The gaunt librarian stepped forwards and clapped his free hand on Xanth's shoulder. ‘Bad news, I'm afraid, young fellow,’ he said. ‘She was shot down over the Eastern Roost. I'm sorry to have to tell you, she hasn't made it.’
• CHAPTER EIGHT •
BLOOD FRENZY
In the forest clearing, a grazing tilder doe looked up, startled, ears twitching. Her fleshy pink nostrils sniffed nervously at the air. She could sense something approaching – something dangerous.
All around her, other Deepwoods creatures were similarly uneasy. Up in the branches, fromps coughed their warning alarm while roosting hackerbats and snowbirds chattered and chirruped. A panic-filled family of lemkins, trembling in the long grass, tried hard to remain still and not give themselves away. But it was no use. Abruptly, terror got the better of one of the nervy youngsters.
‘Waa-iiii – kha-kha-kha-khakha …’ it shrieked, breaking cover and bolting across the forest floor in a streak of blue, followed quickly by all the rest.
The fromps followed suit, leaping away from tree to tree. The hackerbats and snowbirds took to the sky. Halitoads and razorflits, woodboar and weezits, and all the other creatures that had been poised, ready to run, scurry, slither or flap off at the first sign of danger – they each erupted from their hiding-places and fled.
For a moment, the forest clearing was a frantic, screeching, snorting, dust-filled place; a noisy blur of panic. Out of it sprang the tilder doe, her legs like coiled springs as she bounded through the air and skidded off into the surrounding forest. The next moment, the clearing fell still.
It was quiet, empty and hushed like the moment of tranquillity at the end of a storm, or that instance of stillness just before dawn. The air was motionless. Nothing stirred…
The next moment everything changed, as a single shryke exploded from the vegetation, the sunlight in the clearing flashing down on her tawny feathers and glinting on her bone-flail. Then another. And another. Then thousands as, like a great wall of fire driven on by hurricane winds, the vast shryke battle-flock sped past on powerful legs.
Some were brown, some were grey, some were a drab mixture of the two; some were striped, some were spotted, some mottled, some flecked; some had neck-ruffs, some had crests. All of them had razor-sharp beaks and rapier claws – and, as if these were not enough to strike fear into the hearts of their enemies, the shrykes also carried fearsome weapons: lances, maces, pikes and flails, curved scythes, serrated swords…
‘Kaaar-kaaar! Kut-kut-kut!’ a piercing call sounded from the treetops as a shryke-sister with red and purple plumage appeared, leaping from branch to branch on the back of a prowlgrin.
‘Keer-keer-keer!’ Her call was answered by her sisters in the treetops all round.
Like a swarm of snickets, the battle-flock veered off in answer to the treetop calls, never easing up for a moment as they thundered on through the forest. High above, clinging on tightly to the prowlgrin-reins, the noble Shryke Sisterhood – several hundred strong, with gaudy plumage and flamboyant battledress – guided the battle-flock towards their distant goal.
At their head, resplendent in tooled gold armour, the young roost-mother – Mother Muleclaw III – threw back her fearsome head and gave a piercing shriek.
‘Kut-kut-kut-kaaaar!’
Red and yellow, purple and blue, her luxuriant plumage gleamed in the early morning sun, her neck-ruff and tail-feathers flapping as the grey prowlgrin she sat astride leaped on through the forest. Below her, the battle-flock increased its pace.
Some way behind her, also on prowlgrinback, Sister Drab, Matron Featherhorn and the shryke elders trotted across the clearing, pulling a large group of tethered shryke-mates behind them.
‘It's good to be on the move again,’ squawked Matron Featherhorn.
‘Indeed, sister,’ agreed Sister Drab, giving a vicious tug on the leashes in her clawed hand. ‘See how the Deepwoods tremble before us! Nothing can stand in the way of a battle-flock with its blood up!’
‘The little darlings!’ clucked Matron Featherhorn. ‘Hard to believe they were hatchlings such a short while ago. Oh, and look at Mother Muleclaw!’ She cooed with pride.
Sister Drab nodded. ‘A natural roost-mother,’ she said. ‘I knew it the moment she hatched. Why, she'd killed and eaten the others in her clutch before her shell was even cold. Magnificent!’
‘I can't wait to see her in battle,’ said Matron Featherhorn.
