“An illusion.” Tobe shook his head. “No accounting for these mages, what they’ll come up with, eh, lady?”
Kel rubbed the back of her neck. “No accounting at all,” she replied.
Soon the dogs and birds returned. “Anyone?” Kel asked Jump. The dog shook his head. “But there are people living there.” He nodded.
“Cleared out,” said Gil. “And not for us. For Stenmun. They don’t even know we’re here.”
“They’re afraid of their own people?” Owen asked. “That’s sad.”
“I wonder how many children they have,” murmured Fanche.
Kel chewed her lower lip, thinking. “Let’s risk the village and the road,” she decided. “We need to catch up with Stenmun. Gil, those of you with the last forward party, ride. Try to reach them before they get to the castle. There aren’t enough of us for a siege. You have to slow them down before they reach Blayce. Sparrows, some of you fly ahead. Try to get Stenmun’s horses to slow down without scaring them. Tobe will help once he’s close. Go, go, go!”
Seafas, Tobe, Gil and the remaining convict soldiers rushed back to their horses. Kel looked at the others. “We’ll have to push the warhorses, I’m afraid,” she said regretfully. “If we catch the enemy soon we should be all right. Please, Goddess,” she added. Horses were dedicated to the Great Mother.
They mounted and rode, the dogs and birds spreading into the woods to scout. As they passed through the village, Kel noticed a dropped broom, a tipped-over bucket, a lone chicken pecking at the dust. The people had left in a hurry. She had to pray her animal scouts would find them if they waited somewhere nearby with bows, ready to shoot her and her companions in the back.
The road followed the rise out of the small valley that cupped the village. When it levelled, Kel found that her advance party had come to a halt. Their horses reared and danced in the road, their eyes panic-white all the way round the irises. They were terrified despite Tobe’s reassurances.
Sparrows flew shrieking around a bend in the road ahead, crying their most serious alarm. Kel’s scalp prickled. She put two fingers to her mouth and whistled. Saefas turned to look, and she waved him and the others back to her. Though the advance group’s smaller, lighter horses were terrified to advance, they weren’t too scared to return to Kel and the others. They came at the gallop.
The only bird sounds Kel heard were made by a few sparrows. The dogs and cat burst from the woods ahead, racing until they could stand in the road with their people. Jump and Shepherd came last, hackles raised, lips peeled away from their teeth as they voiced low, shuddering growls. They backed down the road to Kel, eyes fixed ahead. Beyond the sounds they made, and those of riders trying to soothe nervous mounts, Kel heard none of the noise of normal forest life. She got her bow and strung it, bracing its lower end against her boot in the stirrup. “Ropes,” she called. She had the feeling that just now readiness was more important than secrecy. “Dom, you remember the last time the birds got this upset?” she asked, making sure she could reach her quiver easily.
“I do,” he said grimly. “Boys, let’s have the special ropes out.” The men of his squad turned pale and moved the coils of rope they carried from the backs of their saddles to the front. “We borrowed a page from your book, ropes with a chain core,” Dom explained. “Oh, look, Mother. We have company for supper.”
Three black metal killing devices walked around the bend in the road. The hammered iron domes that were their heads swivelled to and fro on the neck grooves, questing for their quarry.
The things stopped and fanned out. The sparrows attacked two, swooping and dodging, circling the devices’ heads like a swarm of flies. Both halted, confused. Helm-heads swivelled as they tried to follow the birds. Kel hoped none of the birds would try to climb into the things’ eyepits, as the bird that died at Haven had done.
The third device strode towards them on the grassy border on Kel’s left. Its steps were uncertain, its movements slow and uncoordinated. New? she wondered. Or was something not right with the child whose spirit gave the thing its unnatural life?
She selected an arrow and put it to the string. She rose in her stirrups, aiming at the slow one’s helm, as two of Dom’s men galloped towards the closest device, a rope stretched between them. They spread apart to avoid the thing’s knife-clawed hands.
Kel loosed her arrow. It sped across the distance between her and the slowest device and punched into its iron dome. Shepherd raced over to the thing and leaped, twisting to avoid its wildly flailing knife-fingers and gripping the arrow’s shaft in his jaws. His weight snapped the arrow, allowing its head to fall into the dome, opening a gap for the child-spirit to escape. The dog’s momentum carried him free as the device collapsed in a heap.
