As if in answer, lightning split the sky, yellow forks scattered 'round the compass. Rain slashed down, cold and hard, drops denting the ruined earth.
Yet the battle raged on.
Through a gap in the thorn hedge, uprooted and tumbled and jumbled as everything else, Gull heard a frightful banging and clanging. Dazed, he turned to see through the haze of hard rain.
The two-headed giant had run into something its own size, the clockwork beast. Rain soaked the giant's clothes and ran rust down the iron flanks of the construct. A club in each hand, the giant pounded the sheet iron and wooden monster as if flailing grain. The beast ignored, or did not feel, the blows. With no offensive weapons of its own, it could only march at the giant and butt with its boxy head. It mashed its nose against the giant's middle, where particolored sails were clumsily stitched, and shoved. With two legs against four, the giant gave ground, both heads frowning, clubbing all the while. He bashed off a jutting wooden ear, splintered a beam along its spine, but did little other harm. The mechanical beast pushed and pushed, four legs churning and clumping, internal gears whirring, and the giant was steadily backed toward the Whispering Woods. Every blow of the tree-club on the iron flanks rang like a gong.
Then the clumsy giant slipped on mud or wet grass. Off-balance, he crashed heavily. The clockwork beast mindlessly walked over him, heavy wooden hooves mashing. Struggling to rise, the giant latched onto a leg just above the fetlock, near a complicated joint. Wrenching, he tried to pull himself out from under. But the joint broke and the leg came free.
Rain running in his eyes, Gull watched, fascinated, as the clockwork beast stepped off the giant. Three-legged, it clumped away. Mindless, it described a vast circle like a beheaded chicken. The giant, a foot trapped in a cleft, tried in vain to get up.
It was set upon by a six-headed dragon that swooped from the concealing rain.
The woodcutter gasped, unconsciously moved to a heap of rubble for shelter. The dragon was all gray, as if carved from stone. It was fat-bodied and spraddle-footed, and slow. Gull had always heard dragons were called worms, or wyrms, or even snakes, for they had long sinuous bodies. And only one head.
Then he recalled the old story. Barktooth Warbeard had fought a multiheaded beast. A hydra.
Fat and slow, the beast was still deadly as three pythons. The trapped giant had time for one cry before a fanged head struck. One enormous hand disappeared into the hydra's maw. The giant screamed from both mouths. Another head sank fangs into his wrist. Another bit higher, into his biceps. The powerless giant howled as its arms were shredded.
Gull shuddered. He felt sorry for the giant, for he could sense no malice in it. Anything that thick-witted could hold but little hate in its heart. Yet it had agreed to fight for a wizard, and now would die by another conjured monster.
Rain intensified, and the combatants were lost to sight behind the dense wet curtain. Gull turned, scanning. He had his own problems. How to find his sister? How to help his fellow villagers, now that the village was gone?
A great despair settled, like a yoke of stone dropped on his shoulders. He almost asked, Why bother? With the village wiped out, whither the villagers? Yet he ignored the gloom and plodded away. Find his sister. Plenty enough to do.
He called against the darkness and rain, "Greensleeves! Greensleeves, where are you?"
Hissing and the drip of rain sang in his ears.
"Greennnnsleevvvvvessss!"
"Here! Here I am!"
Gull stopped in surprise. What? His sister couldn't talk.
Hobbling-his bad knee had been wrenched twice and now there was rain too-he limped around the ruins of another house.
Square into a pack of soldiers.
CHAPTER 3
"We know you've got it! Dig it up or eat cold steel! Now!"
Hefting his sodden whip and slick axe, Gull picked his way around a barn. Who had called out? Who was shouting.
Peeking through a knothole, he saw.
Another moral of the old stories was that soldiers were greedy. These were no exception. A half dozen had rounded up twenty villagers at swordpoint and herded them among the ruins. The drenching rain edged their silver scales with rust, made the red hairs of their horsetail plumes stick up in clumps. Swatting and jabbing, the soldiers barked harsh orders. "Dig up your fortunes and you won't be hurt! Disobey and you get this! Move! Move!"
One soldier with epaulets of gold braid pricked Seal in the back with a rain-rusting sword. Seal was a big-bellied man, a lazy bully, a lifelong foe of Gull's. Yet threatened by strangers, Gull viewed him as a brother.
There were more, too. Gull's family was here. His mother Bittersweet, his hunched father Brown Bear. His sisters Rainfall, Angelwing, and Poppyseed. His brothers Lion and Cub. But where was Sparrow Hawk? And where Greensleeves?
Their enemies dead, the heartless mercenaries had fallen to looting. They knew villagers buried their few coins, usually out back, but sometimes within the house itself. They'd kill a few and set the rest to digging.
The woodcutter pondered what to do, then suddenly jumped so high he almost rapped his head on the eaves of the barn. Someone had touched his wrist.
Sparrow Hawk.
The boy grinned nervously at his big brother. Sparrow Hawk had his mother's impish sense of humor, her infectious grin. Tousled red hair was plastered over his head by the rain, and rivulets ran past his freckled sunburned nose. He whispered, "What are you hiding for, Gull? Aren't you gonna get them?"
Rather than set down a weapon, the woodcutter wrapped a huge arm around the boy's head and squeezed him close. "Hush up, bonehead! We need a plan!"
"What?" The boy squirmed to see through a crack between boards. "Can't we just rush 'em? I've got a weapon too!" He held up a rusty spike, one dropped by the goblins.
Gull almost sighed. Eleven summers old, and the child was ready to take on the world. Gull couldn't condemn him, nor his enthusiasm, but he did have to keep him from harm.
"Look, Hawk. Take that pigsticker and circle around, way 'round. I'll charge them from this side, and you can be the reserve, pink one in the back-uh oh!"
Looking through the knothole, Gull saw a soldier suddenly snatch a boy, Chipmunk, by the hair. He laid his sword against the lad's forehead and bellowed, "I want your silver! Or the child loses his scalp!" Chipmunk yelped as the soldier sawed. Skin parted in a crimson line. Rain washed blood into the boy's tight-shut eyes. A mother shrilled.
Seal, normally a coward, stepped forward to defend his son. But a soldier poked his sword into Seal's fat gut, and laughed as he gasped. Seal's wife, Feverfew, protested, and the soldier slapped her with the flat. Another raised his blade. "Kill a few! That'll move the rest-"
Gull swore. "Get moving, Hawk! Go way 'round!" He shoved his brother, who took off along the back of the barn. Then he charged around the other side, swinging his axe behind him. "Join me! Arm yourselves! Yaaaaaaahhhhh!!!"
As he'd hoped, his sudden attack stunned the soldiers, so some did nothing. Yet older veterans moved like lightning. Four slid together, back-to-back, and scuttled behind the villagers to determine the source of the menace.
The young soldier holding Chipmunk balked, tugged for the shield slung on his back. Streaming wet, huge, and screaming, Gull leaped within striking range and swung. Belatedly, the killer raised his sword, and Gull slammed him under the armpit with the full strength of his felling axe. Knocked three feet sideways, the soldier grunted and folded over the blade. Heart stopped, he slumped and slid off the axe head.
There's one, thought Gull, already swinging. Five left.