The donkeys shouldered their way under the square that sheltered Zared"s company, and stood to one side of Leagh, their heads turned out into the landscape.
215.
Despair descended upon the land. It rippled out in grey concentric circles from Sheol"s location in the northern Skarabost Plains, breaking against the western borders of the Avarinheim and Minstrelsea forests, but flowing smoothly south and west.
In the southern Skarabost Plains it flowed over the dreaming, ancient white horse.
Despair surged further south. The grey tide broke and screamed and wailed over the walls of Tare and Carlon, s.n.a.t.c.hing at the few dozen people who had not been fast enough inside.
It sailed straight over the shade that sheltered Zared"s army, leaving them untouched.
But hardly unaffected.
Every member of that force watched the grey twilight areas beyond their shelter. They could somehow feel the despair of that grey contagion, even though it did not seep beneath their shade. It felt as if a thousand eyes waited within the haze outside. Waited for a single toe to creep unnoticed over the dividing line between madness and sanity. It felt as if ten thousand bony fingers creaked and flexed out there, waiting for that mistake, that single instant it would take those fingers to grab.
Leagh watched for ten minutes, and then could bear no more. She turned and buried her face in Zared"s shoulder, feeling his arms wrap about her.
"I do not know if I have the strength," she whispered.
"You must have the strength," he replied. "You have no choice."
The donkeys crowded closer to the pair, and their warmth and apparently unruffable cheerfulness gave both Zared and Leagh strength.
Within the hour, despair pa.s.sed and the wasteland was once more safe to traverse.
But Zared did not break camp. There were perhaps some three hours before dusk and the onset of the ravages of ,216 .
pestilence, but Zared did not think the effort of breaking camp, riding for one hour, and then setting up camp again was worth the effort.
"We stay here until dawn has pa.s.sed," he said. "Everyone has three hours to stretch their legs, eat, forage for fodder, whatever, but half an hour before dusk, I want all back in here."
At dusk the world changed. Pestilence reigned, and a low and utterly horrible whirring and droning came from within the miasma, as if great clouds of insects flew within its grey clouds. As the hour deepened, the surface of the earth itself developed great boils that eventually burst to reveal writhing ma.s.ses of grubs and worms.
When full night descended, terror replaced pestilence. Men swore they could hear teeth gnashing in the darkness beyond the sheltered areas, or the whispers of nightmares too terrible to be contemplated. Terror writhed amid the untamed landscape of the night, and it waited - as had pestilence and despair - for that single error that would let it feed.
Few managed any sleep, and the horses jostled nervously the entire time, forcing men to their heads to try and keep them calm.
A league beyond the boundaries of the camp, coalesced a terror more terrible than any could imagine.
For days the Hawkchilds that flew over the central plains had been driving south-eastwards an army many thousands strong. It had been instructed by the Hawkchilds, and given its purpose by them, but it was led by an immense brown and cream badger intent on its own hunt after a lifetime of being hunted.
All that it saw in its mind and smelt with its nose was the heady brightness and aroma of blood.
It wanted to feed.
217 As did every creature that lurched, scampered, hopped and flew behind it.
There were hundreds of once-white sheep, their wool now stained with madness and the blood of those who had proved themselves a nuisance.
There were twice that number of dairy cows, their udders straining with acc.u.mulated pestilence, their minds fixed on destroying those who had abused them in their former life. For the past week they"d been sharpening their horns on every stone they came across.
There was a ma.s.s of pigs, thousands of them, grown strange tusks in hairy snouts, their eyes almost enclosed by thickened, puffy eyelids, grunting with every step they took. They too wanted revenge against those who"d bred them exclusively for the table.
Among the sheep and cattle and pigs scuttled sundry dogs and cats, many of them far longer-limbed than they"d been several weeks previously, their sides gaunt-ribbed, their mouths open in permanent snarls, rabid saliva flickering from their jaws to dot the paths they took. There were rats and hamsters, mules and oxen, and a thousand maddened chicken, geese and turkeys.
