A Plague of Angels

by Sheri S. Tepper

  They had not done so for half a day before Abasio gave Olly a nickname: Whazzat.

  “What’s that?” she would ask, staring from the wagon seat at some marvel she had never seen before.

  “A bird,” he would answer wearily, for the dozenth time.

  “But what kind of bird?” she cried, wanting to know its name and antecedents and whether it nested here or merely visited on its way somewhere else.

  Abasio had to confess he did not know. “It isn’t a bird I ever saw when I was a boy,” he told her, no matter what bird it was. Truth to tell, unlike Olly, he had not paid that much attention to animals or birds. He had been more interested in stories, in tales of adventure, in epics and sagas and heroics. Though he was now becoming interested in them, at the time animals and birds had not seemed adventuresome.

  He said, “There are no birds much in the cities except crows on the garbage, and pigeons, and little brown sparrows I’ve never seen that little gray and yellow”—or black and white, or red and brown—“one before.”

  Nor had she. Crows she knew, and magpies and jays, and several kinds of ducks that had visited the pool in the village. Herons she knew, for they had waded among the reeds, hunting frogs and talking together in guttural voices. Owls she had heard but seldom seen, and hawks she had both seen and heard, crying from the top of the sky. But she had never seen all these other birds before.

  The farther from the cities they went, with even the farms becoming more and more lonely and scattered, the more birds there were. Olly gave up asking what they were and went to naming them instead, this and that kind of warbler, this and that kind of long-legs, this and that kind of duck or owl or hawk. She was up to forty kinds before she realized some were the females and some the males of the same kinds but quite different colors and patterns. She tore up her list and started over again, making little drawings of them in the book Farmwife Suttle had given her. Later, she might use them in designs. Her head was full of ideas for designs. She was beginning to think of herself not only as a dyer but as a designer as well.

  From across a valley they spied a large furriness shaking the oak brush and rearing up on its hind legs to pull the ripe fruit from an old apple tree on an abandoned farm. At first they thought it was a monster, an ogre or a young troll, but such monsters didn’t eat apples. “Bear, I think,” said Abasio, remembering stories his grandfather had told.

  “I thought bear were mostly gone,” whispered Olly, awed by the size and shape of the distant creature, like a fat man wearing a fur coat, walking on its hind legs almost like a person, like the three bears in her childhood story, like Bear in Oracle’s stories, vehement and fearsome.

  “I thought they were gone too,” Abasio agreed. “Still, I think that thing is a bear.”

  They saw creatures like deer but as big as cows, with wide racks of antler, standing at the edge of meadows in the morning mist, bugling their challenges into the forests. They saw speckled fish that flickered into visibility along the bottoms of clear streams, then vanished as though made of smoke. Abasio grunted when he saw them, remembering certain lessons Grandpa had taught him. The next day, he manufactured a rod and line and caught several silvery flappers for their supper.

  Hills appeared on the horizon east of them, growing nearer and taller day by day. The ground began to rise. The leaves of the shivering white-trunked trees upon the heights gleamed palely gold among the dark pines. The nights were chill. One morning snow covered the high blue peaks, and that day the ruts went around a rocky corner and lost themselves among trees. From that time on they were traveling in the forest instead of alongside it, seeing only pale slits of bright sky among the branches. The ground went on rising, more steeply now. To save Big Blue, they got out and walked, plodding up each slope and down into each little glade, each rise taking them higher than the last.

  More than once they saw small eldritch shapes moving among the roots and heard gnomish laughter in the night. At Abasio’s suggestion, they set out pan bread and found it gone each morning, though they could not tell whether it had been taken by gnomes or goblins or raccoons. Olly met raccoons, with mixed laughter and curses, when a tribe of them invaded the wagon. Abasio knew raccoons from his childhood, and he chased them out with the broom.

