“Those idiots,” Sir Caulder snarled, stomping through the Cleft and into the grasses. “They’re camping on the wrong damned side.”
Fletcher followed. He winced, the glare of the sun hitting him as he stepped out of the canyon’s shadow. To the left and right, the mountain curved outward and away, leaving a few hundred feet of tangled grasses and low bushes before a wall of jungle began. A few stunted trees dotted the area, but otherwise it was devoid of life.
“Anyone here?” Fletcher called, beginning to feel uneasy. There were dozens of tents littering the ground, but if there were occupants, they did not make their presence felt. Many of the sorry structures had collapsed in on themselves, and various barrels and crates lay abandoned beside them.
A hollow breeze rushed past, funneled through the canyon behind.
“Lazy fools have abandoned their posts,” Sir Caulder concluded, kicking at a ring of stones on the ground with his peg leg, tumbling a rock into a pile of half-burned bamboo in its center. “Probably snuck back to Corcillum as soon as we arrived in Raleightown. We’ve been undefended all this time!”
But Fletcher was not so sure. He crouched down and buried his finger in the ashes in the fire pit.
“No,” he said, feeling the barest hint of warmth. “This fire burned itself out only an hour or so ago, plus the ashes would have been blown away by now. Maybe Didric got a message to them last night, told them to make their way to Watford Bridge this morning. We might have just missed them.”
“But that doesn’t explain why they left everything here,” Sir Caulder said, scratching at his grizzled beard.
The Foxes were pouring through the Cleft now, peering curiously at the remains of the Forsyth camp. Soon the soldiers were wandering aimlessly through the abandoned tents, prodding them with their swords and lifting the lids from the barrels.
It was only then that Fletcher noticed him. A topless man, standing in front of a tree, halfway between the Cleft and the jungle. It was hard to tell—he could just see him through a shimmering heat haze. No … not standing. Tied to it.
“Foxes, skirmish formation!” Fletcher shouted. Instantly, the soldiers snapped into action, sprinting into a loose line, spread across the grassy basin.
Fletcher’s heart pounded in his chest. The man could be anyone. A deserter perhaps, left by the Forsyth Furies to die. But Fletcher’s gut told him different.
“Forward, slowly now,” Fletcher commanded, striding toward the man.
He walked twenty paces ahead of his soldiers, eyes scanning the edge of the jungle. The fronds of the vegetation wavered in the breeze, presenting Fletcher with an ever-shifting wall of green.
At first, he had thought he’d seen rocks, strewn about just in front of the jungle’s edge. But then he saw the red stains on the grass around them, the muskets and swords, scattered like discarded branches.
Dead men, in black Forsyth uniform. Eyes, wide and staring, mouths half-open in petrified terror. There was so much blood, more than Fletcher had ever thought possible.
“Halt!” Fletcher shouted.
The men could see the bodies too now, their exclamations of horror loud in his ears. Fletcher’s eyes flicked to the naked man. He was … moving.
Fletcher ran ahead, his eyes flicking between the tree and the corpses beyond, heart juddering in his chest. Now he saw the death apples rotting on the ground beneath the foliage. This was a manchineel tree, so poisonous that were one to shelter beneath it, the very raindrops that dribbled through its leaves would sear your skin like acid. And the poor man was strapped bare skinned to its bark.
A shock of dark brown hair obscured the man’s face. Though he was more a boy, truth be told, if his skinny frame and sunken chest were anything to go by.
Fletcher drew his khopesh and struck the vines that tied the boy to the trunk, wincing in horror at the sight of the blistered skin along the lad’s back, red and weeping with sores. This was orc handiwork.
Then the boy turned, and Fletcher jerked with recognition. It was Mason—the escaped slave who had guided Malik’s team during their mission. Even as Fletcher’s eyes widened with surprise, the boy whispered something, barely more than a croak forced through cracked lips.
Fletcher leaned down and lifted the boy into his arms, careful to avoid the raw skin on his back. The body seemed to weigh almost nothing; so little meat existed on his frame.
“What happened?” Fletcher asked, leaning forward.
It was little more than a whisper, but the word rang like a death knell in Fletcher’s ears.
“Run.”
