by Lian Tanner
He heard a bellow from Field Marshal Brace. “Shoulder your rifles, men! Ready! Steady! Fire!”
The guns stuttered out their deadly song, and the first row of barbarians fell in a heap. But another row took their place immediately, and barbarians and rats surged forward as if they were one creature. Rifles snapped. Muskets crackled. With a roar, the two armies met.
It was only then, as blood began to spill across the ruined ground, that the Fugleman saw what else had come out of the museum.
It was a procession of sorts. But such a procession! A girl strode at the head of it, clutching a human leg bone. Her face was as grim as death. And on each side of her, stretching far back into the darkness of the museum, stalked the stuff of nightmares.
The Fugleman’s skin crawled. He opened his mouth to shout, then closed it again. He clenched his fists and saw the moment when the soldiers from both armies realized what was behind them.
Between one heartbeat and the next, the fighting stalled. Shocked faces turned toward the monstrous beasts.
“Stand firm, you scoundrels,” bellowed Field Marshal Brace, “or I’ll shoot you myself! Ready! Steady! Fire!”
This time, rifles and muskets spat together, with a common purpose. But the beasts did not even flinch. Instead, they roared, as if the bullets had merely angered them.
The sound was so terrifying that many men broke and ran, and the brizzlehounds chased after them on silent paws, herding the mercenaries one way and the soldiers from behind the Dirty Gate the other. The rats dashed hither and thither between them, squealing with fright as the idle-cats snapped at their tails.
“Your Honor!” screamed Guardian Hope. The Fugleman turned in time to see one of the idle-cats stalking toward him with death in its eyes.
He shuddered and forced himself into action. “Ho!” he cried at the top of his voice. “A hundred silver thalers for every soldier who kills a beast!” And he swung his sword at the head of the idle-cat.
It went straight through.
The Fugleman almost fell over with shock and disbelief.
His sword clattered against the pavement and he dragged it up to shoulder height and struck another blow. The idlecat opened its terrible jaws and roared at him, so close that he could see the old blood on its teeth and smell its foul breath.
But the sword slid through it as if there was nothing there.
“It’s a phantasm!” the Fugleman croaked. He looked around wildly. “They’re all phantasms!”
No one seemed to hear him. Guardian Hope had tucked herself between Frow Carrion’s wheels and was babbling, “Mercy! Mercy!” The rest of the Guardians had run away. Field Marshal Brace was rallying his mercenaries as best he could.
“They are ghosts, Brace!” shouted the Fugleman. “Nothing but ghosts from the long-dead past! Tell your men not to be afraid, they can’t hurt us!”
Smudge, who had stood firm up till now, stared at him in horror. Then the stupid man shrieked, “Demons! Demons!” and he and his nearest companions threw down their rifles and ran.
With that, a red-hot fury gripped the Fugleman. Once again, the Museum of Dunt had torn his careful plans to shreds! He ground his teeth and looked around for someone on whom he could vent his rage.
The boy was lying helpless on the ground nearby. On every side of him, the phantasms prowled, lashing out with ghostly claws.
But the Fugleman was not afraid of ghosts. “You!” he snarled, striding over to the boy and raising his sword. “You and your keeper friends. This is all your fault!”
And he swept the sword down in a deadly arc.
The final battle
The warrior princess heard the cries of “Ghosts!” and “Demons!” as if through a dream. The wolf-sark burned inside her, as hot as a furnace, and she clutched her leg-bone sword and strode through the flickering firelight, searching for the man she had come to kill.
The brizzlehounds and the idle-cats peeled away on either side, hunting singly and in packs. They passed through walls without hesitating; their ghostly paws swiped harmlessly at the rats and soldiers, and the rats and soldiers ran for their lives.
The princess studied them, wondering which of them was her true enemy.
And then she saw him, no more than five paces away, near the great gun.
Fugleman.
His face was flushed with rage and he stood over someone—a boy—holding a sword high in the air. Even as she watched, he shouted words that she didn’t catch. And the sword began to fall.