  Returning from this chase he collided with Olly in the doorway of the wagon and found his arms tight around her. He did not move, and for a wonder, nor did she. Her body rested against him like a young willow, supple yet strong, and for a long moment they stood together, thinking nothing, deciding nothing, merely letting themselves be together. Had the mother coon not returned, intent upon finding supper for her brood, they might have remained lost in their wondrous contentment forever, but the mood was broken. Scarlet-faced, Olly returned to her usual arm’s-length behavior.

  As they moved higher, a leaping streamlet came down from the heights to meet them, growing narrower the farther up they went. At last its waning trickle disappeared westward, toward higher ground yet, and an hour later they were upon the promised pass, looking out over distant, misty horizons. Now they went down through the trees.

  Two days later, the tall pines became scattered, then sparse, and they came out onto a short-grassed, arid prairie, its rounded hills and square-edged mesas dotted with stout little cone-bearing trees and blue-green plumes of sage. Even though the forests they had come through could have hidden whole tribes of monsters in their shady depths, Abasio and Olly had felt more secure there than they did on these brushlands. In the forest there had been fringed branches and gnarled trunks reflecting the warm glow of their fire, making a roomhke space with a comforting illusion of walls. Here was only the empty darkness going all the way to the stars in every direction, soaking up their little puddle of firelight like a thirsty black sponge.

  Also, the forest had been populated with sounds of bird and beast and wind, a comforting mixture of natural and animal noises, but the desert was quiet, so quiet that sometimes Abasio brought the wagon to a halt and cocked his head, listening for whatever it was that had put an end to all other sound. Several times in the night they awoke to a distant clamor, confused and indistinct, only loud enough to ruin their rest without coming close enough to be truly threatening.

  The farther they went into the desert country, the more apprehensive they became. Abasio said several times he wished they had a dog to scent danger and warn them of it. And eventually it was dogs of the coyote persuasion who did warn them with a frenzy of yipping and howling back along their trail.

  They had stopped the wagon at the top of a rise where they had a good view of the surrounding country. It was shortly before sunset. Abasio, who had just unharnessed Big Blue, stood with the harness over his shoulder, peering back the way they had come. “I don’t like the sound of that,” he said.

  Olly, busy lighting the evening cookfire, didn’t like it, either. There was something almost hysterical about the noise, a wild, uncontrolled howling and yipping.

  Abasio hung the harness across the seat and climbed atop the wagon. Olly went up beside him like a squirrel up a tree, and the two of them stared northward. Of the two of them, Olly’s eyes were sharpest, and she saw movement first.

  “There,” she breathed, pointing.

  Abasio at first saw nothing, then saw entirely too much. Two shambling forms. Larger than men, walking not on all fours but more or less erect. Long arms. Heads that seemed to jut directly from the shoulders, with no necks. Around them, leaping shapes that kept just out of reach of those arms. Coyotes, teasing.

  The monsters were following the two ruts the wagon had traveled, following those ruts, or the tracks of the wheels, or the scent of the horse, or the smell of the two humans. The fact that Abasio could see them at all meant they were too close for safety.

  “What shall we do?” Olly whispered.

  Abasio made a quick turn, looking in all directions. The wagon wouldn’t offer much protection Ogre talons could rip through a two-inch board in a matter of minutes. On
the other hand, the wagon might keep the monsters occupied for a while. Concealment would be an appropriate action, but this open ground offered no hiding place.

  “Close up the wagon,” he directed, leaping down from the wagon roof. “Leave the fire to attract them here. I see hills east of us, and we may be able to hide there. We’ll ride Big Blue.”

  Abasio rode as he had when he was a boy, bareback, clutching the horse’s mane; Olly, with the angel on her shoulder, clung to him from behind. The sun set behind them as Big Blue plodded quietly off into the dusk. The first stars gleamed in the eastern sky, and Abasio took note of those on the broken horizon. It would be dark soon. They might need something to steer by.

  Behind them, the howling and yipping came nearer, moving along the ruts they had traveled in the wagon Ogres hunted by sight, scent, and sound, so much everyone knew. Country people knew ogres were attracted to fire, though they could not make fires of their own and had to steal it when they could, sometimes setting forests or grasslands alight as a result. They habitually hunted in the dark. They had huge, night-seeing eyes and did not come from their lairs until near dusk.

