Willow Page 15

  “Come on, Madmartigan!”

  “Adorable! Lovely!” Starry-eyed, Madmartigan tottered toward a mud-caked and sneering mule.

  “Come on!”

  “Ah! Love of my life!” Arms wide, Madmartigan tried to embrace a swarthy and hungover trooper who was just then lurching out of his tent. The man cursed and reeled back inside.

  “Now you’ve done it! Come on!” Pulling and prodding, Willow and the two brownies managed to hurry him the rest of the way to Sorsha’s tent.

  “Leave this to me,” Madmartigan whispered when they had slipped past the sleeping guards. “I’ve had experience with these things. I know all about it.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  Madmartigan leered.

  “No! The baby, remember? The baby!”

  “Right!” He winked and vanished through the flap.

  Both princess and child lay asleep as Willow had left them. However, it was Sorsha who drew all of Madmartigan’s attention, as Willow had feared. Curled in the furs, her splendid red hair tumbling free, she looked innocently beautiful. Even if one had not been bedazzled by the magical fairy dust, it would have been hard to believe that she was Bavmorda’s daughter. It would have been hard to imagine her engaged in the business of death. She radiated life—glowing, pure, and exuberant.

  Madmartigan crept up and kissed her gently on the cheek. “I love you,” he said.

  The princess stirred but did not waken.

  “No!” Willow hissed, pointing from the doorway. “The baby, Madmartigan! Elora!”

  Shouts and alarms rose from the camp behind.

  “Sorsha,” Madmartigan said. “My dearest Sorsha, waken from this hateful sleep that deprives me of the beauty of your eyes.” Again he kissed her.

  This time she woke. She came up swinging. One arm slammed Madmartigan so hard across the neck he fell sideways. The other whipped out of the furs, clutching a short dagger. “One move!” she said.

  Flat on his back, Madmartigan spread his arms. “You are my moon, Sorsha! My sun! My starlit sky! Without you I dwell in darkness! I love you!” He began to laugh helplessly.

  Outside, Fin Raziel took flight, croaking, “Doomed! All doomed!” The brownies vanished. Willow scrambled into the tent and headed for Elora Danan, who had awakened and was adding her delighted laughter to Madmartigan’s.

  “I love you!”

  “Stop saying that!”

  “But it’s true! How can I stop the beating of my heart?”

  “I can stop it!” Sorsha said, bringing the dagger close.

  “Go ahead. Kill me! The touch of your hand is worth a thousand deaths.” He seized her free hand and pressed it to his chest.

  The point of the dagger wavered, faltered.

  Willow snatched up Elora.

  At that moment the whole side of the tent split open under the thrust of a mighty sword. Kael pushed through the opening, with half a dozen troopers at his back. He smiled with terrible satisfaction. He hefted his black sword. “So. It was you, Madmartigan. Now, by the gods, you’ll pay!”

  X

  AIRK THAUGHBAER

  Then Willow Ufgood, Nelwyn farmer, saw truly what it was to be a warrior.

  He knew Madmartigan the wheedler and cajoler, Madmartigan the womanizer, Madmartigan the adventurer and braggart. During the escape in the wagon, he had seen Madmartigan the fighter. But he had never seen Madmartigan the swordsman, the master that Franjean had described.

  Now he saw that person.

  Madmartigan laughed in Kael’s face, even as the general lunged through the torn tent. With one arm he pulled Sorsha down to kiss her. With the other he groped in her bed until he found the sword concealed there. He drew it out, flinging the scabbard off. “Ha! A real sword at last!” Before Sorsha twisted free, before Kael’s sword slammed down into the bed, Madmartigan had somersaulted backward and up on his feet. The blade flashed and sang above him like a living thing. His first blow missed Kael’s neck but struck his epaulet so hard that the Nockmaar dropped to one knee. His second blow severed the arm of another warrior charging at him. His third cut clean through the tent pole, dropping the skin structure on a writhing human mass.

  “This way, Willow!” The sword flashed again in the darkness, slicing through the roof, and Madmartigan scrambled through the gap, pulling the Nelwyn and the child after him.

  “Run! Run!” Fin Raziel shrieked, circling frantically above them. “Up here! Up the path!”

