Tristan raised his sword.
“Now! For Eutracia!” he shouted at the top of his lungs as he spurred his mount. All at once, weapons at the ready, Tristan’s Minion warriors started to move.
Gathering speed, both hatchling and Minion alike tore across the sky, covering the distance between them in mere moments. Amid relentless battle screams and the brutal sounds of smashing bodies, the two forces tore into one another.
Tristan immediately went high, pulling his bird up at the last moment, just before the armies clashed. He turned around in his saddle, waving his dreggan.
Almost at once, Ox’s bugle rang out.
Tristan looked down to the battle. It was progressing exactly as he had anticipated, the bulk of the hatchling legions attempting to hack their way through the center of his forces, separating them into two parts. For now, the Minions were holding their ground, their front lines uniform. But he knew that not all the hatchlings had reached the fighting. From each side of the struggle blood, bodies, and severed limbs and heads went flying into the cold air, falling almost in slow motion, bathing the ground below in red.
Tristan heard the bugle ring out for the second time, and he turned to stare at the towering clouds behind him. Now! he ordered silently. You must come now!
On cue, twenty-five thousand Minion warriors—almost a full third of Tristan’s forces—came pouring from the clouds, Ox in the lead. Their wings folded back, their bodies pointed straight down, and their weapons held out before them, the Minions dove directly at the rear, still-uninvolved lines of unsuspecting hatchlings at full speed.
Tristan held his breath.
Nearly twenty-five thousand hatchlings died on the spot. Most of them never saw their attackers as the Minions came plummeting out of the sky, the sun at their backs. Rent apart by dreggans, daggers, and axes, blood flying, the mangled bodies of the grotesque birds fell in convoluted postures of instant death.
The idea had actually been Traax’s, based on one of the strategies the Minions used to capture the swamp shrews in Parthalon. Tristan and the wizards had agreed.
But the prince could also see that the Minions remained badly outnumbered. With the scattering of the hatchlings’ rear lines, the battle was quickly decaying into individual struggles, each fighter for himself. With the two foes filling up what seemed to be the entire sky, Tristan continued to hover, his anxious eyes trying to find Scrounge. And then, in the midst of the melee below, the prince finally saw him.
Scrounge was diving his bird toward the back of an unsuspecting Minion. Raising his broadsword in his left hand, the assassin took the warrior’s head off with a single stroke, only to wheel his bird around and approach yet another of his enemies from the rear.
Although tempting, this deceitful approach was not for Tristan. You shall know it was I who killed you, he swore. He swung his bird around and dove. “Scrounge!” he screamed as he approached the assassin.
Scrounge wheeled about and raised his broadsword. As the two men met, he struck a vicious blow that Tristan just barely parried; only the thigh straps saved the prince from falling off. Tristan countered from overhead with his dreggan, but the weakness in his arm and shoulder made him too slow. Dodging, Scrounge raised his right forearm and snapped his wrist; a poisoned arrow flew straight for Tristan’s breast. The prince whirled his bird at the last moment. The arrow just missed him, going on to bury itself deeply into the neck of an unsuspecting hatchling behind him, sending it crashing to the earth.
Tristan dropped the reins and tossed the heavy dreggan into his left hand. Then he reached back with his right, grabbed one of his knives, and sent it end over end toward Scrounge’s heart.
Twisting in his saddle at the last moment, the assassin was able to keep the spinning blade from entering his chest, but not the shoulder of his sword arm. The dirk buried itself into his flesh up to the handle. Screaming wildly in pain, Scrounge yanked out the bloody weapon and sent it tumbling to the ground.
Tristan dug his heels into the sides of his bird, directing it to hover just above and to one side of Scrounge. Trying to ignore his pain, he raised his sword with both hands and began hacking at the assassin with everything he had.
Wounded, and his broadsword too heavy for overhead fighting, Scrounge lifted his crossbow and let go another of the yellow-tipped arrows. It missed widely. In desperation, he wheeled his bird around, trying to dive to safety by outrunning the prince. Tristan followed him down.
