Agnes Day

by Lionel Fenn

  But as soon as the situation changed, he was going to take the old man and pile-drive him straight into the goddamned ground and roll a rock on top of him and plant flowers all around it and make sure that generations to come would believe the adjoining seven hundred acres were irredeemably cursed.

  He felt much better.

  He smiled, and asked Whale which way they should go.

  "I don't know," Whale said. "You're the hero. You figure it out."

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  "East," Gideon declared without much thought. That was the direction the flying creatures had taken Ivy, and that was the direction from which the nightly visitations of the slanted red eyes had come. It would be rather like Daniel and the lions' den, he supposed, but it was either go east, or take the risk of following the army, which might have gone in another direction.

  He frowned.

  Somewhere there was a flaw, perhaps a serious one, but the day was already nearly half done, and he didn't have the time to figure it out in such a way that he might eventually change his mind and confuse himself to distraction. So, with a nod to Whale and a check to be sure his bat was still in its holster, he moved to the road, trying not to look at the encampment's utter and unpleasant destruction, and started off.

  Confidently, with a spring in his step, and a reaffirmation of his commitment to the struggle he was facing.

  It was, in fact, a surprise.

  The devastation he had suffered upon discovering what had happened to his home in his absence was not, in retrospect, as traumatic as he'd initially believed. Rather, it was a shucking off of moldy husks, a fantastical rite of passage that had ended in a harbor where he could lower his anchor of stability and ride out the storms of Fate's hither and yon, secure in the knowledge that he was stuck, there was nothing he could do about it, so he might as well make the best of it and pray for a miracle that would deliver him from his enemies, if not alive, then at least in one piece; though, he thought on further consideration, alive would be preferable to the alternative.

  "Are you finished?" Whale asked a little more than an hour later.

  "Finished with what?" he said, smiling.

  "Your ruminations."

  He thought for a moment. "Yes," he said. "Yes, I'm done."

  Whale nodded, his wattles nodding with him, and suggested they follow the road to the Fromdil Forest, which lay just before them. The Scarred Mountains, to the north, would do them no good since there had been no reports of enemy activity within their massive bowl of land. The Forest, on the other hand, was fraught with sightings of strange creatures, strange noises, and even stranger occasions of both.

  "You think that's where they took Ivy?"

  "I think that's as good a place as any to begin our search," the armorer said. "It's also where Agnes is."

  Gideon stumbled, but did not stop, and stared at Whale. "Agnes," he said flatly. "I had almost forgotten about her." He stumbled again, looked down, and saw that the road had lost its smooth surface to a number of cobblestones that had not been set properly. "I understand she's broken with the Wamchu."

  Whale shuddered. "Indeed and oh my, she has. It is best, I believe, for you that we confront her first, before we take on the larger task of the Wamchu."

  "Do we have to?"

  "No, not really. But if my military history is correct, the best enemy to do battle with is the enemy that has divided its forces. With such internal dissension, they cannot help but be in a weakened condition, wouldn't you say?"

  He remembered Agnes. He remembered Lu Wamchu. He recalled what he had been told about Agnes, and her approaching moment. "No," he said, "I wouldn't say that at all."

  "Neither would I," Whale agreed sadly. "But one does have to look for the silver lining at times like this, doesn't one."

  "One has to," Gideon told him firmly, "or one will cut one's throat."

  The sun was not as warm as Gideon would have liked, but it sufficed to keep him from unrolling the pacch-hide cloak he had flung over his shoulder. And as the Forest neared, he realized that, just like his old home, the leaves were beginning to lose their green, to transform themselves into the autumn hues that presage the advent of colder weather and snow. The difference was that these hues were far brighter, more intense, and definitely more flame-like in their seasonal immolation in preparation for their seasonal resurrection.

  An hour later, he realized he was wrong.

  The flame-like colors were not flame-like at all. They were flames.

  He stopped, looked back, looked ahead, realized he had been doing a lot of that lately, and waited for Whale to tell him that they were heading into more trouble than he'd originally thought.