  The camp was fully aroused and chaotic. Some troopers were struggling into their armor while others had found their weapons and were racing toward the fallen tent, answering Kael’s bellows of rage. Trainers dashed to loose Death Dogs straining at their leashes. In no time, Madmartigan faced enemies on three sides.

  Willow ran after Raziel. A little path, a goat path, wound up from Sorsha’s tent to the face of a sheer precipice. There was no way through. Within a hundred yards the path had narrowed to a ledge so small that he dared not go farther despite Raziel’s urgings. Perhaps a mountain goat, calm and surefooted, could pass along that ledge, but Willow knew that both he and Elora would certainly plunge to their deaths.

  And horrible deaths they would be.

  Willow’s knees went weak when he looked down. Almost sheer, the cliff fell away below his feet. Far, far down, in the darkness and mists of the valley, huddled a little village, so small in the distance that the smokes from its chimneys hung like merest threads, like the filaments of spiderwebs. Between Willow and the village lay an awful chasm. Ridges of fallen rock reached through the snow of it like waiting claws. The black mouths of its caves and caverns yawned open, glinting with icy teeth. Far below, an eagle circled. Willow pressed back against the rock wall. “No!” he said. “Oh no!”

  Even Fin Raziel squawked and flapped back when she drifted over that abyss.

  But there was no place else to go.

  “Go on, Willow! Out on the ledge!”

  “I can’t, Madmartigan! I can’t!”

  Madmartigan was fighting brilliantly, holding off a swarm of dogs and lancers while he retreated slowly along the narrow track to where Willow cowered with the child. His sword leaped and slashed, whirled, stabbed, cut. Blood flew from it. A trail of bloody snow led up to him, and the bodies of a dozen dogs and as many men lay dead or sorely hurt along the track. But time was against him. More troopers crowded in; and he was tiring. Even as Willow watched, Madmartigan twisted a split second too slow, and a lance grazed his neck, drawing blood. The talons of a Death Dog raked his hip, and its jaws were snarling open for his belly even as his sword plunged down its throat. Sorsha and Kael thrust through the melee, shouting for room, and Willow saw clearly that the exhausted Madmartigan would be no match for the fresh and enraged general.

  Willow groaned.

  Better armed troopers came surging forward. One of them, a bear of a man, howled his war cry as he pushed through ahead of Kael, knocking his companions aside with a gigantic bronze shield. His sword flashed around its edge, and the whites of his fierce eyes shone over its top. So fast and powerful was his charge that he misjudged and his first swing sliced right over Madmartigan’s head, striking a chunk of rock off the cliff above. The shield slammed into Madmartigan as he ducked, and the two men went down, both roaring. Willow did not see what happened under the dome of that great shield, but a terrible shriek emerged, changing instantly into a coughing gurgle. The Nockmaar warrior’s huge legs pumped and thrashed. Other men shrank back in horror, and in that instant Madmartigan bounded free, flipping the bloody shield off the dying man and spinning it up toward Willow. “Get on!”

  Willow faltered, but Madmartigan screamed again, running toward him with swords jabbing at his heels, and Willow jumped. The next instant Madmartigan flopped beside him on his belly. The shield skidded and spun under the flailing Nockmaar lances.

  “Archers!” Kael shouted above the uproar.

  The shield spun as a bolt from a crossbow ricocheted off its rim. An arrow whistle
d into loose snow inches from Willow’s head. Then they skidded onto the glare ice leading down to the precipice.

  They were going over.

  Madmartigan sat up and spread his arms wide as the shield hurtled into space. For that moment he was fully vulnerable, a perfect target. Incredibly, he was laughing! Willow glimpsed Sorsha only yards away, her feet braced and her eyes cold, leveling a fully drawn war-arrow at Madmartigan’s chest.

  “Sorsha! I love you!” he shouted.

  The arrow stayed in its bow.

  The shield swooped over the edge and dropped.

  Madmartigan’s laughter changed to a strangled scream. All Willow’s insides leaped into his throat. He tried to scream too but couldn’t. He tried to see where they were going, but the world tipped horribly; it became only a craggy cliff looming over them, and Fin Raziel folding her wings for the plunge, her eyes shut tight. Willow shut his eyes, too. He hung on to Elora. He hung on to the spinning disk.