The intense coldness of the wind slammed into Tristan’s face and eyes, blurring his vision so that he could hardly see. They approached the lower levels of the fighting, but Scrounge descended even farther, actually soaring beneath the battle. Then he pulled his bird up at a seemingly impossible angle, in an attempt to hide among the massive numbers of warriors and hatchlings above him.
Tristan tried to follow suit, but the pain in his arm kept him from pulling back on the reins as hard as he wanted. He lost sight of the assassin almost immediately. Before he could continue in his pursuit, a hatchling was upon him, its sword held high, its red eyes gleaming. Just as it approached, Tristan reached back and threw a dirk, burying it into one of the awful thing’s eyes. It died screaming, blood and vitreous matter spurting violently from its head as it tumbled to the blood-soaked ground. Two more birds died at the prince’s hand before he had a safe opportunity to look around and take stock of the battle.
The Minions were losing.
For what Tristan assumed to be the first time in their history, the winged warriors were giving ground. Many of the hatchlings continued to fall, as well, but it was clear that if the situation was not reversed, the Minions would soon lose the struggle altogether.
Not yet ready to signal a retreat, Tristan swooped down, trying to find Traax and Ox. But neither of them came into view. Yet another hatchling bore down on him, and he found himself locked into swordplay. For what seemed an eternity the advantage harrowingly seesawed back and forth, Tristan’s right arm growing weaker by the moment. Finally seizing his chance, the prince leaned forward, placing the point of the dreggan against the bird’s breast and simultaneously pressing the hidden button in the hilt. The tip of the dreggan launched forward, slicing directly into the bird’s rib cage. Tristan retracted the bloody blade, and the hatchling helplessly pawed at its fractured chest with its strangely human arms, turning over free fall.
The screams of the dying resonated in Tristan’s ears. Looking around, he still could not locate Ox or Traax. He would have to alter the course of the battle by himself.
Rising higher into the sky, he tried to rally the Minions. He wanted to get as many of them as possible to retreat, in order to regroup into a cohesive fighting unit again, at a far greater altitude. But before he could get the attention of his officers, his hatchling rebelled.
Disobeying his commands, it flew straight down into the battle, swooping and darting among the struggling fighters with unmatched speed and dexterity. Tristan tried desperately to control the bird, but nothing he did worked. It flew unerringly through the worst of the havoc, seemingly searching for something. Several harrowing near misses later, they finally came upon Traax and Ox, fighting grimly back to back.
Tristan pulled on the reins with all his might, trying frantically to get Traax’s attention. But his rebellious hatchling swooped quickly by without pause, and the prince’s raging words were drowned out not only by the wind of his swift passage, but by the screams and shouts coming from the carnage all around them.
The hatchling climbed with amazing speed up through another sky-blue gap in the fighting, heading high in the air over the carnage. Then it slowed to a hover in the cold, blustery air, momentarily safe from the raging battle below, and turned its head around to face Tristan as best it could, its glowing orbs staring directly into his.
“Trust the process, Chosen One,” it said in a deep, controlled voice.
Stunned, Tristan thought he might be hearing things, or that the fourth of his convulsions was upon
him, making him hallucinate. But no convulsion came. Raising his dreggan higher, he looked around to see if someone or something was playing a trick. But there was nothing near. The bird’s head was still turned toward him; its glowing eyes continued to bore their way into his own. The hatchling could speak!
“Trust the process, Chosen One,” the bird repeated. With what seemed to be a strange kind of finality, it turned its head forward once again.
The hatchling had just said the same words that Shailiha had so cryptically whispered to him while he was recovering from his third convulsion. But what is the “process”? he wondered frantically. What is it I am supposed to trust?
“Speak to me!” he shouted at the bird. “I command you! In whom or what is it I am supposed to trust?” But the bird refused to acknowledge him, and it still would not move.
