The Banshee's Walk

by Frank Tuttle

  But I wasn’t vexed. I just followed the sound of the voices, because I knew they’d lead me back to Werewilk.

  And they did. I crawled a hundred yards, peeped over the rotting trunk of a fallen behemoth, and there they were.

  I counted twenty-four of them. All armed. Their horses were tied just beyond the light of their fires. They were gathered around a campfire, passing bottles around, foolishly watching the flames and thus rendering themselves blind to sneaky persons such as myself lying a stone’s throw away. They were cooking and drinking and cussing at each other, while two of them sat well away from the fire and peered into the woods at lights I could just barely see.

  House Werewilk.

  Music rode the winds, from time to time. The band was playing at the foot of the staircase. Holy heavens, I thought. They’re surrounded by an army and the first thing they do is break out the beer and tell the band to play something cheerful.

  I don’t think I was ever quite that young.

  Marlo had been right. They were just watching. They had enough men to break down Werewilk’s door, if they were so inclined, but apparently they were content for the moment to simply watch and make sure no one got word to Rannit.

  I debated getting closer. I could catch snatches of conversation now and again, but not enough to discern who they were or what they hoped to gain.

  In the end, I decided on the legendary better part of valor, and stayed where I was. Odds are, I’d have gotten nothing but half-drunk ramblings about their romantic exploits anyway.

  So I made a mental map instead. If Werewilk was there, and if that’s the forest road over there, then that means south was that way.

  And that’s where I needed to go. South and east, toward the Faery Ring, and the place I hoped I’d find men digging.

  I backed away from the fallen log, moving slowly, keeping low. I was glad Toadsticker and I were covered in dark slime and mud. I looked and smelled like another rotting stump.

  I paralleled the road. It was tempting to assume they weren’t watching it south of the estate, but I wasn’t willing to risk encountering some clever lad with a crossbow trying to work his way up the ranks. So I stuck to the forest, moving when the wind blew and being still when it was still. I crawled from cover to cover, I waited and listened more often than I moved.

  Which is why I’m still alive. Twice I nearly ran across mounted patrols. Twice I had to skirt small groups of two or three men who had the sense to keep their backs to their campfires and their eyes on the dark.

  Someone with deep pockets was determined to keep the treasure hunt a secret.

  I wondered about the neighbors. I gathered the next of the old Houses still inhabited was a good eight miles east. There was a tiny village of sorts about three miles past that.

  I took a deep breath, made myself count ten more. No help was to be had. Fine.

  Just like the old days with the Sixth.

  I pressed on. Moving through a forest at night is a perilous business. You can’t see briars before they tear through your clothes and into your skin. You can’t see rattlesnakes until you’ve annoyed them and they bite. And Heaven help you if you run into a wild boar sow with piglets nearby, because boars are worse than snakes and briars combined.

  I never saw an example of any of those. All I saw were soldiers, some mounted, most on foot. These weren’t all kids, either. Half were my age, which meant they were vets who done this sneaking around business before.

  I just hoped none of them were better at it than me.

  The stars wheeled by above. The coward Moon never rose. The wind kept blowing, howling now and then, reminding me of Buttercup. I still had a hunk of corn bread for her, mashed flat and wrapped in one of Lady Werewilk’s good cotton napkins.

  I topped a tiny little hillock, made my way between the trunks of two mighty oaks, popped my head up long enough to count fires. I saw two.

  And something else. A faint blue radiance, bobbing and trailing sparks that lay there glowing but didn’t touch off any fires.

  I bit back a curse word. I’d watched five of the black robed bastards be yanked up into the sky and I’d been sure, absolutely sure, that I’d seen the last of sorcerers at least for the night.

  But here was at least one more, still on the hunt.

  I hoped Buttercup was somewhere safe. I wondered why they were so determined to snatch her.

  I eased my way back down the hill on my belly, and then I crawled on, heading for the Faery Ring.

