"Hush!" He clamped her mouth. "I don't like that word. It doesn't fit you."
A sniffle, a sigh. "It's what I am. A whore. I pleasure men for money. I've slept with all of them: Towser, Chad, Oles, Kem, even Morven."
Gull jolted. "Morven?"
"Aye. He was the kindest of the lot, lusty but gentle. He liked me to-"
"I don't want to hear about it!"
More sniffles. "You don't have to love me back."
"It's not that…" He raised his fists against the wagon bottom. He felt like punching the oak boards: words seemed useless. "Look, honey-"
A scream split the night.
Gull rolled from under the wagon, double-bitted axe in hand.
A man screamed. Oles.
In the black night beyond the banked campfire, Gull picked out the man's filthy sheepskin vest. It seemed to flap above the ground like a swan taking flight. The slowpoke ran faster than Gull had ever seen, even faster than at dinner call. He was armed with a sword at his belt and crossbow in hand, but seemed to have forgotten. Running flat out, he screamed all the way, one long keening note without breath.
"What is it?" Gull shouted. He took a fresh grip on his axe. Terror was contagious, especially in the depths of night. "What's after you?"
Then Gull saw.
Marching toward the wagons, in a wavering line, came a line of walking dead.
They looked like nothing less than walking birch stumps, so white and stiff were these creatures, these things long dead.
They shuffled over the uneven soil, bumped one another, bounced off, turned half round, stumbled on. Heads were mostly bald or lacked skin, so dull bone gleamed in the moonlight. Faces had dried to leather, puckered tight at their eyes. Mouths hung open as if decrying the injustice of being wrenched from the grave. They were wrapped in burial shrouds, or rat-torn rags, or nothing at all.
Slowly, clumsily, but resolutely, they staggered toward the circle of wagons, half a hundred or more in the dimness. Most horrible of all, they made no sound except the shuffle and rustle.
Sweating, wild-eyed, Gull tried to think. So slowly did the things move, they posed little threat. They could barely raise their arms. Yet neither could they be easily stopped, for they were already dead. One carried Oles's crossbow quarrel through its chest.
"Gods of Urza!" squeaked Lily. "Zombies of Scathe!"
The woodcutter had no time to wonder where a dancing girl had learned of zombies and whence they came, if Scathe was a place. The camp was roused. People tumbled out of wagons. A dancing girl screamed so piercingly Gull's ears hurt.
"Here we go again!" growled Kem. He wound a crossbow held by a stirrup. "I need a new job!"
"Hide!" shrilled a girl. "Get under cover! Towser will protect us!"
"Towser got us into this!" snapped Chad as he yanked his checked shirt over his head.
"No, you don't, ya lubber!" sounded Morven. He dragged Oles from inside the men's wagon. "Ye're fightin' here with us!"
"Get up, Stiggur!" came the muffled voice of Felda inside the chuck wagon. "Get up, you clot! We're attacked!"
"Build up the fire!" shrieked Knoton from inside the wagon. "Towser orders it!"
Gull had found work. He grabbed chunks of cordwood, split the ends, cast about for some canvas or rags to make torches. Every living thing feared fire, maybe the dead did too.
There was more shrilling and shouting, but before sanity could be imposed, the scream of horses caused them to reel yet again.
As usual, the herd was not far off, hobbled so they could browse the night long. But something was amongst them. Gull heard growls like a wolf's, but deeper, and a coughing like nothing he knew.
Gull reached under the chuck wagon for his bow and quiver, found his hands full of weapons, thrust his axe at Lily, who promptly dropped it. The woodcutter nocked and drew, aiming toward the herd, still without knowing what attacked them.
Chad dashed across the circle, opposite from the approaching zombies, swore, leveled his crossbow across a seat. The bow slammed twangtunk and a bolt sizzled through the air. Shoved by Morven, Oles fumbled into position and shot too. A mule shrilled.
Gull screamed, "Ease up, you fool! Watch where you shoot!" Cursing the gods, himself, and everything in between, he tracked along his arrow for a target.
The earth was black speckled with silver: moonlight on spring greenery. White and piebald horses showed as patchy ghosts, but the darker mules were almost invisible amidst burned black trunks. What was…
There. Something large as the horses, and tawny, leaped among the hobbled beasts. Gull couldn't see what for horseflesh. Then he glimpsed a yellow head with wild hair bob and dip. Then two more without manes. A brown cob broke his hobble and ran. Within three paces, twin tawny shapes flashed alongside, raking the horse's flanks with long claws. Blood flew and the horse sagged.
Big cats, Gull realized. Giant wildcats, all of a sand color. The males with shaggy manes.
Killing his livestock.
All this he glimpsed in seconds, and that a shaggy male was after a white mare, then he aimed behind the cat's shoulder and loosed. The arrow sped off with a slap of linen string against his wrist.
The big male shuddered and loosed its grip on the horse. Far off, the brown cob screamed, and frantically Gull tried to find it.
To trained ears came the pounding of hoofbeats. But from the other direction, out near the zombies.
Horses running in time.
Cavalry.
Throne of Bone, whence came these things? Then he knew. He swore bitterly and hard. "It's another damned wizards' duel!"
CHAPTER 10
Gull had two obligations in life: tend his sister and tend his livestock.
Slipping his bow over a naked shoulder, snatching his axe back from Lily, he vaulted onto the chuck wagon seat. He almost bashed heads with Greensleeves, sleepily fumbling past the curtain. Palming her crown, he mashed her back inside. "Stay!" The harsh tone penetrated even her befogged brain.
Then he hopped off the wagon and ran for his other charges.
The big cats-lions, Chad called them-had pulled down that brown cob. Though hard to see in shifting moonlight and shadows, Gull thought they'd hamstrung it or broken its back: the horse whinnied in terror while staying sprawled. One kill assured, the lionesses loped to the hunt again. Evidently they'd cripple half a dozen before feeding, as a fox would tear through a henhouse, then drag one home.
The cats fanned out in a three-quarter circle. The pincer movement forced the herd back against a granite shelf, a temporary pen. Gull took note. These lions were canny.
He remembered something else. Protecting the herd during a wizards' duel had gotten Towser's previous freighter killed.
There were eight or nine beasts spread out among the charred trunks. A big male with a black mane was out of the fight, for he spun in circles, snapping and pawing at the shaft lodged behind his shoulder. There were two more males, young and scrawny, and five or six lengthy females. From what he knew of cats, Gull guessed the lionesses were the more dangerous.
All were poised to tear into his animals like pigs through corn.
Don't rush. Shoot first, he told himself. Close only if necessary.
Huffing to a halt, he nocked a long arrow. A head shot would do little-they probably had skulls like oxen. Aiming in splintered moonlight, as if shooting through water, he lined on a female's belly and loosed. He heard a tuk as the arrow slapped into her. Startled, she hopped, then rolled, hissing and spitting. Gull heard the arrow shaft snap.
That made two heart shots on these lions, he thought grimly, and neither was dead yet. They were hard to kill.
And quick to anger.
The wounded male, old and wise, had fathomed the connection between the stings and the man with the weapon. Roaring, he whirled and charged the woodcutter.