“Stars!” he whispered, “what is that?”
Sicarius heard the horses stop, and turned to look over his shoulder.
The coldness of pure horror passed through him.
Everything that was in him screamed at him to defend those he was with, everything within him screamed to Attack! Attack! Attack!
And yet he could not. He could not.
The StarSon needed his pack intact for the hunt, and Sicarius could not risk them in a fray now.
With a half-yelp, half-howl of sheer frustration and anger, Sicarius led the Alaunt in a flat run down the tunnel, as far away from the black cloud as they could get.
Leaving his charges to defend themselves as best they could.
25
Askam
Askam had been able to come to terms with nothing since Caelum’s astounding decision to accept the traitor Zared into his force in order to meet whatever threatened from beyond the Star Gate. In a matter of weeks, Askam had seen his entire inheritance—Carlon and the lands of the West—disappear through Zared’s treachery, his sister’s disloyalty, and Caelum’s incomprehensible decision not to hang Zared the instant he’d got his hands on him.
Had his father, Belial, fought for nothing? he wondered. What would Belial have thought, knowing that all he’d achieved had been lost within a generation?
Well, Askam had learned one immensely valuable lesson from all he’d witnessed—and lost—and that was that bold action more often won the day (and the land and the inheritance) than did complaining about the actions of traitors.
Action provided what justice this world harboured, and possession was more potent than right.
And so, even while he fumbled one-handed with the cursed piece of weaving under the trees of the Silent Woman Woods, Askam decided on a course of action that would regain him the possession of that which was his.
Damn it! Zared was using every opportunity, even this invasion by the TimeKeepers, to consolidate his hold on the West. And no doubt Zared was working hand in hand with Drago who, in his own fashion, was simply the pawn of the Demons.
“Well,” Askam had said, his eyes sliding over his empty coat sleeve, “as Zared does, so will I take every opportunity offered me.”
Among the combined forces there were still men confused about the issue of leadership. How was it that one day Zared could be the hunted, and the next the commander? Askam played to those confusions, and added in the spice of uncertainty about what was happening to families back home.
“Zared intends to course out into the Arcness Plains to win himself yet more territory,” Askam whispered around carefully selected campfires at night. “He wants to conquer all of the old lands of Achar! But wait…maybe that is not his plan. Zared listens to the vile Drago, and we all know that Drago walks in the company of Demons!”
Askam would lean forward to drive home his point, his eyes glittering with passion.
“Tencendor is doomed if we blindly follow Zared. What about your wives and children back in Carlon? Who will protect them from the horrors that now sweep Tencendor? Caelum has gone north to study at Star Finger, Zared has his personal ambitions to cater for, but I…I…sit here and worry for you, and for your families.”
His words fell on fertile worries. What did happen to their families in Carlon?
“But what can you do to help us?” Jaspar asked. About him some fourteen men sat listening intently.
“I can act,” Askam said, remembering Leagh’s words: People will willingly tear out their hearts for a man who will do rather than expect.
Jaspar looked at Askam for a long moment, then turned and conversed with his companions in low tones.
Satisfied, Askam rose from that campfire and left them to their decision. He knew what it would be.
By the time Zared led the horsed soldiers and Strike Force out of the Silent Woman Woods, Askam had almost four hundred men who would follow him. They wanted to go home, they wanted to be able to look after their families, and they were not particularly thrilled with the notion of chasing about Tencendor in the employment of the Demonic-inspired Drago or the land-hungry Zared.
Askam’s lies had worked their evil well.
He chose the first night they were camped, making sure that all the men who were his were under the same squares of cloth. Askam had noted how cleverly the shade cloths worked, and in the dead of night, when they had the space of many hours before first light, he managed to persuade his men to silently uplift the poles that supported the shade overhead and, keeping the cloths in position, move very slowly and carefully to the north-east.
“We will get above Zared’s forces,” he whispered to Jaspar to spread among the men, “wait for him to move on, and then we can make a run for Carlon.”
Trying to move while keeping the shade cloths steady overhead was no easy task. Three hundred of the men carried the poles, the others led the horses. The night-time terror spread all about them, but it did not infiltrate under the shade.
Askam had smiled in satisfaction. He was acting, he was being bold, and it would win him the day yet.
After several hours movement they heard the sounds of a distant battle.
“See!” Askam cried. “You did well to come with me! Zared and his men die, while we are safe.”
The men nodded, reassured, and they kept moving north-east until well after daybreak.
Then Askam had them roll up the shade cloth and remount their horses.
“We ride!” he cried, “west then south-west for Carlon!”
They rode for the rest of the day, keeping a sharp watch for any signs that they were about to encounter Zared’s force. But Askam had led them several leagues to the north, and if—if, for all had heard the sounds of the terrible battle—Zared still commanded anything resembling a force, then it would be moving to the south of them. Having only four hundred men, Askam found it considerably easier to dismount and manoeuvre the shade cloth into position than did Zared and his massive force, so Askam rode the periods between dawn and mid-morning, mid-morning and mid-afternoon, and then between mid-afternoon and dusk. Thus Askam covered far more territory than Zared, but he was also angling slightly more south than he realised.
