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Paul vainly tugged at the dagger as the Gwarulch advanced, still licking its lips with a bluish, forked tongue. It reached out a taloned hand and, gripping Paul’s hand in its own, pulled the dagger out of the tree.
With his free hand, Paul punched the Gwarulch in the stomach, almost breaking his fingers on the thick, leathery flesh. It hurt him so much, he thought it couldn’t possibly have harmed the huge creature–when it gave a surprised sort of yelp and sank to its knees. Dragged down with it, Paul looked into its fading eyes as it toppled over, letting go of his hand.
Then he saw what had really killed it. A wooden spearshaft projected from its back, a thick spear of dark wood, engraved with runes that seemed to dance along its length.
In between the trees, Paul saw another silhouette. Instinctively, he knew it was the thrower of the wooden spear. Although man-like, the figure’s head seemed strange and Paul had to look twice before he saw that the man, if man it was, had a full set of antlers.
“Who calls Ornware?” said the antlered man. “When Gwarulch walk among his trees?”
Paul gulped and tried to sit up. Aleyne had called out to Ornware, but Aleyne was lying over by a tree, unconscious, if not…dead.
“We did,” he whispered, not daring to look up. Dawn was closer now, and the first cast of light was just allowing real shadows to creep out from the pale, star-lit imitations. And the shadows that lay across Paul were of antlers.
Paul heard an amused snuffle above him and risked a glance upwards. The antlered creature was still there, but it had moved closer to the dead Gwarulch and was pulling out the spear. It came out easily enough, surprising Paul–the spear had almost gone through the other side, and he knew no normal man could have removed it. But then normal men didn’t have antlers.
The creature twirled the spear, then approached Paul, driving the butt of the spear into the ground near the boy’s feet. Paul looked up–straight at that antlered head, meeting the creature’s eyes: deep yellow eyes, the colour of daisies, with thin, bar-like pupils of darkest green. They held power, those eyes, and violence lay beneath the placid daisy-yellow.
“I am Ornware,” said the eyes to Paul, communicating a sense of power, like the overhanging branches of a huge oak. “I am Ornware of Ornware’s Wood, as the trees are Ornware, the earth, the birds, the animals. All are Ornware.”
“Aleyne called you,” said Paul, his voice quavering, eyes still locked into Ornware’s–lost in those deep yellow pools.
Then a few hundred metres away, a Gwarulch howled–their tracking sound. Paul flinched and blinked, breaking his gaze away from Ornware’s.
Ornware’s antlered head turned to face the direction of the howling, and he twirled the spear again, bringing the bloodied point close to his mouth. Paul watched, horrified, as a wide, crimson-red tongue lashed out, cleansing the point with one swift motion. then Ornware was gone, leaping into the trees like a stag towards the approaching Gwarulch.
“The Gwarulch will bother us no more today,” said a cracked voice behind Paul. Aleyne was sitting up, fingering his head. His unruly hair was caked in drying blood. “But I am glad Ornware has other foe to hunt, else he might have turned against us.”
“But I thought you called him?” asked Paul, going over to help Aleyne up.
“You may call him,” replied Aleyne, looking back down the path, “but only in dire need. Ornware is the walking dream of the forest, only woken at its need, or by a call such as mine. But he is a dream of the forest’s fear and anger, and knows little more than blood. Worse, being a creature of raw passions, he likes nothing but the hunt and the kill. He is like a summer storm that saves you by dousing a fire, only to strike with lightning moments later.”
A howl farther in the distance punctuated Aleyne’s words, and he answered Paul’s unspoken question with a finger drawn across his throat. Obviously, the rune-carved spear had found another Gwarulch heart.
“Come on,” said Aleyne, leaning on Paul. “There should be a stream on the other side of this hill, where I can wash these cuts, and try to get us halfway clean for Rhysamarn and its Wise Men. With such an early start, we should be there by mid-afternoon.”
The Gwarulch had not been idle in reaching as far south as Ornware’s Wood so soon after the Ragwitch’s ordering Her war. While the settled folk to the south were unaware of it, the Gwarulch had long lived near, or even within, the northern border, and the Meepers had been quick to fly to isolated bands with orders to waylay travellers and other isolated folk.
Julia had not been idle either. When the Ragwitch was busy, she found it was possible to wrench her mind away. When she did this, she only ended up back “inside” the Ragwitch, near the globe, but at least she got her own body back–despite the Ragwitch’s past assurances that Julia would never feel her own body again. The Ragwitch even seemed amused by her efforts to escape and never punished the girl–apart from forcing her mind back to attach itself to the Ragwitch’s senses.
“What lies between us and the Old Border, Oroch?” asked the Ragwitch, as Her lieutenant alighted from the back of a large, leather-winged Meeper. She had taken up residence (if you could call it that, for She never slept) at the base of the Spire, where She received the reports of the Meepers and gave orders to Her army.
“A new town, Mistress,” replied Oroch, in his mewing, high-pitched tone. “Bevallan, they call it. A small place, without walls or castle. Only a tower, and that is of no great size. They have discovered peace in Your absence, Mistress.”
“It will not be a discovery they enjoy much longer,” spat the Ragwitch. “But what of their Magic: their famous Magi, all cluttered up with Staves and Rings and Talismans; those Wizards, whose flesh is foul and blood rancid?”
“None, Mistress,” chuckled Oroch, bandages whipping in the breeze as he laughed. “The Art is forgotten, as You were…” He stopped in mid-sentence, dropping to his knees as the Ragwitch towered above him to encircle his puny, bandaged neck with one of Her hands.
“Forgotten?” hissed the Ragwitch, spit bubbling between the rows of Her needle-teeth. “Then I shall remind them, will I not, Oroch, My Architect? I shall remind them, and Myself remember the sweetness of their flesh.”
Behind Her, the stone shapes of the Angarling boomed, feeling their Mistress’ anger. The Gwarulch moved about uneasily, careful to avoid the rocking, moving Angarling as they drew closer to the Spire. The Meepers, high above, twirled and dived about the Spire, revelling in the prospect of bloodshed.
Watching through the Ragwitch’s eyes, Julia shuddered and once again started to do sums in her head. Even the thirteen times tables was preferable to the Ragwitch’s memories, presented to Julia as they were with every nuance of sight, hearing, feeling…and taste.
“Assemble the Gwarulch chieftains and the Old Meeper,” the Ragwitch instructed Oroch. “I will…talk…to the Angarling.”
Julia breathed a mental sigh of relief as the memories of pillage and feasting faded, to be replaced by a strong memory of the Angarling, still as stone, being woken by a young, human Witch on her first small steps to power…Surely not the Ragwitch, thought Julia, as she felt her host clumsily lumbering towards the Angarling, those straw-stuffed legs straight and never bending, the puffy three-fingered hand outstretched to caress Her oldest allies–the Stone Knights of Drowned Angarling.
“Tomorrow,” She said, touching the white stone of the nearest Angarling, caressing the lines of the frozen face. “Tomorrow shall be death and ruin, and the sun will sink all bloody in a sky as red as fire.”
“The sun is high, my stomach grumbles and I think it’s lunchtime,” said Aleyne, pausing to let Paul catch up to him. They were climbing up a hill again, where the forest grew less thickly, but Paul was always slow uphill.
“I also think Rhysamarn is only a little way away, and