Wolves.
But wolves didn’t act this way. They didn’t silently attack large companies of armed men, against the background of a bonfire. Even starving wolves would have taken more care, and waited until the company was asleep—and then they would have picked off the look-out or, more likely, gone to the nearest town and waited for a child to wander away from its mother.
Then firelight caught the face of the largest animal, and Stephen realized they were not ordinary wolves at all. They were fairy creatures, come down from Faerie in the north, wearing the semblance of wolves—only, they hadn’t gotten their guise quite right. Wolves did not have tusks and their eyes were not purple and they did not have claws like cats.
This, Stephen thought fervently, was why it was stupid to travel through the Fairwoods, when everyone knew there were perfectly safe royal roads available.
“You see, Enchanter?” the Jolly Executioner murmured to him. “I said you would soon have a chance to prove your worth.”
“Are you mad?” Stephen whispered back. “I can’t kill these! I’d need days to prepare—weeks!”
“You have your serpent.”
“Yes—one serpent, made of snow, a hasty and incomplete job. Don’t you know anything about enchanting? I ward houses and improve swords! I designed my serpent to protect me, not to fight monsters—I didn’t expect I had to fight. What do I know about fighting?”
“If the answer is ‘nothing,’ said the Jolly Executioner, “then you are worthless to us and these wolves will chew on your bones. If the answer is otherwise, then you may survive to enchant something better for us.”
“This is your doing—tell me you didn’t bring these wolves down upon us, if you dare. What if others should die tonight? What if we all die?”
“Then we all die.”
“I don’t even have a knife!”
The foremost wolf charged, jumping at Granite and twisting away, staying out of range of his broadsword. Emboldened, the other wolves attacked. They were clever, three or four surrounding the company’s strongest fighters, six against the Jolly Executioner, and one which had its eye on the juicy, weaponless enchanter standing in a pile of snow.
Stephen caught its gaze and held it. “Serpent?” he asked, his voice hoarse and embarrassingly quivery. “Protect me?”
The wolf bunched its haunches and flung itself at Stephen. Stephen fell back as his serpent reacted: pushing Stephen down with its tail and striking the wolf with its long, thick, magically strengthened fangs.
“Well done, serpent,” Stephen gasped. “Let me up!”
The serpent preened and drew him up into its frozen coils. It nuzzled his head, and got down to work. Quick as lightning, and as brutally efficient, the serpent struck again and again, burying its fangs into wolves. It took down two more in a matter of seconds. The rest of the wolves learned quickly, and stayed out of striking range, so that the serpent had to reach farther and farther from Stephen to get at them, leaving him less protected. At last, Stephen had to order it to withdraw, lest it desert him entirely. The serpent retreated warily, watching the battle.
Despite their grueling ride that day, not one of the company faltered. Each had a weapon suited to his skills, and each fought with at least as much skill as Stephen showed in enchanting. The Jolly Executioner was especially impressive, his iron axe inimical to fairy creatures.
But the wolves were cleverer and harder to kill than ordinary wolves, and the company grew fatigued more quickly than the wolves. As the wolves grew bolder, they advanced, pushing the company back toward the fire.
The serpent followed, holding Stephen in its curls. The closer to the fire they got, the weaker it became, until its backside sagged and could hardly hold Stephen in.
A wolf spotted the weakness and slunk forward, intent on destroying the Enchanter. But the serpent was not done in yet: it made a supreme effort and struck one last time, burying the wolf in its mouth.
Its bottom jaw fell off under the weight of the dead wolf.
The serpent faltered. It turned its head pleadingly toward Stephen.
“I’m sorry,” Stephen said, as the light faded from his serpent’s eyes. “There’s nothing I can do.”
The serpent’s head crumpled to the ground, and was nothing but snow and ice.
And that, Stephen thought to himself with strange satisfaction, was the problem with enchanting snow. It served the Jolly Executioner right for not giving him time to prepare.
Stephen crouched down to await the end of the battle. The remains of his snow serpent had become a sort of honeycomb snow fort, and he as safe there as anywhere else. After a moment or two of thought, he began packing snowballs as a secondary line of defense, along with slight magical modifications for density and accuracy. It wasn’t much, but it might give him a second or two when he needed it.
A little half-laugh, half-sob escaped him. Stephen slapped a hand over his mouth, but it was too late: the wolves had remembered him—the lone man without any sharp weapons, on the outskirts of the group, the serpent dead.
Stephen knelt hurriedly and scrapped up his snowballs. Ten—twelve—why had he only made twelve? He began throwing them wildly, pelting the earth as often as the wolves, pushing more magic into the snowballs, wild magic without purpose or direction, and flinging them—
And then, as suddenly as it had begun, the battle was over. The remaining wolves dragged one of their brethren away from the edge campsite, and melded into the shadowy woods.
