Close. Most with any spark of courage or decency deserted quickly.
The wicker man eyed the sky. A faint smile stretched the ruin of his mouth. “Do it,” he said.
* * *
The soldiers groaned and grumbled as they stood to arms, but stand to they did. The wicker man stared at the temple. It abused his confidence, but he could not discern any concrete cause. “Go!” He slapped Toadkiller Dog’s shoulder. “Scout it, damn you!”
He then assembled the surviving witchmen from the northern forest. They had not been much use lately, but he had a task for them now.
* * *
There wasn’t a breath of warning. One moment the night was still except for the chirp of crickets and the uneasy rustle of men on the brink of an assault, the next it was alive with attacking mantas. They came from every direction, not fifty feet high, in twos and threes, and this time their lightning was not their most important weapon.
The first flights ghosted in and dropped fleshy sausage-shaped objects four feet long. Boiling, oily flame splashed everywhere. Toadkiller Dog howled in the heart of an accurately delivered barrage. Soldiers shrieked. Horses screamed and bolted. Baggage wagons caught fire.
The wicker man would have screamed in rage had he been able. But had he had the capability, he would not have had the time.
He had begun preparing a snare. And while he had concentrated on that they had caught him flat-footed.
He was enveloped in flame. He dared not think of anything else.
He suffered badly before he shielded himself with a chrysalis of protective spells. He was sprawled on the earth then, his wicker body charred and broken. His pain was terrible and his rage more so.
Bladders continued to fall. Mantas that had dumped theirs returned with their lightning. The wicker man extended his charm to include a pair of shamans. One struggled to lift the wicker man’s battered frame. The other found the tag ends of the Limper’s charm and began to weave it stronger.
The remnant of the wicker man waved a blackened arm.
A manta tumbled from the night, little lightning bolts popping and snapping around it.
The wicker man waved again.
Toadkiller Dog charged the temple. Most of the men followed. A quick, successful assault would mean shelter from the horror in the sky.
That horror pursued them. The air above the Limper had become too dangerous.
Fire bladders fell and blossomed orange, finishing the baggage and supplies. Safe now, the wicker man forgot the fires. He chained his anger. He returned to his interrupted task.
As Toadkiller Dog neared the monastery wall something reached out and flicked him away the way a man flicks a bug. Soldiers tumbled around him.
There would be no shelter from the devils in the sky.
Yet a few men did keep going, their progress unimpeded. Why?
The mantas came down on rippling wings. Toadkiller Dog hurled himself into the air. His jaws closed on dark flesh.
* * *
The wicker man murmured while the two shamans recovered something from the smoldering remains of a wagon. He beamed at them, oblivious to the surrounding holocaust.
The thing they brought him was an obsidian serpent, arrow-straight, ten feet long and six inches thick. The detail was astonishingly fine. Its ruby eyes blazed as they reflected the fires. The witch doctors staggered under its weight. One cursed the heat still trapped in it.
The wicker man smiled his terrible smile. He began singing a dark song in a breathless whisper.
The obsidian serpent began to change.
Life flowed through it. It twitched. Wings unfolded, long wings of darkness that cast shadows where no shadows should have been. Red eyes flared like windows suddenly opened on the hottest forges of hell. Glossy talons, like obsidian knives, slashed at the air. A terrible screech ripped from a mouth filled with sharp, dark teeth. The thing’s breath glowed, faded. It began trying to break away, its gaze fixed on the nearest fire.
The wicker man nodded. The shamans released it. The thing flapped shadow wings and plunged into the fire. It wallowed like a hog in mud. The wicker man beamed approval. His lips kept forming words.
That fire faded, consumed.
The thing leaped to another. Then to another.
The wicker man indulged it for several minutes. Then the tenor of his whisper changed. It became demanding, commanding. The thing shrieked a protest. A fiery haze belched from its mouth. Still screaming, it rose into the night, following orders.
