Meanwhile the other monsters were busy. The winged horse was rearing and stomping; the rabbits were gnawing into legs; the double-headed eagle was plucking eyeballs neatly from their sockets and swallowing them whole, the satyr was--Dor stared for a moment in amazement, then forced his gaze away. He had never imagined killing men that way. The more formidable monsters were laying about them with similar glee, reveling in an orgy of slaughter. For centuries they had restrained themselves from attacking men too freely, for men could be extremely ornery about vengeance. Now the monsters had license. Now, and perhaps never again.
The Mundanes, however, were tough. They had no magic of their own, but compensated by being extremely disciplined in combat and skilled with their weapons. Quickly realizing that they could neither prevail nor escape on the open battlefield, they fell back to natural and artificial defenses. The burning wagon made a good barricade, and next to it the moat made another. Mounds of dirt and debris had been formed by the dragon's thrashing tail, and these made excellent cover. The archers, nestled behind such shelter, were scoring on the lesser monsters, bringing down the barnacle geese and rabbits and hurting the thunderbird and sliver cat. The swordsmen were mastering the trick of sliding their blades up under the scales of the armored creatures, penetrating to their vital organs. Perhaps a quarter of the Mundanes had perished in the initial clash, but now half the monsters were dead or injured, and the tide of battle was turning. Dor had never anticipated this. What phenomenal brutes men were! "Now we must assist our allies," the Zombie Master said.
"Oh no you don't!" Millie protested protectively. "You'll get killed, and I haven't even married you yet."
"My life is complete, receiving such a caution from such as you," the Magician murmured.
"Don't make fun of me! I'm worried!"
"There was no fun intended," he said seriously. "All my life I have longed for attention like this. Nevertheless, there is an obligation to acquit."
"No!"
"Peace, my dear. Zombies cannot die."
"Oh." Her innocence became her yet.
Dor, hearing this brief dialogue, suffered again his bit of jealousy. Yet he recognized that Millie had found in the Magician as good a man as was available. The Zombie Master loved her, but loved honor too. He knew she was to die, yet was going to marry her. He had the kind of discipline Dor was striving to master. For the Zombie Master, there was no special conflict between love and honor; they merged.
The Magician sent out a zombie contingent, wearing green sashes. Both monsters and Mundanes were startled. But the monsters let the zombies pass without hindrance. The undead charged into the Mundane positions, picking up fallen weapons along the way and hacking with unsteady but gruesome conviction.
The Mundanes had come to fight zombies. Yet they were taken aback by this sally, and repulsed by the repulsiveness of the half-dead things. The living men overreacted, hacking violently at the things in their midst--and scoring on each other.
Then the monsters rallied and bore in again. The zombies had made the difference; the defensive positions of the Mundanes were overrun, and the carnage resumed.
But the monsters were tired now, and some were pausing to glut themselves on the bodies of slain Mundanes. The monsters had been great in ferocity, not number, and some were dead. The Mundanes still outnumbered them, and after their lapse with the zombies, their excellent fighting discipline reasserted itself. The tide of battle was turning again, despite the zombies efforts. There were too few of them to last long.
Then some wickedly smart Mundane caught on to the significance of the green sashes. He ripped one from a dismembered zombie and put it around himself. And of course the monsters did not attack him.
"Disaster!" Dor exclaimed, remembering Murphy. "In a moment they'll all be wearing green!" He started for the front gate."
"I will swing us down," Jumper chittered. "It is faster."
"But--" Millie started, appalled. Dor experienced a flush of gratitude: she was solicitous of his welfare, too.
Jumper fastened a dragline to Dor's waist. Dor jumped over the parapet. Jumper played out the line, letting him drop swiftly but carefully into the moat
Millie made a stifled scream, but Dor was all right. The water softened the impact, and the commotion outside was such that not even the moat-monster noticed him. He sloshed to land. Jumper bounded to ground, then skated on the surface of the water to make sure Dor was all right.