“Can I have one of those arrows?” asked Fanche. Kel handed one over and selected a third for herself.
Dom’s first two riders galloped past the device in the centre of the road. Their rope snagged neatly under the thing’s chin, in its neck groove. The riders then galloped at each other, crossing the rope so it encircled the device’s neck. It snapped off its feet, crashing on to its back. Two more of Dom’s men rode forward, twirling rope lassos. The nooses settled over the device’s arms and pulled tight. Behind them came more of Dom’s men to lasso the thing’s feet.
Kel and Fanche shot the second device in the dome, nicking a feather on a sparrow who didn’t move quickly enough. Both arrows struck the device and punched through. It began to spin, clawing at the arrows. Its knives sheared through the shafts, allowing the arrowheads to drop inside the dome. A small cloud issued from one of the holes, wailing like an infant. Its iron prison collapsed as the wind blew the infant’s ghost away.
The third device hung in the air between five horsemen, spreadeagled by tight-drawn ropes. It fought to get free as the men wrapped the ropes around their saddle horns and backed the horses, until the thing’s limbs were stretched to their limits. Dom got down from his horse, choosing an axe from his weapons. It was like Kel’s own war-axe, a blade on one side, a sharp spike on the other. Dom smashed the spike into the device’s helm. When he yanked it free, the white ghost-cloud flowed out and broke up. The device went dead, and his men recovered their ropes.
“Lady,” Tobe called, “we got visitors.” Kel looked back.
From the trees on either side of the road came the missing villagers, men and women, armed with scythes, axes, flails, crude spears with knives strapped to them for blades, whips and a few clumsily made bows. They spread out across the road.
Kel looked at Gil. “Take a scout and go ahead, in the woods,” she ordered. “I need to know what that Stenmun is doing.”
“This day just gets better and better,” groused Owen as they turned their horses. “Why can’t we fight real warriors, who know what they’re doing?”
Kel and Peachblossom advanced through her people as they moved aside. Neal and Owen followed on either side of her; Tobe rode beside Owen. The animals came with them, but for the sparrows who left with Gil or went to search the woods. Kel held up a hand; she and her immediate companions halted out of the range of the villagers’ weak bows.
“We don’t want trouble,” she called in Scanran. “Our business is with those who just rode through your village. We mean no harm to you if you mean none to us.”
A girl of no more than six or seven years trotted out of a dump of bushes to stand at the centre of the road. She clutched a floppy rag doll to her chest. Kel thought of Meech and twisted her ring of bright red yarn, wanting to scream with impatience. Her problems were ahead, not behind. If she’d been alone she might have run, but she didn’t want farmers who knew this area to be after her people.
The child stared up at her and smiled. She had vivid dark green eyes rimmed with long lashes as brown as her waving mass of hair. Her smile was full of innocent good will. When she grinned, she revealed a missing front tooth. After looking at Kel for a moment, she faced the villagers. “That’s the one, all right,” the girl announced. “I told you she would come, the Protector of the Small. And she’s got her knowing animals, the healer, and the horse boy, the armed men and the marked men, the trapper and the bitter mother. They’re all here. Blayce will fall.”
A man, sharp-featured and lank-haired, came up to stand beside the child. “She is a seer,” he explained, his dark eyes hard as he looked Kel over. “She prophesied that you would come and save us from the Gallan. You had better be worth the wait.”
“I’m not interested in waiting,” Kel replied, happy that her mail hid the goosebumps that had rippled over her skin when the little girl spoke. “Every moment I sit here puts Stenmun closer to the castle and its walls. If you don’t mind, go home and let me do what I came to do.”
“You must come with us,” the little girl said matter-of-factly. “They’re closing the castle gates now. Blayce has your children.”
Kel’s heart froze. She turned Peachblossom and set him racing down the road towards the castle. She had not gone a mile when she met Gil, his companion Morun, and the sparrows. The bleak look in the men’s eyes told Kel the young seer was right. Stenmun, and Kel’s charges, were in Blayce’s hands.
How could she get in? They couldn’t lay a siege here, not twenty-odd fighters without supplies or catapults. Were they completely helpless?
