Soldiers still lined the castle parapet. They were armed with swords and pikes and the occasional bow. But no one expected any of these weapons to stop the army that was coming their way.
Wick, Grimluk’s acquaintance from the inn, was among them. He had been promoted to captain of pikes.
But all hope was invested in the Magnifica: the twelve.
Twelve people was not a lot when you actually saw them all together. It was a huge number in the abstract—the only number actually larger than eleven—but when Grimluk looked around him at the shivering, scared mess of young men and women, he was not impressed.
They were seven males and five females. Some were rich, as evidenced by their numerous teeth, their excellent clothing—two of the Magnifica had actual buttons—and their superior education.
The others were poor and wore coarse grain sacks with holes for arms and neck. Some were really poor and wore nothing but strategically placed tufts of grass attached with mud—uncomfortable at the best of times and rather disastrous in a heavy rain.
The wealthiest and best educated of the Magnifica was a woman named Miladew. Despite her station in life, she had befriended a guy named Bruise.
Bruise was poor and ignorant, but he was a capable hunter, as evidenced by the fact that he had a loincloth of black-and-white skunk pelt and fabulous shoes made of the boiled-down skulls of wild boars (complete with tusks).
The boar shoes made a clatter when Bruise walked on the stone parapet, and they were evidently painful, because Bruise cried out softly with each step. The skunk garment had a distinct aroma, but while it could not be described as pleasant, it was far better than the stench that rose from within the castle walls, where butchers tossed hog and cow innards straight onto piles of human poo for the delight of the many, many (many) flies. The butchers would no doubt have tossed leftover food onto the pile as well, but the first leftover would not be developed for many centuries.
“How could the earth be flat and have four corners?” Miladew was saying to Bruise. “Everyone knows the earth has six corners with a giant nail in one of those corners that keeps us attached to the vast bald head of Theramin. Poor Bruise, we really must work on your education.”
Bruise nodded and looked sheepish.
The witch Drupe joined them atop the wall. She gazed out at the smoke rising from the forest.
The Magnifica formed a circle around her. She had been their teacher over the long, dread-filled weeks as they struggled to master the Vargran tongue. But no one got very close. Drupe’s elephant leg had been replaced by the leg of a giant bird she called an ostrich. The leg was unusually long, and it was feared that Drupe could topple over at any moment.
“Each of you has learned a portion of the Vargran tongue,” Drupe said. “Each of you has the enlightened puissance. Thus, each of you possesses power that acts by means of Vargran. The power to cause spears to appear and hurl themselves. The power to cause a cold so terrible that hardened soldiers will freeze. The power to move with the speed of a gazelle. The…” She noticed many puzzled looks. “It’s an animal. Like a deer. But faster.”
“Ah,” the Magnifica murmured.
“The point is that each of you has magical powers to bring to the approaching—it means ‘getting closer’—battle.”
A guy everyone called Hungry Hode—his name was Hode, and he had once mentioned he’d like more than one meal per day—interrupted. “But, Drupe, will we really be able to stop the Dread Foe?”
Drupe looked at him with a mixture of pity and contempt. “With the powers of the Vargran tongue, you will be able to fight the Tong Elves, the Weramin, the Skirrit, the Bowands, the Gudridan—all the many, many (many) fell creatures of the Dread Foe. You may even be able to contest with the princess. But your separate powers will be nothing to the Pale Queen herself.”
“Then—” Hungry Hode started to say. But Drupe was on a roll.
“The Dread Foe has all of those powers and more. She can become any creature. She can shrink as small as an ant and swell to a size impossible for your limited minds to comprehend.”
Grimluk tried to imagine how big that could be. Horses were big. Cows were big. Did Drupe mean something even bigger? He decided not to ask.
“She can breathe fire!” Drupe cried. “She can cast spells that send mighty stone walls tumbling into dust. She has potions and magic powders. She can command the evil beasts of the forest: snakes, boars, ticks, worms, unicorns, and giant beaver rats.”
Grimluk glanced around at his fellow Magnifica. They looked as scared as he felt. None of them knew what Weramin or beaver rats were, but Drupe seemed to think they were very bad indeed.
“Then how?” Grimluk asked, his voice shaky. “How will we defeat the P—I mean, the Dread Foe?”
Drupe stuck out one crooked hand and grabbed him hard by the shoulder. She looked into his eyes. But because Drupe had only the one eye, she chose to stare at just one of Grimluk’s eyes. The left one. Not that it matters.
“I don’t know,” Drupe said.
“Um…what?” Grimluk said.
“What does she mean, she doesn’t know?” Bruise asked Miladew.
“I know that there is a way,” Drupe said. “I know that if the twelve of you can find a way to unite all of your power, all of your courage, into one mighty thrust, you have enough, just barely enough, of the enlightened puissance to overcome the P—I mean, the Dread Foe.”
She released her hold on Grimluk’s shoulder and hung her head. “It is in the prophecies of the Most Ancient Ones. It is why we have placed all our hopes in you. The twelve of