"You'll have a snootful in a moment!" Gull shouted over the noise. "That shout was-Greenie! Hold up!"
But lost in her own world of newfangled magic, his sister went on whispering and waggling her fingers.
A roar answered her.
A pair of humpbacked grizzly bears big as hayricks winked into being thirty feet away. One of the shaggy brown animals roared, snapped slavering jaws full of long white teeth, looked around for something to bite.
And spotted Gull and company against the monolith.
The woodcutter gulped. He never knew his sister had touched grizzly bears!
But why did they turn this way…?
Then he realized.
Greensleeves couldn't control any of these creatures.
They'd attack whatever they liked. Including him and his sister.
In a flash, Gull saw the problem.
Towser, with years of training and experience, had learned to control whatever he summoned. Laid on each being, magical or not, was a geas, a compulsion to serve the wizard. Thus Towser could summon the darkest monster and point it at an enemy, himself immune from attack.
But Greensleeves had neither training nor years. Whatever she conjured did as it pleased. The badgers, befriended, had chosen to defend her.
But these grizzlies…
Suddenly they had too much "help."
The bigger bear, the male, kicked its back legs to gather speed, rolled at them like a boulder from a mountaintop.
"Greensleeves!" shouted Gull. "Something to stop it!"
His sister saw the charging bear, threw up her hands, bleated.
An upwelling flare of multicolored light, a rapid barking and woofing, and suddenly nine husky gray timber wolves, thoroughly fuddled, spilled across the altar.
They thumped at Greensleeves's feet, tumbled against the monolith and bounded away, dumped on their rumps in the path of the grizzly bear.
Instinctively protecting his pack, one huge wolf leaped at the grizzly's face. With gleaming fangs it latched onto the bear's muzzle. The bruin half reared to bat it away. The wolf kicked scrabbled for footing in the grass, yanked to tear flesh and pull its opponent off-balance. Other wolves nipped at the bear's flanks, but the rampaging female smashed amidst them, bowling them right and left.
"Rabid wolves to stop hungry bears?" rasped Morven. "That's an improvement?"
Gull only shook his head. "Badgers, I'd seen her play with! Deer! Wolverines, even! But I never imagined she'd touched-"
He turned at a snarl. Atop the monolith perched a tawny mountain lion. It clung with razor claws. White whiskers bristling, ears laid back, it screeched a challenge to this indignity.
A louder roar distracted the fighters. Yelping, howling, leaping, screaming, a horde of blue-painted, white-haired, tusked barbarians gathered at the gap in the crazy bramble walls.
And charged.
CHAPTER 18
"Fall back!" shouted the woodcutter over barbarian screams. He caught Greensleeves's arm, plucked at Morven's, all while juggling his axe. "We need cover!"
"There ain't no cover!" Morven yelled. He turned the air blue shouting sailors' oaths at the oncoming barbarians.
Gull didn't argue. They couldn't fight an army. Dragging his companions on tiptoes, he backpedaled around the monolith till it rose like a wall on their left.
Near the altar, the bear-wolf fight sent fur pluming into the air. Five wolves tumbled and snapped at the grizzly bears, more snarling than fighting. The male grizzly batted a wolf, rushed and trampled over him, then whirled. Gull could have touched the bear's tail.
But at the barbarians' rush and shout, the dogfight split apart. Yelping wolves shot across the warriors' front line and vaulted through the thin brambles. The grizzlies bowled after them and bashed straight through stone spears and vines.
Nothing protected them now, thought Gull.
Threescore blue barbarians ran five abreast. They cheered, lusty and proud, some garbled the name of a war god, loudly enough to hurt ears. They laughed as if going to a holiday instead of slaughter. Gull and his companions would be mincemeat.
Dashing all the way into the pocket behind the monolith, a second's glance showed they were trapped.
The bramble-sword-wood wall was still a solid barrier, thirty feet thick here, that halted abruptly at the cliff's edge. Roots and branches stuck into space. Gull had vaguely hoped they might run around the monolith, since it didn't sit on the very lip of the bluff. But rocks higher than his reach were piled against the back of the dark cone, possibly to prop it, a jumbled line of them some twenty feet long. Given time, they could boost and climb over: but they had no time. Squinting into the setting sun, Gull found the cliff edge dropped sheer thirty feet to surf-swept boulders.
There was only twelve feet of space between the monolith and bramble wall, yet they had nothing to plug the gap, for Stiggur's clockwork beast was still fetched up in the brambles. The boy yanked at the controls. Levers clicked, pulleys raced, gears clashed, but the construct was mired in vines. Gull wasn't sure it would make a barrier anyway.
This pocket would prove the last stand for Gull, Greensleeves, and Morven. They would fight and then die. In dying, choose blades or a fall.
Gull shoved his sister behind him, against the rocks, and hefted his axe. Morven lifted his pathetic steel spike.
The barbarians struck.
The same people who had captured Gull and Greensleeves in that copse at the beach, the barbarians were normal humans except for tusks and white hair. Tattooed and berry-stained blue, they dressed in skins and war harness, carried painted rawhide shields, and either curved bronze swords or obsidian-headed clubs like small pickaxes. Gull noted the few women among them were equally tusked and tattooed. They rushed blindly forward, weapons raised, howling like demons.
Gull's vision filled blue, and he had no more time to think, or even call to his sister. This was the fight of his life.
A screaming barbarian swung his sword overhand. The woodcutter shoved his axe haft in the air so the blade gouged hickory. Wheeling, Gull slammed the butt end into the man's temple, dropping him.
A woman rushed, jabbed with her burnished sword for his groin. Gull dropped his axe handle to block, but her thrust was a feint. Quick as a snake's tongue, the sword flicked back, aimed for his belly. He flinched and ducked, caught the point in the ribs. It hurt like fury. Swearing, he batted the sword up, smashed the handle into the woman's jaw. Teeth broke, then her jaw. She collapsed, and Gull was glad. She was too dangerous to fight.
Gull cursed steadily as he swung and dodged. He hated to fight them. These people were as much slaves to Towser as Gull had been. But under the wizard's control, they'd kill him if they could.
And undoubtedly would. They were warriors bred to the sword, and Gull was a woodcutter. He'd been lucky so far, but it couldn't last. Someone would gut him before long.
From the corner of his eye, he saw Morven had gained a bronze sword and shield, flailed about as if threshing grain. He dinged heads and hands and kept a half dozen warriors at bay.
A pair of barbarians, male and female, sized Gull up and attacked from two directions. From the right, the man swung his war club, and Gull shifted. But that was the plan. The woman stabbed from his left, chipped his elbow so blood spattered his side. Gull could see the advantage of fighting with a shield. One-handed, the woodcutter slapped his axe at the man, but he'd jumped back. The duo called to each other, closed to set up the same attack.
It had worked once, it would work again. Gull would be nibbled to death.
Then sounded a crashing of breaking wood and stone spears.
With a snapping of vines and clumping of great wood-and-iron feet, Stiggur broke the clockwork beast free of the bramble wall.