Something deep inside her cried out in horror. She threw herself across the space, thrusting the leg bone out at arm’s length. There came a shriek from between the wheels of the great gun. And her enemy’s sword hit the leg bone.
The shock of it went right through her, and the bone shattered into a dozen pieces. But the sword was turned aside, and her sudden intervention left the Fugleman stunned and gaping. Quickly, she scanned the ground for another weapon.
“There!” shouted the boy, pointing to a sword that lay just beyond his reach.
The warrior princess snatched it up. As her fingers wrapped around the hilt—the familiar hilt—the wolf-sark howled with joy. The red mist thickened and she threw herself at the Fugleman with murder in her heart.
But this time he was ready for her. His sword clattered against hers and forced it to one side. He screamed in her face. “A girl? A girl has brought me down? I will slice you to pieces, Golden Roth, for what you have done!”
“The Wolf! The Wolf!” cried the warrior, and she struck again, in a flurry of blows that stripped the words from the Fugleman’s throat and drove him backward, away from the boy.
All around them, brizzlehounds herded men like cattle. The mercenaries were sent running down the hill in a panic, but the soldiers from behind the Dirty Gate were driven back up the steps of the museum and along its dusty corridors. Idle-cats pursued rats through every drain and gutter, winkling them out with ghostly claws, until they too scuttled back the way they had come. The air stank of gunpowder and fear.
The warrior princess knew all this and cared nothing for it. The only thing that mattered was the duel. She slashed at her opponent’s head, and when he fought back she stepped out of the line of attack and lunged at his legs. The wolf-sark gave her a strength beyond anything she would otherwise have had; her warrior training kept her muscles loose and her body balanced.
After only a minute or two her enemy was breathing heavily. He bared his teeth at her, and snarled, “You will be sorry you were ever born!”
The words did not touch her. She drove in harder, and harder, as quick as firelight and as impossible to catch. She 312
struck at her opponent’s face and thrust at his stomach. She turned him so that the fire was in his eyes, and he winced and cried out, “Shoot her, Hope! Shoot her, you fool!”
But there was no shot, just a whimper of terror from beneath the great gun, and the screams of the soldiers as they fled from the phantasms.
The warrior fought on. The wounded boy cried encouragement, but it meant nothing. The phantasms and the small group of mercenaries who still held out against them; the girl with the bow, who came running with her parents to stand guard over the boy; the woman with the slaver tattoos; the man with the harp and the boys who accompanied him; the two old keepers who watched the duel with their hearts in their mouths—none of them meant a thing to the warrior. There was only the fight.
And then a moment arrived when the battle-rage and the training slotted together so perfectly that she became the wolf, and her sword was the wolf ’s claw. She growled, and leaped at her prey with such force that his weapon flew from his hand and he crashed to the ground, kicking like a rabbit.
As the wolf stood over him, the past unfurled behind her eyes. A great black hound fell wounded to the floor. An ancient army sprang into action, threatening everyone she loved. A longbow lay abandoned on the cobblestones, and next to it, an arrow stained with blood. Four children crouched in a sewer with t
he water rising.
A terrified city . . . A good woman thrown into the canals like rubbish . . . A slave ship . . .
Mist descended on the wolf—a great howling red mist. She raised her claw for the killing blow.
“No!” screamed the rabbit. “You can’t kill me! I’m the Fugle man!”
“Blood and death!” howled the wolf.
“No! I surrender! Listen to me, I surrender! We—We all surrender! Brace! Lay down your weapons, you and your men! Quickly! Quickly! I surrender, I swear! I give my word!”
“Blood and death!” The wolf ’s voice was hoarse with fury. But somewhere inside her, a last skerrick of sanity whispered, “Remember, there is always a choice.”
She did not want to listen. The wolf-sark rode her so strongly that she could feel the fur on her head and the hot saliva dripping from her jaws. “No choice!” she growled. “Revenge!”
“Goldie!” shouted the boy lying on the ground. “Stop! They’ve surrendered!”
“No choice!” she growled again, but the boy’s voice was like a wind that pierced the wolf-mist, and the speck of sanity grew larger.
“. . . always a choice . . .”
More voices joined in—voices she loved. “Goldie! Goldie!”