Stephen tried to rewind the last few minutes, tried to see the decisive move that had turned the tide, but all he could remember were teeth and snowballs and the increasing weariness of his arm. Whatever the others had done, whatever stunning fighting they had performed, he had missed all of it.
Had any of the company survived? Yes, all of them—or, at least, he could not see any dead, and when he counted, he found nineteen. There—he could see the Jolly Executioner and Tinkerfingers and Granite and Miss Ironfist and Craggy and Banananose—where was Youngster? Yes, there, with that little man in blue, who was bandaging an arm injury. Tinkerfingers had been obscuring Stephen’s view.
Stephen didn’t know the others by sight, yet. It occurred to him that he never would have known it if one had died and been replaced by one of the wolves in the guise of a man.
“Is the Enchanter hurt?”
It was the little man in blue talking to him. Stephen started. He had dazed off again. He did not think he like battles. “What?”
“I’m a doctor. Is the Enchanter hurt?”
Stephen shook his head. Medic looked him up and down, nodded, and moved on without another word.
A locksmith, a child, a mirror of his old governess, a mad executioner, and now a doctor who spoke to people in the third person. Fabulous.
All around him, the companions were going about their tasks in a humdrum way that never would have suggested they had fought off fairy wolves summoned by their leader. Several of them took to skinning the wolves and collecting meat. Stephen caught the eye of one—a stock man with a warthog nose and dark, beady eyes. Warthog waved him over. “You’re the Enchanter,” he said.
“I am.”
“Can you do anything useful? I hate to see you sitting around all the time when there’s work to be done.”
“I can enchant weapons—but not just now; I’m pretty drained. I can, um.” What could he do? He had once thought of himself as accomplished. ‘I can sew,’ was unhelpful, ‘I know several languages,’ boastful and ‘I can play the fife’ daft. “What do you need?”
“Can you skin a wolf?”
“It how many ways?”
Warthog looked blank.
“I guess so—only, I don’t have a knife.”
“We have extra. Your predecessor left them in his saddlebag.”
I’m not going to ask, Stephen promised himself. “My predecessor? What happened to him?” Drat.
“He was slow.”
“Ah.” Stephen hesitated. “I do
n’t suppose the Jolly Executioner would mind if I took some—some trophies from the corpse? Ears and snout, sort of thing?”
“Don’t suppose he would,” said Warthog. “I don’t mind either, if you keep them to yourself and don’t tell me what they’re for.”
IV
It is almost invariably unpleasant to meet a monster,
But equally unpleasant to be the monster who is met.
Stephen awoke cold and uncomfortable, but without any sign of a sniffle—which was, in his opinion, worth a tree-root in the back. Or possibly a rock; he couldn’t tell under all that snow.
The rest of the company was already awake and shuffling around and packing and doing all sorts of other work with which Stephen couldn’t be bothered to help. No one asked him, either. Maybe they thought enchanters didn’t know how to roll blankets or put out fires or anything else useful.
Just as if he hadn’t been traveling on foot since he was a teenager. How did they think traveling enchanters got around—by teleporting?
Probably.
He wondered if it were possible to build himself a winged horse with which he could fly around the kingdom. Maybe. If he had the right materials. Not that anyone would hire an enchanter who came in on a flying horse . . . likely as not, it would turn out to be illegal.
Speaking of which, he’d better get to work enchanting his new knife. He had found it in his saddlebags the night before: a curved skinning knife about ten inches long and—importantly—bronze rather than iron. It wasn’t a bad knife, either. Stephen knew his weapons; he had enchanted everything from catapults to brass knuckles. This one would hold as many enchantments as he could push into it.
Stephen meandered over to Noble Steed and patted her nose as he contemplated the knife. Enchanting weapons wasn’t his favorite work, but it was more interesting than warding, and didn’t take as long. He had an idea that it would come in especially useful over the next however long he would be with the company.
First things first: his own personal protection trumped that of the company. He’d start to work on monsters for the Jolly Executioner after his knife was so heavy with enchantments it glowed.
Possibly literally. That much magic did strange things to metal.
Stephen set about placing the base enchantment on his knife. After a time, he vaguely remembered climbing onto Noble Steed’s back, but he was concentrating so deeply, he barely noticed. There was the magic, and the knife, and he thought of nothing else. He wove a permanent base level of stability into the knife, then began adding auxiliaries: strength, sharpness, recognition of wielder, protection, safety. On top of those he added a glimmering sheen of concealment from enemies.
If anyone captured him again, they would not find a knife, not even if it were directly in front of them.
In theory.
Stephen was not aware of it, but several of the company watched him work. One or two asked him questions, but gave up when he made no sign of hearing them.
And then he was done. He blinked at the knife—which, if it was glowing, was doing so too faintly to be spotted in daylight—and heard Tinkerfingers say, “I had no idea enchanting was so much work.”