No one paid attention to them. They passed the griffin, who was busy disemboweling a Mundane; the creature glanced up, saw the sashes, and returned to its business. Dor and Jumper proceeded unmolested to the nearest green-sashed Mundane. The man was laying about him with vigor, slashing at the chimera, who was backing off uncertainly. The monster didn't know whether it was legitimate to crunch this green-clad foe, however obnoxious the man became.
Dor had no scruples. He charged up, sword bared.
The Mundane saw him. "Come, friend--let's get this dumb monster!" And Dor's blade ran him through. The Mundane's only reaction as he died was surprise.
"Okay, chimera--go to it!" Dor urged the monster. The chimera, its doubt resolved, returned to the attack against unsashed Mundanes.
Dor proceeded to the next green-sashed Mundane. Now a scruple caught up to him. He felt a twinge of guilt for what he was doing, until he reminded himself that it was the same thing the Mundanes were doing: masquerading as a friend. If they hadn't started impersonating monster-exempt humans, they would not have been fooled by the real green-sashes. Dor was merely restoring the validity of the designations. So the scruple paused, then reluctantly retreated. A battlefield was not a fit home for scruples.
Jumper was an anomaly: he resembled a monster, yet wore the sash. A wyvern glanced at him, startled, then returned to the fray. Jumper looped silk around a sashed Mundane, chomped him neatly on the head with his chelicerae nippers, and went on. The spider was enjoying this; after all, these Mundanes had tortured him by pulling out four of his legs.
Thanks to Dor and Jumper's activity, the monsters swung into a slow ascendancy again. The Mundanes did not stem the tide this time; they fell back toward their base camp, taking losses, pressed by monsters, zombies, and Dor and Jumper. The battle was almost over.
Then another smart Mundane popped up. Smart Mundanes were a nuisance! He ducked under Dor's swing, came in close, and ripped Dor's sash from his body. "Now fight!" he screamed.
Dor's return thrust skewered him. But the damage was done. The sash was buried under the body, and the hippogriff was bearing down on him. There was now no way Dor could distinguish himself from the Mundanes.
The hippogriff had the forepart of a griffin and the hind part of a horse. That gave it excellent fighting ability, coupled with superior running ability. The eagle's beak and claws stabbed viciously forward. Dor danced aside, then cut at a wing with his sword. He didn't strike too hard, because he did not want to hurt or kill a creature on his own side, but he had to defend himself. It was the hippogriffs turn to take evasive action. But then it closed its wings and bore in again, and Dor knew he could not survive the onslaught long. The monster was too big, too fast, too strong; it was wary of Dor's sword, but able to dodge it. The hippogriff was tired, but so was Dor.
"Jumper!" Dor cried. But then he saw that Jumper was engaged with three unsashed Mundanes, and could not extricate himself, let alone come to Dor's rescue. The four-footed whale rose up between them, opening its huge cetacean maw to engulf-gulp a Mundane; it incidentally blocked off Dor's approach to Jumper. Now he had nowhere at all to go. Oh, this was terrible!
But the Zombie Master, high in the castle, was watching out for him. Millie's fault scream came, and there was a spark of sunlight from her swirl of hair; then the Magician's faint command: "Egor!" And the zombie ogre charged out of the castle, bearing a gargantuan club. He swept aside Mundanes and monsters alike, bearing down on Dor.
Until he encountered the land whale. This monster was simply too big to mo
ve, and it was not about to give way to an ogre, even a green-sashed zombie ogre, The whale did not attack; it just hulked. It had the head and tusks of a boar, and rows of spikes on its body, with powerful lion's legs: a slow but formidable creature. The ogre had to make a detour around it--and in that critical period of delay, the hippogriff spread its wings, fanned a cloud of battle dust into Dor's face so that he was momentarily blinded, and clawed swiftly at his sword, disarming him. Dor threw up his arms in a futile defensive gesture--
And found himself lifted high, unharmed. Startled, he blinked vision back into his watering eyes, getting the dust out, and discovered himself hooked on the long tip of the Dragon King's tail. Fifty feet away, the dragon's snout growled, emitting puffs of smoke.
"What's he saying?" Dor demanded of a stone as he was being carried past
"Better be more careful of your sash, Magician!" the stone translated.
