A snort came back. "I've no desire to discuss thaumaturgy before breakfast, certainly not with a lout who abuses my hospitality by sundering my wagons. You'll not get what you seek, so you may as well depart."
Again the warrior growled and grunted, but halted when Towser reached behind him into the wagon. He plucked out the pink stone box. By dim light it resembled, as Kem had said, pig guts strung tight. As if it would rot in the morning sun.
The warrior spoke again, but Towser lifted his free hand and pointed, then clenched his own fist.
The armored warrior staggered as his knees buckled. With an amazing display of strength, he propped himself upright and waved a clenched hand. Gradually, he righted. Probably he'd blocked Towser's spell- more weakness?-with a counterspell, Gull thought. But who knew what wizards did: mortals could only watch and wonder.
The woodcutter wondered what came next. If the warrior couldn't stand up to Towser's mana vault, then what?
Wood splintered and cracked. Towser's wagon groaned, jiggled, and tilted, pushed from underneath. Gull craned to see in the dim light. White swords, from the cave floor, multiplied under the wagon. Rising, they shoved the wagon off its wheels. And continued to grow, and push.
Towser cursed, grabbed for a grip, struggled to hang on to the mana vault.
Strength returned, the warrior dropped that attack, began another.
With long strides, he stamped toward the chuck wagon. Grabbing hold of the axle, he dragged it sideways. Inside, Felda screamed. Lily yelped, Morven cursed, and Gull hefted his poker.
It wasn't much to battle an armored magician.
He heard his sister shriek. Finally, she'd discovered terror.
Swinging his thin poker in his left hand, Gull hopped around the tongue of the overturned wagon.
"Fight me, you fiend!" he shouted. And he charged.
Things happened too fast for Gull to follow. Part of him said it didn't matter. He must protect his sister. That was enough. So he attacked.
The warrior-wizard snapped wood like kindling, ripped the wagon tongue and front axles from the frame. A wooden wheel bounced off his silver helmet. A metallic hand tore boards off the wagon's side. Canvas split, tangled. Splinters flew. Screams rang.
From the hole in the side of the wagon, like a woodchuck, popped up Stiggur. He flung a bottle at the warrior's helmet. It shattered, and Gull smelled vinegar. The wizard sliced with a metal hand that would have decapitated the boy, but he disappeared into his den.
By then Gull had dashed around to the wizard's back. He saw no chinks in the armor. And where the blazes was Towser with his bag of tricks?
The woodcutter wound up and slammed the poker at the back of the wizard's knee. Chain mail protected him, and the poker only bent.
The only sign the wizard gave was to slap backhanded, like swatting a fly.
Gull shot out his arm to protect his head, but the armored glove slammed his elbow, almost breaking it. Gull's own hand banged his rasped forehead, which bled anew. He felt he'd been crushed by a tree. Reeling, the woodcutter bounced on the turf.
Through a haze, he heard screams.
Vision whirling, he saw a spinning wizard drag his sister's gown, yank her from the wagon. The wizard pinned Greensleeves by one arm. She shrieked like a trapped rabbit at the cold touch.
Gull tried to sit up, but his muscles wouldn't respond. He couldn't find his arms or hands, as if they'd been wrenched off. Perhaps they had. He tried to kick, to sit up, but only twitched. Panic set in. Perhaps his back was broken, like his father's.
Another scream joined Greensleeves's. Kicking with an armored boot, the wizard knocked the wagon askew, reached behind, caught Lily by the waist- kidnapped for the second time this night. She tugged at the metal hand until her fingernails bled, but couldn't get free.
Morven the sailor leveled his crossbow and shot from ten feet away. The heavy steel-tipped bolt spanked off the wizard's helmet, ricocheted away. Chad ran up, racked the bow on his crossbow, but stopped: if one bolt had failed, surely another would. But it was all they had. Kem and Oles waved swords feebly. They saw no place to attack. Jonquil, one of the dancing girls, ran up with a torch, but halted too.
Gull shook his head, grew dizzy. Through a fog he saw the warrior turn toward his camp with two captives, heard Towser bellow some magical command.
About time, the woodcutter thought.
The command got results. The warrior-wizard paused, half turned, and -his helmet exploded.
One second it was there, the next his head sundered as if struck by lightning. Hot jagged metal flew in all directions. A piece nicked Greensleeves in the forehead and made her bleed. Lily yelped as a fragment pinked her bosom. Gull heard a piece flicker into dirt nearby.
All that remained was a fragment of molten collar. As the warrior took another step, this charred twisted strip sloughed off and crunched underfoot. Chain mail from the coif hung in tatters on the red-and-silver breast.
But the armored wizard kept walking.
With no head at all.
"An avatar!" shrieked Towser. "You cheat!"
Vaguely, Gull wondered what an avatar was. But not for long.
The titan-phantom or ghost or whatever it was- strode toward the distant bonfire with his captives.
Paralyzed, Gull lay in his path. But the armored giant couldn't see him.
A huge foot reared over the woodcutter. Eyes bulging, Gull remembered that the giant had sunk into the loam, heavy as a yoke of oxen.
He was about to step on Gull, crush him like a cockroach.
Then the world went white.
CHAPTER 13
One second Gull stared helpless at a hobnailed armored boot poised to crush him -the next the sky filled with white, and the dank moldy smell of mushrooms washed over him.
Something huge loomed over Gull, something that made the armored avatar seem a mouse in comparison, as if the moon had come to earth.
The thing cast its own cold sickly light, like the foxfire of swamps or the glitter of lightning bugs. The woodcutter saw a head the size of a cottage, goggling glowing yellow eyes, and teeth like the stone spears of a cave. The beast was white all over, with that dank glow, speckled with rows of brownish-gray lumps.
Mushrooms, Gull realized. The beast was one giant mushroom speckled with a thousand more. The rank musty smell was overwhelming. Flakes big as plates fell from the beast's shoulders and broke on the ground, the way oyster mushrooms sloughed from birch trees in fall.
But the teeth were what touched the armored wizard.
The headless warrior balked as if hitting a wall. The mushroom monster's maw swung toward it and bit down. With a sickening crunch, stone teeth shattered on red-silver armor.
The women dropped to the ground as the avatar struggled, grabbed for anything to prevent disappearing into the maw. The mouth, big as a well, opened farther, swallowed half the armored carcass. Metal gloves plucked at the lumpy lips. White chunks crumbled, rained on Gull and the dancing girls. With a sudden surge of strength and terror, Gull crawled out of the way, bumping his sister and Lily with his head.
Then the armored wizard was gone.
Gull blinked. Swallowed? Or…?
No. There went the avatar, a wisp like ashes, flickering into the sky.
The giant mushroom monster growled deep in its throat. Goggle eyes like a fish's rolled, hunted. The thing was huge, tall as the dead trees, long as a barn. It picked up a bloated pulpy foot, lurched toward the wagons. People howled.
Then the beast changed color.
Waves of brown welled upward from the ground, flushed green near the middle, flooded blue at the top. Gull was reminded of Towser's gown, with its ascending stripes. For a few seconds, the mushroom-monster stood bathed in multicolored light. Then it collapsed onto itself, withered, and sank into the ground.