War in Hagwood Read online

  The track curved to the right and the ground began to rise. The Hollow Hill was almost within reach. Flickering beams of silvery-green light were filtering through the trees, illuminating the way. Meg urged Dewfrost on and the sluglungs whooped and hollered as they swung alongside her.

  A crackle of lightning came shooting from the shadows and struck the path before them with terrible force. There was a violent explosion of earth and the horse reared. Meg was thrown from the saddle but quick, clammy hands saved her and she was deposited safely onto the ground.

  A peal of horrible, raucous laughter issued from the darkness. Dewfrost snorted and stamped and shook her head. Somehow the werling children had managed to hang on and were dangling from the horse’s mane. The nobles and the goblin knights drew up alongside the beast and Lord Limmersent calmed her, holding her steady while Meg climbed back into the saddle.

  The sluglungs dripped onto the path and stared into the gloom.

  A second bolt of lightning blasted from the dark. This time it slammed into one of the sluglungs and the startled creature burst apart. Charred lumps of smoking jelly flew everywhere and his companions hopped up and down, wailing with grief and distress.

  More vile laughter ensued. Peeping timidly through Dewfrost’s mane, Tollychook glimpsed large shapes moving through the shadowy undergrowth of the surrounding trees. Then, a familiar voice cut through the darkness.

  “You look as grotesque squatting upon my horse as you would hunched upon my throne, Clarisant,” it purred contemptuously. “Yet you will never reach it. There is no sanctuary in the Hill for you. You fled many years ago and cannot claim its refuge now. The time has come to pay the price for your sordid elopement.”

  The bracken rustled and a slender figure stepped from the shadow of a wide oak and into the trembling light. The Unseelie Court held its breath.

  Rhiannon Rigantona was cloaked in wolf skins. A crown of antlers was upon her head, woven into her braided raven hair. Necklaces of smooth round stones threaded onto leather strips adorned her pale throat where the silver fire devil gleamed once more. In her left hand, she carried a wooden staff, bound about with lodestones, large black pebbles charged with powerful forces. The owl sat upon her shoulder. The grass trembled and twisted as she approached and the drooping twigs of the trees curled up to clear the way. Even the forest itself obeyed her now.

  Only Peg-tooth Meg could meet her stabbing stare without shuddering and, unlike the rest of those gathered there, she regarded Rhiannon with a mixture of pity and loathing.

  “You are lost, sister,” she said. “Deathless and unequaled you may be, but your new realm will be a blighted and barren, joyless world. Who will serve you; who could endure such unrelenting tyranny?”

  Rhiannon gave a snarling, repulsive laugh. “Is there ever a lack of craven-hearted worms?” she answered. “Those who save their skins by selling those of their friends, or even their own offspring? Humankind shall serve me. They are so easily persuaded and ever ready to yield to the strongest oppressor. How they yearn for subjugation. Yet that is no concern for you, unhappy, deformed pond spawn.”

  “You have betrayed your high-born blood!” Meg cried. “You have deceived your own people and allied yourself with our father’s greatest enemies.”

  “I abjure the line of Ragallach!” Rhiannon snapped. “I renounce the blood that ties me to you. I have better sisters now—they claimed me long ago and I am their revered Queen.”

  She raised her staff and gave a commanding shout: “Come forth, my loathly sisters!”

  Lightning spiked down from the heavy clouds above, drawn to the stones bound to the staff. The electric jags snaked and sparked around them and Rhiannon’s laughter was joined by other harsh voices.

  At last, the darkness beneath the trees was banished as countless forks of blinding white fire came blasting down. In the stark glare of the jumping light, the enemy was finally revealed.

  They were hideous: hulking hunched hags with unformed faces like pitted and weathered boulders, set with glaring orange eyes. Pebbles and stones were bound into their wild tangled hair and many more were hung about their short necks, strapped to their foreheads, and wrapped around thick wrists. Their arms were short but their hands were large as spades with fingers like twisted roots. Wrapped in wolf-skin cape, each crone bore a cudgel or stave tipped with lodestones and they whirled them in the air, tearing lightning from the heavens.

