by John Barnes
Two or three of the boldest were knocked from the road, skittering down the steep gravel bank into the gorge, where they were swept down to the opening of the defile, if they survived, and farther still, if they did not.
After that first, brief rush, then, as Sir John urged Amatus and the women onward, ten of the forty foemen were fallen, without any injury to the Twisted Man. Whether his heart lightened with hope, or whether he just continued to fight as he always did, could not be known even if a living witness had been found, but he had not given an inch, and the Prince and his party had gained a great deal of valuable time.
The next rush met with only slightly better results; the Twisted Man had no time to reload, and so they fell only to the blades of his whirling weapons, but the road was narrow there—barely enough for a single horse—and thus they could close with him only in ones and twos. He struck them down, and—in his usual way—when he could, left them wounded rather than dead, forcing the other troops to care for them.
But he must have been at least a little puzzled by these strangely identical soldiers who advanced upon him, for they were not demoralized in the least by the screams of the wounded; they did not even seem to notice them.
Still, at the end of the second rush he had accounted for another five who were dead, and two grievously wounded, and the puddled blood made the pathway more slippery and dangerous for the next rush.
This was by the time that the sun was going down quickly, because all of Thunder's best trackers agree that it was during the second, bloody rush that the Twisted Man seemed to have taken two soldiers prisoner. He hamstrung one with his escree and broke the other's knee with the flat of his ax, then dragged them in behind him while the others were too confused to mount another rush. A few quick strokes with the pongee to slash through their flesh and destroy their tendons, and now they could neither stand nor grip anything; they lay, crying and begging for death, behind him.
Whatever might be said of Waldo, and of men who would voluntarily serve him, they had some loyalty to each other, for the next rushes upon the Twisted Man were wilder than before, with men apparently scrambling to get at him and save their fellows. They met with no better success. He killed a few more, though he was now too hard-pressed to choose to wound them, and their bodies, too, tumbled down into the raging stream below.
And the sun, which had been creeping away, touched the horizon, and the sky began to darken, indigo invading blue.
He fought on, though he may well have guessed what was to come. One man was too badly wounded to retreat, but the Twisted Man was too hard-pressed to drag him over to his other prisoners, and so the man lay bloody and dying between them, crying out for water or mercy. He received neither; nor could he have imagined what would happen next.
When darkness had just fallen, the rocks resounded with horns and with howling, for the mountains had always had more than their share of goblins, and now they were bursting forth to their ally's aid. Thankfully none came from the little stretch of rock behind him, but still his situation was now desperate, for goblins can climb and scramble many places a man cannot, and thus they could come at him from up and down the slope. Moreover, though they were still little skilled, these goblins too seemed to have mastered disciplined fighting, and they advanced in tight, orderly ranks.
He took his first wound in the calf as he rushed forward to seize the wounded man. In and of itself the wound was not serious, but it slowed him considerably afterwards.
For the time being, however, he had grabbed the broken, gasping man and lifted him over his head. The man may have seen what was to come, and screamed for help or mercy, or perhaps even begged the Twisted Man. If so, the Twisted Man no doubt enjoyed it. More likely the man was unconscious.
The Twisted Man shouted, "Man's flesh! Man's flesh to eat!" and hurled the man into the back ranks of the goblins.
The new "discipline" of the goblins was a relative matter; they still fought together only about as well as a mob of human farm boys without training might do in a pinch. At the prospect of man's flesh, they broke ranks at once and set upon the hapless man, and even their officers broke discipline to join them. Waldo's men were forced to draw blades and pismires and to fight their way into the goblins, killing many of them and receiving many wounds in return, and the battle that raged there on the road was nearly as dangerous as the one against the Twisted Man. At the end, besides the man who had been eaten, there were a dozen goblins dead and one more man sorely wounded.
"Why do men make alliance with goblins?" the Twisted Man taunted them.
They gave no answer. Now that their allies were back in ranks, they prepared for the final attack—stopping only to knife any goblins who appeared to be pulling things from concealment and chewing on them.
The rush this time was organized tightly and came in three prongs. Two big men came up the road with escrees drawn to engage the Twisted Man. Above him on the rocky cliff, a small band of goblins attempted to descend behind him, and below, creeping for toe- and fingerholds on the steep, loose bank between the road and the rushing river, another three goblins crept inward.
The Twisted Man took the men first, as most dangerous, and struck with a ferocity that must have appalled one of them, for there was a clear mark of his heel turning; Dick Thunder's woodsmen were so skilled they could read a track upon a track upon ten tracks, but this one cut so deeply that they thought he must not have been struck at all, but turned and fled when the man beside him was struck dead at the first blow. This had happened faster than the enemy had planned upon, and the goblins were not yet in place; snatching up one of his reserve prisoners, the Twisted Man again screamed "Man's flesh!" and lifted the man up. The prisoner, having heard what had happened before, shrieked, begged, and wept—or wept anyway, for three teardrops were found in one of the marks of the Twisted Man's boots—but to no avail. He might have cried to his mother, or to whatever dark gods Waldo served, but it did not matter at all. The Twisted Man hurled him forward into the press of goblins.