The Dragon King had recognized Dor, and saved him. In a moment Dor was dumped beside the moat, out of the fray. The tail snaked back, to emerge with Jumper. "With your concurrence," the Dragon roared, "I will personally slay a few sashed men. There are none here on your side, apart from the zombies, correct?"
"Correct!" Dor cried, thankful for the dragon's perspicacity. The regular monsters might not know the difference, but the Dragon King obviously did.
"No wonder he is King," Jumper chittered. The spider had lost a foot, but was otherwise intact, "We must get back inside the castle; the monsters will prevail."
"Right. Should we call back Egor?"
"He is having such a good time; let him rampage."
They re-entered the castle, where Millie was waiting with healing elixir. In a moment the spider's foot was whole, and Dor's many abrasions were gone.
Millie hugged Jumper briefly, turned to Dor, and refrained from making a similar gesture. After all, she was now betrothed to another man. They returned to the upper ledge to watch the conclusion of the battle.
In this installment, the monsters were mopping things up. The tough Mundanes became less tough as they perceived defeat looming, and finally they broke and fled. The monsters pursued, cutting them down without mercy. The vicinity of the castle was deserted, the ground strewn with the bodies of men and monsters, and with struggling pieces of zombies.
"Now I must work," the Zombie Master said. "Dor, if you will supervise the carrying of bodies to my laboratory, I will render them into loyal zombies. It will require a few minutes and some effort for each, so you need not hurry--but the faster we perform, the stronger the zombies will be. Also, we shall need to march within a day, to reach King Roogna's castle in time to be of service."
Dor nodded agreement. He saw how tired the Magician looked, and remembered that he had spent all the prior night making new zombies. The man needed a rest! But that would have to wait. After all, Dor himself had had no more rest.
They organized it and got to work. Millie spotted the best corpses of man and animal, now so accustomed to the gore that she worked without even token screams. Dor carried the bodies to a staging area. Jumper attached lines and hauled the objects across the moat to the castle. They concentrated first on Mundanes. When a number of these had been animated, the new zombies took over the labor of transporting corpses, and the pace accelerated. Soon there was a backlog of bodies awaiting the Magician's attention.
The Dragon King returned. He was spattered with blood, and several of his mirror-scales had been hacked off, but he was in fairly good condition. "That was some fun!" he growled. "There is not a man alive, here." There was no flame when he spoke; he had used it all up for the nonce.
"Oh, let me give you some elixir!" Millie exclaimed. She sprinkled some on him, and the dragon was instantly restored to full health. Then she went to the other monsters straggling back, and restored them similarly.
"One could almost get to like a creature like that, human though she be," the dragon said reflectively. "There is something about her--"
"The dead we shall reanimate as zombies, as promised," Dor said quickly.
"No need. The survivors will consume the dead, as is our custom. We do not care to become zombies."
"We have been taking the intact corpses. If you are satisfied to eat the dismembered ones--"
"They will do nicely." And the monsters fell to their repast, crunching up bodies. It was a strange and grisly scene: dragon and griffin and serpent, ripping into corpses, while zombies carried other corpses around them in sepulchral silence, and the pretty maid Millie wandered amid it all sprinkling healing elixir.
"Where is Egor?" Jumper chittered.
Good question! There was no sight of the zombie ogre who had fought so valiantly to rescue them. They spread out, searching.
"You mean the ogre?" the Dragon King inquired, ripping the delicious guts out of a Mundane and smacking his long lips. "He got in a bit of trouble down by the Mundane camp, last I noted."
They ran down to the deserted camp. There, in pieces, was Egor Ogre. The last surviving Mundanes had hacked him to quivering pieces.
"Maybe we can still help," Dor said, his stomach roiling. He had become acclimatized to gore, but this was a friend! "Let's collect all we can find of him, put it together, and sprinkle some elixir."
They did this--and the ogre was restored, except for part of one hand and foot and some of his face they had not been able to locate. The zombie could no longer speak, and walked with a limp. But in his condition that was not too noticeable. They trekked back to the castle.
"Would you monsters care to join us at Castle Roogna?" Dor inquired. "I'm sure the King--the Man King--would welcome your help."
"Fighting whom?" the Dragon King inquired, slurping a tasty intestine.