  Only the child watched everything.

  Only Elora laughed.

  Down they went, glancing off boulders, bounding over snow crests, swooping through icy tunnels and crevasses. Rock talons snatched at them. Looming walls almost toppled them. Snowdrifts slowed them slightly before they punched through and whirled like a top out the other side. At last, when he felt the shield steady a bit, Willow dared to open one eye. They were no longer spinning. Straight as an arrow, they were hurtling toward the forest where the valley began. Thick and dark, the tree-wall loomed ahead. Willow glimpsed the village on the other side, but he saw no way through.

  He hugged Elora. He took a deep breath and said Kiaya’s name, and Ranon’s, and Mims’s. He got ready to die.

  With his eyes shut tight, he felt the shield veer right, but did not see it zip into the mouth of an icy tunnel, a smooth greenish slide that angled through the forest and then back again, crossing the slope several times in ever-more gentle zigzags out onto the floor of the valley. Miraculously, it took them safely to the last slope above the village, where laughing children were playing on skin toboggans.

  Here, in the last stage of that dizzy flight, Madmartigan fell off. Willow scarcely had time to miss him. One minute he was there; the next, gone. Willow and Elora were skidding alone down to the village, finally slowing to a stop as the slope flattened near the first houses, and the children swarmed up to them. Elora had laughed all the way, and she was still laughing.

  Willow staggered off the shield and reeled a few paces before collapsing. The village, the mountains, the children, all tilted and rocked, steadying slowly. He became aware of Fin Raziel shouting something overhead. He saw that some of the children had raised the shield and were bearing it and Elora triumphantly toward the village. Others were pointing at the slope, where a large snowball was rolling-down. It slowed as it crossed the field and broke open against a woodpile, spilling out a limp and dizzy Madmartigan, still clutching Sorsha’s sword.

  Willow ran over to him.

  “Peck, where are you?”

  “I’m here.”

  “What happened up there?” He thumped his temple with the heel of his hand.

  “You don’t remember?”

  “Nothing! Last I remember, I was in that cage and the brownie was picking the lock. I got something in my eyes.”

  “Fairy dust. Dust of Broken Heart.”

  “That’s all I remember.”

  “Well,” Willow said, heaving a big sigh. “Quite a lot happened. You tried to make love to Sorsha. You had a big fight. You skidded here on that . . .”

  “What?” Madmartigan shook his head incredulously. “Sorsha?”

  “You kissed her. You said she was your moon and stars and sun.”

  “Impossible! I hate that woman!”

  Willow shrugged. “Well, that’s what you said. Then . . .”

  “Kael! Kael!” Fin Raziel screeched overhead. “Coming!”

  Madmartigan shot to his feet. Down the winding road to the village rode a troop of Nockmaar cavalry with Kael and Sorsha at their head. They were less than half a league away and coming fast.

  Children milled around them, pulling at their hands.

  “Hurry,” they said. “This way!” They led them behind woodpiles and stables, through the back lanes of the village. “We’ll take you to the others.”

  “Others?” Madmartigan asked. “What others?”

  “You’ll see,” the children answered. “Hurry! The Nockmaars are almost here!”

  It was a poor village, far poorer than Willow’s. The houses were small for Daikini houses, the barns dilapidated. Word of their arrival had spread fast, and people emerged from every house to surround them, quickly hiding them in a crowd.

  Ahead, Willow saw the child-borne shield with Elora Danan on it vanish into what appeared to be another ramshackle barn. As he drew closer, however, he saw that it was a large meeting hall at one side of a village common. Up and in they went, hurried along by the crowd. A white-bearded elder scuffed aside thick straw and heaved open a trapdoor in one corner of the floor, while the other villagers and the children began an impromptu meeting. One man proclaimed loudly as if in mid-speech, and the rest listened, shuffling, mumbling agreement or dissent. All kept glancing at the road.

  The last Willow saw was General Kael in his terrible skull helmet, rounding the bend and driving toward the village at full gallop. Sorsha rode close behind, her red hair free and the bow still in her hand. After her, well spread out, came thirty or forty Nockmaar troopers.

