shimmery metal.

She flung it before her just as an axe sliced through the air. The blade screeched along the surface of the rod, finally sliding off in a shower of sparks.

Axis unsheathed his sword, wishing he had his axe of old, and wishing he had a trusted warhorse under him when…

…
when suddenly he was clothed again in the familiar black, and the sword had transformed itself into his battleaxe, and the horse beneath him, while not Belaguez, showed the same heart and courage in leaping forth into the fray…

Pretty Brown Sal was angry. She was bred as a dancer and a slider, not a fighter, but her light-footedness and litheness served her as well in battle as it did on the dance field, and her anger turned her dainty pirouettes into battle manoeuvres.

The two Demons had forced Urbeth to one knee, their axes striking ever harder against the metal rod, notching and bending it, when suddenly both were hit from behind—one by a mighty axe blow to his head, the other by two-steel-edged hooves crashing down about his shoulders.

Axis laughed, and swung again, delighting in the feel both of Pretty Brown Sal and the axe in his own hand.

Qeteb and Barzula swung about, irritated more than angry, and not hurt—this man and horse had no weapons or magic which could harm them—and simultaneously swung their axes, one aiming to cut the mare’s dainty legs out from under her, the other aiming to bury his axe in the rider’s side.

Both missed.

Sal had skittered
(slid)
lightly to one side while Axis had merely laughed—
gods, how good it felt to be in the heat of battle again!—
and twisted away from the blade.

Qeteb and Barzula stumbled and almost fell with the momentum of their missed swings, then regained their balance. They growled, their beards bristling out to three times their previous length and thickness, and swung their axes once more.

Pretty Brown Sal and Axis slid lightly out of the way.

Barzula screamed and lunged, using his axe as a pike now, rather than as a weapon to swing through the air.

Sal and Axis evaded effortlessly, moving through the snow as its lover, rather than its foe.

Qeteb and Barzula turned to horse and rider; enough was enough, and while axes were pretty, the sheer destructiveness of their power would be enough to dispose of this—

Both screamed as fingers of ice wormed their way into the napes of their necks, and then into their very spines.

Urbeth: her arms were ice from the elbows down. Her fingers had turned into razor-sharp needles, prying and worrying themselves into the Demons’ flesh, slicing through bone and arteries—

Both Demons tore themselves off her claws, and swung about to face her.

Instead, their eyes were riveted on the man sitting the Star Stallion three paces behind the ice woman.

“Aaargh!” SpikeFeather screamed, waving his arms and leaping and twisting about like a maniac. “Aaargh!”

All four Demons hesitated, their eyes slipping from the prey before them to the birdman capering and screaming just to one side of the two women.

“Aaargh!” SpikeFeather screamed again, and dashed madly, foolishly, and utterly desperately at the Demons.

All four raised axes that had momentarily drooped in surprise, and simultaneously swung them at SpikeFeather, who was dashing straight towards the centre of their line.

In that instant before the blades sank home, SpikeFeather dropped flat to the ground, and there was a soft “Ugh!” of surprise as the middle two Demons buried their axes in each other rather than in the birdman.

The other two Demons stumbled and fell, as Qeteb and Barzula had, pulled to the ground by the targetless momentum of their axe swings.

The two wounded Demons wrenched their axes out of each other, cursing softly even as their flesh smoothly mended itself, and raised their axes to do SpikeFeather to death when suddenly they found their forms bristling with spears and pikes.

Behind Urbeth’s daughters stood a line of some three score Ravensbund warriors, already aiming their next phalanx of spears at the Demons.

SpikeFeather reached up, hardly able to breathe through the force of his terror, yet still committed to action, and grabbed one of the spears, twisting and wrenching it until the Demon toppled onto him.

SpikeFeather found himself in an inferno of hatred and vengeance. Fires and teeth lapped and gnashed at his arms wrapped protectively about his head, and he could feel talons slicing down deep into his belly and upper thighs. He screamed, knowing death was only a breath away, when—

—when suddenly the Demon rolled off him and he saw instead the hand of one of Urbeth’s daughters reaching down, her face hovering behind it: beautiful, distant, and utterly, utterly lovely.

SpikeFeather could hear the Demons screaming somewhere in the distance, but for him his entire world consisted of that hand, now touching his, and the almost disembodied face floating behind it.

He blinked, took her hand—

—and found himself standing to one side of what he could only describe as a desperate scrum in the snow. Arms and legs and heads appeared and then disappeared, axes flew, blood spattered about, and howls of rage and frustration wrapped the entire fracas.

SpikeFeather looked about, desperate to find someone to help him in aiding Urbeth’s daughters.