Again, ranks broke and chaos ensued, though not so much as before, and indeed his comrades managed to drag the wounded prisoner from the clutches of the goblins before he was entirely dead, though the marks on the ground show he died shortly after, large parts of him gnawed away before the goblins could be stopped. This time there were two dead men and nineteen dead goblins, and in the meantime by hurling stones the Twisted Man had been able to bring down the goblins crawling above him.
When the single-minded little party of goblins tried to leap onto the trail behind him he had more than time and attention enough to bring his double-bladed ax about and split all three of their skulls at a stroke, leaving their brain pans leaking open as he kicked their twitching bodies into the river.
But somewhere in the process—perhaps from one goblin dart that had found a mark, or even from the escree of the last man he had killed—he had taken a wound in the shoulder, where the blood runs close to the surface and where the muscles he would need with which to fight were attached, and now, too, he was slower from the wound he had taken earlier.
Moreover, the men, having seen two of their number fed to the goblins, were of no mind to give respite. They drove the goblins together upon the road—killing a couple more of them in the process—and then pushed them forward from behind, slaughtering the laggards without compunction. Driven by fear, the goblins rushed upon the Twisted Man in a wild fury, and though he butchered them as they came, here and there one would land a blow or a bite before dying, so that he grew battered and he bled from a dozen places, and his breath came in great heaving gasps.
It was fully dark, now, and the moon did not penetrate to this side of the steep-walled gorge, so that they fought on as dim shapes to each other. The men were at some risk of running out of goblins before the fight was over, but they pressed on, prodding at the laggards with their escrees and turning their pismires on any who tried to climb up or down from the road. The black shadows occasionally flashed wit
h a pale glimpse of steel, and when one of the men shot a deserting goblin, there would be a great orange flash upon the rocks, but for the most part it happened as a clash of steel in the dark.
At last the Twisted Man stepped back and placed his back to the rocky cliff. Even now he did not surrender; he did it only to sow confusion in the enemy ranks, for the first rank of goblins charged forward and threw themselves upon the helpless prisoner he had retained, and the Twisted Man would let no more pass, so that the men behind them were eventually forced to cut every last one of the goblins down to rescue their screaming comrade.
That finally brought the last seven men face to face with the Twisted Man, and now, they, like he, were far past the point of fighting for any reason at all except to kill and to hurt; they had seen bloody things done and their minds were filled with longing for more, and that was all. They closed in and struck with a fury as blind and deep as his, and it was the opinion of Thunder's senior woodsman that they had often struck each other, for in that dark storm of clashing blades and spraying gore, the Twisted Man died, but all seven of his opponents did as well, and at last all lay there to be gnawed by the few hungry goblins who returned later.
Far away, by now, high up on the road and well beyond any sound of the battle, Amatus felt something different, and looked down to see that he now had, besides his left foot and left eye, a left arm. He flexed it once, then spoke to the others. "He has died."
They did not ask how he knew, but they turned to see what part was regained. He raised the arm, quietly.
"I never knew him well," Amatus said, "For all that I saw of him."
"He preferred it be that way," Psyche said.
They walked on until dawn came up, and they had just found a comfortable meadow to stretch out in—for there was now no sign of pursuit and they were tired—when they heard hoofbeats behind them.
At once, Amatus and Sir John Slitgizzard drew their weapons, and stood waiting for what might come around the bend of the road.
The first thought was that it was not Waldo's men; it was a grizzled old fellow, his face battered raw by wind and rain, brown eyes and gray hair bleached by the sun, clad in ragged gazebo hides, an omnibus slung on his shoulder and an escree dangling at his side, on a great red stallion, and behind him there was a band of equally tough and seasoned—and equally ragged-looking—men on horseback.
There was a long pause. "Escree Jack," the old man said.
"Deacon Dick Thunder," Sir John replied, keeping his voice just as level and neutral as the old man's had been.
"Richard?" Sylvia exclaimed.
Deacon Dick Thunder looked at her, and something inside him seemed to collapse. The old man dropped from his saddle and ran toward her; neither the bandits nor the Prince nor any of his company seemed to know what to do.
Deacon Dick Thunder, terror of the mountains for decades uncounted, knelt before the plump commoner girl and whispered, "I must ask your forgiveness."
IV
The Love of You
1
Old Friends and Unexpected Meetings
With everyone in the small party exhausted (except, perhaps, for Psyche), the wisest thing to do seemed to be for everyone to sleep before matters were sorted out; yet the excitement was such that this was impossible. In a short while, it had all tumbled out, while everyone claimed that they were just going to bed and would talk in the morning: about Waldo's invasion, and the slaughter of the city; about how Amatus had gained an arm; the ride on the Riddling Beast, and, at her decision, even Calliope's real identity, "for," as she said, "if I am to be a rallying point, I must be known to be one, and if we fail, Waldo will kill me about as dead no matter what."
Yet even that news was overshadowed by the great shock of discovering that Deacon Dick Thunder was the husband who had been unable to muster the courage to rescue Sylvia from Goblin Country, as had been told in "Penna Pike" for all these years.
"But I thought 'Penna Pike' was centuries old," Calliope protested.