It was like being underwater and coming up for air. Suddenly the world around him was full of sound and colors, and Stephen realized it had been all along, he had just been too absorbed to notice.
“It’s almost like a real job,” he heard himself say. His own voice sounded stupid in his ears and he shook himself. “I can do quick enchantments in minutes—and they’ll only last for minutes. Making a permanent one, making a quality one, takes time.”
“Will you enchant our weapons also?” Warthog asked. “You mentioned something about that yesterday. I wouldn’t mind having an enchanted club.”
Club. Stephen hadn’t noticed the day before which weapon Warthog used. His disdain must have shown on his face, because Warthog’s expression clouded. “You may think it’s primitive—” he began.
“Is it bound in iron?”
“What?”
“Your club, is it banded around with iron?”
“Steel.” Warthog hoisted the double-handed club into his arms and showed it to Stephen. It was a sturdy piece, with a nasty head on the end: designed to bash in skulls without getting stuck. It was, as he had said, made with steel rather that iron. Stephen marveled that Warthog could afford it. Did that kind of money come from working for the Jolly Executioner or somewhere else? “Or is that too close to iron for you?”
“No, no; steel is fine.”
“In that case,” said Youngster, “could you enchant my swords also? Make them seek enemy blood and drain it from their corpses and spread disease among the evil and hope among the good?”
“If you like,” said Stephen, “I could try. It’d be highly illegal and you’d no doubt regret it intensely after the first day or so, but—”
“He was exaggerating,” Tinkerfingers broke in. “Whatever you typically do with weapons, that’ll work.”
“But maybe a little more special,” Youngster said. “An extra snap of pizzazz.”
“But one which won’t bedazzle him and make him a mad warrior enthralled to his weapons.”
“Is that possible?”
Tinkerfingers and Youngster turned expectantly to Stephen. “Yes,” he said seriously. “Yes, given time and resources, I could make a weapon do that. But it’d be illegal—not to mention immoral.”
Youngster looked faintly disappointed.
Stephen stowed his knife away, and grilled Youngster on exactly which enchantments he wanted. Warthog burst in after that, and then Tinkerfingers . . . and by the end of the day, Stephen had enough enchanting lined up to last him a week.
He hoped the Jolly Executioner wasn’t expecting more monsters any time soon.
The Jolly Executioner himself never approached Stephen to ask for any enchantments on his weaponry—quite sensibly, as it was iron—nor did he mention making monsters. The company continued to travel north and Stephen continued to enchant, until Stephen almost thought that living with this company wasn’t so bad. He missed the walking, but having a full stomach at the end of every day and the companionship—if not friendship—of Tinkerfingers and Youngster made up for it.
Nothing could make up for the prospect of fighting monsters, but as the company traveled, Stephen began to hope that maybe there was some other plan after all. Maybe the Jolly Executioner had been teasing him or speaking metaphorically or—
Or not.
January was five days old and colder than ever when the Jolly Executioner called a halt just before noon.
“What’s going on?” Stephen whispered to Tinkerfingers. “We’re in the middle of nowhere! This can’t be our destination.”
“It isn’t,” Tinkerfingers replied. “The Jolly Executioner is planning something else. Probably another monster. I wish I had a map; I’m sure I’ve heard of one around here.”
“Of course you have,” Youngster interjected. “Have you lost your memory completely? What creature dwells in the dead center of the Fairwoods and only emerges on the coldest day of the year?”
Tinkerfingers’s face dawned with comprehension, horror, and amusement in one. “I suppose it is the coldest day of the year. I hope it is, anyway. I’ve never felt colder.” His quick hands, which usually waved in the air, were deep inside thick mittens. His only visible skin was a thin horizontal slit between the scarf he had wrapped around his face and the hat he had pulled down low. On a warmer day, Stephen might have wondered how he could see; today, he knew from personal experience: fuzzily, but in (relative) warmth.
Around them, the rest of the companions were making similar conclusions as to what they had to fight. Stephen couldn’t see their faces, but their low, muttering voices did not inspire confidence.
“Enchanter!” the Jolly Executioner called. Stephen reluctantly turned his way. “Have you prepared a monster to fight for us?”
“No,” said Stephen, and was annoyed how sulk
y he sounded. “How could I, without materials, not once being told what kind of monster you wanted, or what it was for. Besides, I’ve been busy enchanting weapons.”
“In that case, you have sixteen hours to make a monster. We’ll be fighting tomorrow, and I plan to do so with magic at our side. Get to work.”
“You still haven’t told me what I’m facing! And you mustn’t expect much, in only sixteen hours.”
The Jolly Executioner rose up, huge and stormy and faceless in his hood. “I expect you to fulfill our agreement!”
“Yes, yes—I’m trying. I never said I wouldn’t.”
The Monsters of Stephen Enchanter Page 5
