The remaining spearman stared at the huge carcasses, awestruck. “How came we to slay such horrors, my lord?”
“Because,” Diarmid told him, “your spears and arrows are tipped with Cold Iron, which is poisonous to any creature of faerie.”
Alain was taking experimental steps, staring at his healed leg in amazement. “You are a wonder, my love!”
“And you were so brave you nearly stopped my heart.” But Cordelia held her brother’s wounded arm in her hands, glaring at the slash.
“Thank you, Allouette.” Quicksilver took stiff steps, her healed muscles seeming to thaw by the second. “Surely this cannot be all the force Zonploka could muster!”
“Now they are wounded! There are only a dozen of them!” a voice screamed behind them. “Kill them! Rend them! Hack them apart!”
Whirling, they saw Zonploka, mounted on a beaked lizard with horns stabbing from its forehead, clawed feet, and a snake’s lashing tail. He rode out full tilt against them, and behind him rode rank upon rank of over-wide human forms with distorted faces, grinning in anticipation of their victims’ agonies.
CHAPTER 17
“It is an army!” Cordelia cried. “How can we stand against them?”
“You cannot!” Quicksilver snapped. “Fly, witch, while you may!”
“And leave you to face them alone? Never!”
“Even so, sister-to-be!” Alain set his shoulder against hers as he raised his sword. “We live or die together!”
“Aye, together!” Geoffrey cried, setting his shoulder against Quicksilver’s and pulling Allouette up on his far side. She stared at him in surprise, then grinned in determination and turned to face the enemy with nothing but the dagger from her sleeve.
Then, behind them, a bugle blew and dozens of horses came thundering down upon them. The companions spared a quick look back and saw a fully armored figure with the royal coat of arms on its shield, riding at the head of scores of knights and hundreds of footmen, charging down upon Zonploka and his men with lances leveled—and pointed with Cold Iron.
The two forces met with a deafening crash. Instantly it turned into a melee, monster-man against steel-clad knight, bronze swords clashing against Cold Iron. Then the footmen came charging in their hundreds, pikes stabbing upward to unhorse Zonploka’s half-armored riders, halberds chopping into the huge oxen and giant lizards they rode. The alien soldiers howled with anger and tried to defend their mounts, but steel weapons chopped through bronze and left the invaders unarmed.
Through it all rode the knight with the royal arms on his shield, shouting for the leader to stand against him in single combat, but nowhere could he be found—until Alain caught at the knight’s bridle, pointing toward the river and crying, “There!”
The knight turned his visor to follow Alain’s pointing and saw Zonploka, standing alone in the vortex as it closed about him, shaking his fist and shouting threats that nobody could hear above the din of battle.
On the slope above the riverbank, Cordelia stood holding her brothers’ hands in her right and Allouette’s in her left. Her mother Gwendylon held Allouette’s other hand while her father the Lord Warlock stood before them with Quicksilver, guarding them as the witch-folk chanted a verse in a language that Zonploka could never even guess at—and as they chanted, the vortex closed, shimmered, then disappeared completely.
The army of horrors screamed with one united voice, then fell to the ground and, before the astounded eyes of the royal soldiers, melted away into a noxious steaming brew that evaporated and was gone.
Cordelia turned and fell into her mother’s arms. Gwen reached out and gathered Allouette in, too. Rod Gallowglass turned toward them grinning, his left hand holding Quicksilver’s high in triumph. Then Geoffrey was there to claim her, wrapping her in his arms.
Gregory gazed at Allouette with longing but said only, “Praise Heaven you have come, my father! How did you know?”
“You don’t think Tuan was about to let the six of you go gallivanting off without a small army to back you up, do you?” Rod asked. “And when he found out you were going up against the supernatural, of course he told your parents!”
“I am mightily glad he did,” Gregory said, then saw Lady Gwendylon relax her hug and the two young women step back. “By your leave,” he muttered, and strode forward to embrace his fiancée.
Rod smiled and went forward a bit more slowly to take Gwen’s hand just as Alain swept Cordelia up in a bearhug. Behind them, the royal knight rode up, sheathing his sword and lifting his visor to reveal the face of King Tuan, beaming down at them.
When Alain and Cordelia finished a very long kiss, the prince looked up at his father and asked, “How did you know?”
“Diarmid was good enough to leave word,” Tuan answered, “though he was clever enough to make sure he had a full day’s start on me. I have been tracking him ever since, and the six of you along with him.”
“Of course.” Tuan grinned up at him. “It would never do for the land to be left without a crown prince, would it? Or even his younger brother!”
“And it would never do for your mother and I to be left without a son,” Tuan answered, reaching down to throw a steel-clad arm about Alain’s shoulders, “either of you.”
A few hours later, when the wounded had been tended and the dead prepared for their final journey, Gwen and Rod sat with Tuan, watching the younger contingent, who seemed to be in engaged in a very animated discussion.
“Here is a new enemy come upon us, then,” Gwen said, “one whom our children have found and driven off almost without our help.”
“They have found and confounded this sorcerer by themselves, and held him at bay until he unleashed a whole army,” Tuan agreed. “They are a brood of whom you may be justly proud, my friends.”
“Thank you, my liege,” Gwen said, smiling, “and proud of them we are. But your sons have shown to advantage in this, too—and from what Geoffrey tells me, Alain has finally begun to show the qualities that will make a strong king, those which he has inherited both from you and from Catherine.”
“Still so humble in the showing of them, though.” Tuan shook his head with a fond smile. “So anxious to be sure no one else will rise to the occasion before he intrudes! Where could he have learned such overweening modesty?”
Gwen and Rod exchanged a knowing look, then beamed on their old friend, who would never acknowledge his finer qualities.
“Thank you for kind words, though,” Tuan said, “and I am deeply proud of the lad, almost as proud as I was when he showed such excellent taste in his choosing of a bride.”
“Thank you, my liege,” Gwen murmured.
“I am quite proud of my younger son, too,” Tuan went on, “both for his courage and for his determination not to let his brother face danger alone.”
“Not to mention his carefully delaying the message to you,” Rod said, “which showed responsibility and a certain yearning for adventure.”
“Which I had thought he would never evince. Yes.” Tuan nodded. “You must be proud of your future daughters-in-law, too.”
“Yes, indeed,” Gwen agreed, “but I am most proud of their accepting Allouette so completely into their fold.”
“Yes, she had proved quite treacherous in the past.” Tuan frowned. “To the Crown also—but how can we condemn a woman who has reformed so completely as to help save both crown and country?”
Gwen fairly glowed—Allouette’s reformation, and the cure of a twisted heart that underlay it, were the greatest feats of healing she had ever undertaken, and she was rightly proud of them—but even prouder of her children being so ready to forgive.
“We can’t condemn such a woman, of course,” Rod said, then sighed. “I do wonder, though, how Magnus will react to her when he comes home.” If he comes home . . . but he put that thought away.