  I chided myself a dozen times on that dark journey, about my destination. I was making an awfully long leap of faith, going from two mentions in an old Werewilk family history to being sure something ancient and potent was hidden along a creek that had dried to nothing generations before the War even broke. You’ll feel pretty foolish, I told myself, if you reach the Ring and all you find are oaks and midnight.

  You’ll feel even more foolish if someone sees you and puts an arrow through your gut.

  I couldn’t argue with either sentiment, but I kept going.

  Halfway there, I began to see signs that I might have been right after all.

  I found rutted wagon tracks, in the forest. Wagons had left the old road. I counted at least five. Men had cleared the way with axes, oxen and ropes. Some of the cut timber was so fresh it still wept sap.

  But there were no men. Not a single sentry had been left in the wagons’ wake.

  Although men had accompanied the wagons, in single file on either side of them, in numbers I couldn’t even estimate.

  I stayed thirty feet or so off the new-cut road. I moved as quietly as I could, but I no longer crawled. Instinct told me that, at last, I was about to learn just what the fuss was about.

  I smelled smoke from the fires before I saw them. A few moments later, I heard the first voices, and the first sounds of hammers and picks and axes. And then I topped another gentle rise, and it all came into view.

  A ring of torches. Wagons. Men moving and shouting and working. Most were digging. Others were erecting a scaffold of fresh-cut timbers over the deep wound they’d dug in the soft, wet earth.

  As I watched, chains were dragged from a wagon, and a heavy block and tackle, and ladders were propped against the scaffold and men clambered up them, chains and tackle in tow.

  I felt a tiny hand slip into my right pocket. I didn’t even smell her over my own enthusiastic stink.

  “Hello, Buttercup,” I whispered.

  She found and unwrapped the corn bread, frowned at its mashed state, and then shrugged and began to gobble it down, using the napkin to keep the crumbs in place.

  She stood pressed to my side, her right hand filled with corn bread and her left wrapped around my waist. The top of her filthy little banshee head failed to even meet the middle of my chest.

  She was shaking. I didn’t dare move. I didn’t want to spook her, even though the realization that she was probably being tracked by at least one determined sorcerer was sending shivers up and down my spine.

  “Did you lose your blanket?”

  She looked up at me again and grinned.

  And then she coughed, choking on a mouthful of dry corn bread.

  It wasn’t the loudest cough I’d ever heard but it was close. But I dropped to my knees and dared putting an arm around her as I did so.

  She didn’t bolt. She was shaking. She huddled close, still chewing, her eyes locked on mine.

  I raised a finger to my lips.

  She hesitated a moment, and then did the same.

  I almost laughed. But instead I watched and listened.

  The workers down below kept working. The movement of the torches and lanterns kept on as before, with none of them heading suddenly our way.

  No booted feet rushed towards us. No iron hooves, either. I decided we’d found Fate’s favor, that time. I hoped the rest of the night would prove as fortunate.

  “Do you know what they’re doing, down there?” I asked, in a whisper. I wasn’t really expecti
ng a reply. I had no way of knowing whether Buttercup could speak or understand speech.

  She tilted her head and eyed me curiously. I shrugged.

  “No matter. We’ll just watch for a while.”

  And we did. They dug. Dirt was hauled the edge of the light and dumped. I tried to pick out the ringleaders by looking for anyone not carrying a tool. Part of the activity right at the edge of the excavation was obscured by a tent that was being erected as I watched, and I wasn’t willing to risk moving just to see around it.

  A horn blew, three short blasts. In the Army that meant archers to the fore. To the men below, it meant more shovels, on the double, because a mob of them leapt from the backs of various wagons and hoofed it toward the hole.

  It was then I caught a brief glimpse of what I decided was the man in charge. A small group of men made a slow circle of the pit. Three of them carried odd glowing implements that they held out over the hole on lances.

  The fourth was twice the height of any man I’d ever known, and as thin as he was tall. If he were a he at all. No way to tell, since he or she was wrapped in white robes from head to toe.