CHAPTER
49
THEY ERUPTED FROM THE TREES in a crash of snapping branches. Cassowaries, too many to count, their black-feathered bodies tearing over the ground, red wattles dangling beneath blue necks and fierce orange eyes. Astride them were gray-skinned goblins, screaming their battle cries, spears and wood clubs held aloft.
“Close ranks,” Sir Caulder roared. “Schiltron formation!”
There was no time to get back to the men. Fletcher summoned Ignatius in a burst of white light and shoved Mason’s body across the Drake’s back. He threw himself on top of the boy as a javelin whistled past his head, so close Fletcher felt the flutter of air on his cheek. Another grazed Ignatius’s side, leaving a furrow of welling blood among exposed, pink flesh. There were dull thuds of more striking the tree trunk. Then, as hurled spears buried themselves in the shaded ground around them, Ignatius beat aloft, thrusting into the air with the two boys on his back, as more and more enemies burst from the jungle.
Fletcher circled out of javelin range, watching the figures below. Gunshots blasted, as desperate soldiers emptied their muskets into the front-runners. Already, cassowaries were tumbling into the grass, but still more came from the jungle border. Fifty or so were already on the battlefield, and as many more emerged from the foliage … then more again, over a hundred now, a seemingly endless flood of squawking riders.
A soldier went down, a javelin through his thigh before he could reach the small circle of men, half-formed in the first few seconds of battle. Rotherham picked him up and threw him over his shoulder, reaching reinforcements in the nick of time.
Then the first wave of cassowaries broke upon the small knot of men, parting around them like a wave, hurling spears and sweeping with their clubs. More men fell, even as goblins were blasted from their seats and cassowaries were skewered on poleaxes, falling in a flurry of kicking talons and floating plumage.
Riders circled and broke, then formed again, charging onto the poleaxes, meeting the bullets with their bodies in suicidal abandon. It was mad, brutal fighting, where sheer force of numbers threatened to engulf the beleaguered circle of men.
A crackle of lightning from Genevieve hurled cassowaries back, earning the men time to drag the injured into the center, where Rory’s healing touch waited. Beside him, taller men’s muskets cracked and spouted gouts of smoke, whipping death over the long grass with practiced accuracy, felling the stragglers who bore down upon them. Dwarves swept poleaxes low as cassowaries lunged, cutting their long legs from under them and finishing the job with swift, precise chops. The Foxes’ formation held, but barely; the weight of the cassowaries falling among their tightly packed ranks and leaving vulnerable gaps, even as more riders thundered from the edge of the jungles.
“Down!” Fletcher yelled, sweeping Blaze toward the second wave of riders. He tugged Gale from his holster as they hurtled through the air, Ignatius’s baying matching the roar of the wind in Fletcher’s ears. He emptied both barrels, seeing the twin spurts of black feathers and blood from the front-runners, spilling them and their goblins into the ground.
Then Ignatius was tearing through their lines, claws outstretched, beak snapping. Goblins were slashed from their perches, cassowaries bowled to the earth. Fletcher fired Blaze into a goblin’s chest—the spear it was about to throw falling from nerveless fingers.
Mana roiled within Fletcher’s consciousness as Ign
atius landed, then the Drake spun and poured a flood of flame over the fallen bodies of goblin and cassowary alike. Half the riders were down, the rest wheeling away in disarray.
But the third wave of enemies was bearing down now, and they were forced to take off once again, pain flaring in their consciousness as a thrown spear pierced Ignatius through the delicate membrane of his wing, and another thudded into his haunches.
They limped in the sky, mana draining as Ignatius’s wounds healed, far more slowly than Fletcher would have liked. He tugged the spear from the Drake’s rump, grimacing at the spurt of blood and hurling it ineffectually at the charging enemies beneath them. Ignatius was flagging now, and Fletcher dared not risk summoning Athena with all the javelins flying, especially with her penchant for disobedience.
Far below, the final wave smashed into the schiltron. This time, the formation dissolved into knots of fighting soldiers, broken by the momentum of the impaled cassowaries. The gunfire slowed, the battle now a bloody mess of flailing poleaxes and the occasional fireball from Rory and Genevieve. At the center, Sir Caulder and Rotherham stood over a pile of wounded soldiers, killing all comers with deadly efficiency. But they were too few, and the riders many. They needed help.