‘Patience, sister,’ replied Sister Drab. ‘We shall be there soon enough and, if the librarian knight spoke correctly, the Undertowners will be at our mercy!’ She closed her eyes and smiled with pleasure.
Oh, how that captured librarian knight had screamed and shouted and begged for death, writhing beneath her probing talons as she'd extracted every last bit of information. Then, when she'd got everything she wanted, how the hapless creature had turned tack, begging for mercy instead.
And she had been merciful, she remembered. Rather than linger over the flayed, tortured body longer than she'd needed, she had torn out the heart with a single stab of her beak and swallowed it while it was still beating. Delicious! The librarian had lived just long enough to see it.
Sister Drab looked up ahead as she cantered on and, as the forest thinned for a moment, she glimpsed the unmistakable shape of the mighty Ironwood Stands, rising up out of the forest canopy and silhouetted – dark and imposing – against the pinky-yellow sky in the distance.
‘Not far now,’ Sister Drab clucked contentedly. ‘Not far. I can almost taste the blood on my tongue!’
Preparations had been made and now an eerie silence hung in the air. High up at the very top of the tallest ironwood pine, Felix Lodd and Deadbolt Vulpoon were deep in conversation.
‘Do you think it'll work?’ said Felix.
‘It's got to work,’ said Deadbolt, ‘or we're dead meat, the lot of us, and that's a fact!’
‘Dead, or slaves,’ said Felix bitterly.
‘Oh, if the shrykes triumph, there'll be very few slaves, believe me,’ said Deadbolt, ruefully stroking his beard.
Felix raised an eyebrow.
‘It's a young battle-flock, according to your Professor of Light,’ the sky pirate said.
‘He's not my Professor of Light,’ said Felix.
‘Maybe not, lad,’ he said, ‘but that doesn't alter the fact that these shrykes are newly hatched. They're ill-disciplined and inexperienced. Once they go into battle, they'll get the blood frenzy, and the only way to stop them will be to kill them. You mark my words.’
Deadbolt raised his telescope and looked back across the Deepwoods for any trace of the approaching shryke battalions.
‘See anything?’ Felix asked.
The sky pirate captain shook his head and snapped his telescope shut. ‘Not yet,’ he said darkly, ‘but they're on their way.’ His eyes narrowed, and his nostrils twitched. ‘I can smell the scurvy creatures…’
Far below, on the forest floor, Xanth felt a heavy hand on his shoulder and turned to see a cloddertrog sky pirate looming over him. The pirate wore a muglumpskin coat and carried a heavy poleaxe.
‘Librarian, is it?’ he asked, scrutinizing Xanth. ‘You lot are with the Undertowners at the lufwood mount. The shrykes are on their way – or hadn't you heard?’ he added sarcastically.
‘I was looking for my friend, Rook Barkwater …’ said Xanth, nodding towards the empty banderbear nests in front of them. ‘But he seems to have left.’
‘Rook Barkwater?’ said the cloddertrog. ‘Isn't he that librarian knight who got caught in the sepia storm?’
‘Yes,’ said Xanth. ‘The banderbears were tending to him in this nest…’
‘If he's with banderbears then he'll be safe enough,’ said the cloddertrog. ‘It's yourself you ought to be worried about, out here in the open with a shryke battle-flock due at any moment. You should be with your librarian friends.’
Xanth shook his head sadly. ‘The librarians aren't my friends,’ he said. ??
?In fact, I don't seem to have any friends.’ With a sigh, he slumped down on the forest floor.
‘Well, you can't sit round here feeling sorry for yourself,’ said the cloddertrog. ‘Here, you can join me if you like,’ he added, and held out a massive hand. ‘Henkel's the name. Captain Henkel of the Fogscythe – currently without a crew, on account of them having run off to seek their fortunes in the Foundry Glades with a scurvy cur by the name of Quillet Pleeme. Pah! But that's another story … Come on, if you're coming.’
Xanth smiled, and was about to reach up and take Henkel's hand, when he noticed an oil-cloth bundle resting against the moss-covered side of the abandoned nest. He reached over and picked it up.
‘What have you got there?’ asked Henkel, peering down as Xanth carefully unwrapped the package.
‘It's … it's a sword,’ said Xanth.
‘And a mighty fine one at that. Can't leave it lying around here,’ said Henkel, as Xanth got to his feet. ‘Best hold on to it for now, lad. You can look for its owner later. Anyway, if you stick with me, you'll have need of it …’ he stuck out his massive hand again ‘… friend.’