  Before darkness settled completely, Abasio urged Big Blue into a clumsy canter, clinging for dear life, finally slowing to a walk again when it became too dark to see Abasio stroked the horse’s neck with a peculiar sense of having lived this scene before. Then he realized he had dreamed it. This was the dark, the quiet progress, the same horse. He lay quietly along Big Blue’s back, feeling Olly’s body tight against his, willing the monsters to content themselves with the wagon, with the fire.

  The sounds behind them continued unabated, becoming even more tumultuous, as though a whole pack of coyotes were following or chasing or being chased by the creatures. Abasio felt for his weapons, finding them both hooked securely to his belt. He doubted they’d be very useful. He was short on ammunition for both the missile gun and the flame shooter. He could cause some damage up close and as a last resort, but if an ogre got that close, it would be a last resort. For him and Olly both.

  As they came to the slope of the nearest hill, they heard a screaming roar, a huge and furious sound as of a creature hurt past endurance.

  “Our fire burned down, and something stepped on it,” muttered Abasio. “I’ll bet you anything.”

  The deafening sound came again. Big Blue swerved to the left, to avoid something only he could see. Abasio got down to examine the terrain as best he could in the darkness. There was only deep blackness and deeper blacknesses, with little to tell which was traversable, which might be safe and which not.

  “This way,” piped the guardian-angel. “This way.”

  Big Blue stepped forward as though in response to this invitation. Startled, Olly clung to his back and Abasio to his tail.

  “Does your angel know what it’s saying?” Abasio asked in a baffled mutter.

  “Sometimes it seems to,” she admitted. “It found a path for me when I left the village.”

  If their progress was any indication, the angel had found a way again, for they were moving steadily, curving to the south, as Big Blue picked his way among tumbled stones along some invisible but rising path.

  “Through here,” called the angel. “Here, here!”

  They bumped between stony prominences, the path narrowing, then opening once more.

  “Here,” whispered the guardian-angel. “Stay here.”

  Big Blue dropped his head and stood absolutely still, only his skin quivering as though bitten by invisible flies Olly slid from his back, whispering, “Where are we?”

  “I don’t know,” Abasio answered. “Just a sort of stony place Look. The moon’s rising.”

  The moon, almost full, shouldered its way above a line of cloud, illuminating the place they stood. They had come from the north, up a winding and hidden path, into an east-facing hollow scooped from a rocky hillside. At either side of the hollow, stony pillars cast ebon shadows; at its lip a scatter of boulders hid them from the moonlit place below, and there, ominous figures stood silently black against the silvered soil.

  At the sight of them, Abasio and Olly instinctively leaned toward each other before freezing into immobility. Even in the inadequate light the figures were unmistakable: the stance, the curled helmets, the uncanny silence—all spelled walkers. Their motionless figures were turned slightly northward, toward the wild cacophony that flowed past the hill.

  The tumult grew louder, finally surging around the foot of the slope Olly and Abasio had climbed, and onto the plain where the walkers stood.

  “Shhh,” hissed the guardian-angel, almost soundlessly.

  Hunchbacked and hairy, the ogres shambled into the open, huge hands curled, knuckles resting on the ground, heads lowered between those hands, long torsos bent forward on short legs as they sniffed the earth. It was Big Blue’s trail they had been tracking—or trying to—for the ring of coyotes that circled them had disturbed the scent.

  Olly let herself sag against Abasio, gripping his arm in panic. “What?” she whispered, a mere breath. “What are they?”

  “Ogres,” he murmured in return, pulling her tight against him, his mouth next to her ear. “Big ones!” Oh, yes, they were big ones. The kind that had populated his nightmares as a child. He had seen young ones before, though rarely, but never any this size or this close. If they could stand erect, they would be twice the height of a man. They would be taller yet if their heads did not thrust so necklessly forward from their woolly chests.

