She didn’t bolt. She was shaking. She huddled close, still chewing, her eyes locked on mine.
I raised a finger to my lips.
She hesitated a moment, and then did the same.
I almost laughed. But instead I watched and listened.
The workers down below kept working. The movement of the torches and lanterns kept on as before, with none of them heading suddenly our way.
No booted feet rushed towards us. No iron hooves, either. I decided we’d found Fate’s favor, that time. I hoped the rest of the night would prove as fortunate.
“Do you know what they’re doing, down there?” I asked, in a whisper. I wasn’t really expecting a reply. I had no way of knowing whether Buttercup could speak or understand speech.
She tilted her head and eyed me curiously. I shrugged.
“No matter. We’ll just watch for a while.”
And we did. They dug. Dirt was hauled the edge of the light and dumped. I tried to pick out the ringleaders by looking for anyone not carrying a tool. Part of the activity right at the edge of the excavation was obscured by a tent that was being erected as I watched, and I wasn’t willing to risk moving just to see around it.
A horn blew, three short blasts. In the Army that meant archers to the fore. To the men below, it meant more shovels, on the double, because a mob of them leapt from the backs of various wagons and hoofed it toward the hole.
It was then I caught a brief glimpse of what I decided was the man in charge. A small group of men made a slow circle of the pit. Three of them carried odd glowing implements that they held out over the hole on lances.
The fourth was twice the height of any man I’d ever known, and as thin as he was tall. If he were a he at all. No way to tell, since he or she was wrapped in white robes from head to toe.
I tried very hard to sink back even further into the shadows. My knowledge of Rannit’s sorcerous crowd was by no means exhaustive, but anyone that odd would have been mentioned, here or there.
Which meant an out-of-town wand-waver was in the mix.
I thought back to those stories we told each other in the trenches. There had been something about an inhumanly tall wand-waver, way up in the Northlands. Longshanks or Longlegs or some such, fond of using plagues as weapons. The diseases had killed humans as well as Trolls. There had been grumblings that our losses to illness had been at least as numerous as those of the enemy.
After the War, the bulk of the Regency’s sorcery corps moved with the Regent to Rannit, which had survived the War with relatively little damage. The sorcerers who didn’t make the move were generally the ones who’d made powerful enemies among the wand-wavers who did.
Buttercup gobbled down the last of her corn bread. She then licked the napkin clean of crumbs and butter before deciding my other pockets might bear more yummy treasures.
“Whoa, sister, that’s no way to act.”
I grabbed her hands. They were tiny, but strong. She smiled and before I realized what was happening she leaped up in my lap and kissed me, square on the lips.
I fell over backward. Dry leaves crunched. Tattletale twigs snapped. Buttercup fell with me, giggling and redoubling her grip. I tried to pry her away without hurting her, but her tiny stature belied a powerful frame.
I was about to stand up and take her by the shoulders and just push her an arm’s length away when we both heard the sound of a horse trotting through the trees.
She let go. She drew her hands up over her mouth, covering a tiny mewling noise.
The blue glow shone through the limbs, coming our way.
I cussed. Buttercup buried her face in my side.
The blue light bobbed and flickered, growing larger and brighter as it came. Where it touched me, I felt an odd sensation, as though a spider web was being pressed against my skin.
Buttercup’s mewl became the tiniest of whimpers, but that was enough.
The sorcerer spurred his mount and came directly at us, crashing through the forest as though it was noonday bright.
I put my hand on Buttercup, intending to push her behind me before I drew Toadsticker.
She took my hand in both of hers and dashed out in front of me. I was about to yank her back when she made that odd dancing little side step.
The ground spun. I dropped a half an inch. The wand-waver, who had been bearing down on top of us, charged past on my left.
Buttercup gasped, pulled hard on my hand.
I drew Toadsticker left-handed as the sorcerer whirled.
And the light from his blue globe fell full on me from my waist up.
I tried to move, couldn’t. I’d been tied into place by a thousand sneaky spiders. The blue light was sticky, and it coiled about me, tightening and going suddenly rigid.
I did the only thing I could do, which was let my legs go limp. I fell, and fell into shadow, and the invisible bonds went limp and loose.
The wand-waver spurred his mount again, charging me. Buttercup screamed and heaved, and again we moved, landing directly behind the furious mount and its befuddled sorcerer.
His own body blocked out the light from the glowing orb he bore. It also outlined man and mount in a brief, perfect silhouette.
I landed a solid left-handed blow right across the horse’s ass with the flat of Toadsticker’s blade.
The horse reared, struck a solid limb, neighed and bucked and leaped. Hooves flashed so close to my face I could smell loam and fresh horse flop.
I managed another solid blow before Buttercup took us a few paces away.
Bucking horse and hapless rider parted ways. The sorcerer pitched forward, but his right foot hung in the stirrup. I heard his leg snap, heard a muffled cry.
His frantic black mount charged on, dragging the wand waver by his broken leg. I saw his head strike no fewer than six very solid tree-trunks before mount and former rider were swallowed up by the night.
The blue-tipped staff lay on the ground a few steps from us. It no longer glowed.
Buttercup refused to loosen her grip on my hand. I dragged us over to the staff despite her mewls of protest and attempts to drag me in the opposite direction.
A glance down at the camp revealed the source of her agitation. Men were shouting and lights were moving up the hill toward us. Another horn blew, twice this time, and horses began to move.
I snatched up the staff, relieved that it didn’t cover me with fire or turn me inside out.
Buttercup let out the beginning of a long, loud banshee’s wail.
I didn’t bother to try and silence her. They’d seen the glowing staff fall and go dark. Men and horses were charging toward us. It didn’t matter that they couldn’t see us. They’d be all over us before we’d gone fifty paces.
Buttercup grabbed my hand, did her tiny jumping sidestep. Again, the ground tilted, trees appeared where there had been none a blink ago.
I whirled, found the torches, heard the men. We’d not covered much ground.
Buttercup wailed, skipped again.
She must have been getting weaker. We probably didn’t move more than a dozen paces.
“Go,” I said. I tried to let go of her hand, but she held on. “Shoo. Beat it. Go hide.”
She might not have understood the words, but she must have gleaned their meaning, because she set her jaw and jumped again.
When we landed, she fell gasping to the leaves.
Hooves thundered toward us.
Buttercup fell silent in mid-wail. Her eyes went wide. She lifted her left hand, pointing back toward the camp, and then she leaped toward me, her back to the torches and the men, burying her face in my ragged, soiled shirt.
The ground shook. There was a noise, a sound pitched so low and so powerful the first hint of it literally knocked the breath right out of me.
And then came the light.
The forest lit up, noonday bright, then brighter, brighter, and brighter still. I saw trees and leaves and then just limbs and trunks and then just a wash of pure white light, and the awful bass rumble that rose up from the earth grew louder, became a voice, and then a scream.