This time Xanth clasped it and shook it warmly. ‘Friend!’ he replied.
‘Keer-keer-kaaaaarrr!’ screamed Mother Muleclaw, spurring her prowlgrin on through the branches.
Below her, the shryke battle-flock surged forwards, shrieking and screeching in reply. Ahead of them stood the Ironwood Stands, their branches heavy with the hunched figures of Undertowners huddled round burning stoves. It was almost too good to be true. They were at her mercy, and she, Muleclaw – beautiful, strong, hungry Muleclaw – would show them none!
Foam flecked her long, curved black beak. She opened it, threw back her head and spat a trailing arc of bile high into the air. Her bright yellow eyes flashed, their dark pupils fully dilated. A mist was descending in front of them; a red mist.
She must taste blood! She must taste it now, and gorge! And gorge! And gorge…
From below her, a volley of flaming arrows flew up from the bows of the jostling flock and into the tops of the massive ironwood pines. One by one, the resinous tips of the huge trees caught fire and blazed like gigantic torches. Below, on the branches, the Undertowners remained motionless, as if rooted to the spot, their hanging-stoves twinkling in the fading afternoon light.
With a grunt, the roost-mother's prowlgrin launched itself from the topmost bough of a copperwood and onto the end of one of the massive branches of an ironwood pine. She was followed by her roost-sisters, shrieking with savage glee.
‘Kut-kut-kut-kaaaaar!’
‘Keer-keer!’
‘Kut-kut-kut-kaaaaarrr!’
Below, the main body of the battle-flock flowed round the massive trunks of the Ironwood Stands in a screeching feathered flood. Thousands of piercing yellow eyes turned upwards in eager anticipation.
They didn't have long to wait. Mother Muleclaw and the shryke-sisters were spreading out through the branches, slashing and swiping with their claws and bone-flails from astride their leaping prowlgrins. The bodies of the Undertowners fell like ripe fruit, down into the seething mass below.
‘Kaaar! Kaaaar! K-k-k… Ki? Ki? Ki-i-i-i-i!’
The expectant shrieks of the battle-flock changed abruptly to indignant, high-pitched whistles. What was this? Not flesh and blood, entrails and guts, but … Wood … Cloth … Bundles of moss and sacking!
The shrykes tore at the stuffed effigies in frustration. Mother Muleclaw pulled up her prowlgrin with a vicious tug on its reins and seized a figure slumped beside a hanging-stove.
‘Kiii-kiii-i-ai-ai!’ she screamed as she recognized it for what it was; a stuffed dummy in a woollen shawl, its hastily carved wooden head grinning back at her mockingly.
Suddenly, on the branch above, a shryke-sister gave a strangled scream and plunged past Muleclaw, her throat skewered by a crossbow bolt. The roost-mother's eyes swivelled round. They were under attack!
‘KAAAAAR!’ shrieked Mother Muleclaw in a frenzy of rage and frustration as, the next moment, the sky around the Ironwood Stands filled with librarian skycraft.
They swooped in close, firing blazing arrows and heavy bolts, before swerving away. The shryke-sisters were easy targets and fell in twos and threes, then fours and fives, and then dozens, as the skycraft swarmed about the ironwoods like angry woodhornets. Down on the forest floor, the battle-flock erupted into a frenzy as the bodies rained down and they began gorging themselves on their fallen sisters.
And still the librarian knights swooped in, loading, firing and reloading, until not a single prowlgrin-mounted shryke-sister remained in the blazing Ironwood Stands.
Below, the frenzied battle-flock seethed. They had tasted blood at last – but not nearly enough. Suddenly, clambering down the massive trunk of an ironwood tree like a gaudy feathered beetle, Mother Muleclaw appeared. Her prowlgrin dead, her armour battered and her gaudy silks singed, she halted above the heads of her flock, with her talons embedded in the rough bark.
‘Kut-kut-kaaaaii!’ she shrieked, and all eyes turned to her.
She waved a claw towards the forest where a trail, marked by discarded bundles of belongings, led away. Her yellow eyes flashed. Above them, the skycraft soared up and away over the trees.
‘Kaaaar!’ Mother Muleclaw screamed. ‘KAAAAAARR!’
‘It's gone quiet,’ Gilda whispered to her companions. ‘What do you think's happening now?’