She could have turned away from them even then, and let the battle-rage do what it hungered to do. But she had fought too hard to be the person she was and to live the life that she wanted to live. And she would not give it up now, not even for revenge.
With a great shudder, she forced the wolf-sark down. She forced the warrior princess down too, until the person standing over the Fugleman, sword in hand, was Goldie Roth. No more, no less.
She looked up and saw Herro Dan and Olga Ciavolga watching her, with Auntie Praise, Sinew, Mouse and Pounce beside them. Bonnie and her parents were crouched next to Toadspit. Guardian Hope still whimpered between the wheels of Frow Carrion, and Field Marshal Brace and his few remaining mercenaries stood back to back, with their guns on the ground at their feet and a score of brizzlehounds padding around them in a silent, threatening circle.
There was no sign now of the rats, or of the ancient soldiers who had come so close to invading the city. They were gone, driven back to where they had come from.
Goldie was suddenly so tired that she could hardly think. Where was Broo? She looked at the prowling phantasms and realized that he might be any one of them, and that she could no longer tell him apart.
Where was the cat? It had been with her when she came out of the museum, at the head of that strange procession.
She shifted her weight—
—and the Fugleman, who was not a rabbit after all, but a fox of infinite cunning, kicked her legs out from underneath her, grabbed her sword and leaped to his feet.
“No one move or the girl dies!” he shouted, holding the sword to Goldie’s throat.
Bonnie froze in the act of raising her bow. So did Auntie Praise, her hand on the pistol in her belt. Toadspit groaned, and Herro Dan cried out in anger.
But Guardian Hope opened her eyes and crawled from between the wheels of Frow Carrion. Her great fear of a moment ago had given way to an even greater viciousness, and she kicked Toadspit as she passed him, and slapped Auntie Praise’s face. Then she snatched their weapons and held them all at gunpoint, saying, “Did you think you would win? What fools you are!”
Goldie lay on the ground, burning with fury. She should never have taken her eyes off the Fugleman, not even for a second! She should have known—
Without shifting the sword from her throat, the Fugleman glanced toward the mercenaries. “Pick up your guns, Brace! I need you.”
The field marshal and his men did not move. The brizzlehounds snarled silently at them.
“There’s nothing to fear from a few phantasms!” cried the Fugleman. “Come, I need you here. There is rubbish to be disposed of.”
The firelight leaped and flickered. Field Marshal Brace nodded to his soldiers, who picked up their rifles and edged past the brizzlehounds. Herro Dan and Olga Ciavolga gripped each other’s hands, their gaze fixed on Goldie.
“The prisoners are all yours,” said the Fugleman, when at last the mercenaries stood before him. He waved his free hand in a generous arc. “Shoot them, bayonet them, I don’t mind, as long as they are dead.” He looked down at Goldie and his teeth gleamed. “Except for this one. I will take care of her myself.”
The field marshal coughed into his fist. “You surrendered,” he said.
“I did indeed,” laughed the Fugleman. “A fine trick, was it not?”
“Mm.” Brace sucked on his teeth. “You told us to surrender, and we did so.”
“All part of the ruse, my dear Brace. It does not bother you, does it? Why, I imagine that you and your men must surrender all the time, then stab your enemy in the back when they are no longer expecting it. That is war, is it not?”
Goldie heard the mercenaries hiss under their breath, as if they had been insulted.
Brace’s eyes were like pewter. “But you gave your word.”
“And I would give it again, a hundred times over if necessary,” said the Fugleman with his most charming smile. “Now, shall we get on with it? Once these scum are dead there is a bonus waiting in the Treasury for you and your brave soldiers. A considerable bonus. And we will break out the very best wine tonight, I think, to celebrate the end of the Hidden Rock. What a partnership we have, Brace! And remember, this is only the beginning—”
“You. Gave. Your. Word,” said the field marshal. His fists clenched and unclenched as if he wanted to hit someone.
The Fugleman stared at him, puzzled. “Are you quite well, Field Marshal? Did you take a wound in the fighting?”
“You surrendered. We surrendered.”