And saw them, standing slightly to one side, their arms folded, their faces smug.

SpikeFeather,
one said in his mind,
we have thrown our shadows in for the Demons to chase.

What will happen,
he said, astounded to find himself able to reply in the same manner,
when they realise the trick?

Both ice women shrugged, and their smiles deepened, but they did not reply.

SpikeFeather turned back to the fray, and then stumbled several steps towards the safety of the avenue.

The Ravensbund were still there, lined up with spears at the ready.

“Hello, Qeteb, Barzula,” DragonStar said, and he nodded behind them. “I believe you have met my father?”

Qeteb hefted his axe.

“No,” DragonStar said, and his voice darkened and became heavier. “No. You cannot hurt what is protected by these trees.”

“Not until you are dead,” Qeteb said.

“Quite,” DragonStar agreed.
“If you
can kill me.”

Qeteb’s eyes slid towards Urbeth. She had somehow grown stronger in the last few minutes, and now she stood straight and tall, her eyes hard, her figure implacable.

Her hands, so recently ice, now turned into the furred claws of the ice bear.

Suddenly Urbeth’s mouth opened in a vicious snarl, and she completed the transformation and crouched to spring.

“The war is between you and me,” DragonStar said, “and between yours and mine.”

“Ah, DragonStar,” Qeteb said, his voice even now. He, as Urbeth had, raised himself to his full height and assumed his true form of black, invulnerable armour. “You cannot begrudge me a pre-dinner nibble or two, can you?”

DragonStar shrugged. “Your nibble has done you no good. What matters is the Hunt through the Maze. That is what you and I both know.”

The Dream grabbed both of them. They were hunting through a Maze of stars, dipping and swaying with the interstellar Star Dance.

All existence held its breath, awaiting the outcome.

DragonStar urged his Star Stallion forward, the Alaunt streaming out to his flanks like the twin tails of a comet, but, despite their speed and power, the great dark beast behind
him was gaining, and DragonStar could sense the weapon Qeteb lifted above his shoulder.

Qeteb took a step forward, and half raised the axe he still held.

The Dream shifted slightly, and DragonStar knew that Qeteb was as much in control of the Dream as he was in control of the Hunt.

“The weapon I wield,” Qeteb screamed through the universe, “is not of metal or even of power. It is the weapon I will fashion from your weakness! See! See!”

And, despite himself, DragonStar turned to see what it was that Qeteb wielded.

Faraday—or what was left of her.

DragonStar felt a cry tear itself from his breast, and the Star Stallion faltered, and the Alaunt milled in confusion, and the next instant Qeteb was upon him.

As Qeteb moved forward, Axis shifted to urge Sal forward as well, but DragonStar shook his head almost imperceptibly, and Axis stilled.

“Neither of us can escape what has been foreordained,” DragonStar said, and none failed to note that his voice trembled slightly.

Everyone watching could feel the amusement radiating out from Qeteb.

“No,” he said, “we can’t. But since I have given your witches such a good head start, I thought it only fair that I amuse myself with this convoy in the meantime. Fair’s fair, after all.”

The sense of amusement—almost joy—radiating out from Qeteb increased tenfold until both Axis and Urbeth were forced to back away several steps.

“And I find,” the Demon continued, “that I have enjoyed myself so much I may well be back for another nibble.”

Qeteb hefted the axe, then hurled it into the ground before the Star Stallion.

Belaguez’s ears flickered, and his eyes rolled slightly, but he did not flinch.

“Don’t bother,” DragonStar said. “This column is invulnerable.”

His only reply was laughter, and DragonStar flinched at its virulence.

Qeteb’s laughter slowly subsided, then, with a final chuckle, he lifted into the air, and was gone within heartbeats, Barzula behind him.

Axis lowered his head from watching the Demons fly away towards the other end of the avenue and looked at his son.

“Tell me you
can
defeat him,” he said.
“Tell me…”

Q
eteb strode into the still squabbling fracas of four Demons and tore them apart. He was in a high good humour—surely he had forced DragonStar’s hand to the point where the starry idiot would try and move the sixth elsewhere…an elsewhere that might be more vulnerable than the column—and thus he did the four no permanent injury. The abrasions and tears he did cause healed themselves within the moment.

SpikeFeather, as Urbeth’s two daughters and the Ravensbund warriors, straightened in alarm—SpikeFeather moving even closer to the two women—but Qeteb laughed and waved a dismissive hand.

“Enjoy your victory while you can,” he said, “for your eventual defeat is but a week or so away.”

And then all six Demons vanished.

Qeteb rose so far into the sky that he was invisible from the ground.