Turntail, an elderly mobgnome, squeezed her hand warmly. ‘The lull before the storm,’ he said, his voice soft and wheezy. ‘By Sky, if I were only fifty years younger, I'd show those disgusting bird-creatures a thing or two. I'd crack their skulls and split their gaudy gizzards open, so I would. I'd … I'd …’ He collapsed in a fit of hacking coughs.
‘Quiet, back there!’ came an urgent voice.
The mobgnome pulled away and tried to stifle the cough with his hands. Gilda patted him on the back. Rogg, a grizzled, one-armed flat-head who was sitting with them, pulled a bottle from his belt, unstoppered and wiped it, and handed it across.
‘Sup that,’ he said gruffly.
Turntail held it to his lips, slurped, swallowed – and gasped for breath, his eyes streaming. ‘What … is … it. ?’ he rasped.
‘Firejuice,’ said Rogg. ‘Like it?’
‘It's … it's …’ the mobgnome began. ‘The most disgusting drink ever to have passed my lips.’
Rogg snorted. ‘Stopped you coughing though, dinnit?’
Behind them, a high-pitched voice spoke up. ‘I wouldn't mind a drop of firejuice myself,’ he said. The others turned to see a wizened old lugtroll, pale and trembling, wrapped up in a tattered scrap of blanket. He smiled toothlessly. ‘Warm these palsied bones of mine a tad,’ he said.
Rogg passed the bottle back. ‘Just a drop, mind,’ he said. ‘Don't want you keeling over.’
Gilda nodded. Although the journey from the Ironwood Stands to the lufwood mount had been little more than a few hundred strides, it had severely tested several in their small party. Gilda had had to support Turntail the whole way, while Rogg had ended up carrying the lugtroll under one arm, and a portly gabtroll and her babe-daughter under the other.
Still, at least Gilda hadn't had to carry the sword any longer. Wrapped in its oil-skin cloth, it had been an awkward bundle – though she'd kept it safe all the same, carrying it all the way from Undertown and into the Deepwoods. It was the least she could do for the brave young librarian who had lost it when he'd rescued her from slavers in old Undertown. She'd feared he was dead, but she'd kept the sword with her all the same, just in case … And then she'd spotted him! She could hardly believe it.
Oh, he'd changed all right. He was sick, she could see that clearly. He was carried right past her in the arms of a huge banderbear. His eyes were closed and he was moaning softly, but it was definitely him; her brave young librarian.
The banderbear had disappeared inside a nest with him, and Gilda had been too frightened to follow.
The creature had looked so big and fierce, and the poor librarian so ill. She decided it would be best not to disturb him, so she'd propped the precious bundle by the entrance where they'd be sure to find it. She'd planned to go back to make sure – but then news of the shryke attack had broken and everyone was suddenly running around in a terrible panic, gathering up everything they could carry…
That was just this morning. Gilda looked around at her companions. Together, like all the other Undertowners – old and young, rich and poor – they had struggled gamely on, heading westwards, away from the ironwood pines and on through the dense Deepwood forest.
Twice, they had come to places where the trees had been felled by teams of ghosts and sky pirates – two vast concentric circles which ringed the lufwood-covered crag – and had had to pick their way over the jumble of fallen branches and logs. Finally, they had arrived at the top of the mount; tired, weak and frightened.
They'd made camp there, along with the thousands of other Undertowners. Below them, the lufwood-covered mount had soon echoed with the sound of sawing and chopping as the ghosts and sky pirates erected makeshift barricades to protect them. Then, as the afternoon light had begun to fail, the librarian knights had taken off and flown back towards the Ironwood Stands.
Gilda had marvelled at the sight. How proud and brave they'd looked! Then, along with the others, and hardly daring to breathe, she had listened for the tell-tale sounds of battle.
When the first furious shryke scream had echoed through the trees, everyone had fallen silent, and as the mighty battle had raged at the Ironwood Stands, they had all listened carefully to every crack, every cry, every distant screech, scream and wail. The more suspicious among them had stroked their amulets and whispered prayers and incantations that the brave librarian knights would prevail and that the Undertowners, in their concealed fastness, might survive.
Now it was quiet again, with the stillness more terrifying even than the noisy battle. As the sun set, the librarian knights arrived back, and as the moon rose, the sky glowed red in the distance where the Ironwood Stands blazed. The librarians, ghosts and sky pirates took to the barricades in the darkness below the lufwood mount.