“A head wound, perhaps? You are repeating yourself, man!”
Field Marshal Brace’s face twitched. “Then I will repeat myself one last time: You surrendered. We surrendered. We can do nothing more here. This alliance is finished.”
“What?” said the Fugleman, realizing too late that the other man was serious. His sword hand spasmed, and blood ran down Goldie’s neck. She lay as still as stone.
The field marshal took three steps toward Frow Carrion, then swung back. “You have no honor,” he said in a voice as quiet and deadly as the plague. “You have no idea of honor. You think that because we are mercenaries you have bought us completely. But there are rules in this business. Rules of war. And you have broken them one by one.”
The Fugleman began to protest, but Brace continued over the top of him. “Oh yes, you want us to stay! No doubt you will promise us anything if we stay.” His face twisted in disgust. “No doubt you will give us your word!”
He signaled, and all but two of his men stepped away from the Fugleman and swarmed toward Frow Carrion, loading cannonballs onto a cart and hitching up the gas tractor.
It took them ten minutes to ready the great gun for departure. In that time, no one else moved or spoke. The Fugleman might have been statue. A muscle in his jaw flickered, nothing more.
But Goldie could feel the dreadful eagerness in the sword that rested at her throat, and she knew that as soon as the soldiers left, the Fugleman would kill her.
She slipped her hand into her pocket and wrapped her fingers around the bluebird brooch.
The moment came more quickly than she had expected. The gas tractor rumbled to life and lurched away into the darkness, dragging Frow Carrion behind it. The cobblestones shook. All around the open space, walls and chimneys that had been weakened by the bombardment tumbled to the ground in a cloud of dust.
Without looking back, Field Marshal Brace raised his hand. The two men who had been standing on either side of the Fugleman jogged away.
The Fugleman’s grip tightened on the hilt of his sword. But before he could thrust it downward, Pounce began to beg for mercy in a whiny, irritating voice. The Fugleman glanced up at him. . . .
And in that split second of distractio
n, Goldie whipped the bluebird brooch out of her pocket and plunged its pin deep into the calf of his leg.
The Fugleman screamed with pain. Goldie threw herself sideways, trying to scramble to her feet. She could hear Guardian Hope shouting, and several pistol shots. She looked around for help, but the Fugleman had already wrenched the brooch from his flesh and was advancing on her, sword in hand.
There was only one thing left to do. “Pa!” screamed Goldie at the top of her voice. “Now! Now!”
The Fugleman laughed grimly. “No more tricks, girl!” he snarled. “This time you are mine!”
He raised the sword. Behind him, a quiet voice said, “Hello, brother.”
The Fugleman spun around so quickly that he lost his footing. Auntie Praise leaped out of the shadows and wrenched the sword from his fingers. Guardian Hope rushed to the rescue, raising her pistol, but Toadspit stuck out his good leg, and she tripped over him and fell to the ground, where Bonnie and Pounce sat on her.
The Fugleman hardly seemed to notice. He was staring at the Protector, who stood firm and unforgiving in front of him, supported by Ma and Pa.
“You—” said the Fugleman. “You’re dead!”
“I am alive,” said the Protector. “And you are beaten.”
“Never!” snarled the Fugleman, and before anyone could stop him he jumped to his feet and scrambled away across the broken ground.
Herro Hahn and Sinew would have gone after him, but Olga Ciavolga halted them with a gesture. “He will not get far,” she said. “Look.”
All this while, a small pack of brizzlehounds had been pacing silently in the background. Now they surged forward to block the Fugleman’s escape, their teeth so dreadful and their eyes so savage that the Fugleman hesitated.
But then he drew himself up and cried, “You do not frighten me! You are nothing but phantasms! You cannot hurt me!”
He walked right through the first great beast, and the second, and all they could do was snarl.
The Fugleman laughed a bitter laugh. “You are dust!” he shouted, in the face of the third brizzlehound. “Ancient dust, and no more powerful than a dead leaf on the ground! I will escape you all, and one day I will return and destroy what you are so keen to protect. Try and stop me! Try and kill me! Go on, do your worst!”
