He had to keep moving anyway, he knew. If he stopped for a second, all his bruises and wounds would seize up and he'd be helpless.
Stumbling across the crater slope, he caught the captain's horse. It backed, but Gull crooned and snagged the reins and it obeyed. Too sore and tipsy to mount, Gull caught Lily's hand and smacked the horse so it towed them up the slope.
Atop the rim, Gull searched for the horse he'd jumped from, but didn't see it. With the moon gone, the night was black. Only ghostly birch stumps glowed, their scorched trunks gray stripes against blackness. He could barely see his hand by starlight. They'd have to creep back to camp.
Despite the dancing girl's protests-she didn't want to mount again-Gull climbed painfully into the saddle and hauled her in front of him. Upright, this time. Clucking, he set out west. Blown and carrying double, the horse would only walk. Blown himself, Gull let it.
Camp was perhaps a half mile off. Through twisted trunks and some brambly screen they glimpsed light. "The campfire!" Lily chirped.
Gull muttered, "Could be piled high as a signal for us."
"You think the battle's over?"
He shrugged. The moment's rest had recalled all his injuries, and each burned and twinged and itched and ached. Wherever his skin touched Lily's baggy soiled clothes, sweat and dirt and blood stuck. Yet she pressed close for comfort.
"Mayhaps," he said, "but that may be bad, too. If Towser gets himself outnumbered, he might flee, as that brown-and-yellow wizard fled the duel at White Ridge." The name of his lost village pained his heart. Angrily he shook his head. "That's why we must hurry back. If Towser disappears, he might take everyone with him, including my sister. She's the only one I care about."
"What about me?" Lily pouted.
Pained and worried, Gull was now irritated. He clucked and nudged the horse to a faster walk. "You too, of course. But we've got to-"
The horse whickered and stopped, as if it'd hit a wall. Gull swore, nudged, but then sensed something before them in the blackness. The slight breeze that had washed them stopped.
Carefully, he slid down and walked forward, hand out. And pricked his hand. He sniffed a familiar green-bitter smell.
"Balls! It's Towser's wall of thorns again. Now what?" He cast right and left, snagged his tangled hair in grasping thorns, swore. "Can you see a way around?"
Higher on the horse, the dancing girl craned. "Off to the right is something white. That wouldn't be thorns, would it?"
"Who knows?" Gull sighed. "Once they loose magic, there are no rules. Nothing makes sense."
He towed the horse toward the white whatevers, one hand up to shield his face in the pitchy darkness. The thorn wall meandered like a wild hedgerow, and he was tagged on the shoulders and hands by thorns, stepped barefoot on more, often banged into trunks and had to circle them.
As time dragged on, he fretted more and more. He had to get back to Greensleeves before some disaster struck the camp.
Nearing the white barriers, Gull found them to be-teeth?
At first the thorn wall intermingled with the white teeth, then gave way to them entirely. The teeth were all sizes, from finger height to taller than a man could reach. Gull felt a tooth, found it slippery-smooth, sharp enough at the tip to pierce skin. Testing, he snapped a slim one in his hand like an icicle. But any thick as his thumb were unbreakable.
"I've seen these," said Lily. "They grow in caves, from the ground and the ceiling. People call them stone spears. Smell? The earth is covered with bat guano."
Gull wrinkled his nose at the dry acrid smell. The earth was gray-white, and from the gunk came the chit-tering of a million insects living in the stuff. Another distant chunk of the Domains, thought Gull, ripped from the floor of some mammoth cave and dropped here, into the western reaches of the Whispering Woods. What wonders these wizards pissed away for their greedy ends!
White by starlight, the wall of swords waggled this way and that through the charred stump forest, as if sown by a drunkard. But it was no more two hundred feet wide anywhere.
There came another surprise.
With a clear line of sight, they could see the fire they'd glimpsed.
Not their own camp, but another wizard's.
It was not a pit for a cooking fire they saw, but a large heaped bonfire.
It was a few hundred feet off. I've gotten turned around without the moon to guide us, Gull thought. Between tree trunks like black bars he could make out little. Black knights encircled the fire, some mounted, some dismount. At the center walked a large figure-very big, he realized. Almost as tall as the mounted men. That figure stalked around and around, probably haranguing his troops, dangerous as the lions. Light gleamed from the man as if he were armored all over. Beyond the circle were curved ridges like distant hills: Gull finally decided they were covered wagons with the canvas painted dark.
So these were the wagons whose trail they'd cut weeks ago.
But where was Towser's camp? And the zombies? And what form would the next attack take? Something worse than undead?
Lily whispered his name, pointed. He followed the white curve of her sleeve.
Way over there was a glimmer of a sheltered fire. A suggestion of moving bodies and a hoop shape-the bow of a toppled wagon.
Hissing for silence, lest they draw down the black riders, Gull covered the horse's nose to prevent its snorting to its mates. Gingerly he towed the beast amidst the field of swords. In the murky nonlight, he shuffled his bare feet lest he step on a spike, and hoped the horse did the same. Bat manure squished between his toes. The crunching of insect shells was loud and sickening.
Soon they stepped clear of the cave floor to soft black loam. Gull wiped his feet, swung up behind Lily. With the tiny glimmer to guide them, they could ride to camp. They might have to flee if the riders came.
A thunder of hooves suddenly drummed on the ears, but not from the distant bonfire. From the direction of Towser's camp.
Gull reined alongside a thick trunk. Lily asked, "Who's-"
"Shush!"
Two riders, driving hard, swerving between trunks. A hallooing went up, a weird ululating war cry that split the night and sent shivers up spines.
Gull barked in surprise. He knew that cry.
"Helki! Holleb!"
Sweaty bronzed skin glistened by starlight. The centaurs were naked, without armor or helmets or warpaint, only their armbands and feathered lances. Ratty hair sailed behind them, grown almost long as their tails. What had happened? he wondered. Formerly they'd been so tidy and soldierly, with their gear painted and polished and stowed neatly on their harness. Why now so mangy and unkempt?
And why were they here? Why not home in their steppe country?
As they surged by, Gull called their names. Holleb only shouted his bloodcurdling cry. But Helki whinnied as if in fear or shame.
"Gull! We must attack! We are captives! We cannot-uh!" She interrupted herself to shout her cry, and the two leveled lances.
By the distant bonfire, black riders scrambled to mount. The big central figure waved gold-gleaming arms.
But Gull could only sit stunned at Helki's words. Captives? Again? The brown-and-yellow wizard had abandoned them. Towser had returned them home. So… had he summoned them himself, enslaved them for his own purposes? He must have, for they traveled from his camp toward the enemy.
Was Towser indeed as bad, as callous and cold-hearted, as any other wizard? Was Gull a gull to work for him?
"Oh!" cried Lily. "Look to the sky!"
A bright flash blinded Gull, made him blink.
Sizzling into the air, coming from the far wizard's camp, glowing like a rocket, soared a horse afire.
"Nightmare!"
CHAPTER 12
The magic horse blazed across the sky like a comet.