  "You noticed," the armorer said when he saw the direction of Gideon's dismayed gaze.

  "I think so, yes."

  "I was hoping you wouldn't."

  "How could I miss it?"

  Whale shrugged. Such considerations were often beyond him, taking for granted as he did the oddities of his homeland. "It doesn't burn, you know."

  "Are you sure about that?"

  "Positive. I've been here many times. Many times." His mouth opened to expose a magnificent row of large teeth that had no business not piercing his lips whenever they closed. "In the old days, I came here with my one true love." He sighed. "We would walk the paths, cook our meals under the trees, and pass the time in romantic dalliances the purpose of which I fear I have now forgotten." He grinned. "Well, not exactly forgotten. But I sure ain't the man I used to be."

  Gideon touched his arm. "She must have been something."

  "Oh my, indeed yes. And it's entirely possible we would have paired for life had not tragedy befallen us."

  A flock of high-flying birds soared overhead, their soft whistling cries a tender counterpoint to the melancholy that glazed Whale's eyes.

  Gideon, feeling as if he had stumbled upon a shrine, asked if Whale felt up to telling him what that tragedy was.

  "Of course," the armorer said, "it was so long ago, I barely remember it. She tried to kill me."

  Gideon sniffed.

  "She had this remarkable weapon, one of the sort you saw in my shop so long ago. A gun. Silver, it was. She didn't understand that one just doesn't shoot a human being with one of those. She had no concept of the sporting elements inherent in war and personal disagreements."

  I'll be damned, Gideon thought.

  "It wasn't silver, it was nickel," he said.

  Whale looked at him in astonishment.

  "Her name is Rose, and she's a lousy shot."

  The astonishment grew to something akin to fear mixed with religious awe.

  "And she wears her hair in a bun at the back of her head."

  "Damn," Whale said.

  "She and her cronies have taken over what used to be my house." He looked down at the scar on his jeans. "She missed me, too."

  "Damn."

  "I wondered how she knew about the Bridges. Incredible, isn't it. What a small world the universe is."

  Whale headed down the road again, quickly, and Gideon had to hurry to catch up.

  "Did... did you see Daisy?"

  "The whole damned garden," he said. "Loons, the lot of them. I think they hire out as mercenaries or something."

  "I loved Daisy," Whale said.

  "I thought you loved Rose."

  "I did. But Daisy was, well, different."

  "She liked milkmen, for one thing."

  "Postmen," Whale corrected. "Violet liked milkmen. It was hell when she had to get her milk at the grocery store. The choice of clerks nearly drove her mad."

  "You know what a grocery store is?"

  "No, but I've heard of them."

  The road forked, and Whale led him to the right, where the cobbles disappeared and were replaced by sullen red bricks no better inserted in the ground than the others. The Fromdil Forest closed in on them, slowly, the nearest trees still a half-hundred yards distant, their leaves burning merrily without, Gideon noticed, giving
off much light or heat. Nevertheless, he felt his shoulders tightening, his hands clenching, his very flesh preparing to feel the sting of spark and the dust of ash.

  "Are you nervous?" Whale asked.

  He admitted he was.

  "Not to worry. I told you they don't burn."

  A loose brick nearly sprained Gideon's ankle, and with a wary eye on the trees, he elected to walk on the verge; immediately, the armorer warned him that there were dangers in the grass, which, he also pointed out, grew much higher here than back on the Plain itself. Gideon tried to see what there was he ought to be on guard against, and saw nothing; nevertheless, he did not argue, since what he could not see could very likely kill him as dead as what he could see, in the long run.

  "Bingoos," Whale said to the unasked questions.

  "What are bingoos?" Gideon asked foolishly.

  "They are," Whale answered, and hastily drew his sword.

