I nodded nervously.
One-Eye shuddered all over, jumped high in the air’ again, wailed and howled, then went down kicking and flopping like a man with the falling sickness.
The surviving beetles rushed together, zip-zap, clickety-clack, into two seething piles, clacking their mandibles angrily, scraping against one another chitinously. Brown smog wriggled from the piles in thick ropes, twisted and joined, became a curtain concealing the frenzied bugs. The smoke contracted into globules which bounced, bounding higher after each contact with the earth. Then they did not come down, but rather drifted on the breeze, sprouting what grew into gnarly digits.
What we had here were replicas of One-Eye’s horny paws a hundred times life size. Those hands went weed-plucking through Goblin’s monster garden, ripping his plants up by the roots, knotting their stems together in elegant, complicated sailor’s knots, forming an ever-elongating braid.
“They do have more talent than one would suspect,” Soulcatcher observed. “But so wasted on frivolity.”
“I don’t know.” I gestured. The show was having an invigorating effect on morale.. Feeling a breath of that boldness which animates me at odd moments, I suggested, “This is a sorcery they can appreciate, unlike the oppressive, bitter wizardries of the Taken.”
Catcher’s black morion faced me for a few seconds. I imagined fires burning behind the narrow eyeslits. Then a girlish giggle slipped forth. “You’re right. We’re so filled with doom and gloom and brooding and terror we infect whole armies. One soon forgets the emotional panorama of life.”
How odd, I thought. This was a Taken with a chink in its armor, a Soulcatcher drawing aside one of the veils concealing its secret being. The Annalist in me caught the scent of a tale and began to bay.
Catcher sidestepped me as though reading my thoughts. “You had a visitation last night?” The Annalist-hound’s voice died in midcry. “I had a strange dream. About the Lady.”
Catcher chuckled, a deep, bass rumble. That constant change of voices can rattle the most stolid of men. It put me on the defensive. His very comradeliness, too, disturbed me.
“I think she favors you, Croaker. Some little thing about you has captured her imagination, just as she has caught yours. What did she have to say?”
Something way back told me to be careful. Catcher’s query was warm and offhand, yet there was a hidden intensity there which said that the question was not at all casual.
“Just reassurances,” I replied. “Something about the Stair of Tear not being all that critical in her scheme. But it was only a dream.”
“Of course.” He seemed satisfied. “Only a dream.” But the voice was the female one he used when he was most serious.
The men were oohing and ahing. I turned to check the progress of the contest.
Goblin’s skein of pitcher-plants had transmogrified into a huge airborne man-of-war jellyfish. The brown hands were entangled in its tentacles, trying to tear themselves free. And over the cliff face, observing, floated a giant pink face, bearded, surrounded by tangled orange hair. One eye was half closed, sleepily, by a livid scar. I frowned baffled. “What’s that?” I knew it was not any doing of Goblin’s or One-Eye’s, and wondered if Silent had joined the game, just to show them up.
Soulcatcher made a sound that was a creditable imitation of a bird’s dying squawk. “Harden,” he said, and whirled to face the Captain, bellowing, “To arms. They come.”
In seconds men were flying toward their positions. The last hints of the struggle between Goblin and One-Eye became misty tatters floating on the wind, drifting toward the leering Harden face, giving it a loathsome case of acne where they touched. A cute fillip, I thought, but don’t try to take him heads up, boys. He won’t play games.
The answer to our scramble was a lot of horn-blowing from below, and a grumble of drums which echoed in the canyons like distant thunder.
The Rebel poked at us all day, but it was obvious that he was not serious, that he was just prodding the hornets’ nest to see what would happen. He was well aware of the difficulty of storming the Stair.
All of which portended Harden having something nasty up his sleeve.
Overall, though, the skirmishes boosted morale. The men began to believe there was a chance they could hold.
Though the comet swam among the stars, and a galaxy of campfires speckled the Stair below, the night gave the lie to my feeling that the Stair was the heart of war. I sat on an outcrop overlooking the enemy, knees up under my chin, musing on the latest news from the east. Whisper was besieging Frost now, after having finished Trinket’s army and having defeated Moth and Sidle among the talking menhirs of the Plain of Fear. The east looked a worse disaster for the Rebel than was the north for us.
It could get worse here. Moth and Sidle and Linger had joined Harden. Others of the Eighteen were down there, as yet unidentified. Our enemies did smell blood.
I have never seen the northern auroras, though I am told we would have gotten glimpses had we held Oar and Deal long enough to have wintered there. The tales I have heard about those gentle, gaudy lights make me think they are the only thing to compare with what took shape over the canyons, as the Rebel campfires dwindled. Long, long, thin banners of tenuous light twisted up toward the stars, shimmering, undulating like seaweed in a gentle current, Soft pinks and greens, yellows and blues, beautiful hues. A phrase leapt into my mind. An ancient name. The Pastel Wars.
The Company fought in the Pastel Wars, long, long ago. I tried to recall what the Annals said about those conflicts. It would not all come to the fore, but I remembered enough to become frightened. I hurried toward the officers’ compound, seeking Soulcatcher.
I found him, and told him what I remembered, and he thanked me for my concern, but said he was familiar with both the Pastel Wars and the Rebel cabal sending up these lights. We had no worries. This attack had been anticipated and the Hanged Man was here to abort it.
“Take yourself a seat somewhere, Croaker. Goblin and One-Eye put on their show. Now it’s the turn of the Ten.” He oozed a confidence both strong and malignant, so that I supposed the Rebel had fallen into some Taken trip.
I did as he suggested, venturing back out to my lonely watchpost. Along the way I passed through a camp arouse by the growing spectacle. A murmur of fear ran hither and yon, rising and falling like the mutter of distant surf.
The colored streamers were stronger now, and there was a frenetic jerkiness to their movements which suggested a thwarted will. Maybe Catcher was right. Maybe this would come to nothing but a flashy show for the troops.
I resumed my perch. The canyon bottom no longer twinkled. It was a sea of ink down there, not at all softened by the glow of the writhing streamers. But if nothing could be seen, plenty could be heard. The acoustics of the land were remarkable.
Harden was on the move. Only the advance of his entire army could generate so much metallic rattle and tinkle.
Harden and his henchmen were confident too.
A soft green light banner floated up into the night, fluttering lazily, like a streamer of tissue in an updraft. It faded as it rose, and disintegrated into dying sparks high overhead.
What snipped it loose? I wondered. Harden or the Hanged Man? Did this bode good or ill?
It was a subtle contest, almost impossible to follow. It was like watching superior fencers duel. You could not follow everything unless you were an expert yourself. Goblin and One-Eye had gone at it like a couple of barbarians with broadswords, comparatively speaking.
Little by little, the colorful aurora died. That had to be the doing of the Hanged Man. The unanchored light banners did us no harm.
The racket below got closer.
Where was Stormbringer? We had not heard from her for a while. This seemed an ideal time to gift the Rebel with miserable weather.