"Why," asked Whistledove, "does no one enter this forest?"
Jasmine shook her head, irritated by a lack of knowledge. "This forest was once home to pine dwellers who hunted and trapped and traded at Buzzard's Bay. Pixies too, t'was said, though none were ever seen or caught. They left. Driven out, perhaps."
The heroes gazed at the mysterious and green-misted beauty of the land. The forest seemed to wait, but for what? A red squirrel scrabbled down from a branch and crossly chattered a challenge. Simone the Siren chucked a pinecone, and the defender scampered up and away. People laughed, and the spell was broken.
Adira nudged Sister Wilemina, still shaking from the magical shift, gazing back the way they'd come.
"Close your trap, Wil, before a swallow builds a nest in your jaw."
— "Look," whispered the archer. "Down there lies sere desert and up here lush forest! A division sharp as beach and sea! Because of this giants' wall! Surely we must wade knee-deep in ancient magics, and what can protect us?"
"I'll protect you, sweetheart," laughed Murdoch and swatted Wilemina's rump, so she jumped a foot. His laughter died as the blonde archer cracked a homy fist on his jaw that toppled him to the turf.
"There's magic for you," chuckled Simone. "Woman magic!"
Fretful and wary and heartened and excited, the party tightened cinches and swung into saddles.
They goggled as Jedit Ojanen stepped from behind a tree, silent as a ghost, to report, "No scent of our enemy."
"None?" asked Adira. "How can that be?"
"If Johan levitated his party," put in Jasmine, "they may've alighted miles within the forest."
"Or anywhere," said Virgil, always glum.
"Or nowhere," admitted Adira, "but we'll flush him out. Jedit, Heath, take point. Murdoch, Peregrine, the vanguard. And don't 'Yes, milady' me, Peregrine, or I'll kick you off this cliff top. 'Adira' suffices. We're brigands, thank the stars, not soldiers."
Perched in a basket atop a packhorse, Whistledove Kidikin held her rapier in one hand, so looked like a child playing pirate.
Peering big-eyed under flat red hair, she asked, "Why would native peoples abandon such a beautiful forest?"
"Only one way to find out," said the pirate chief. "Hi-ho and go."
Strung single file on skittish horses, led by a talking tiger, Adira Strongheart's Robaran Mercenaries penetrated the deep woods.
The leader added in a hush, "Besides, if someone does live here, we shouldn't fret. We've done naught to aggravate them. So far."
Miles ahead, in the depths of the forest… "Halt and speak! Where are you bound?"
Johan, Emperor of Tirras and the Northern Realms, again disguised as a drab monk, sat bald and unblinking as his sedan chair settled. His entourage gaped at strangers who'd materialized like shadows from pine scrub, a prime spot for ambush.
Four dull-witted barbarians lugged their master's chair. A Tirran captain and four pikemen in gray linen tunics painted with Johan's four-pointed star carried spears. Tagging along were a scribe, a lesser mage, a seer, five porters lugging chests and sacks, and a huntsman, cook, and helper. The tyrant kept the party small to move quickly and attract less attention.
Yet they were surrounded by forest denizens. Thin to the point of emaciation, the men and women had fair skin and auburn hair, sharp cheekbones, and slanted eyes, as if part fox. They wore leather kilts or skirts and leggings and jerkins, though a few had shirts of rough cloth obviously traded from the outside world. Everyone was trimmed with a king's ransom in furs: brown, black, ermine, sable, spotted. Most wore the faces of their prey framing their faces, so Johan's entourage seemed doubly surrounded by people and animals: beavers, bears, red and silver foxes, wolverines, wolves, and wildcats. In their hands hung iron spikes, mauls, and axes, and at their backs bows and arrows. Nine warriors, Johan counted.
"We ask, where are you bound?" The spokesman's wispy beard and flat coyote headpiece accentuated his thinness. But rippling knots in his arms suggested a greyhound. "Our people war with an invader. We must know your allegiance or else turn you back."
"Oh, pray, never let us be strangers." Deceptively mild, Johan tugged his brown robe at the knee and stepped onto "brown needles in bare feet. The pine folk exchanged glances, wondering how a poverty-clad hermit rated such an entourage. They frowned, bewildered, as Johan picked up a fallen twig still fresh with green needles.
"Who are you," asked the wizard, "besides my future subjects?"
"Subjects?" blurted the thin leader.
A woman in a wildcat cap snarled, "The people of the pines are no one's subjects!"
Toying with the twig, the stranger replied, "I am Johan, Tyrant of Tirras and Emperor of the Northern Realms, soon emperor of all Jamuraa. Thus, you peasants of the pines, will become my subjects and pay homage to me-if you survive."
Nine warriors recoiled from malice or madness, weapons poised, then shouted as Johan let slip his disguise.
The homely bald monk polymorphed into a demon from legend. Fire-red skin glowed with black stripes. Downtumed horns sprouted from his chin and forehead. The drab robe curdled into a loathsome purple hide that squirmed with life. As the natives stood stunned by the horrific vision, Johan snapped the twig between long black nails.
Immediately came a thrashing as a dozen pine limbs overhead broke and fell. Plummeting, thick branches like giants' spears thundered around Johan's party. A woodsman was lanced in the neck and fell, spurting blood. A dodging woman was impaled through the skull. A lad was crushed by a branch big as his waist, so he squirmed and twitched under a hundredweight of deadfall. Bark chips, splintered heartwood, and pine needles rained. One of Johan's porters flinched backward into the deadly hail and was clipped across the brow by a branch.
Only two woods warriors remained standing. Shrieking, vaulting deadwood, one swung an iron hatchet but was speared in the belly by Johan's pikeman. The other shouted and dived in a crouch but was slashed across the throat. Both fell dead. One guard snatched a wildcat cap as booty, and the other looted a wolf pelt.
Just like that, except for groaning wounded, the attack was done. Without a word, Johan stepped to his sedan.
Color drained from his skin and robe like fading twilight. Again a drab monk, the mage brushed pine needles off his chair.
"Dispatch the wounded, milord?" asked the Tirran captain.
"If you like. Leave a few to tell the tale."
Frightened survivors would spread more terror than plague. Johan ordered his shaggy bearers to rise.
"This porter is hurt." The captain nudged the fallen man with his toe. Another northern barbarian, one of many tribes conquered by Johan, he'd joined the army to see the world. "Sling him across the poles, your worship?"
"No. Divide his goods among the others." An invader left behind could spread terror too, singing songs of Johan's conquests, under torture if need be. "Come. The day wanes. Which way, seer?"
The seer, a gray-haired woman with no teeth and bad eyes, knelt on the pine sward, set down an open-weave pentacle of poured brass, mumbled an incantation, and threw a handful of bones, wood chips, river stones, and other bracken. Leaning close like a hound, the seer studied into which arms of the pentacle the oddments had fallen, then rocked back and pointed west of north.
"Blood. Human. And Johan's stink, like snake musk."
Rising from all fours, the great talking tiger Jedit Ojanen peered about the forest. Granite broke the surface, so hemlock and laurel scrub abounded. Off a ways, wild turkeys strutted and pecked and watched the intruders with beady eyes.
Jedit pointed a black claw. "This fight took place just yesterday."