  There were hundreds of them riding on the backs of monstrous, snorting wild boars. Many of them were accompanied by the thorn ogres: small, brutish creatures created by the High Lady that had been missing from the attack upon the Wandering Smith several days ago. Sitting between the ears of the enormous hogs and crouching on the hags’ shoulders, they shrieked in gleeful, croaking voices, anticipating the carnage to come.

  Nine of the troll witches sported fresh and gruesome additions to their staves. Jammed on the tops of them were the heads of a spriggan gang they had encountered as they came tearing down the cinder trackway. The faces of Captain Grittle and his lads decorated the cudgels, frozen in expressions of shock.

  The werlings spluttered with horror at the scene and Dewfrost whinnied shrilly and backed away. Meg clenched her few teeth and the sluglungs gibbered in fretful voices. Lord Limmersent and the other nobles fumbled with their swords, and the goblin knights cursed behind their visors.

  Rhiannon threw her arms wide in welcome.

  “Now my sisters,” she called, “this squalid forest is yours at last. Torment it, destroy it, and kill them all.”

  Holding their clubs and staves high, so that the lightning played and spat across their lodestones, the troll witches of the Cold Hills screeched with mordant glee as they charged forward. The wild boars ripped up the ground with their curved tusks before stampeding toward the frightened horses. The thorny imps clacked and clicked their woody limbs as they rocked to and fro, their evil faces grinning ever wider.

  “Their numbers are too great,” the nobles cried.

  “Give me a sword!” rang Meg’s resolute reply. “My sister is beyond the reach of blade, but these hags have plenty of blood to spill, though it be black and steaming. Beware their staffs—cut off their hands if you can. We are fewer in number but still we fight! For my father the High King, for the Hollow Hill—for Hagwood!”

  Inspired by her courage and bold words, the Unseelie Court took up her cry and every weapon was drawn. Sir Hobflax handed Meg his best sword, a glittering, Pucca-forged blade.

  “For the glory of the Hollow Hill!” the goblin barked. “And for you, Queen Clarisant!”

  Meg swept the sword from side to side, slicing through the rain. “Hold tight, little shobblers,” she told the werlings huddled in front of her. “These are the final frantic beatings of our doughty hearts. We will die bravely, as did Prince Tammedor.”

  Before Liffidia or Tollychook could make any answer, she gave a defiant yell of challenge and Dewfrost galloped forward to meet the enemy head on. Meg’s cavalry charged after her and the sluglungs rushed alongside.

  The forest was filled with the clamor of combat. The troll witches pulled down lightning from the sky and flung it at the horses. Steeds and riders were hurled high into the air and ravening tusks gored deep into flanks. Breastplates were split asunder and heads were hammered from shoulders. Thorny imps sprang at the horses and clawed at their eyes and wrenched open the goblins’ visors to bite their faces. The ghastly, feral shrieks of the troll witches rose above the clash of the swords, echoing under the trees.

  Tollychook and Liffidia were utterly helpless. As the hags came charging in, they could see the grains of grit and filth ground into their pocked troll hides and smell their foul, moldy breath. Liffidia was shaking uncontrollably and flinched with every new burst of lightning that ripped through the shadows.

  Meg’s sword thrust and chopped, but the troll witches were merely play
ing with her, baiting and screaming with laughter, running their hogs around and around, in and out of the horses’ paths and weaving through the trees. They had waited a long time for this night, and would relish every last drop of pain and suffering.

  Standing at the edge of the conflict, Rhiannon Rigantona’s dark eyes sparkled as she watched. Another horse and rider were blasted over the forest by a blinding spear of lightning. White flames were burning within Sir Hobflax’s armor and shooting from the eye slots of his hounskull helmet. He soared through the darkness, leaving a smoking trail in his wake.

  Rhiannon laughed cruelly.

  “Thus endeth the Unseelie Court,” the owl commented in her ear. “And all else who dare oppose thee, My Lady.”

  The vile bird’s mistress smiled as two more knights and their horses were catapulted into the night. Then she licked her lips and said, “Seek a safe vantage point, my loyal lieutenant. I am entering the fray—I must kill Clarisant myself; it is a pleasure I cannot be denied. But first of all, I require a mount.”

