Behind the cutters, the Hollow’s three fattest cows had been staked in the center of the square. Having consumed Leesha’s drugged meal, they slumbered deeply on their feet.
Behind the cows was the largest circle. Those within could not match the raw muscle of the cutters, but they had greater numbers. Nearly half of them were women, some as young as fifteen. They stood grimly alongside their husbands, fathers, brothers, and sons. Merrem, Dug the butcher’s burly wife, held a warded cleaver, and looked well ready to use it.
Behind them lay the covered pit, and then the third circle, directly before the great doors of the Holy House, where Stefny and the others too old or frail to run about the muddy square stood fast with long spears.
Each one was armed with a warded weapon. Some, those with the shortest reach, also carried round bucklers made from barrel lids, painted with wards of forbiddance. The Warded Man had made only one of those, but the others had copied it well enough.
At the edge of the day pen’s fence, behind the wardposts, stood the artillery, children barely in their teens, armed with bows and slings. A few adults had been given one of the precious thundersticks, or one of Benn’s thin flasks, stuffed with a soaked rag. Young children held lanterns, hooded against the rain, to light the weapons. Those who had refused to fight huddled with the animals under the shelter behind them, which shielded Bruna’s festival flamework from the rain.
More than a few, like Ande, had gone back on their promise to fight, accepting the scorn of their fellows as they hid behind the wards. As the Warded Man rode through the square astride Twilight Dancer, he saw others looking toward the pen longingly, fear etched on their faces.
There were screams as the corelings rose, and many took a step backward, their resolve faltering. Terror threatened to defeat the Hollowers before the battle even began. A few tips from the Warded Man on where and how to strike were meager against the weight of a lifetime of fear.
The Warded Man noticed Benn shaking. One of his pant legs was soaked and clinging to his twitching thigh, and not from the rain. He dismounted and stood before the glassblower.
“Why are you out here, Benn?” he asked, raising his voice so others could hear.
“M-my d-daughters,” Benn said, nodding back toward the Holy House. It looked as if the spear he held was going to vibrate right out of his hands.
The Warded Man nodded. Most of the Hollowers were there to protect their loved ones lying helpless in the Holy House. If not, they would all be in the pen. He gestured to the corelings materializing in the square. “You fear them?” he asked, louder still.
“Y-yes,” Benn managed, tears mixing with the rain on his cheeks. A glance showed others nodding as well.
The Warded Man stripped off his robes. None of the people had seen him unclad before, and their eyes widened as they took in the wards tattooed over every inch of his body. “Watch,” he told Benn, but the command was meant for all.
He stepped from the circle, striding up to a seven-foot-tall wood demon that was just beginning to solidify. He looked back, meeting the eyes of as many Hollowers as he could. Seeing them watching intently, he shouted, “This is what you fear!”
Turning sharply, the Warded Man struck hard, smashing the flat of his hand against the coreling’s jaw, knocking the demon down in a flash of magic just as it became fully solid. The coreling shrieked in pain, but it recovered quickly, coiling on its tail to spring. The villagers stood openmouthed, their eyes locked on the scene, sure the Warded Man would be killed.
The wood demon lunged, but the Warded Man kicked off a sandal and spun, kicking up inside the coreling’s reach. His warded heel struck its armored chest with a thunderclap, and the demon was sent reeling again, its chest scorched and blackened.
A smaller wood demon launched itself at him as he stalked his prey, but the Warded Man caught its arm and twisted himself behind its back, jabbing his warded thumbs into its eyes. There was a smoking sizzle, and the coreling screamed, staggering away and clawing at its face.
As the blind coreling stumbled about, the Warded Man resumed his pursuit of the first demon, meeting its next attack head-on. He pivoted and turned the coreling’s momentum against it, latching on as it stumbled past him and wrapping his warded arms around its head. He squeezed, ignoring the demon’s futile attempts to dislodge him, and waited as the feedback built in intensity. Finally, with a burst of magic, the creature’s skull collapsed, and they fell to the mud.
The other demons kept their distance as the Warded Man rose from the corpse, hissing and searching for a sign of weakness. The Warded Man roared at them, and those closest took a step back from him.
“It is not you that should fear them, Benn the glassblower!” the Warded Man called, his voice like a hurricane. “It is they that should fear you!”
None of the Hollowers made a sound, but many fell to their knees, drawing wards in the air before them. He walked back up to Benn, who was no longer shaking. “Remember that,” he said, using his robes to wipe the mud from his wards, “the next time they clutch at your heart.”
“Deliverer,” Benn whispered, and others began to mumble the same.
The Warded Man shook his head sharply, rainwater flying free. “You are the Deliverer!” he shouted, poking Benn hard in the chest. “And you!” he cried, spinning to roughly haul a kneeling man to his feet. “All of you are Deliverers!” he bellowed, sweeping his arms over all who stood in the night. “If the corelings fear a Deliverer, let them quail at a hundred of them!” He shook his fist, and the Hollowers roared.
The spectacle kept the newly formed demons at bay for a moment, issuing low growls as they stalked back and forth. But their pacing soon slowed, and one by one they crouched, muscles bunching up as they tamped down.
The Warded Man looked to the left flank, his warded eyes piercing the gloom. Flame demons avoided the water-filled trench, but wood demons approached that way, heedless of the wet.
“Light it,” he called, pointing to the trench with a thumb.
Benn struck a flamestick with his thumb, shielding the tiny blaze from the wind and rain as he touched it to the wick of a flamewhistle. As the wick sizzled and sparked, Benn uncoiled, flinging it toward the trench.
Halfway through its arc, the wick burned down and a jet of fire exploded from one end of the flamewhistle. The thick-wrapped paper tube spun rapidly in blazing pinwheel, emitting a high-pitched whine as it struck the oil sludge in the trench.
Wood demons shrieked as the water about their knees burst into flame. They fell back, beating the fire in terror, splashing oil and only spreading the flames.
Flame demons cried out in glee as they leapt into the fire, forgetting the water that lay beneath. The Warded Man smiled at their cries as the water boiled.
The flames filled the square with flickering light, and there were gasps from the cutters at the size of the host before them. Wind demons cut the sky, adroit even in the wind and rain. Lissome flame demons darted about, eyes and mouths glowing red, silhouetting the hulking rock demons that stalked the edges of the gathering. And wood demons. So many wood demons.
“S’like the trees of the forest have risen up ’gainst the axemen,” Yon Gray said in awe, and many of the cutters nodded in horror.
“Ent met a tree yet I can’t chop down,” Gared growled, holding his axe at the ready. The boast filtered through the rank, and the other cutters stood taller.