They rode until they were an hour away from dusk, and Askam started to look for a likely spot to camp in this arid, cold wasteland, although it all looked uniformly inhospitable.
Jaspar, riding at his right, lifted slightly out of the saddle and tried to shade his eyes from the setting sun they rode into.
“My Prince? There is a depression ahead. A small valley perhaps.”
A small valley? Here? Well, who knew what the winds had blown out. Or maybe it housed one of the small streams that fed the Nordra.
Askam peered into the sun. It was about a half-hour’s ride away. “Good. We will camp there. At least it will provide us with some shelter.”
They spurred their horses faster, wanting to reach the camp site as fast as possible.
As they neared, Askam waved his men back to a trot, and then a halt as they stood at the rim of the valley.
Valley was too grand a word for this depression. About twenty paces deep and ten wide, it stretched for about a league north-south.
Askam shrugged. It was shelter.
He waved the men forward, and they turned their horses onto the faint path that led down the eastern slope of the depression. The floor was sandy, and gave way alarmingly in places, but it would suffice for the night, and they could not afford to ride any further.
“Set up camp,” Askam ordered.
As dusk settled about them, pestilence raged. Then terror swept in at pestilence’s heels, and the men huddled underneath their shade cloth, trying to catch what sleep they could.
The horses shifted, nervous.
Askam jumped out of his doze as a horse snorted and half-reared. Damn! Would they never grow used to the Demonic Hours? Their mounts would be worn out before they got halfway to Carlon.
Askam cursed, and rolle
d over, drifting back to sleep.
The sentries posted at the borders of the square of shade remained alert, but their eyes tended to be averted from the landscape outside, for there terror and horror raged, and they feared that even by looking on it, it might yet infect them.
Thus they did not see it when great lumps and forms arose out of the sandy soil about them.
The badger had been busy. After his failed attempt at Zared’s force, he’d decided to lay a trap…a trap into which Askam had inadvertently blundered. Among his force the badger had set the burrowing animals to work, digging out great traps under the sandy floor of the depression. There he had secreted the most violent and crazed of all his command.
Attack at night, and silently, and maybe they would escape whatever enchantment had defeated them previously.
The badger realised this smaller force was not the one he’d wanted to trap, but he also saw its possibilities, and as night moved in he’d changed his mind about his method of attack—and the results he wanted to see.
A score of scrawny and scratched men and women crawled closer to the square of shade. Among them writhed a dozen small children, as well three infants barely able to crawl. Almost a thousand poultry, eight hundred rabbits and hamsters, and six-score cats crept with the mad humans.
All wanted to taste blood. But all had very strict instructions not to kill. Just to drag.
Behind this first wave of attack came the pigs and cows and sheep, ready to charge in once the first wave had created its terror.
The sentries, alert, still kept their eyes averted from the terror of the night, and thus it was that the first they knew of the attack was when hands and paws and claws and beaks reached out from the darkness of the night and snatched their ankles.
The men cried out, waking their companions, but their cries cut off suddenly.
They had been dragged out from the shade and into the terror of the night. For a heartbeat they thought they were safe, and then terror such as they had never imagined forced its way down their throats and between the spaces of eye and eyelid, and tunnelled its way into their bodies. The men’s minds did not snap immediately. The terror let them feel it, feel how it enjoyed feeding on the spaces within their bodies, before it finally let its full force explode through their minds. The men screamed and writhed, voiding themselves on the sand, some snapping the delicate bones of fingers and wrists as they scrabbled for an escape, any escape.
But there was no escape. The terror finished its work, and when it was done, the men stood, shaking almost uncontrollably.
Their minds were gone. They had been consumed, and now these men turned their swords and eyes back to the squares of cloth, their loyalty now belonging to the badger, not Askam.
Askam, as everyone else, had leapt to his feet, appalled by the screaming. “What…what happened?”
Suddenly there was a frightful wail outside, and a wall of appalling creatures rushed the square. Some were cut down the instant they met the swords of the men, but most were not, and they dragged and clawed and chased men out from under the protection of the shade.
“Gods!” screamed Jaspar as an ox seized his collar in his teeth and pulled him towards the night. “Askam! They mean to drag us outside.”
Askam could no longer reply. He was already outside, lying on his back, staring at the stars overhead.
Completely mad.
Within a space of only minutes, the entire force of four hundred men lay twitching under the stars, their minds a ghastly thick soup of madness, pain, and gleeful whispering voices.
The brown and cream badger trotted triumphantly among the victims. He had lost a few of his command, yes, but they had now been replaced by four hundred men and horses, all relatively intact and capable of obeying his every command.
There was a whisper of feathers overhead, and the hiss of satisfaction. At last! The beginnings of a true army for their masters. Soon the entire landmass of Tencendor would ring to the booted footsteps of an army swaying to the battle songs of madness.