  The bird obeyed her and found a branch that commanded an excellent view while the High Lady strode forward and lifted her staff.

  Throughout the long empty years scraping and starving in the Cold Hills, the troll witches had thirsted for such a vicious encounter as this and Rhiannon had promised them many more. The foul wizened faces rushed through the leaping shadows yelling and shrieking with murderous glee.

  One of the witches, the Widow Hakkra, was delivering crippling blows with her stone-covered cudgel atop her monstrous hog Ironback. Then she saw Lord Limmersent riding alongside one of her sisters, engaged in a bitter duel. He had become separated from the rest of the riders and was too vulnerable to ignore. Brandishing her cudgel, intent on smashing in his brains, she rode forward feverishly.

  Lord Limmersent brought his sword down upon the shoulder of a hag called Mother Shaler. She snarled at him when the blow caused her staff to fall from her hand and she pulled on the ears of her wild boar to bring the animal to a halt. Without hesitation, the noble thrust his blade clean through the great hog’s neck and it keeled over, sending the troll witch sprawling. He permitted himself a grim smile and turned his horse about, only to be confronted by the Widow Hakkra.

  Her cudgel was already raised and he knew he was doomed.

  There was a searing streak of light and, to his wonderment and the witch’s short-lived astonishment, Rhiannon’s carefully aimed lightning blasted into her.

  The Widow Hakkra bellowed as she hurtled through the air. Lord Limmersent watched her spin into the trees then stared back at the High Lady in confusion. Why had she spared him? But her sinister attention was fixed solely upon the wild boar. She wanted Ironback, the fiercest hog in the sounder, and she wasn’t going to spend a breath commanding Hakkra to give it up. Her will was the only law now, and every life was hers to end, whenever the impulse drove her.

  Extending her hand, she hissed words of summoning and the massive wild boar tossed its ugly head and raced across the battleground to meet her.

  Rhiannon Rigantona climbed onto his bristled back and, with murder burning in the depths of her eyes, searched for her sister in that beleaguered knot of death and despair.

  “The toad queen is mine!” she called when she saw Meg struggling against three troll witches. “It is I who must blast the life out of her!”

  In the thick of the battle, Dewfrost reared and kicked at the troll witches’ fearsome swine. Holding to the reins with one hand and setting her sword to sing with the other, Peg-tooth Meg fought valiantly, calling the name of her dead love as a battle cry. But she was barely keeping the enemy at bay, and it was a fight she could not possibly win.

  All around Meg the knights and nobles were gradually diminishing in number. A flux of lightning exploded in the chest of Sir Begwort and his breastplate shattered like glass. A shard slashed Dewfrost’s neck and a white-hot spark scorched her flank. Neighing wildly, the mare bucked and bolted with terror—dashing through the enemy lines and leaping over anything in its path. Meg was almost thrown but held on, and yet no command she gave could stop the horse’s mad flight.

  Tollychook had tied a hank of the horse’s mane around his waist so, even if he lost his grip, he would not fall. Liffidia had not been so prudent. As Dewfrost jumped over a hog and rider, the mane slipped from the girl’s fingers. Before Tollychook could catch her, she slithered down the horse’s shoulder and was gone—her terrified cry swamped by the roaring din as the battle swept over her.

  “Mistress Nefyn!” the boy bawled. He whisked his head around and stared past Meg’s streaming green hair to the spot where Liffidia had fallen. There was no sign of her. Hooves of horses and swine and the tumult of the fighting obscured all else. What chance of survival had a small werling girl in the middle of that trampling destruction?

  “She’m be crunched into the soil or shredded by tusks by now,” he sobbed.

  Still trying desperately to control the fleeing horse and remain in the saddle, Peg-tooth Meg could do nothing to comfort him.

  Heeding no voice but that of her own fear, Dewfrost burst through the ranks of the enemy and plunged headlong into the forest.