And among all these beasts who had formerly been enslaved, ran those creatures who had once commanded them. Naked, febrile men, women and children, sometimes running upright, sometimes scuttling on all fours, snapping at any creature that came within reach.
All lost to the Demons.
All wanting blood, and revenge for whatever slight their madness had magnified in their mind.
They adored this wasteland, and they would do anything - anything - to protect it.
They attacked at dawn when hunger ruled the land.
Zared and his army had no knowledge of their approach. The air was dark about them, and they were muddle-witted from an almost sleepless night. They were still broken up into 218.
their seventy-five squares, a formation hardly conducive to effective defence.
The donkeys gave the first warning. They had been curled up beside Zared and Leagh"s sleeping roll when they jerked awake, their eyes wide, and scrambled to their feet.
If that alone was not enough to startle those about them into wide-eyed apprehension, it was the low, rumbling growl that issued forth from one of the donkeys" throats.
Zared followed the donkeys" stare into the lightening gloom, and then drew his sword with a sharp rattle.
"Ware!" he shouted, and the shout was taken up a hundred times until it echoed about the camp.
Ware! Ware! Ware!
Then the maddened army was upon them.
That those they wished to kill currently rested under shade did not worry them in the slightest. Shade or sun, they could still attack, and attack they did against an army that had never, never, trained for defence against scuttling cats, or vicious-eyed hamsters, or sharp-toothed sheep, or the sheer weight of a charging cow or ox. Or the sight of a scrawny, naked woman who had twisted her hands into claws and who threw herself into the fray with no thought for the swords that were pointed at her belly.
Horses - and men - panicked.
Zared found himself, and those who sheltered with him, almost overwhelmed by the first wave of attack. A pig knocked him to his knees, and he only just managed to run his sword through its left eye and into its brain before its teeth would have sliced into his throat.
He looked up. "Leagh!"
She had shrunk back among the horses - now rearing and plunging. A howling, naked boy of about ten was darting under the plunging hooves, trying to reach her. He held a great rock in one hand.
"Leagh!"
Zared tried to rise and go to her aid, but a cat sprang and *219.wrapped its legs and claws about his head. Blinded, Zared jabbed the hilt of his sword into the cat"s body, over and over, until he felt its grip loosening.
Something ma.s.sive and foul-breathed loomed to one side, and Zared ducked, flinging the body of the cat as far away as he could.
He tried to turn to meet the new threat, but something bit into the calf of a leg, and he grunted in pain, momentarily distracted.
The huge creature - an ox! - lunged, its forelegs stiff and murderous, but in the instant before it crushed Zared, something white flashed in from the side, and suddenly the ox had no head, and half its left side was gone as well.
It toppled to the ground.
Zared blinked, clearing his own blood from his eyes, then blinked again.
What? He had the hazy impression of something white, more ma.s.sive even than the ox, moving swiftly through the mayhem.
There was an inhuman shriek, and he vaguely saw the boy who was attacking Leagh fall under the onslaught of the white beast. And there was another white creature, leaping the distance between his shelter and the one adjoining.
Was it a Demonic beast as well, that it could run between shelters?
One . . . roared? Zared blinked again. There. Yes! It roared, and swiped with a huge paw, and suddenly animals were scattering everywhere, fleeing back into the wilderness from whence they had come.
Zared concentrated, but he could not clearly see what it was that had come to their aid. The two white forms - they were so immense! - were leaping from shelter to shelter, and setting to flight any crazed animal that fell within their field of vision.
"Leagh?" Zared scrambled to his feet. "Leagh?"
"Here. Safe." She emerged from behind one of the horses, now strangely calm, and looked at Zared.
220.
"What was that?"
He shook his head. "I don"t know." He made sure that Leagh was, indeed, unharmed, then moved among his men within the shelter. Some carried deep wounds, several were dead, but most had survived the encounter relatively physically intact. Their frightened eyes, however, made Zared wonder how well their souls had survived.