26
The Hall of the Stars
“Sicarius!” Azhure cried, unable to believe the Alaunt were running. “Sicarius!”
But none of the hounds paid her any heed. Within moments they had disappeared from sight.
She looked at Axis, her eyes stricken.
“We will manage without them,” he said, and squeezed her arm briefly.
She nodded, and turned her eyes back to the cloud that was slowly advancing toward them.
“There must be somewhere to hide—” Caelum began, turning his horse about in tight, anxious circles, but his father interrupted.
“Hide. Where? This tunnel is bare of any secret spaces. Captain. Arrange your men behind me. Azhure, take Caelum, and ride as fast as you can. Get him out, at least.”
She nodded, silencing Caelum’s protests with a curt wave of her hand.
“Be careful,” she whispered to Axis. “Come back to me.”
He grinned for her, although the effort cost him dearly. “I have not battled through all these years to lose you now,” he said, and kneed his horse close to hers so he could lean over and kiss her hard on the mouth. “Now, get our son to safety.”
Azhure turned for one last look at the cloud, her face tightening in horror. There were no bodies distinguishable in the cloud, but here and there she could see the brightness of eyes gleaming, and in one or two places she thought she saw hands reaching out…grasping…
“Ride!” Axis shouted, and whacked the rump of her horse with the flat of his hand.
It leaped forward, desperate itself to escape what advanced behind them, and Axis waved Caelum after Azhure. “Damn it, Caelum—follow your mother. You can do nothing here!”
Caelum held his horse back long enough to give his father one hard stare, trying to imprint Axis’ face in his memory for all time, then he spurred his horse after Azhure.
Axis swung his horse to meet the threat. “Hold fast, man!” he told the captain and the other three men, and they tried to quell the growing agitation of their mounts, as well the horror in their own bellies, as the cloud seethed down the tunnel towards them.
He risked a glance over his shoulder to make sure Azhure and Caelum had managed to escape—and froze.
Both were only some twenty paces away, and moving no further.
The tunnel floor had disappeared.
As had the walls, and the roof.
Even as he watched, Azhure’s horse screamed and reared, tossing her. Frightened into total panic, it leaped into the darkness in front of it—and vanished.
Caelum bent down and hauled Azhure up behind him, kicking his horse to guide it back to his father and the four escorts.
“It is no use,” he said. “The tunnel has gone.”
Axis swung his eyes forward again, expecting to see the black cloud filled with its eyes and hands ready to pounce.
Instead, it had completely disappeared. As with the tunnel behind his back, twenty paces ahead of him the floor and walls of the tunnel had vanished.
Replaced with darkness…and stars.
“What is happening?” one of the men whispered.
Axis shook his head slowly. “I do not know. I do not know.”
The Demons and StarLaughter stopped their horses, and arranged themselves in a row, facing east.
All of the Demons stared with unblinking eyes, and StarLaughter alternated between watching them, and staring east herself. She could feel the power bubbling within her, and she sent it coursing east, trying to see what the Demons did.
She closed her eyes, allowing the power to rope free, and when she opened them again, she did not see with her eyes, nor did she see the flat of the Skarabost Plains.
She saw through the eyes of the Hawkchilds in the tunnel under the Fortress Ranges, and she saw the group of riders, their faces a mixture of confusion and panic. Dimly, StarLaughter heard the thump of a great paw next to her horse.
Queen of Heaven, Sheol wh
ispered into her mind. Do you see?
Yes.
They are trapped. Sheol’s mind voice was filled with irrepressible glee.
Yes!
Watch, Sheol commanded, and follow our lead.
“Gods save us!” one of the men-at-arms screamed, staring at the floor beneath his horse.
Like the floor and walls elsewhere, it was slowly fading.
The man tried to wheel his horse about, but he lost control and the horse panicked. It reared and plunged and then…both man and horse vanished. They had fallen through into the darkness beneath.
“Stand fast!” Axis yelled. “And dismount! These horses will be no use.”
Everyone did as he commanded, grateful to be off the increasingly panicked horses, yet well aware of the risks of trying to meet whatever danger threatened them on foot.
Axis felt Azhure by his side, and he looked at her.
She was calm, and in complete control. “We will do the best we can,” she said.
“Yes,” Axis answered, and looked to his son. “Caelum?”
Caelum was as calm as Azhure, and he managed to give his father a confident nod.
“What I need to know,” the captain ground out, “is what we face and how to deal with it! I—”
His voice abruptly cut off, and Axis turned to look at him. He was struggling to find his footing. Beneath him the floor had disappeared.
Strangely, the captain managed to stay upright, and he lifted an ashen face to stare at Axis.
“It’s all gone,” he said unnecessarily. “There’s nothing under my feet!”
Within a moment all six found that the tunnel had entirely disappeared, taking the remaining horses with it. They were standing in blackness, surrounded by blackness—except for the bright stars where once had been the black cloud.
“Look,” Caelum said softly. “The stars…”
Once stationary, now the stars were flowing towards them, the sense of danger growing so palpable that Axis thought he could reach out a hand and snatch at it.