From below, Tristan heard the peal of four bugle calls. Ox! They understood my meaning, and are sounding a retreat!
Then, as if at the behest of the bugle but still in defiance of Tristan’s direct commands, the hatchling started to move. As it circled lazily in the sky, Traax and Ox neared, followed by what remained of the Minion army. Then, just when Tristan was about to shout orders, the bird turned and flew off again.
Tristan pulled back on the reins with all of his strength. He had to speak with Traax and Ox! But whenever the two Minions gained on them, the hatchling would speed up. Then it turned east.
We are in a full-fledged retreat! Tristan realized with growing horror.
Sensing imminent victory, the entire hatchling army, with Scrounge at the lead, chased after them.
“Trust the process, Chosen One.” He wondered what it meant.
Finally bowing to the inevitable, Tristan leaned forward a little in his saddle as his hatchling mysteriously continued on its way.
Shailiha stood with her back to the magnificent pine forest; before her, to the west, lay the barren, snow-laden fields of Farplain. Her eyes were closed, her face raised, her arms outstretched. The only sound she could hear was the soft brushing together of the pine needles in the boughs of the trees behind her as the cold wind moved them about.
And then, suddenly, she heard it—the mental call of the flier, Caprice. Dropping her arms to her sides, she opened her eyes.
“They come,” she said softly. “Tristan, Ox, and Traax remain unhurt.”
“It is Caprice who has told you this?” Faegan asked.
“Yes,” the princess replied.
“And the hatchlings follow?” Wigg asked.
“Yes.”
“How long?” Faegan demanded.
“One hour, perhaps a bit more.”
“Then it is time to make ready,” Wigg replied.
The wind blew the snow back and forth into little drifts of ever-changing shape; the deceivingly calm, blue skies overhead were soon to be full of the coming fury. Behind Shailiha stood the most magnificent forest she had ever seen. And just before her, though she could not see it without proper training, lay the invisible canyon guarding the borders of Shadowood.
Within that dark, enchanted forest, the Minions and the gnomes had hurriedly begun to go about the tasks the wizards had given them. The various sounds coming to her ears from their work seemed strange, and foreign-sounding.
Everything else seemed so peaceful here in this place of the craft, but in her heart of hearts she knew all of that was about to change.
Tristan held tight to both his reins and his saddle pommel as the snowy ground below him flew by at an astonishing speed. Almost an hour had passed since they departed the battle scene. By now it was abundantly clear that they were heading for the coast, or at least as far as Shadowood.
In sheer desperation he pulled once more on the reins, trying to change the bird’s direction and thus veer the monsters behind them off course.
But still it was no use. Exhausted not only by the poisoned blood swirling through his veins but also by the recent battle, he carefully replaced his heavy dreggan within its scabbard and slumped forward. The bird carried him across the sky at what now seemed to be an even greater speed.
They are here,” Shailiha said, opening her eyes. She looked up to the sky, where tiny dots were beginning to form. “First come Tristan, then Ox and Traax, the Minions, and finally Scrounge and his hatchlings.” Her voice was cracking with the strain. “They will be over us in moments.” She closed her eyes once more.
Wigg turned his own white, unseeing eyes toward where he knew Faegan to be. Desperation showed clearly in his face. “Are they ready?” he asked.
“If they are not,” Faegan answered softly, “then all that we know is truly and finally lost.”
With Shailiha and Wigg standing quietly in the snow to either side of his chair, Faegan reached out and linked hands with the princess and Wigg. He turned his eyes to the sky before speaking again.
“May the Afterlife have somehow granted us the wisdom to be right.”
Tristan clung to his hatchling as it tore across the sky. Looking up, he could just begin to make out the edge of the dark forest protecting the western border of Shadowood. He still didn’t know precisely where his bird was taking him, but one thing was now blindingly certain: It was no use trying to get the hatchling to change direction.
But then, quite unexpectedly, it did on its own.