Fletcher sheathed his pistols and drew his khopesh, pointing it down at the enemy.
“Again!” he shouted, and Ignatius was already swooping down for one final charge. They smashed into the back of the riders, sending a half-dozen goblins flying. Fletcher’s vision was filled with struggling men parrying and hammering, thrashing clubs held by gray limbs above hook-nosed faces, cassowaries kicking with savage abandon.
Then he was leaning out and stabbing over Ignatius’s shoulder, spitting a goblin through its mouth. The creature fell back, and Fletcher lost his sword in the melee, unable to tug the blade from the skull. A burst of gunfire half-deafened him, smoke stinging his eyes as it plumed by his face.
They were losing. The few Foxes still standing staggered from exhaustion, while more and more wounded fell behind the fragile ring of defenders. There were fewer gunshots now—no time to reload as the baying horde of creatures pressed in.
An elf screamed in front of him, a spear buried in her midriff by a snarling goblin. It was Dalia, her face white with shock. Weaponless, Fletcher could only curse and fire a bolt of lightning into the perpetrator’s back, killing it in a sizzling screech as Dalia clawed herself over the blood-slick grass into the safety beneath Rotherham’s and Sir Caulder’s swords.
Pain. So bad that Fletcher could hardly believe it. Ignatius collapsed beneath them, sending Mason’s body sprawling over Fletcher as they fell into the bloodied grass. A spear was buried deep into Ignatius’s neck, held by a triumphant goblin. Ignatius’s tail whipped around and near decapitated it with his spike, but the damage was done. The Drake collapsed, the pain too much for him.
“Fletcher!” Genevieve screamed, and he rolled aside in the nick of time as a club thrummed by his head, thudding into the grass. Mason grasped at the offending goblin’s leg, using the last of his strength. It gave Fletcher time to snatch Dalia’s discarded poleaxe from the ground and stab the goblin through the stomach.
It collapsed on top of him, pinning him in place, and a spear stabbed down as if from nowhere, the point slitting his cheek and missing his eye by a hairsbreadth. Fletcher felt the hot gush of blood on his face, saw a goblin raise his spear again. His hands were pinned beneath him. No time.
Then a brown, furry blur whipped by, and the goblin clutched at its throat, trying to seal the gaping wound that had suddenly appeared there. A warbling cry cut through the sounds of battle—and suddenly there were gremlins everywhere.
They rode their rabbitlike maras, ululating as they sliced their shark-tooth daggers into exposed goblin ankles, parting tendons and opening arteries with deadly efficiency. Poison darts flitted from outriders along the edges, sending cassowaries and goblins tumbling, twitching horribly as the toxins took hold.
“Don’t hurt the gremlins!” Fletcher bellowed with the last of his breath, crushed under the weight of Mason and the dead goblin. He heaved them aside and staggered to his feet. Pain spiked his skull, blinding him to the seething battle around him. His hands felt the shaft of the spear in Ignatius’s neck, and he tugged it out. For a moment black waves of nausea rolled over him, the Drake’s agony like a scream in his mind as he etched the healing spell. Then he was pulsing white, healing light into the wound.
The world cleared, pain receding. Guns were firing again now, while all around him, maras pattered by, leaping high to allow their gremlin riders to slice at goblin necks. The battle had taken a dramatic turn. Dead goblins were sprawled about like beached fish, eyes glazed over in death. A cassowary limped back toward the jungle, dragging a dead rider tangled in its claws. There were no more than a half-dozen goblins left now, and even as the last of Ignatius’s wounds were sealed, they were shot ragged by the Foxes still standing.
Then it was over, and all that could be heard were the groans of the dying.
CHAPTER
50
FLETCHER TURNED HIS HEALING spell on his own cheek, then staggered through the corpses to the injured, ignoring the gremlins as they dismounted nearby. He knelt beside Dalia, white light pulsing through his finger to heal her wound, wiping away the jagged puncture as if pouring clear water over a stain of red paint.