The wicker man turned his attention to the Temple of Traveler’s Repose. It was time to see by what sorcery the place kept itself inviolate.
The shamans took hold and carried him toward the temple wall.
26
Bomanz’s knuckles were white. They ached. He had a death grip on some windwhale organ. The monster had dropped low enough that the flash and fire and chaos down below gave him a clear perspective of just how far he was going to fall if he relaxed his grip for an instant. Silent and Darling were close by, watching. One false move and Silent would give him a kick in the butt and a chance to see if he could fly.
It was testing time. The White Rose had orders to stop the old horror here, where there might be help from its victims. This time she had woven him into her plan.
In fact, he had the feeling he was the plan.
She had not explained anything. Maybe she was playing woman of mystery. Or maybe she really did not trust him.
He was in charge—till he did something unacceptable and bit a boot with his butt on his way to doing a swan dive into hell.
Menhirs seldom got any feeling into their speech. But the one that materialized behind his left shoulder managed sorrow as it reported, “He’s shielded himself. Neither fire nor lightning can reach him.”
The surprise had seemed a wan hope, anyway, but a long shot worth trying. “And his followers?”
“Decimated again. The monster is unconquerable, though. He suffers, but pain just makes him angrier.”
“He’s not invincible at all. As you will see if I get close to him.”
Bomanz’s least favorite talking buzzard cackled wildly. “You’re big-timer, eh? Ha! That thing is gonna squish you like a bug, Seth Chalk.”
Bomanz turned away from the bird. His stomach flopped as he looked down again. The buzzard was determined to get his goat. He was amused by the bird’s optimism. He had learned self-control in a hard school. He had been married for thirty years.
“Isn’t it time you stones made your move?” He tried a disarming smile, a man with nothing on his mind but the issue at hand.
A little scheme had begun to fester in the back of his head. A way to put that snide vulture in his place.
The stone said, “Soon. What will you contribute to the farce?”
Before he could temporize the buzzard shrieked, “What the hell is that?”
Bomanz whirled. That damned bird wasn’t scared of anything, but it was squeaky with fear now.
Vast dark wings spanned the night, masking the moon and stars. Fires animated wise and evil eyes. Another limned huge needle teeth. Those malignant eyes were fixed on those who rode the windwhale.
Silent made frantic warding signs that did no good.
Bomanz did not recognize the thing. It was nothing of the Domination, brought out of the Barrowland. He was an expert on those and believed he knew every rag and feather and bone that had gone into them. Neither was it something of the Lady’s empire or she would have made it her own thing during her heyday. So it had to be loot from one of the cities desolated since the Limper had come out of the empire.
Whatever its provenance, it was dangerous. Bomanz began putting himself into that trance from which it was easiest for him to meet a supernatural challenge.
As he opened himself to the energies of another level of reality, fear struck. “Get on to the next phase!” he shouted at the scarred menhir. “Now! Recall the mantas! Get everybody off this damned thing!”
; Fire-edged wings beat the night. The red-eyed thing streaked toward the windwhale.
Bomanz used the strongest warding spell he knew.
The monster tortured the night with its shriek of pain. But it came on, its path deflected only slightly. The windwhale shuddered to its impact.
All across the windwhale’s back talking menhirs began vanishing, leaving baby thunderclaps.
The talking buzzard cursed like a stevedore and flailed at the air. Young mantas screeched in fear. The Torque brothers rushed Bomanz, shouting questions he did not understand. They were going to throw him off.
Darling stopped them with a gesture.
Below, the windwhale’s belly opened and gave birth to a boiling globule of fire. Heat rolled up its flanks. A huge shudder ran its length. Bomanz’s knuckles grew whiter. He wanted to move back but his hands had a will of their own and would not turn loose.
Another explosion tore the windwhale’s belly. The great sky beast dropped a short distance. Upset became panic. “We’re going down!” one of the Torques shouted in his barbaric eastern gabble. “Oh, gods, we’re going down!”