"Gustus?" Zared called to the next shelter and, gradually, as men shouted between shelters, he managed to get an idea of how badly his force had been hit.
High overhead, a swarm of Hawkchilds hissed and whispered in frustration. What had gone wrong? There had been an enchantment worked below - but what kind? How? They were far from any forest. Was not the Star Dance dead? Was it the stray magician or two that had aided the army below? They screamed, then veered north to commune with the Demons.
Also to the north, the brown and cream badger snapped and snarled his own force back into some form of order. They"d had their chance, and wasted it. But the badger had learned. He"d wait, and grow, and next time ... next time ...
Zared let the surgeon suture the wounds on his forehead - that cat had truly been murderous - and talked to Herme, Theod and Leagh through the man"s twisting fingers.
"What happened?" he asked.
Theod and Herme looked at each other.
"We were attacked -" Herme began.
"By what!" Zared snapped.
Leagh looked at Theod and Herme, and placed her hands on her husband"s shoulders, smiling her thanks to the surgeon as he packed his bag and left.
"They know no more than we do," she said gently. "We were attacked by crazed animals."
"They moved as one force," Zared said. "Under direction."
* 221 .
"Yes," Herme said. "We knew that numbers of demented creatures wandered the plains, but we did not know of this organised force."
"And the people among them," Leagh shuddered. "I swear that I recognised one or two of those faces."
"They were more animal than the creatures they ran with," Theod said softly. "Is this what awaits all of us?"
"Unless Drago finds this Sanctuary," Zared said, and stood up. He gazed slowly about, and eventually looked back at his wife and two closest friends.
"What was it that saved us?" he said, his tone almost a whisper.
"I don"t know," said Herme, shifting from foot to foot. "But . . . but in the one brief glimpse of it as one lunged past me, I could have sworn ... I could have sworn that it was an enormous bear."
"Whatever," Zared said, "we can afford to linger here no longer. Roll up the shade cloth, stow the poles, bury the dead, and put the wounded on horses or litters as need be. We must keep on moving."
Herme glanced at Theod, then addressed Zared.
"Sire, there is a problem." "What?"
"When Theod and I collected the names of those dead and wounded, we discovered ..."
"You discovered what}"
"We discovered that Askam, and some four hundred men, horses and weapons, had gone."
24.The Dark Trap Sicarius returned within five hours. Axis, who"d been sitting talking with the captain of the escort, slowly rose to his feet as he saw the hound enter the glade and sit down.
"Azhure," Axis called softly, and she turned from grooming her horse.
"Sicarius?" she said, and the dog whined and shifted.
"There are no other hounds," Azhure said, breaking into a large smile. "They must be waiting at ... well, at whatever they have found."
Both Axis and Caelum stared at the hound, wondering to what he would lead them.
"Do we wait the night ... or follow Sicarius?" Azhure asked.
Axis hesitated, then made up his mind.
"Mount up!" he called, and men leapt to tightening girths and untying reins.
Sicarius led them northwards, then veered east. The land slowly rose towards the southern foothills of the Fortress Ranges. No-one in the group, not even any of the men among the escort, had ever explored the southern Fortress Ranges. They were rocky, barren hills, lofty and difficult to pa.s.s. Apart from the tunnel Azhure had once travelled with the two Sentinels and Rivkah, Axis knew of 223.only one way through - the Valley, once known as the Forbidden Valley, directly north of the site of the now destroyed Smyrton.
"I sincerely hope there is another way through - or under - these Ranges," Axis muttered, "for I do not wish to be out on their open slopes during those hours when the Demons rage."
Azhure shot him an anxious look, but it was Caelum who responded. "Should we just ride for the Valley, father, and continue our journey through the Avarinheim?"
"Let"s see what this hound has found for us first," Axis said, and spurred his horse after Sicarius" form in the distance.
The hound led them to a square hole in a cliff face.