She rode on past her scouts. The castle. It wasn’t as far off as it had looked from the ridge above the village. The trees ended where the castle’s owners had cleared the land to leave half a mile around its walls with no cover for attackers. Armed men trotted to positions on the walls: Kel’s people were expected. She saw no moat or abatis. Her men might try to scale the walls that night. Dom and Connac had brought grapples.
The castle itself was not particularly big. The river flowed along its east side, a brisk, deep obstacle. On the north side a sheer stone cliff soared hundreds of yards into the air. The north and east walls, then, were well defended. The west and south walls might be climbed in the dark, if the guards were distracted, and if the mage had set no further illusions or killing devices to protect the place. Kel didn’t like to calculate with so many “ifs” to consider.
The wind stirred. It bore a stench and a clacking sound. Gripping her spyglass with hands that trembled with frustration, Kel opened it. She found the source immediately. Corpses hung from the walls in iron cages. Some of the bodies were beginning to fall apart. At least two looked fairly recent. Some cages hung empty. The dead looked to be adults, not children. Kel wondered who had been so unfortunate as to suffer Blayce’s wrath.
Slowly she rode back, considering. They needed a distraction, a good one. An assault had a better chance of success after dark, but she feared to wait that long. How many children would be dead by the time she got her plans in order?
When she rejoined her force, the villagers were still there. “Come with us,” the little girl said. “We’ll help you.”
Kel looked bleakly down at her. “How?” she demanded. “And when?”
“Tonight,” said the man who had spoken before. “We know a way inside.”
It took a moment for his words to penetrate Kel’s gloom. When they did, her nerves came to fiery life. “A way in? Then we can’t wait. We’ll distract them, draw them off.”
“We wait,” the man replied stubbornly. “There’s no cover, and the way lies right under their walls. Unless you’ve a mage who can hide everyone, we’re not killing our own so you can bravely charge in.”
Kel leaned forward, clutching her saddle horn tightly in her effort to be patient. “You don’t understand,” she told them fiercely. “They have nearly two hundred of our children. I want them back - all of them. How many will he slaughter between now and dark?”
“None,” said a hollow-eyed woman. She wiped her mouth on a grimy sleeve. “Right now he’s arranging for them to have baths, and have their hair combed and curled. He’s showing them rooms of toys and beds with clean sheets and silken comforters. Later they’ll eat food the likes of which they’ve only dreamed.”
“He’ll talk to them, and tell them they’re safe,” added the lank-haired man. “He’ll make Stenmun apologize on bended knee for scaring them. They’ll play games tonight and tomorrow. They’ll have kittens and puppies and more baths. They get balm put on their chapped little hands to make them as smooth as a lady’s. He won’t pick his first one for a couple of days, and that only if he’s in a hurry.”
“How do you know all this?” asked Neal. “How can you be sure?”
“My daughter worked there, till he found she was smuggling poppy to the ones he’d chosen,” said the hollow-eyed woman. “She’s hanging on the walls right now.”
“And my daughter’s there, and my son,” the lank-haired man told them. “My grandchildren went in there and never came out.”
“Your children work for him?” demanded Owen. “They lend themselves to that?”
“He says if they don’t, he’ll kill us,” retorted another woman. “He tells us that if we refuse to till his fields, he will kill them.”
Kel sat for a moment, looking at these people. They were ragged, thin and dirty. She remembered the homes in the village, the bad thatching, the windows with shutters made of trash wood, the crudely made pens and coops. These people got no profit from the creation of killing devices. They looked as if they were near starvation.
“I don’t understand,” Neal said abruptly. “He doesn’t need that for death magic. Clothes, or food, or toys. Bathing, maybe, for purification, but the rest makes no sense.”
“He doesn’t do it because it’s needed,” said the hollow-eyed woman, her voice thick with scorn. “He does it because he likes it.”
“He could use any ghosts for his magic,” the girl seer added, rocking her doll in her arms. “As long as the king in Hamrkeng gets his evil metal creatures, he doesn’t care who Blayce uses or how he uses them.”
“At least, he doesn’t care if our children are used, or yours across the border,” said the lank-haired man, his voice cracking. “It would be different if Blayce wanted nobles’ children.” He shook his head as if to clear it. “Well?” he demanded, brown eyes fierce as he glared at Kel. “Do you want in, or don’t you? Will you rid us of him, or will you stay here like a herd of cows?”