Darling caught Bomanz’s eye and in peremptory sign language ordered, “Do something!” She was not rattled.
Before he could respond the air filled with icy water spraying from organs on the leviathan’s back. Despite the departure of the menhirs the windwhale had begun to lose buoyancy. It was shedding ballast high, hoping that would dampen the fires.
The chill water helped stifle the panic.
Mantas began coming in out of the night, fluttering into the spray. The instant they came to rest their young scrambled onto their backs, followed by other Plains creatures. Once a manta had all the weight it could bear, it flopped to one of the slippery, downsloping launch slides that allowed them to hurtle into space.
Another explosion shook the windwhale. It began a slow buckle in the middle.
Darling approached Bomanz. She looked like she would put him over the side personally if he did not start doing something more than gawk and shake.
How could she stay so damned calm? They were going to die in a few minutes.
He closed his eyes and concentrated on the author of the disaster. He tried to pump himself up.
He did not know what that thing was but he would not let it intimidate him. He was the Bomanz who had slain a grandfather of dragons. He was the Bomanz who had walked into the flames, daring the wrath of the Lady in all her majesty and strength.
But his feet had rested upon solid ground those times.
Softly, surely, he murmured the calming mantras, following with the unleashing cycles that would allow him to slide free of his flesh.
In a moment he was adrift in the whale’s belly, floating through the flames, watching the dark fire-eater. Only because it fed so gluttonously had the windwhale not yet been consumed by a holocaust.
He added his skills to the self-protective efforts of the windwhale and the damping of the fire-eater’s feeding. The flames began to dwindle. He tried to move subtly and do his work unnoticed by the predator. That thing had only one thought. Soon the windwhale could manage the fires alone.
The fire-eater tried to breach another gas bladder. Bomanz slapped it away. It tried again, and again, and again, failing, till it flew into a frustrated fit.
While it was out of control Bomanz insinuated tendrils of sorcery. With a jeweler’s touch he evicted the commands of the wicker man. He replaced them with one overwhelming imperative: destroy the wicker man. Consume him in darkness, consume him in fire, but rid the earth of his noxious presence.
Bomanz retired to his own proper flesh. Physical sight showed him the stars masked by fire-edged wings that spanned half the sky. Those wings tilted. The body they supported dropped toward the place Old Father Tree wanted defended at all costs.
Bomanz glanced at Silent and Darling. The dusky, humorless wizard smiled slightly, nodded, made a small gesture to indicate that he had witnessed a job well done.
So maybe he was finally off the shit list.
He watched the fire-eater strike.
“Damn!” It was plunging toward the compound. Limper must have broken in.
The windwhale had fallen a long way, too. It was in easy striking distance for the wicker man. The giant of the sky had buckled in the middle, become a sagging sausage. It had no more ballast to shed. Neither could it control its motion through the sky. It was at the mercy of the wind, heading south, still losing altitude.
Silent and Darling joined Bomanz. He demanded, “Why did you stay? Why didn’t you get the hell off?”
Silent’s fingers danced as he relayed to Darling.
“Knock it off with the waggle fingers. You can talk.”
Silent gave him a hard look. He did not say anything.
The windwhale lurched. Bomanz grabbed an organ stem as he hurtled toward the monster’s side and a drop still three thousand feet till it was over. A gobbet of flame rolled up, singed him. He cursed and clung for his life. The windwhale continued to reel and shudder. It began making a hollow, booming noise that might have been a cry of pain.
An overlooked spark had tangled with a slow leak from a gas bladder. The game was about over. There was nothing to be done this time.
He was going to die in a few minutes. For some reason he could not get as upset as he thought he should. Mostly he was angry. This was not the way for the great Bomanz to go out, just dragged along, without an audience and no great battle to die in. Without a legend to leave behind.
He cursed continuously, in an unintelligible mutter.