  They roared in frustration, clutching at the circling coyotes with their taloned hands. Abasio knew that no weapon he carried, nothing he could do would cause either the ogres or the walkers any but the slightest discomfort or delay. Only something as fleet-footed as the present tormentors would even try.

  The coyotes did more than merely try. They leaped and scuttered, twenty or more of them, nipping a hairy ankle, jumping away, coming teasingly close, then darting away, tempting the enormous creatures farther from the scent trail.

  Where the whole cacophonous coyote-ogre circus froze into silence, suddenly aware it was not alone.

  Abasio and Olly heard the icy walker voice as clearly as if it had spoken only an arm’s length away.

  “Go away. We are not your prey. Go away.”

  The ogres roared, pounded their chests with clenched fists, waved their great paws aloft, and roared again.

  “Go away.”

  The ogres did not go away. They plunged forward, huge arms grappling, closing the distance.

  Olly buried her head in Abasio’s chest. He saw a spurt of flame, heard a burst of horrid sound. One of the coyotes yipped in pain and scrambled away from the conflict along with the other doggy forms, all leaping and tumbling, head over tails, leaving behind them a towering cloud of dust, silver and gray and black, rising and roiling in the moonlight, growing into a wide pillar that hid the monstrous struggle that had been joined.

  Abasio pulled Olly with him as he edged farther into shadow. He couldn’t see what was happening. The dust was so thick, he could see only the tumbling cloud, silvered by the moon. The hideous sounds went on: roarings, howlings, shrieks that sounded more mechanical than fleshy; great poundings that made the earth shudder beneath them. Abasio and Olly clung together, both of them terrified at the certainty that, when the battle was over, any surviving monster would find them and finish what the ogres had set out to do.

  The sound did not stop all at once. It faded very slowly into a stillness punctuated by occasional howls and roars by a single voice. Out of the dust, one of the ogres emerged to bellow at the moon. Araungh! Then again: Araungh! As the echoes died, it stared up the hill, its piggish snout moving as it sniffed.

  Abasio threw his head back, trying not to breathe. It did no good. The wind was from behind them! The monster was coming in their direction, lifting one hand to strike itself on the chest with every other step: thwomp, then a step, then thwomp, like the slow beat of a drum.

  Abasio fumbled for his w
eapons. Olly caught at his arm, stopping him. She was looking up, listening, hearing what he had heard without realizing it was not part of the continuing struggle, a huge hawk cry, a shriek, a descending scream that ended on the edge of the hollow before them in a great flurry of widely spread wings that extended before them like a ribbed screen. Beyond those wings the ogre made a sound of baffled fury.

  The wings beat down, lifted, dived toward the shambling figure, which turned with its huge hands over its head and ran away toward the east, uttering a guttural cough that could have been a summons to others of its kind or the cry of a creature wounded. The wings rose and dropped again. The ogre increased its speed.

  Abasio and Olly stayed quiet. Words came from the sky above them, each distinct, falling on their ears like separate blows, soft but clear:

  “I remember!”

  “Who?” whispered Abasio. “Who remembers what?”

  “I don’t know,” said Olly, staring into the sky. “Or—or maybe I do. I met a griffin once. I think. Though up until now, I’d thought maybe I’d dreamed it.” She gazed, mouth open. Had her encounter with the griffin been true? Well, why not? Other, equally unlikely things had been true. Were true.

  The ogre’s cough receded into the east. The dust settled Whatever had flown to their rescue was now gone. They moved to the edge of their hollow, far enough to see several dark blotches on the battleground below. Bodies, perhaps. Or body parts. They watched long enough to be sure there was no movement. Neither of them wanted to go any closer.

  As though in agreement with this sentiment, the coyotes began to yip and howl once more, emerging from folds in the ground and gathering in a dance of leaping, tumbling forms that flowed back toward the west, taking their yip-yowl music with them. The last member of this departing troupe stopped in its tracks, turned toward them, nose in air, and howled a farewell that sounded suspiciously like laughter.