“And what wilt thou do with me, once thou hast me there?” she purred, nestling up against him.
The contact sent a current coursing through him. His breath hissed in. “I said a teapot, not a pumpkin shell!” He reached out to caress her gently, and it was her turn to gasp. He breathed into her ear, “Just wait till they fall asleep…”
“Beshrew me! But they have only now waked from several hours’ rest!” Gwen gazed up at him forlornly. “Hmm!” Rod frowned. “Hadn’t thought of that…”
“Aye di me!” Gwen sighed, snuggling a little closer. “E’en so, the comfort of thy presence will aid me greatly, my lord.”
“Fine—now that you’ve made sure I won’t sleep!”
“Yet must not a husbandman be ever vigilant?” she murmured.
“Yeah—waiting for my chance!” He rested his cheek against her head. “Now I know why they call you a witch…”
“Papa-a-a-a!”
Rod waked instantly; there’d been tears in that little voice. He opened his eyes and saw Gregory leaning over him clutching his arm, shaking him. “Papa, Papa!” Tears were running down the little boy’s cheeks. Rod reached up an arm to snake around him and pull him down, cradling him against his side. The little body stayed stiff, resisting comfort. Rod crooned, “What’s the matter, little fella? Bad dream?”
Gregory gulped, and nodded.
“What was it about?”
“Nasty man,” Gregory sniffled.
“Nasty?” For some reason, Rod was suddenly on his guard. “What was he doing?”
“He did creep upon us.” Gregory looked up at his father, eyes wide. “Creeping up, to hurl things at us.”
Rod stared into his eyes for a second, then began to pat his back gently. “Don’t worry about it. Even if the nasty man did sneak up on us, your brothers and sister would gang up on him before he could do much damage.” He smiled, and saw a tentative, quivering lift at the comers of Gregory’s mouth. He tousled the boy’s hair and turned to look at his wife. He saw a large pair of eyes staring back at him. “Kind of thought you’d wake up, if one of the kids had a problem.”
“I did hear him,” Gwen said softly. “I did see his dream. And, my lord…”
Rod couldn’t help feeling that being on his guard was just the thing for the occasion. “What’s wrong?”
“Gregory’s mind would not conjure up so mild a phantasm, nor one so threatening.”
The tension was building inside Rod. Anger began to boil up under it. Rod tried to hold it down, reminding himself that he and Gwen could probably handle any attempt to hurt them. But the mere thought that anyone would dare to attack his children, to plant nightmares in their sleeping minds…!
Magnus, Cordelia, and Geoffrey suddenly sat bolt-upright. “Papa,” Cordelia gasped, “what dost thou?”
“Is it that bad already? I’m trying to hold my temper.”
“Thou dost amazingly.” Magnus blinked the sleep out of his eyes and leaned closer, on hands and knees, to peer at his father. “In truth, thou dost amazingly. I would never guess thy rage, to look at thee. Papa, what…”
The night seemed to thicken a few feet away from the children. Something hazy appeared, coalesced, hardened, and shot to earth, slamming into the ground a few feet from Magnus’s hand. His head snapped around; he stared at a six-inch rock. Cordelia’s gaze was riveted to it, too, in horror; but Geoffrey leaped to his feet. “Ambush!”
The night thickened again, just over Magnus’s head. Something hazy appeared…
… and began to coalesce…
“Heads up!” Rod dove for his son. His shoulder knocked Magnus sprawling, and a foot-thick rock crashed down, grazing Rod’s hip. He bellowed with pain—and anger at the monster who dared attack his children. His full rage cut loose.
“Ware!” Magnus cried. The children were already looking up, as their father had bade them, so they saw the rocks materializing—two, three, all plummeting to earth as they became real.
“Dodge ball!” Magnus shouted. Instantly, he and his brothers and sister were bounding and bobbing back and forth, Cordelia weaving an aerial dance that would’ve given a computer tracker a blown fuse, the boys appearing and disappearing here, there, yonder, like signal lights in a storm. Through their flickering pavane, Magnus called in suppressed rage, “Art thou hurted, Papa?”
“Nothing that a little murder won’t cure,” Rod yelled back. “Children—seek! Discover and destroy!”
The children seemed to focus more sharply, and stayed visible for longer intervals.
Gwen was on her feet, still, her eyes warily probing the night above them.
Then Geoffrey hopped to his left, just as a small boulder materialized right where his chest had been.
Rod stood rigid with horror. If the boy hadn’t happened to jump aside, just at that instant… “Somebody’s trying to teleport rocks into the kids’ bodies!”
“ ‘Twould be instant death.” Gwen’s face was pale, but taut with promised mayhem.
Rod stood tree-still, his eyes wide open; but the night blurred around him into a formless void as his mind opened, seeking…
Cordelia seized her broomstick and shot up into the sky. For a moment, all three boys disappeared. Then Magnus reappeared, far across the meadow, dimly seen in the moonlight. He disappeared again just as Geoffrey reappeared ten feet away, twenty feet in the air. Air shot outward with a pistol-crack, inward with firecracker-pop. The meadow resounded with reports, like miniature machine gun fire. Geoffrey disappeared with a dull boom, and a treetop nearby swayed with a bullwhip-crack as Gregory appeared in the topmost limbs.
And stones kept falling, all over the meadow.
“Husband!” Gwen’s voice was taut. “This enemy will mark us, too, ere long.”
That jolted Rod. “I suppose so—if he doesn’t just pick on little kids. Better split up.”
Gwen seized her broomstick and disappeared into the dark sky.
That left Rod feeling like a sitting duck. He supposed he would be able to float up into the sky himself, if he just thought about it—but he’d never done it, and didn’t want to have to pay attention to trying to keep himself up while he was trying to find and annihilate an enemy. Capture, he reminded himself—capture, if you can.
But he hoped he’d find he couldn’t.
Magnus appeared ten feet away, shaking his head. “He doth cloak his thoughts well, Papa. I cannot…” Suddenly, his eyes lost focus. Geoffrey’s laugh caroled over the meadow, clear and filled with glee. Magnus disappeared with a pistol-crack. Rod leaped for Fess’s back and shot across the meadow, a living missile with a double warhead.
He was just in time to see Geoffrey and Magnus shoot up out of the trees, carrying a young man stretched like a tug-of-war rope between them. He struggled and cursed, kicking and whiplashing about with his legs and torso, but the boys stretched his arms tight, laughing with delight, and pulling with far more strength than their little bodies could account for.
The young man shut his mouth, and glared at Magnus.
Foreboding struck, and Rod sprang from Fess’s back in a flying tackle.
He smacked into the young man’s legs so hard they bruised his shoulder. Above him, the warlock yowled in pain.
Then it was daytime, suddenly full noon. The glare stung Rod’s eyes, and he squinted against it. He could make out fern leaves closely packed above, and a huge lizardlike monstrosity staring at them from five feet away. Then its mouth lolled open in a needle-fanged grin, and it waddled toward them with amazing speed. Panic clawed its way up Rod’s throat, and he almost let go to snatch out his knife—but the enemy warlock panicked first.
It was night again, total night. No, that was moonlight, wasn’t it? And it showed Rod water, endless waves heaving below him. One reached up to slap at his heels, and its impact travelled on up to hit his stomach with chilling dread. He could just picture himself falling, sinking beneath those undulating fluid hills, rising to thrash about in panic, clawing for land, for wood, for something that floated… Instinctively, he tightened his hug on the ankles.