* * *
His thoughts, more agile than ever he pretended, scurried around in frantic search for a way to make sure the wicker man went with him.
There was none. He had no weapon but the fire-eater, which was a javelin thrown and now beyond his control.
The windwhale began settling more rapidly. Fire crept up the aft half of the monster. The bend in its middle grew increasingly pronounced. The sucker was going to break up. “Come on. That half is going to go.” He began climbing the steepening slope of the fore half. Silent and Darling scrambled after him.
Another explosion. Silent lost his footing. Darling grabbed a treelike organ with one hand, caught him with the other. She hoisted him to his feet.
“That ain’t no woman,” Bomanz muttered. “Not like I ever saw.”
The rear half of the windwhale began falling faster than the front half. Secondary explosions hurled comets of whale flesh into the teeth of the night. Cursing monotonously, Bomanz continued his scramble away from disaster—every second wondering why he bothered.
The fear began to come, feeding on his helplessness. His talents were of no avail. He could do nothing but run from the conquering fire till there was nowhere left to flee.
Yet another explosion ripped and wrenched the windwhale. Bomanz fell. Below, the aft half of the monster tore free and fell away, the whole enveloped in flames. The rest of the windwhale bobbed violently, trying to return to horizontal. It yawed and rolled while it bobbed. The old sorcerer hung on. And cursed.
A whimper caught his ear.
Not five feet away he saw the glowing eyes of an infant manta. When the windwhale fragment began to stabilize he crawled thither. “They forget you, little fellow? Come on out here.”
The kit hissed and spat and tried to use its lightning. It could generate no more than a spark. Bomanz dragged it out into the moonlight. “You are a tiny one, aren’t you? No wonder they missed you.” The kit was no bigger than a half-grown cat. It could not be more than a month old.
Bomanz cradled the infant in the crook of his left arm. It ceased struggling almost immediately. It seemed content to be held.
The old wizard resumed his journey.
The windwhale had become as stable as it could. Bomanz eased nearer the side. He looked down just in time to see the other half hit ground.
Silent and Darling joined him. As always their faces were emotionless masks, on
e dusky, one pale. Silent stared down at the earth. Darling seemed more interested in the baby manta. Bomanz said, “Under two thousand feet now but that’s still a long way to fall. And there’s still that to concern us.”
That meant the small fires still burning back where the rear half had broken away. One of those could reach another gas bladder any minute.
“We should get as far forward as we can and hope for the best.” He tried to sound more hopeful than he felt.
Silent nodded.
Bomanz looked around. The monastery was burning merrily, fired by the fire-eater. So that had worked, some. But when he listened the right way he could sense a knot of rage and pain seething amidst the flames.
The Limper had survived again.
And his scheme had worked some, too.
27
I had a hard time believing it. Raven had given up. His hip must have hurt a lot more than he wanted to admit.
He had not moved since he had gone down, and hadn’t said nothing since his body beat down his will. I think he was ashamed.
I really wished the son of a bitch would figure out that he didn’t have to be a superman. I wasn’t going to make him stop being my buddy because he was human.
I was as wiped out as he was but I could not lay down and die. That show up around the monastery was getting flashier all the time. In fact, some of the fireworks was headed our way. That made me too nervous to crap out, though even my toenails were tired.
Another blast. A rose of fire bloomed in the sky. A big hunk of something started falling, spinning off smaller hunks of fire.
I realized what I was seeing.
“Raven, you better get your ass up and look at this mother.”
He grunted but he didn’t do it.
“It’s a windwhale, asshole. Out of the Plain of Fear. What do you think of that?” I saw a couple get wiped during the big bloodletting up to the Barrowland.
“So it seems.”
Mr. Ambition had rolled over. His voice was cool but his face was fishbelly white, like he’d stepped around a corner and bumped noses with Old Man Death.
“So how come it’s here?” Then I shut up. I’d imagined up a reason.