  Meanwhile, the remaining army of the Hollow Hill had finally caught up with the nobles and goblin knights and were storming in with their pikes and spears. Perched upon klurie helmets, the Redcaps fired their arrows and many hogs stumbled and crashed as their poison did its work. Milkmaids clouted umpteen heads and even the shrunken race of oakmen scampered forward to engage the thorny imps in combat. But there was no defense against the lightning that the troll witches wielded.

  From its vantage point, the owl surveyed the seething spectacle impassively. Its golden eyes watched Dewfrost bolt into the forest, and saw Rhiannon Rigantona set off upon Ironback in pursuit. It swooped from the branch in haste to follow its divine mistress.

  With the sea of war raging around him, Lord Limmersent marked the owl flying overhead and urged the Unseelie Court to fight their way through the forest.

  “Warriors of the High Queen!” he yelled, rallying the knights and foot soldiers to his upraised sword. “Clarisant rides unguarded and certain death pursues her! Ride! Run! Fight your way through this darksome night and protect her with your lives!”

  With renewed vigor, he slashed and kicked the swarming forces of the enemy and drove his horse through. Shouting Clarisant’s name, the Unseelie Court battled southward, in the direction of the Witch’s Leap.

  * Chapter 17 *

  To the Witch’s Leap

  WHEN THE HOLLOW HILL HAD OPENED and the earth had shook, Gamaliel and the others had feared the worst and thrown themselves to the ground.

  Curled up like hedgehogs, they waited, and waited. But all that happened was that they heard the sound of the trumpeting fanfare in the far distance as the Unseelie Court progressed toward the ruined watchtower.

  “Someone’s having a shindig,” Bufus muttered, rising to his feet. “They must be bonkers.”

  “What sanity has there been these past days?” Gamaliel asked, picking himself up.

  Kernella pouted peevishly. “I’m sure Finnen won’t be there,” she said. “He’ll have far more important things to do than be at some rotten old party.”

  Master Gibble brushed the grass from his ragged gown and cocked his long ears toward the remote noises.

  “That is the pomp and blare of a conqueror,” he uttered gravely. “The High Lady is on the move.”

  “And so are we,” Gamaliel told them. “To the Witch’s Leap.”

  His sister huffed and looked at Bufus who only shrugged in return.

  “Is it absolutely necessary for us to venture there?” Terser Gibble asked forlornly.

  It was Bufus who answered him.

  “If Gammy says so, then we’re going,” he said sternly. “Come on, Wibble—you’re not scared, are you?”
r />   “I’m petrified,” the wergle master mumbled.

  They resumed the march in ponderous silence, stopping at intervals so Kernella could wergle into a squirrel and scurry up the tallest tree she could find and look out over the forest roof. The colossal, dark mass of the Witch’s Leap grew steadily closer until finally her scouting expeditions became unnecessary. The ground was rising and the immense, oppressive bulk of the Witch’s Leap reared up on their left, like a slumbering leviathan, blotting out the thickly moving clouds that pulsed and flared with the oncoming storm.

  Its looming presence was daunting and they wondered what they would find when they reached the top of that dizzy height. The closer they drew to the lower slopes, the more agitated Master Gibble became. He began to babble, chattering about anything and everything and getting on everyone’s nerves until Bufus told him to button it.

  “But I cannot proceed!” the tutor protested, his head twitching uncontrollably. “Charming and gladmaking as your company has been—and it genuinely has been most pleasant to be among you once more—I really cannot accompany you another step toward that lofty rise. The very marrow in my bones shrivels at the idea. I cannot—and I won’t and that’s that!”

  “What’s rattled you so much?” Bufus asked, irritably.

  Master Gibble rubbed his bony elbows and shuddered. “That place,” he muttered. “It’s not called the haunted crag for naught. The leader of the troll witches jumped from that great height to her death hundreds of years ago when she was trapped there by the High King. But her evil lingers still: They say her shrieks can be heard in winter storms. And there are other things that shift in and out of the dark—nameless, shapeless, unquiet horrors. I am too craven to venture closer. How can you even think to trespass on that fearsome spot?”

  The children looked at him in mild surprise and then considered one another. Master Gibble was right—a week ago only Bufus would have imagined himself brave enough to venture to such a place, but he would never have actually gone there. They had all changed since then.