  I tried very hard to sink back even further into the shadows. My knowledge of Rannit’s sorcerous crowd was by no means exhaustive, but anyone that odd would have been mentioned, here or there.

  Which meant an out-of-town wand-waver was in the mix.

  I thought back to those stories we told each other in the trenches. There had been something about an inhumanly tall wand-waver, way up in the Northlands. Longshanks or Longlegs or some such, fond of using plagues as weapons. The diseases had killed humans as well as Trolls. There had been grumblings that our losses to illness had been at least as numerous as those of the enemy.

  After the War, the bulk of the Regency’s sorcery corps moved with the Regent to Rannit, which had survived the War with relatively little damage. The sorcerers who didn’t make the move were generally the ones who’d made powerful enemies among the wand-wavers who did.

  Buttercup gobbled down the last of her corn bread. She then licked the napkin clean of crumbs and butter before deciding my other pockets might bear more yummy treasures.

  “Whoa, sister, that’s no way to act.”

  I grabbed her hands. They were tiny, but strong. She smiled and before I realized what was happening she leaped up in my lap and kissed me, square on the lips.

  I fell over backward. Dry leaves crunched. Tattletale twigs snapped. Buttercup fell with me, giggling and redoubling her grip. I tried to pry her away without hurting her, but her tiny stature belied a powerful frame.

  I was about to stand up and take her by the shoulders and just push her an arm’s length away when we both heard the sound of a horse trotting through the trees.

  She let go. She drew her hands up over her mouth, covering a tiny mewling noise.

  The blue glow shone through the limbs, coming our way.

  I cussed. Buttercup buried her face in my side.

  The blue light bobbed and flickered, growing larger and brighter as it came. Where it touched me, I felt an odd sensation, as though a spider web was being pressed against my skin.

  Buttercup’s mewl became the tiniest of whimpers, but that was enough.

  The sorcerer spurred his mount and came directly at us, crashing through the forest as though it was noonday bright.

  I put my hand on Buttercup, intending to push her behind me before I drew Toadsticker.

  She took my hand in both of hers and dashed out in front of me. I was about to yank her back when she made that odd dancing little side step.

  The ground spun. I dropped a half an inch. The wand-waver, who had been bearing down on top of us, charged past on my left.

  Buttercup gasped, pulled hard on my hand.

  I drew Toadsticker left-handed as the sorcerer whirled.

  And the light from his blue globe fell full on me from my waist up.

  I tried to move, couldn’t. I’d been tied into place by a thousand sneaky spiders. The blue light was sticky, and it coiled about me, tightening and going suddenly rigid.

  I did the only thing I could do, which was let my legs go limp. I fell, and fell into shadow, and the invisible bonds went limp and loose.

  The wand-waver spurred his mount again, charging me. Buttercup screamed and heaved, and again we moved, landing directly behind the furious mount and its befuddled sorcerer.

  His own body blocked out the light from the glowing orb he bore. It also outlined man and mount in a brief, perfect silhouette.

  I landed a solid left-handed blow right across the horse’s ass with the flat of Toadsticker’s blade.

  The horse reared, struck a solid limb, neighed and bucked and leaped. Hooves flashed so close to my face I could smell loam and fresh horse flop.

  I managed another solid blow before Buttercup took us a few paces away.

  Bucking horse and hapless rider parted ways. The sorcerer pitched forward, but his right foot hung in the stirrup. I heard his leg snap, heard a muffled cry.

  His frantic black mount charged on, dragging the wand waver by his broken leg. I saw his head strike no fewer than six very solid tree-trunks before mount and former rider were swallowed up by the night.

  The blue-tipped staff lay on the ground a few steps from us. It no longer glowed.

  Buttercup refused to loosen her grip on my hand. I dragged us over to the staff despite her mewls of protest and attempts to drag me in the opposite direction.

  A glance down at the camp revealed the source of her agitation. Men were shouting and lights were moving up the hill toward us. Another horn blew, twice this time, and horses began to move.

  I snatched up the staff, relieved that it didn’t cover me with fire or turn me inside out.

