“I’ll have to do without her, won’t I?” said Derk. “I’ll speak to the Horselady after the battle.”
The battle started several hours late the next day. Almost the only people who were in place in the last valley at the right time were the legions and the werewolves, who did not use horses to get there. King Luther was over an hour late. The fanatics and the mercenaries were an hour later still. It was possible that some Pilgrims never got there at all. Agitated wizards kept appearing all through the night and during the dawn, imploring Derk to hold the battle up because their parties were still ten, or twelve, or twenty miles off and were going to have to walk all the way. Nobody but Barnabas got much sleep.
At least the delay meant that Barnabas could be sobered up. While Kit paced up and down beside the river in black impatience, slapping the shingle with his tail, Derk marched to Barnabas’s tent and hauled the sleeping wizard out. When Barnabas did nothing but curl up on the stones and moan, Derk took the bucket of river water Callette handed him and poured it over Barnabas. Barnabas sat up with a yell, dripping twirls of water from every curl on his head.
“Have a heart, Derk!”
Derk took the flask of coffee Don handed him and passed it to Barnabas. “Drink this. Then check the battle spells on the soldiers, please. They don’t seem right to me.”
Barnabas glanced up the hill to the dome, where the soldiers were dimly to be seen forming up in ranks on the parade ground. “They’re fine, Derk. Promise.”
“Check all the same,” said Derk.
Barnabas swigged down the coffee and got up, dripping and dismal and grumbling, and trudged his way around the dome. Derk went with him to make sure. As far as he could see, the spells were indeed in place and all correct, but yet he was still not happy about them. When Barnabas opened up the dome and the army marched
out, Derk watched the men narrowly. They all seemed just as usual. By this time the black armor, though brightly polished, was battered and rather worn and a lot of the soldiers had got themselves extra weapons—bows and arrows mostly, but some had morning stars, dwarf axes, or a second sword—picked up from dead enemies. But they had had those for several battles now. That was nothing new. Their faces inside the black helmets looked grim and unfeeling, just as usual. And yet—Derk was frustrated. Nothing was obviously wrong, but he was sure something was. He sighed and took his place at their head, on foot for a change, with Callette beside him carrying the black banner with the strange device. Drums beat; trumpets sounded. They marched to the valley.
It was just as well this was a much smaller valley, Derk thought when they reached it. Now half the legions and a third of the mercenaries were gone, the Forces of Good, up among the trees opposite on the hill that hid the lake in the next valley, were small indeed. Kit had had his work cut out to plan their victory convincingly. Their own side was smaller, too, but this was because people had been killed. Kit called this natural wastage. Derk wished he wouldn’t. He gave the signal to advance.
Both sides shouted and began moving downhill. As the front lines closed on one another, Kit as usual rose majestically from behind Derk’s lines, twice the size and with the illusion of a dark shadow riding on his back, and circled above the fighting, uttering dreadful screams. It was always awesome. Derk stared upward admiringly. Kit looked almost as big as Scales. He blocked off the light.
Movement caught the corner of Derk’s eye. He turned sharply to the right. Half the soldiers there were down on one knee on the hillside, bending longbows, aiming upward. The glimpse he had of the nearest face did not look bespelled in the least. What the—? Derk slapped a hasty and ragged stasis spell out there. Bowstrings twanged, and most of the arrows looped harmlessly around the hillside. But almost at the same time, Don screamed a warning from Derk’s left, and behind Don’s scream, Derk heard the breathy whuff of a flight of arrows truly aimed. He whirled that way to see arrows storming into the sky and the soldiers on that side punching the air, capering about waving longbows, and pointing triumphantly.
Above the valley Kit screamed even more dreadfully and lurched in the air. Two black stalks were sticking out of his chest. Another black stalk was slantwise into one wing. As Derk stared, scarcely able to credit this, the shadowy figure vanished from Kit’s back and the mighty black illusion shrank. Kit was suddenly a black griffin half the size, tumbling and shrieking and turning in the air. One wing was flailing uselessly, whirling Kit upside down. Then he fell like a stone and plunged out of sight beyond the opposite trees. Only some big black flight feathers were left, twirling above the hill. All around, the soldiers cheered and shouted their hatred and joy. They had been out to kill Kit, and they had.
Beside Derk, Callette spread her wings. “Stay where you are!” Derk snapped. “And you, Don.”
He translocated himself, messily, and so jerkily that half of him seemed to be still in the valley for a second, among a battle that was breaking up into chaos. His own side was fighting itself. The werewolves, the monsters, and King Luther’s men threw themselves upon the soldiers in black. Groups of Pilgrims, cheering lustily at what they took to be the death of the Dark Lord, raced across the valley to join in, while the legions and most of the dwarfs and mercenaries hung back, bewildered by this. It was not part of the plan. They only moved when the fanatics stormed out of the woods and began attacking everyone impartially. As Derk arrived among the trees at the top of the opposite hill, the valley became full of a seething free-for-all. He knew he should have told Don and Callette to get to safety. They were going to be killed, too.
But the lake was below him, long and blue-brown. He was in time to see the reflections of trees in it tossing and breaking in the great ring of waves where Kit had gone down. Bubbles came out of the center for a moment and then stopped. By the time Don and Callette arrived, Derk was staring at the very last ripples lapping the shore.
“I told you—” he began. Then he gave up. “What’s the use? Did either of you see Prince Talithan?”
“He went into that green haze,” Don said. “All the elves did when the fanatics came out.”
“Barnabas went, too,” Callette said sourly. “He knew I was going to pull his head off.”
Derk looked at her and saw blood on her beak and her talons. But it did not seem to be her own blood, so he did not let it worry him. His mind seemed to have closed down into a very small space. There was only one thing in it. “Follow me back to camp, both of you,” he said, and translocated again.
In the camp, he collected the dogs, the pigs, and the Friendly Cows into a huddle and called Talithan. As Callette and Don landed by the river, the green haze swung and Talithan stood on the shale beside them. He was pale and breathing heavily, but he bowed politely to Derk. “You have need of me, Lord?”
“Yes. Come over here,” Derk called to the griffins. “Talithan, do one more thing for me. Then you can collect Pretty from the Horselady and I won’t trouble you again.”
Talithan looked puzzled. “But, Lord—”
“The Horselady had no business to take Pretty,” Derk said. “Tell her from me that he’s yours. What I want you to do is to put all of us here into your green haze and move us back to Derkholm.”
Talithan’s eyes moved dubiously from Derk in his huddle of animals to the two griffins. “So many,” he murmured.
“Can’t it be done?” Derk asked.
Talithan looked at his face. His manner changed. “I was merely thinking,” he said gently, “that very few have ever walked through our country. Of course it can be done. I shall take you through my own lands, Lord, all of you.”
When King Luther and the Emperor Titus panted into the camp half an hour later, blood-spattered, exasperated, and wanting an explanation, they found the place deserted.
TWENTY-THREE
IT WAS A BIG MISTAKE, Blade discovered, to translocate in among a troop of galloping horsemen. It would have been a mistake by daylight. In the dark he was lucky not to be killed. Sukey’s kidnappers did not even know Blade was there. They simply galloped on. Reville, pounding up on foot around dawn, found Blade lying in the clump of gorse he had been kicked into some hours before.