  —|—

  A cloud rose from the high grass, one formed by a swarm of scores of large insects the knowledge of which Gideon wished he had been spared. Each was about the size of a baseball, and nearly as round, except for the five pairs of antennae, the six pairs of serrated legs, the two pairs of gossamer wings, and the single eye that took up most of the bingoo's face. Its coloration consisted of black and red splotches on a field of rippling bronze, and its eye was the dull green usually found on automobiles that have been in the junkyard sun too long.

  "Don't move," Whale warned. "If you move, they'll attack."

  Gideon froze. "Do they sting, bite, or what?" he said from the corner of his mouth.

  The cloud hovered over the grass in perfect silence, then began drifting toward them.

  "They suck."

  "Vampire beetles?"

  "What's a beetle?"

  "They are."

  "No, they're bingoos, and one false move will have all the vital juices drained from your body within seconds."

  Gideon wished he wasn't reminded of a school of piranha as the bingoo cloud neared them, rose, and cast its ominous shadow over his head. He could hear now the thrum of wings, the clack and click of claws, the subtle vibration of antennae testing the air for unwary prey; he could detect the faint odor of vital bodily juices on their foetid breath and could only hope that they had already eaten their midday meal and were simply checking out the new boys on the block; and he could sense a probing in his mind, a tentative touch of psychic infiltration that told him more clearly than the unwinking Cyclopean eyes that these creatures were not being driven by their own natural instincts, but rather by the unholy and unhealthy malevolence of a power far greater than theirs.

  The cloud descended.

  Whale stiffened, his hands gripping his sword tightly.

  Gideon speculated on the time it would take to bring his bat to bear should the cloud break up and the attack begin, and realized that he would be a prune before he could get in the first blow.

  The cloud resumed hovering less than a foot over his head, and his hair wafted side to side in the gentle breeze of their wings. He could see Whale watching him fearfully from the corner of his eye, and he tried to signal the old man not to make a move in his defense—his lower lip twitched, and the cloud dropped an inch; his right eye winked slowly, and the cloud dropped again; his cheek developed a tic which drove the cloud back up to a height of three meters, and when his left nostril flared, the cloud lowered again, this time to less than a hand's breadth from the crown of his skull.

  Shit, he thought.

  Someone called his name from the depths of the Fromdil Forest.

  Oh, shit, he thought.

  A bingoo detached itself from the cloud and flew around him several times, finally stopping less than a foot from the tip of his nose, its antennae snapping back and forth, its eye trying to focus on his mouth. It was all he could do not to smile at the thing, and in thinking that he'd better not do it, he did.

  The bingoo darted back a yard.

  Someone called his name again, and there was at the edge of his vision a sign of movement under the flaming trees.

  Oh shit, oh shit, he thought as the bingoo returned, and the eye winked at him.

  "Damnit, Gideon," a woman yelled, "are you going to stand there all day or what?"

  He couldn't help it; he turned his head and saw, just under the nearest tree, a woman with long black hair, a gold-trimmed white gown, and high-heeled white boots. Her hands were on her hips and she was looking at him as if he had just made a public nuisance of himself.

  Glorian! he thought. Oh shit; oh shit; oh shit.

  The bingoo whirled at the intrusion, its claws clacking in fury, its eye racing through the rainbow of its insectoid spectrum; then it rejoined the cloud, which instantly rose like a meteor above the trees, the backwash staggering him to one side. He looked up, bat in hand, as the swarm performed an intricate dance of frustration and vowed vengeance, then vanished once again into the high grass.

  "Jesus," he said, and dropped weak-kneed and mouth-dry to the road, wiped the sweat from his brow, and glared back at the woman who had started it all. "You could have killed us both, you idiot!" he shouted. "Are you crazy, or what?"

  Whale joined him on the ground, panting and trying unsuccessfully to sheathe his sword. "My word," he gasped. "My word, indeed."

  Glorian strode unconcernedly through the grass to stand before them, and Gideon smiled in spite of his reaction—she was still regally lovely, still had those uncanny violet eyes, and still roused in him the feeling of wanting to put a fist to her chin just to see if she wouldn't mind landing on her ass for a change.