"Goblins and harpies, mostly."
The dragon snorted a smoke helix. "Now I do have a gripe against the Goblin King, but let's not lose our perspective. Killing men is fun; killing other monsters is treason. We cannot join you there."
"Oh. Well, sir, we certainly thank you for--"
"Our pleasure, sir." The dragon dipped a tooth into the body and brought out a splendid liver. "I haven't eaten this well in fifty years. I'll catch my death of a stomachache." He slurped the liver down.
"Uh, yes," Dor agreed. Liver had never been his favorite food, and after this he doubted that taste would change.
"Since we monsters will not be participating, but do have a grievance against the goblins and no liking for harpies, I feel free to make a comment," the dragon said, fixing a bright eye on Dor. "This battle for the zombie castle has only been your rehearsal for the siege to come. The goblins are tougher than men.
Prepare well--better than you did this time, or you are doomed."
"Tougher than Mundanes? But goblins are so small--"
"Heed my warning. Bye." The Dragon King moved off in quest of another succulent corpse.
Dor shook his head, ill at ease. If the dragon thought the upcoming battle would be worse...
They returned to the castle, where the Zombie Master was still hard at work. A new zombie army was shaping. The others helped all they could, but this was the Zombie Master's labor, and his magic alone sufficed. He worked through the day and into the night, growing even more gaunt than usual--but the zombies continued to shuffle out of the laboratory and form ranks in the courtyard. There had been a great number of Mundanes!
They ate a restive supper of poached jumping beans and bubblejuice, with the beans jumping into the juice at odd moments. Millie forced some on the Magician, who continued working. Most of the bodies were gone from the surrounding landscape now; the monsters had gorged themselves and staggered off to their lairs with toothy smiles and a final fusillade of belches. A zombie detail was burying the uneaten, unusable fragments. The night settled into morbid silence.
Finally the last corpse was done. The Zombie Master sank into a sleep like a coma, and Millie hovered near him worriedly. Dor and Jumper slept too.
Chapter 9
Journey
r /> In the morning, early but not bright, they set off for Castle Roogna. It would have been easiest to have the roc carry them singly to the Castle, but two things argued against this. First, there was an army of about two hundred and fifty zombies to transport, and for this number marching seemed to be the only way. Second, the skies were now being patrolled by aerial sentinels, harbingers of the harpies. The roc, huge as it was, would be torn apart in midair by the vicious creatures, if they decided it was an enemy. As perhaps it was.
The Zombie Master had lived as a recluse so long that he was only vaguely familiar with the terrain, and Dor had not viewed the scenery with an eye to zombie travel when he rode in. The zombies tended to shuffle, and then: feet snagged on roots and vines, tripping them or even ripping off their feet. The majority were Mundane zombies, sounder of body than the older ones; but these were as yet inexperienced and prone to accidents. So it was necessary to scout ahead for a suitable route: one more or less level, avoiding dangerous magic, and reasonably direct.
Dor and Jumper did the scouting, with the man checking the lay of the ground and the spider reviewing the threats lurking in the trees. They worked together to flush out anything uncertain, to determine whether it should be ignored, eliminated, or avoided.
When they had determined a suitable portion of the route, they set magic markers along it for the zombie army to follow. All they had to do was stay well ahead, so that they had time to backtrack and change the route if necessary.
The wilderness of Xanth was not as sophisticated now as it would be in Dor's own time; the magic had not had as much time to achieve the devastating little refinements and variations that made unprotected paths so hazardous. But there was plenty of raw magic here, and no enchanted paths to follow. Overall, Dor judged the jungle to be as dangerous for him as anything he had known--if he allowed himself to get careless.
One of the first things they ran afoul of was dog fennel. The plants had evidently been taking a canine nap, noses tucked under tails, but woke ugly when Dor blundered into them. First they barked; then, gathering courage, they started nipping. Angered, Dor laid about him with his sword, clearing a circle. Then he suffered regret as the creatures yiped and whined, for they really were no threat to him. Each dog grew on a stem, rooted in the turf, and could not move beyond its tether. Its teeth were too small to do much harm.