The barrage ended when, in sheer hysteria, they tried to storm us. That was turmoil, slice, hack, rip, tumbling about in their vile welter. They might have overrun me by numbers had Ginny not finished her paranatural defenses and come to my aid. Her weapon disposed of the demons that crawled over the pile of struggling bodies.
When at last they withdrew, their dead and wounded were heaped high. I sat down amidst the ichor, the fragments, the lamentations, unreeled my tongue and gulped air. Ginny rumpled my fur, half laughing, half crying. Some claws had reached her; blood trickled from scratches and her dress was tattered into battle banners. Svartalf’s aid had prevented her opponents from inflicting serious wounds, though. I glanced within and saw him playing mousey with a devil’s tail.
More important was the soft luminosity from the lines woven across the floor. We were accessible as ever to physical force, but goetics couldn’t touch us now. To break down her impalpable walls would take longer than we’d possibly stay.
“Steve, Steve, Steve—” Ginny straightened. “I’d better prepare for our return.”
“Halt!” called a voice from the dusk. It was hoarse, with an eerie hypnotic rhythm, not calming, but, rather, invoking wrath and blind energy. “Waffenstillstand. Parlementieren Sie mit uns. ”
The devils, even the strewn wounded, fell quiet. Their noise sibilated away until the silence was nearly total, and those who could, withdrew until they merged in vision with the blackness behind them. I knew their master had spoken, the lord of this castle . . . who stood high in the Adversary’s councils, if he commanded obedience from these mad creatures.
Boots clacked over flagstones. The demon chief came before us. The shape he had adopted startled me. Like his voice, it was human; but it was completely unmemorable. He was of medium height or less, narrow-shouldered, face homely and a bit puffy, ornamented with nothing but a small toothbrush mustache and a lock of dark hair slanting across the brow. He wore some kind of plain brown military uniform. But why did he add a red armband with the ancient and honorable sign of the fylfot?
Svartalf quit his game and bristled. Through diabolic stench, I caught the smell of Ginny’s fear. When you looked into the eyes in that face, it stopped being ordinary. She braced herself, made a point of staring down along the couple of inches she overtopped him, and said in her haughtiest tone, “Was willst du?”
It was the du of insult. Her personal German was limited, but while Bolyai was in Svartalf she could tap his fluency by rapport with her familiar. (Why did the devil prince insist on German? There’s a mystery here that I’ve never solved.) I retained sufficient human-type capabilities to follow along.
I ask you the same,” the enemy replied. Though he kept to the formal pronoun, his manner was peremptory. “You have encroached on our fatherland. You have flouted our laws. You have killed and maimed our gallant warriors when they sought to defend themselves. You desecrate our House of Sendings with your odious presence. What is your excuse?”
“We have come to gain back what is ours.”
“Well? Say on.”
I growled a warning, which Ginny didn’t need. “If I told you, you might find ways to thwart us,” she said. “Be assured, however, we don’t intend to stay. We’ll soon have completed our mission.” Sweat glistened forth on her brow. “I . . . I suggest it will be to the advantage of both parties if you let us alone meanwhile.”
He stamped a boot. “I must know! I demand to know! It is my right!”
“Diseases have no rights,” Ginny said. “Think. You cannot pierce our spell-wall nor break through by violence in the time that is left. You can only lose troops. I do not believe your ultimate master would be pleased at such squandering of resources.”
He waved his arms. His tone loudened. “I do not admit defeat. For me, defeat has no existence. If I suffer a reverse, it is because I have been stabbed in the back by traitors.” He was heading off into half a trance. His words became a harsh, compelling chant. “We shall break the iron ring. We shall crush the vermin that infest the universes. We shall go on to victory. No surrender! No compromise! Destiny calls us onward!”
The mob of monsters picked up a cue and cried hail to him. Ginny said: “If you want to make an offer, make it. Otherwise go away. I’ve work to do.”
His features writhed, but he got back the self-control to say: “I prefer not to demolish the building. Much effort and wizardry is in these stones. Yield yourselves and I promise fair treatment.”
“What are your promises worth?”
“We might discuss, for example, the worldly gains rewarding those who serve the cause of the rightful—”
Svartalf mewed. Ginny spun about. I threw a look behind, as a new odor came to me. The kidnapper had materialized. Valeria lay in his grasp.
She was just coming awake, lashes aflutter, head turning, one fist to her lips. “Daddy?” the sleepy little voice murmured. “Mothuh?”
The thing that held her was actually of less weight. It wore an armor-plated spiky-backed body on two clawed feet, a pair of gibbon-like arms ending in similarly murderous talons, and a tiny head with blob features. Blood dripped off it here and there. The loose lips bubbled with an imbecilic grin, till it saw what was waiting.
It yowled an English, “Boss, help!” as it let Val go and tried to scuttle aside. Svartalf blocked the way. It raked at him. He dodged. Gin, got there. She stamped down. I heard a crunch. The demon ululated.
I’d stuck at my post. The lord of the castle tried to get past me. I removed a chunk of his calf. It tasted human, too, sort of. He retreated, into the shadow chaos of his appalled followers. Through their din I followed his screams: “I shall have revenge for this! I shall unleash a secret weapon! Let the House be destroyed! Our pride demands satisfaction! My patience is exhausted!”
I braced myself for a fresh combat. For a minute, I almost got one. But the baron managed to control his horde; the haranguing voice overrode theirs. As Ginny said, he couldn’t afford more futile casualties.
I thought, as well as a wolf can: Good thing he doesn’t know they might not have been futile this time.
For Ginny could not have aided me. After the briefest possible enfolding of her daughter, she’d given the kid to Svartalf. The familiar—and no doubt the mathematician—busied himself with dances, pounces, patty-cake and wurrawurra, to keep her out of her mother’s hair. I heard the delighted laughter, like silver bells and springtime rain. But I heard, likewise, Ginny’s incantation.
She must have about five unbroken minutes to establish initial contact with home, before she could stop and rest. Then she’d need an additional period to determine the precise configuration of vectors and gather the required paranatural energies. And then we’d go!
It clamored in the dark. An occasional missile flew at me, for no reason except hatred. I stood in the door and wondered if we had time.
A rumbling went through the air. The ground shuddered underfoot. The devils keened among shadows. I heard them retreating. Fear gripped me by the gullet. I have never done anything harder than to keep that guardian post.
The castle groaned at its foundations. Dislodged blocks slid from the battlements and crashed. Flamelight flickered out of cracks opened in gates and shutters. Smoke tried to strangle me. It passed, and was followed by the smell of ancient mold.
“ . . . in nomine Potestatis, fiat janua . . .” the witch’s hurried verses ran at my back.
The giant upheaved himself.
Higher he stood than the highest spire of this stronghold beside which he had lain buried. The blackness of him blotted out the stars of hell. His tottering feet knocked a curtain wall down in a grinding roar; dust whirled up, earthquake ran. Nearly as loud was the rain of dirt, mud, gravel from the wrinkled skin. Fungi grew there, pallidly phosphorescent, and worms dripped from his eye sockets. The corruption of him seized the breath. The heat of his decay smoldered and radiated. He was dead; but the power of the demon was in him.