  "My dear," Whale said, "you really ought to be more careful with other people's lives. Those bingoos—"

  "Bingelas," she said scornfully. "God, don't you even read your own books?"

  Whale sputtered, then laughed, slapping Gideon on the shoulder as he accepted her hand in assisting him to his feet. "Bingelas! My heavens, what a silly mistake."

  Glorian gave him a brief, friendly smile. "It's the eyes, Whale. You never remember about the eyes."

  "What about the eyes?" Gideon said.

  Whale waved the question away impatiently. "No time for lessons now, my boy. We have to be on our way."

  "In there," Glorian said, pointing to the Forest. "We've been waiting for you."

  "We?"

  "A few close friends," she explained as she started off. "We thought you'd been killed, but of course you weren't, so as soon as Gideon gets up, would you mind bringing him along so he can help us figure out how we're going to take care of Agnes?"

  Gideon didn't move.

  Bingelas. Bingoos. It's all in the eyes; what a hell of a way to run a war.

  On the other hand, he decided as he got up and followed them into the shadows of the trees, it beats getting killed.

  Then he heard Glorian say, "Jeepers, really? The bingoos have green eyes? Damn, I thought it was the bingelas."

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Gideon was worried that his neck was going to atrophy. Walking as he was under the burning leaves, with shoulders hunched and breath held most of the time, his neck seemed permanently thrust into his chest cavity. It bothered him when he swallowed; and once he noticed that, he couldn't stop swallowing, and decided to get hold of himself, be a man, and walk tall. But first he made sure that Whale was right, that the leaves wouldn't scorch or sear or otherwise turn his skin black.

  The Fromdil Forest was, he was forced to admit, an incredible sight. The leaves really were burning. When he stretched up a finger toward one of them, he nodded—there was little heat, and certainly little light; the shadows beneath the high foliage were as dark as if there was no fire at all, and they moved as if the leaves were being gently rustled by a breeze which had somehow lost its way from spring. Nevertheless, it was a while before he was able to extend his neck to its proper length, and a while after that before he could stop flinching whenever a burning leaf spiraled in a brilliant flare to the ground and hissed as th
ough it had been plunged into water.

  Not bad, he told himself as his stride lengthened; one of these days you might even get used to this place.

  Whale was directly ahead, and Glorian had already disappeared around a bend in the narrow path they were following. She had mentioned a few friends, and he wondered who they could be. He knew several people, but half of them were on the other side, and he had no illusions about Agnes joining up with the good guys just to get back at her husband. Especially when she wasn't getting back at her husband but, rather, was getting back at him for knocking off her co-wives.

  Of course, he could be wrong about that. He had no proof, yet, that Agnes Wamchu even remembered him, much less enough to want to jeopardize a conquering of a world just to wreak a little murderous vengeance.

  Except for the visions, of course, which were, he supposed, proof enough.

  "Whale?"

  The armorer looked over his shoulder and with a jerk of his head urged him to hurry.

  "Whale, who—"

  "Hush," Whale said, a cautionary finger to his lips. "There are ears in this forest, Gideon. We don't want anyone to know what we're planning."

  "No problem. I don't know what we're planning."

  They walked for nearly an hour, perhaps more, before the trees fell back to surround a small meadow in the center of which a group of people sat around a campfire. There was singing. Beautiful singing, in a harmony he hadn't heard since...

  "I'll be," he said in delight.

  And broke into a trot when a portly, green-clad figure with a longbow slung across his back rose and waved to him. Beside him, another, younger man rose, spindly and green-clad as well. A wave, and twelve more equally green men rose to their feet, singing their hearts out as Gideon reached Vorden Lain and shook his hand, embraced him, shook Croker Boole's hand, and gave a large grin to the rest of the merry band who had fought side by side with him so long ago.

  Then he looked across the campfire and saw Jimm Horrn, looked to his right and saw a white bundle huddled on a pile of what looked like sheepskin, though it was hard to tell since the pile was still moving. He grinned again and pushed his way through the welcoming throng to sit beside his sister.