  “Down!” someone hissed. A hand pushed hard on the top of Willow’s head, and he skidded down steep steps into darkness. The trapdoor thumped shut, and boots hastily scuffed straw into place on top of it.

  Willow found himself in a large, cool cellar, a storageroom for perishables. It smelled of cheese, fresh milk, and vegetables. At first he could see nothing at all, but then as he struggled to find Elora in the gloom, his eyes adjusted, and by the dusty light filtering through the cracks in the floor he saw that they were not alone. The cellar was crowded with men. Weary men. Hurt men. Beaten men. Sitting on barrels, lying on straw pallets, they looked warily at the new arrivals. Some had drawn swords and daggers and were gazing up toward the thunder of hoofbeats and the unmistakable roaring of Kael.

  Only one was standing. A large man with an auburn beard. Willow blinked, squinting into the darkness and into the tumultuous jumble of memories since his journey had begun. He knew this man. He remembered a proud army with banners aloft. He remembered . . .

  “Airk Thaughbaer!” Madmartigan whispered, stepping forward and laying his hands on the big man’s shoulders, shaking him gently. “You left me in that rat trap to die!”

  “I knew you’d get out. You’re a cat with nine lives.”

  “What happened to you, Airk?”

  “Slaughtered. Too many of them, too few of us.”

  “You see! You should have given me . . .”

  “Quiet down there!” someone hissed from above. “They’re here!”

  The shouting and hooting of the sham meeting died away. The shuffling stopped. The crowd fell silent.

  Heavy boots crunched across the floor of the hall. “You have a choice, you scum!” Kael’s voice rang out. “Tell us where you’ve hidden that Nelwyn and the child, or have your Prefect killed and your village burned!”

  The crowd gasped.

  “You wouldn’t dare!” the Prefect declared, thumping his staff of office on the floor so hard that dust swirled down onto Willow’s face. He was the elder with the flowing white beard who had held the door for Willow to scramble down the steps—a Daikini version of the High Aldwin. He was shorter than most Daikinis, and Kael towered over him. He tipped back his head and jutted out his jaw as he spoke, his face flushed. “Enough! For years you’ve kept us in fear, you Nockmaars. You’ve taken what you wanted from our valley. You’ve done what you wanted with our people. You’ve forced us to pay fines and taxes. You’ve kept us poor. And now you interrupt our meeting with t
hreats of burning and murder! And I say to you you can’t! You won’t!” He advanced on Kael as he spoke, thumping his staff. “You wouldn’t dare, Kael. I tell you . . .”

  No one would ever know what the agitated little man intended to say, because he never said it.

  He died.

  Kael swung his sword.

  The blow sliced off the Prefect’s head as a birch switch might take the bud from a flower stalk. It dropped into the straw, eyes still blazing at the general. The body twitched convulsively where it fell, arms and legs striking out. Blood trickled through the cracks in the floor onto Airk’s men underneath, who cursed softly, fingering their weapons. A moan like wind through tall pines rose from the crowd, and in the midst of it came a cry shriller and higher than any other: Elora Danan. The baby’s gaze was fixed at the place above her where Kael stood, and her cry was a shriek of outrage.

  “Whaaat?” Kael said. He looked around. He looked down. The hiding men drew their weapons and prepared to die fighting. Even the most sorely wounded struggled to their feet.

  But Fin Raziel saved them. Squawking in a perfect imitation of Elora’s cry, the raven came swooping in through one window and out another, narrowly missing Kael’s head.

  The general laughed gutturally. “Next!” he thundered, waving his sword at the silenced crowd. “Who else wishes to defy the power of Nockmaar?”

  No one spoke.

  “Where do you hide these fugitives?”

  Still no one spoke.

  “Very well! Princess, you and your men search and burn this miserable place. Start here, with this barn. You men come with me. Spread out through the woods. Remember, I want them all alive!”

  His boots ground across the floor, and a moment later the hiding men heard the jingle of harness and the clatter of hooves galloping away.

  “What I wouldn’t give for a score of those mounts!” Airk Thaughbaer hissed.

  “Shh!” Madmartigan said. “The princess!”