Rotherham reformed the surviving soldiers in a circle, wary of more enemies. Only Rory and Genevieve were spared, collapsing to the ground beside him so they could help with the healing.
“I’ve barely any mana left,” Genevieve said, her hands shaking with nerves.
“Just do what you can,” Fletcher croaked, his throat suddenly hoarse with thirst.
It was tough work, and his own mana reserve was draining far faster than he would have liked. The worst injured were healed first, though Fletcher’s heart twisted as he passed over a dwarf who had died before they could get to him, his green uniform red with blood from the two spears that had passed through his chest.
Others had broken arms and fractured skulls, which Fletcher could not heal for fear of fusing the bone and causing permanent disfigurement. When Genevieve and Rory ran out of mana, they did what they could to splint broken limbs with strips of cloth and broken spear hafts, but the wounded soldiers would not be fighting anytime soon.
“What’s the butcher’s bill?” Fletcher called as he healed the last man of a deep gash in his thigh. Sir Caulder stomped from the ring of men surrounding the three battlemages and knelt.
“Four dead,” he said. “A dwarf, two men and an elf. Then there’s a young lad with a dented head and two more with broken limbs.”
Fletcher closed his eyes. How had this happened?
“Easy there, lad,” Sir Caulder said, his voice low in Fletcher’s ear. “We did well. There were almost two hundred of the blighters. It could’ve been a lot worse. Trust me, I’ve seen it.”
Fletcher nodded, but could not help but let a tear trickle down his cheek, mixing with the blood that still caked his face. They had done well, but good men and women had died. Was it his fault, for taking them so close to the jungle’s edge? And who knew how many more would have been lost if it weren’t for the sudden appearance of the gremlins? He ran a hand over his eyelids, unwilling to get to his feet just yet. A sudden exhaustion had taken hold of him.
“About our rescuers—looks like one of ’em wants to talk to you.” Sir Caulder jerked a thumb over his shoulders.
Fletcher sighed and struggled to his feet, making his way out of the ring of soldiers. As he did so, he pushed down the muskets that the men held pointed at the gremlins and forced an encouraging smile. After so many years of regarding gremlins as enemies, he could hardly blame them for their apprehension, especially given the similarities in appearance between their race and the goblin species. He had felt the same way, not so long ago.
There were as many as forty gremlins wandering the field, stabbing the hundreds of ene
my corpses to make sure they were dead. It was brutal to look at, but the occasional squeal revealed that at least a few goblins had been faking, though driven more by animal instinct than cunning—Fletcher knew from experience that goblins were barely smarter than a jungle chimp, incapable of complex language or intelligent thought.
One gremlin stood ahead of all the others, its hands on its hips, legs spread akimbo. Fletcher recognized it instantly from the tattered stump of an ear on the side of its head. It was Halfear, one of the gremlin leaders he had met at the Warren during their mission.
“What are you doing here?” Fletcher asked, hunkering down so that he was more level with the short-statured gremlin.
Halfear crossed his arms and spat derisively. Clearly, the choice to aid them had not been his. Instead, the gremlin pointed over his shoulder, toward the edge of the jungle. Fletcher gaped at what he saw there.
There were hundreds of gremlins, blinking in the sunlight as they emerged from the undergrowth. Females, elders, children, most carrying bundles of food, tools and weapons on their backs. Beside them, a multitude of animals walked, and not just maras. Tiny jerboa could be seen, held on leashes of grass twine, appearing like mice with overlarge ears and long, skinny hind legs that made them hop like a kangaroo. Bandicoots dragged infant-laden sleds, sniffing the ground ahead of them with their shrewlike noses. There were even lumbering, potbellied wombats being used as beasts of burden, carrying baskets of fruit and dried fish on their backs and looking for all the world like miniature bears.
But despite the procession of beasts and gremlins, Fletcher’s eyes were fixed on the figure at their head, one that he recognized even from all the way across the field. Blue.
The gremlin was riding a fossa, a creature that might have been the love child of a cat and a ferret, padding sinuously over the grass with feline grace.
Seeing Fletcher, Blue dug his heels back, sending the animal racing toward him. He halted just in front of Fletcher, a wide grin spread across his frog-like face, the large, bulbous eyes filled with joy.