You know what must be done, the Dustman replied.
Is it difficult?
Not at all. It is part of our magic. What we are.
Halliwell went down on one knee, thrusting the long, narrow fingers of both hands into the blood-soaked dirt. For a moment, he wondered what would happen, and then he knew. All he needed to do was visualize. In his mind’s eye-in the Dustman’s mind-they could see the constructs.
The earth churned nearby. From deeper, where there was dry, rough soil, a hand thrust up from underground. Quickly, the warrior dug itself out. It rose, clad in armor of its own, and drew its sword. But the warrior was only dirt and sand and stone, as were its armor and sword. A construct.
The construct turned, opened its mouth in a silent battle cry-for it had no voice, no life or mind-and it ran into battle. A Euphrasian cavalryman had been toppled from his horse. The animal was dying, bleeding. A warrior of Atlantis stood over the fallen man, more than eight feet tall and splashed with the blood of others. A deadly enemy.
The sand creature brought its sword around-a blade whose edge was as sharp as diamond-and cleaved the Atlantean in half at the torso. Both halves of his body hit the ground together.
Halliwell and the Dustman willed it, and more constructs began to rise. Six. Eleven. Nineteen. At twenty-seven, he could do no more. To extend himself any further could have led to a loss of control, and Halliwell could not risk it. In his mind, the Dustman began to manipulate the constructs, controlling them from afar, a puppeteer.
But Halliwell didn’t mind. What he did next would be for him, and the Dustman did not need to be involved.
The sand of his body shifted and resculpted itself, and now he wore the bowler hat and mustache and greatcoat of the Dustman again. He went to the fallen soldier and held out a hand to help him up.
The horseman stared at him, eyes wide with terror.
“Get up, pal,” Halliwell said, aware of the incongruity of his voice, his words, coming from the mouth of a legend. A monster.
The horseman shook his head once, slowly.
“Suit yourself,” Halliwell said, dropping his hand. In the chaos of war, with shouts of fury and screams of agony and the clashing of weapons, somehow his own voice and the breathing of the downed horseman were louder than anything.
“Julianna Whitney. Bascombe’s fiancee. Is she here?”
Suspicion clouded the soldier’s eyes. A sadness came over Halliwell as he realized that, once again, he would need to use fear to achieve his ends. Fear was always swiftest.
The sand ran like mercury, shaping itself again, and now the cloak returned and his vision became jaundice-yellow. He saw the soldier through the Sandman’s lemon eyes.
Finger-knives reached down for the terrified horseman, snatched his arm and dragged him up to his feet…off his feet. Halliwell dangled him off the ground.
“Is Julianna here?”
The horseman nodded. He pointed up the slope toward the tents at the top of the hill in the distance. The king’s encampment.
“Helping the wounded,” the soldier said, his eyes and voice desperate.
“Of course she is.” Halliwell smiled. With the Sandman’s face, the expression was enough to make the soldier begin to cry.
Halliwell dropped him and started away from the battle, up the hill, leaving his constructs to aid Hunyadi’s defense against the invaders. He would see to Julianna’s safety through the end of this battle. He owed her that. And then he would go home, where Sara waited for him, and he would be her dad again. Whatever else he had become, he was still that.
Sunlight glared upon Ovid Tsing’s face, but his eyes were closed. Half-conscious, he stared at the inside of his closed eyelids, at the bright red glow of the sun. His lids fluttered. He wanted to wake. But he winced at the glare and pressed them closed again, let his head loll to one side. Beads of sweat dripped and ran across his scalp and along his neck before falling. His clothes were damp and sticky, but he felt sure sweat did not get so heavy.
Blood, then.
He shifted, trying to move onto his side. Pain lanced the left side of his abdomen and a trickle of something traced his skin. Might have been sweat, but he doubted that. Blood ought to have been warmer, but as hot as it was outside, perhaps his skin had become hotter than blood.
His blood felt cold on his skin.
Ovid wished for a breeze. The wind had not died. He heard a tent flapping nearby. His body strained as though he could catch the wind if only he were more attentive. It took some time before he realized that the tent itself was acting as a wind-break, keeping any breeze from reaching him.
Darkness claimed his thoughts. When again he became aware of the heat on his face, the glare on his eyes, his side felt tight. Gingerly, he managed to reach down and touch the place where the Yucatazcan spear had punctured his flesh, and he found a bandage there. A sigh of relief escaped him. They’d taken the time to bandage him-probably to stitch him up as well. Ovid interpreted that to mean the field surgeon didn’t think he was going to die today.
Carefully, he tried to sit up. Pain surged through him again and he faltered. The darkness threatened, but did not overcome him. He lay back with his eyes pressed closed, hissing air through his teeth, waiting to feel the trickle of a freshly reopened wound on his side, but no blood flowed.
From far off, he heard the echoes of combat, the shouts of men and women, gods and monsters, the clang of weapons. He wondered how the King’s Volunteers were faring without him, and imagined they were probably doing just fine. His lieutenants were well trained, and they had heart. They had come here with only victory in their minds. Nothing else would do, save death. Ovid only hoped it would not come to that.
Good son.
Ovid frowned, eyes still closed. Had he heard a voice in the cacophony of battle or in the flap of the nearby tent? Perhaps someone inside of the tent.
In his mind’s eye, horrid memory played out against the red-flare curtain of his eyelids. He saw again the broken corpse of his mother in the grasp of the Sandman, the gore-encrusted holes where her eyes had been. He saw, all too clearly, the face of the monster-the face of Ted Halliwell, the man who’d come to Twillig’s Gorge searching for Oliver Bascombe.
What Halliwell had to do with the Sandman, he didn’t know. But whatever face it wore, it was a monster, and it had his mother’s blood on its hands.
Moisture ran down his cheeks again, but it wasn’t sweat this time. Ovid let a few tears fall before regaining his composure. He opened his eyes and let the sun sear them a moment as though it might burn his grief away as it dried the tears. Once again he let his head loll to the side…
And the Sandman passed by. Wearing Halliwell’s face, it weaved amongst the wounded where they had been stretched out on the open ground and strode toward the enormous tent upon which flew the flag of Euphrasia and the colors of King Hunyadi.
He blinked, certain that somehow his subconscious had summoned only a mirage of his mother’s murderer. The heat, the loss of blood. But no matter how many times or how firmly he squeezed his eyes closed, when he opened them, the Sandman remained. Halliwell, the monster, remained.
Its presence created a fresher wound than even those he had sustained on the field of battle.
Ovid gritted his teeth. Slowly, warily, he rolled onto his side and then onto his chest. Breathing evenly, preparing himself, he pushed up onto his knees. Black dots swam at the edges of his vision, but he kept breathing and they faded. Teeth still gritted against pain-which inexplicably spread to his shoulders and legs-he staggered to his feet. Something tugged in his wound, perhaps a single stitch breaking free, and a single track of blood spilled like a teardrop down his belly and thigh.
He began to limp after the Sandman. When he passed a wounded soldier-a woman who’d once been beautiful-he bent carefully and borrowed her dagger, nearly passing out in the process. But he remained conscious. The woman seemed near death. Fluid rattled in her throat when she breathed. She would not miss the dagger.