"The older a song is, the truer," Psyche explained, "and 'Penna Pike' was so old that it had to be constantly true."
Perhaps because she had always been a little suspicious of Psyche, Calliope let that pass.
"Well, to tell you the truth, it was turning coward that turned me to a life of crime," Thunder was admitting to Sylvia. "I had always dreamed, you know, of heroic deeds and that kind of thing, and here with a genuine chance to do one, and a song ready to go if I managed to pull it off—and not even that difficult a task at that, you know—well, I just turned tail and ran. Didn't have the stuff of which heros were made and that was all there was to it. So I drifted north, and you might know how it is, when you already think you're a deplorable fellow, you get to thinking that you might as well do deplorable deeds. I started out shoplifting, you know, and then got into purse-snatching, then stealing chickens, which led to sheep and then cattle and horses, and pretty soon I was a fair all-around thief, but you know a thief gets no respect, there's no advancement, and sure enough, that meant if I wanted to get anywhere I should have to turn either robber or pirate, and you know how little the sea agrees with me, Sylvia, it was robber or nothing.
"I was dreadfully worried about it at first because, you know, I didn't think I had an ounce of courage, but I found I was an adequate shot with a pismire, and could swing an escree about reasonably well, and most of the time when you're robbing you're dealing with unarmed people, or ones you have the drop on, anyway. So I nerved myself up to learn to use a weapon or two, and got steadily better at it, and well, here you see me. Leading robber in the Kingdom. But it's all compensation, really—our counselor, here, with the band, has stressed that to me repeatedly. I need to learn to accept my successes in one set of ballads and not worry about my failures, you know, over in that one other ballad.
"Oh, and everyone else—my real name, by the way, is Brown. Plain old Richard Brown. It was just no sort of name for a robber chief, you know, so I called myself Dick Thunder, and then when I instituted, as simple public relations, a practice of not robbing the poor, and of tithing some of our take to the widows and orphans and so forth, which cost us little financially but got commoners to lie about having seen us and not to cooperate with the police—well, this quite meaningless little publicity-stunt seemed to earn me the name of the Deacon.
"And there was a certain resonance and social advantage to the way things turned out, you'd have to admit. 'Deacon Dick Thunder's Men' just sounded a lot more grand than 'Richard Brown's Purse-Snatchers and Chicken Thieves.' "
A muttering of agreement ran through the men.
Naturally it took much less time for Sylvia to tell what had become of her—after all, her time in Goblin Country had passed like one long dream, and after that she had taken a job as a waitress in a small taboret for a time, before she found that tips were always better among the Vulgarians and moved into that part of the city to work in a stupor.
Finally, with everyone's tale told, so late in the day, Thunder—it seemed impossible to think of him as Brown and besides his men would not hear of it—suggested that they might ride to one of his secret camps in the woods, eat something, go to bed early, get up late, and in general get themselves into better shape for the days ahead. The idea was so sensible that Amatus muttered to Sir John, "I can well see how he came to be leader of the band."
"That's it exactly," Sir John whispered back, "but for all the gods' sake don't go mentioning it. He won't hear of the idea that he got to be leader for his administrative skills and common sense. He still wants it to be because he was the boldest, baddest robber from the Lake of Winter to the Bitter River. Don't hurt his feelings—he's terribly sensitive."
As they neared the camp, they were greeted by tens of children and a dozen women, all of whom seemed excited and each of whom seemed to have a husband or father among the band. In very little time, they seemed to be the center of a considerable parade. Because of his strange appearance, the children avoided Amatus, bu
t they mobbed Calliope and Sir John, never having seen a real Princess or a real knight before.
Dick Thunder dropped back to talk with Amatus. "I hope we can keep the war from coming up into the northern frontier, here. These camps have gotten to be more towns than anything else, over the years; many of the men only rob part-time now, and mainly work as farmers, and quite a few of them have nice houses they would hate to lose."
Amatus smiled. "It would seem that portions of the Kingdom marked 'unsettled' on the maps are very well settled."
"Well, there are no claims or deeds—"
"These things can be made good. If there's a Kingdom anymore, instead of a—what would you call it, anyway? a Usurperage? or a Usurpy, like a duchy or a county?—but I digress. I see you have many bold men among you, and quite a considerable force here, and that they all certainly have things to fight for."
"Part of what makes them formidable," Thunder said, with a nod. "Bachelor robbers are no use at all. In the first place, they've no respect for wenches, and that gets the men among the robbees upset, and before you know it some silly fool has pulled out a weapon and then almost anything can happen. And what's more, when a bachelor robber happens into a lot of swag, do you suppose he's going to keep working? Oh, no, he heads into town to spend it, where he's like as not to get caught and make us all risk our necks in a rescue, and very likely he'll end up betraying secrets. But a married robber—especially in a band of married robbers—now there's a robber. He won't bother a wench at all, because he knows the other fellows will talk to their wives and sooner or later it will get back to his. And as for spending it in town—well, fat chance. There's savings to be thought of, and new shoes for the children, and perhaps some new thatch for the cottage, and if the swag is big enough it starts to look like a down payment on something.
