Frank Tuttle - The Banshee's walk

I didn’t need any exhortation to hurry. Evis glided on ahead, cloak flapping, silver blade gleaming in his hand.

“There he is!”

I risked a glance backwards. A dozen of the Lady’s staff took to the stairs after me. There was no mercy in their eyes.

A pair of dark shapes leaped over me. They fell into the mob. Bodies flew. It was over in a pair of heartbeats, and the stairs were littered with groaning forms who puked and bled but nevertheless made a decent show of crawling downward and away.

Sara and Victor rose from the dust. “We made every effort to spare their lives,” said Victor. “I shall show no such restraint again.”

The hulda howled and called out for blood. I turned from the halfdead and followed Evis up the stairs.

We made it inside. The catapult crews shouted and cussed, preparing their engines for another round of mayhem.

Mama was at the hole by the window. “I figure these here walls are tougher than anybody knew,” she announced. “Still, two more throws from each, and they’ll be a knocking on yonder door. And that’s if the floor don’t cave in first.”

Darla was whispering with Evis. I didn’t need to guess about what.

“Boss.” Gertriss was eyeing me funny. “Boss, what have you been up to?”

Mama turned from her surveillance of the lawn and fixed her eyes upon me as well.

“There may be another option,” I said. “Hisvin and the people outside aren’t the only magical types involved.”

Darla came to my side. “What were you thinking?” she said. She ran her fingers through my hair, turned my face to hers, looked at me as if she were trying to stare inside my skull. “Are you crazy, Markhat? You don’t know what’s down there, what it might do.”

“Nobody does, oh light of my life. That’s one thing we’ve all got in common. But we’ve got something neither the Corpsemaster nor the spooks outside have got.”

Buttercup ran up to me as if summoned. I tousled her hair, and she squealed and smiled.

“Evis said-”

“I know what Evis said. And I appreciate it. I’m not saying we start propping up paintings and opening doors just yet. I’m just saying it’s another place to run, if all else fails. I haven’t counted the Corpsemaster out just yet.”

Mama came stomping up. Evis took her place at the spy-hole.

“Boy, you got less sense than any man I ever met. Hold this.” She stuck a dead robin in my hand.

“Mama.”

“Shut up. Gertriss. Take his other hand. Look.”

Gertriss took my free hand, shrugged apologetically, and closed her eyes.

Mama mumbled something too soft for me to catch.

Shivers ran up my spine.

“Oh my,” said Evis. “The Corpsemaster. I do believe you’ll want to see this, Markhat.”

We could all hear renewed shouting from outside. The telltale clinks of metal on metal joined them, and the hiss and thunk of arrows and bolts.

I tried to tear free, but Gertriss held fast.

“Still, boy, be still,” hissed Mama. She shook an owl at me with her free hand. Gertriss pawed at the air with hers.

“Something done touched you, boy,” said Mama. “You see it, girl?”

“I see,” replied Gertriss. Her eyes didn’t open. “Something old. Something that’s been buried.”

“Buried but not dead,” said Mama. “Restless in a tomb.”

I yanked my hands free. “We don’t have time, ladies,” I said. “What’s happening out there?”

“Men. Lots of them. They’ve just come walking out of the woods.” I couldn’t see Evis’s face, but I could hear the puzzlement in his voice. “They’ve attacked the catapult crews.”

“Are they winning?”

“Depends on your point of view.”

“Evis. Now is not a good time for cryptic.”

“They’re taking arrows and bolts by the dozen. Aside from one having his legs hacked off, they’re still coming.”

“What?”

“They’re getting slaughtered, Markhat. But they’re not dying. Or at least they’re not falling down like polite dead men tend to do.”

A flash so bright it lit up Evis in silhouette shone outside. He leaped back from the spy-hole, blinking and cussing.

“The cylinders,” he said, before I could ask. “Lit up. Like magelamps, but brighter.” He waved his hands in front of his face. “I hope this isn’t permanent.”

“Was that Hisvin too?”

Evis shrugged, still blind. “No idea.”

Screams rose up from outside.

Screams, and a wind. It built and rose and whipped and howled. It switched directions, it beat against the wounded House with fists of debris.

The walls shook. The floor beneath groaned as timbers shifted.

Buttercup dropped her dolls, stood and opened her mouth to howl.

Mama waddled forward and stuffed a huge chunk of taffy candy right into Buttercup’s mouth.

The banshee tried to spit it out, but Mama held her lips shut, and within a moment Buttercup was smiling and chewing and beaming up at Mama.

The wind intensified. Softer, wetter thuds joined the sharper pelting of rocks on the walls, and I realized the louder ones were the impacts of bodies carried by the gale.

Something smashed through the window. We scattered. Evis snatched up the rolling projectile and hurled it back outside. I don’t think anyone but Darla saw its eyes or blood-soaked beard, and though she stood close and took my hand she didn’t scream.

“Damn wand-wavers are gonna take the House down whether they means to or not,” shouted Mama. “I reckon it’s time.”

Lightning joined the wind, bolt after bolt, so many and so fast they lit the window with a constant, harsh light. I could see limbs whipping, debris flying, blinding bolts of light arcing down, shadows flying briefly in the instant between being born and being extinguished by the next furious bolt.

I heard words, in the thunder. The huldra exulted, echoing them, awash in the proximity and intensity of the sorcery being hurled just yards from my boots.

Something in the forest roared, louder than the thunder, louder than the ringing in my ears. It roared and it charged, and we all saw monstrous blood-oaks go down, saw them torn from the earth and cast aside as though they were brambles.

And then came the stones. They fell from the sky, each trailing acrid smoke that lingered in the air and swirled about and burned eyes and choked throats. The stones fell almost silently, save for a whistling, but when they reached the ground, they simply obliterated all they touched with a flash and a crack even brighter and louder than the lightning.

A stone struck the House, tearing through it from roof to cellar in the blink of an eye. The floor beneath us tilted. Timbers began to groan in a long, building, awful noise that that set my teeth on edge.

A sudden rush of falling stones fell about the thing in the forest. More trees went flying, as it rolled, and then it was still.

The rain of stones ceased. Then the lightning. Then the wind, which died as abruptly as it had been born, dropping its volleys of limbs and lumber in a single great tumble.

Evis dared poke his head through the shattered window.

He didn’t suddenly sprout arrows, so I let go of Darla and joined him.

Outside was ruin.

The catapults were simply gone. Only shallow craters remained. Bodies were everywhere. Many began to move as I watched, though with the clumsy, slow gestures of the stunned and the injured.

A single glowing blue stave lay alone on the blackened earth. As I watched, a man clad in beggar’s clothes stumbled toward it, picked it up, and carried it toward the woods, ignoring the showers of sparks the thing loosed at his head.

Evis shook his head.

“The one with the red scarf. See him? Over there?”