  Buttercup let out the beginning of a long, loud banshee’s wail.

  I didn’t bother to try and silence her. They’d seen the glowing staff fall and go dark. Men and horses were charging toward us. It didn’t matter that they couldn’t see us. They’d be all over us before we’d gone fifty paces.

  Buttercup grabbed my hand, did her tiny jumping sidestep. Again, the ground tilted, trees appeared where there had been none a blink ago.

  I whirled, found the torches, heard the men. We’d not covered much ground.

  Buttercup wailed, skipped again.

  She must have been getting weaker. We probably didn’t move more than a dozen paces.

  “Go,” I said. I tried to let go of her hand, but she held on. “Shoo. Beat it. Go hide.”

  She might not have understood the words, but she must have gleaned their meaning, because she set her jaw and jumped again.

  When we landed, she fell gasping to the leaves.

  Hooves thundered toward us.

  Buttercup fell silent in mid-wail. Her eyes went wide. She lifted her left hand, pointing back toward the camp, and then she leaped toward me, her back to the torches and the men, burying her face in my ragged, soiled shirt.

  The ground shook. There was a noise, a sound pitched so low and so powerful the first hint of it literally knocked the breath right out of me.

  And then came the light.

  The forest lit up, noonday bright, then brighter, brighter, and brighter still. I saw trees and leaves and then just limbs and trunks and then just a wash of pure white light, and the awful bass rumble that rose up from the earth grew louder, became a voice, and then a scream.

  My eyes were closed. My fists were upon them. But the light blazed through skin and bone and just for an instant I saw something monstrous etched against it, something so large it took up a quarter of the sky.

  It was a face. A face so thin and worn it was more bone than flesh. Its eyes were mere shadows, but its mouth was open, and from it that terrible sound shook the ground.

  I may have screamed. I still don’t know.

  The face looked down on me, from so far above, and I knew it could see me, that I could hide myself in the deepest darkest cavern but I would never be hidden
from it, never escape its unblinking gaze.

  It winked.

  And then, there was silence.

  Silence and darkness.

  Or, more precisely, blindness and deafness. The light had left my eyes useless. The roaring word had left my ears ringing.

  But I could still feel Buttercup, feel both her tiny hands on me, feel her trying to pull my limp bulk to safety.

  I don’t remember much about the next half-hour or so. Buttercup led. I stumbled. Together we made our way through the forest. I made the acquaintance of several dozen sturdy trunks and a greater number of cruel whipping limbs.

  But I’d begun to see a bit, and could hear my own labored breathing, before we encountered the first of the men in the woods.

  Buttercup had the sense to stop and drop silent to the leaves. She struggled not to gasp. Her whole frame shook. She didn’t look up, or try to take my hand.

  We got lucky, the first two times. I still couldn’t see or hear well enough to fight. The men we encountered weren’t much better off. I could hear them cussing, stumbling and running into oak trunks and ditches and each other.

  I caught snatches of conversation too.

  I heard one man breathlessly report to his fellows that the thing in the ground had stirred in its slumber. He was quick to note there wasn’t much left of the camp at the dig site. Even the steel chains and iron-shod wagon wheels had been melted into shiny iron puddles by the heat from the flash.

  Someone asked if they were pulling out, and got told a resounding no. The dig had been resumed as soon as the fires were out.

  In the wake of that news, I learned that more than one of the hired help was reconsidering the value of their employment.

  “So am I, brother,” I mouthed, silently. Buttercup frowned at me and snuggled closer. At least she wasn’t trying to wax romantic anymore.

  We lay there and waited. I kept Toadsticker under me so the blade wouldn’t give off a tell-tale gleam and give us away. I didn’t figure I’d be able to save us by swatting a horse’s ass twice in the same evening.

  I wished for the thousandth time I’d kept my grip on the fallen sorcerer’s staff. Lady Werewilk might have been able to use it somehow. More importantly, if might have eventually told me who was paying the black-clad wand-wavers.