Pointing its head down in an incredibly steep dive, the bird plummeted headlong toward the white, cold earth. Turning around as best he could, Tristan was able to see that all of the Minions were obediently following him, with hatchlings still in relentless pursuit.
It was then that the insidious realization gripped him.
It was a trick! His hatchling had not been successfully tamed by Wigg and Faegan. It was one of the enemy still—and it intended to dive straight at the ground, killing Tristan along with itself. How could he have been so blind and mistrusting? And what about the Minions? Would they follow him to their deaths, as the hatchlings driving them onward pulled up at the last moment?
He tried to raise his hands to wave the Minions off, but the force of the oncoming wind was too strong.
Finally, as the white, snowy ground raced up to meet them, Tristan remembered the invisible canyon. And then it all became clear.
“Trust the process, Chosen One.” Now he understood!
For a split second, as the earth approached headlong toward him, he saw three figures holding hands. Shailiha?
One second later, as the white, snowy ground rose up into his face, he gripped the bird around its neck for all he was worth, wondering if he was about to die.
He didn’t. But all he could see was blackness.
What seemed like an eternity passed as the hatchling continued its steep descent into the canyon. Then he felt the bird begin to level out, and his eyes started to adjust to the gloom. His hatchling made a curving turn to the left and went speeding along what seemed to be the floor of the canyon; the walls flashed by so quickly they were just a blur. Looking down, he saw bones scattered everywhere. They were no doubt the result of having gone one step too far in the pursuit of the magical place known as Shadowood.
Glancing up, he could see the sky overhead, sunlight streaking down here and there between the clouds. Then he looked behind him, and his mouth fell open.
The entire Minion army, led by Traax and Ox, was following him along the floor of the canyon. There was no way to tell whether the hatchlings were still pursuing them.
All Tristan could do was hold on as best he could while the floor of the cavern and its macabre carpet of bones flew by at an astonishing speed.
Are you quite sure of the timing?” Wigg asked nervously. “It must be absolutely perfect!”
Faegan pursed his lips, trying to retain his concentration. “I am well aware, Wigg,” he responded curtly.
The three of them were still at the edge of the invisible canyon, and had watched both the prince and the Minions dive into its depths, followed by Scrounge and the hatchlings. With the rapid di
sappearance of the two forces, the skies above had gone still. But Faegan, Wigg, and Shailiha knew it was not to last.
Turning around to face the forest, hoping against hope, Shailiha held her breath.
Now also turning, his eyes closed, Faegan silently employed the craft to calculate the variables of time, speed, and distance. It must be neither too soon, nor too late, he reminded himself. As Wigg said, it must be absolutely perfect. There will be no second chance.
Still concentrating, Faegan slowly raised his right hand. Then he opened his eyes and sent an azure bolt from his fingertips into the sky. At the signal, the trees in the forest seemed to tremble.
The Minions who had brought Wigg, Faegan, and Shailiha here flew from the woods. Many of them carried something in their hands other than weapons. And others of them carried something on their backs that seemed stranger still—the gnomes of Shadowood.
Each of the little men had one of his small arms wrapped tightly around the neck of the Minion he was riding, and in the other he gripped what appeared to be a canvas bag.
Rising quickly into the sky, the Minions fanned out over a section of what the wizards had previously shown them to be the unseen outline of the canyon’s facing edges and unwrapped their cargo. Faegan again sent a bolt of magic shooting skyward. Without hesitation the Minions dived for the earth, spreading something before them.
Swamp shrew nets.
Holding the nets out before them, the Minions plunged headlong into the canyon. Shailiha watched in amazement as they disappeared, as if they had been literally swallowed up by the earth. As quickly as they had come, the Minions and the gnomes were gone. Turning to the princess, Faegan nodded.
Closing her eyes, Shailiha raised her arms.
Without warning, Tristan’s hatchling lurched upward, soaring toward the top of the chasm. The prince watched, mouth agape, as the walls of the canyon flew by, vertically this time, and wondered what was to become of him.
The Gates of Dawn Page 56
