Christopher Golden - Lost Ones

Giants walked amongst the combatants, but only a handful. There were Stonecoats and tall warriors who could only be what the Dustman thought of as gods. A massive stag-perhaps fifteen feet tall or more-kicked its hooves at Atlantean soldiers and thrashed a Peryton from the air with its antlers. The stag was made entirely of plants, tree branches, wheat and cornstalks. It smelled wonderfully of fruit.

The Sandman smiled. Halliwell smiled. The Dustman smiled.

An octopus drifted above the soldiers. A dead woman, half-naked and missing one leg, dangled broken from its tentacles. It unfurled other tentacles and snatched up a Euphrasian soldier wearing the colors of King Hunyadi. The soldier screamed as his bones shattered. A god in black armor, red eyes burning from within his helm, charged up from a pile of corpses he had created and swung his sword toward the octopus, but the cowardly thing moved away. It would only hunt the easy prey.

Halliwell wanted to kill it. But not now.

A moment later, a Peryton took his choices away. Broad wings threw their shadow down upon him, blotting out the sun. He glanced up with the lemon eyes of the Sandman, glaring at the Atlantean Hunter. It dove down at him, talons hooked and antlers lowered, intent upon tearing him apart.

Halliwell let it come. The Peryton’s talons sank into his cloak and dug into the shifting sand and dust and ground bone of his body, harmless. He reached up and grabbed the antlers of the Peryton in one hand and twisted, snapping its neck. His free hand darted at its face and before he realized what he was doing, his knifelike fingers pried one of the Hunter’s glazed eyes from its socket and raised it to his lips. His tongue reached, yearning, for the dripping, bloody eye.

The Sandman began to shudder.

The Dustman crushed the eyeball in his hand, felt it pop.

Halliwell let the corpse of the Peryton fall to the battlefield and wiped the viscous remains of its eye on his cloak. Disgust coiled serpentine through his heart, his shared soul.

With Sara, back in the ordinary world, he could be himself more easily. Sand, yes, and a legend. A monster. But still Ted Halliwell. Here, in this place, he had to hold the reins more tightly to make sure the little voice of the Sandman down deep inside of him did not rise again. The Dustman helped. Together they could stifle the Sandman forever, perhaps destroy him. But vigilance would be necessary.

We must help Hunyadi’s army.

You know what must be done, the Dustman replied.

Is it difficult?

Not at all. It is part of our magic. What we are.

Halliwell went down on one knee, thrusting the long, narrow fingers of both hands into the blood-soaked dirt. For a moment, he wondered what would happen, and then he knew. All he needed to do was visualize. In his mind’s eye-in the Dustman’s mind-they could see the constructs.

The earth churned nearby. From deeper, where there was dry, rough soil, a hand thrust up from underground. Quickly, the warrior dug itself out. It rose, clad in armor of its own, and drew its sword. But the warrior was only dirt and sand and stone, as were its armor and sword. A construct.

The construct turned, opened its mouth in a silent battle cry-for it had no voice, no life or mind-and it ran into battle. A Euphrasian cavalryman had been toppled from his horse. The animal was dying, bleeding. A warrior of Atlantis stood over the fallen man, more than eight feet tall and splashed with the blood of others. A deadly enemy.

The sand creature brought its sword around-a blade whose edge was as sharp as diamond-and cleaved the Atlantean in half at the torso. Both halves of his body hit the ground together.

Halliwell and the Dustman willed it, and more constructs began to rise. Six. Eleven. Nineteen. At twenty-seven, he could do no more. To extend himself any further could have led to a loss of control, and Halliwell could not risk it. In his mind, the Dustman began to manipulate the constructs, controlling them from afar, a puppeteer.

But Halliwell didn’t mind. What he did next would be for him, and the Dustman did not need to be involved.

The sand of his body shifted and resculpted itself, and now he wore the bowler hat and mustache and greatcoat of the Dustman again. He went to the fallen soldier and held out a hand to help him up.

The horseman stared at him, eyes wide with terror.

“Get up, pal,” Halliwell said, aware of the incongruity of his voice, his words, coming from the mouth of a legend. A monster.

The horseman shook his head once, slowly.

“Suit yourself,” Halliwell said, dropping his hand. In the chaos of war, with shouts of fury and screams of agony and the clashing of weapons, somehow his own voice and the breathing of the downed horseman were louder than anything.

“Julianna Whitney. Bascombe’s fiancee. Is she here?”

Suspicion clouded the soldier’s eyes. A sadness came over Halliwell as he realized that, once again, he would need to use fear to achieve his ends. Fear was always swiftest.

The sand ran like mercury, shaping itself again, and now the cloak returned and his vision became jaundice-yellow. He saw the soldier through the Sandman’s lemon eyes.

Finger-knives reached down for the terrified horseman, snatched his arm and dragged him up to his feet…off his feet. Halliwell dangled him off the ground.

“Is Julianna here?”

The horseman nodded. He pointed up the slope toward the tents at the top of the hill in the distance. The king’s encampment.

“Helping the wounded,” the soldier said, his eyes and voice desperate.

“Of course she is.” Halliwell smiled. With the Sandman’s face, the expression was enough to make the soldier begin to cry.

Halliwell dropped him and started away from the battle, up the hill, leaving his constructs to aid Hunyadi’s defense against the invaders. He would see to Julianna’s safety through the end of this battle. He owed her that. And then he would go home, where Sara waited for him, and he would be her dad again. Whatever else he had become, he was still that.

Sunlight glared upon Ovid Tsing’s face, but his eyes were closed. Half-conscious, he stared at the inside of his closed eyelids, at the bright red glow of the sun. His lids fluttered. He wanted to wake. But he winced at the glare and pressed them closed again, let his head loll to one side. Beads of sweat dripped and ran across his scalp and along his neck before falling. His clothes were damp and sticky, but he felt sure sweat did not get so heavy.

Blood, then.

He shifted, trying to move onto his side. Pain lanced the left side of his abdomen and a trickle of something traced his skin. Might have been sweat, but he doubted that. Blood ought to have been warmer, but as hot as it was outside, perhaps his skin had become hotter than blood.

His blood felt cold on his skin.

Ovid wished for a breeze. The wind had not died. He heard a tent flapping nearby. His body strained as though he could catch the wind if only he were more attentive. It took some time before he realized that the tent itself was acting as a wind-break, keeping any breeze from reaching him.

Darkness claimed his thoughts. When again he became aware of the heat on his face, the glare on his eyes, his side felt tight. Gingerly, he managed to reach down and touch the place where the Yucatazcan spear had punctured his flesh, and he found a bandage there. A sigh of relief escaped him. They’d taken the time to bandage him-probably to stitch him up as well. Ovid interpreted that to mean the field surgeon didn’t think he was going to die today.

Carefully, he tried to sit up. Pain surged through him again and he faltered. The darkness threatened, but did not overcome him. He lay back with his eyes pressed closed, hissing air through his teeth, waiting to feel the trickle of a freshly reopened wound on his side, but no blood flowed.