Harbinger

25: OH, THE HORRORS

Between Pittsburgh and the East Coast were ancient mountains, worn down by time and weather into tall ridges separated by long, continuous valleys. A virgin forest of ironwood trees blanketed the land in unending green when viewed from the air and a vast dim cathedral of moss and fern rose from the ground. The rich dark smell of earth seemed overwhelming after the baked asphalt of Pittsburgh, but after hours of hiking up and over the steep ridge, it faded from Wolf’s senses enough that he started to catch the stench of the large oni camp. It was a smell like that of a slaughter yard mixed with an open latrine. As he led his people down the ridge into the valley, he started to hear noises from the fortification. There were command whistles blowing, drums beating out instructions, and deep, rough voices barking out orders. It sounded like the oni were on high alert.

Wolf came to a rocky outcrop covered with moss. Ahead the trees stopped at the edge of a marshy area. The rocks made a good viewing platform. Wolf crouched at the cliff edge to study the valley. His warriors took up positions around him, careful to keep down so as not to be silhouetted on the summit.

The forest stopped a few yards beyond the foot of the cliff where the land leveled. A beaver dam had been built across the stream that cut through the heart of the valley. The brook had been too small and the land too uneven to make one large pond. A dozen small pools were linked together by a maze of meandering channels. The water had killed all the valley’s trees, creating a wide marshy meadow full of denuded stumps and thick clumps of cattail reeds. On the far western side of the marsh, the land sloped up to a stockade wall. The oni had left enough ironwoods standing within the camp so that Wolf couldn’t see into it clearly from his elevated perch. Even with the green leafy screen, the scale of it was intimidating. The oni had built a fort of ironwood, a quarter mile square. Wolf could pick out hundreds of tents and cages that once held wargs. Like a kicked anthill, the camp swarmed with creatures. Oni of all sizes moved with intent, some controlling packs of wargs on leashes.

Wolf scanned the ground his people would need to cover to reach the fort. It made a hellish obstacle course. He considered the dam. Would blasting it make the crossing less dangerous? The weather was right for call-lightning, with heavy clouds hanging overhead. The dam seemed poorly made, suggesting that there been a great deal of engineering — although poorly executed — to turn the valley floor into a swamp. “No beaver would make something that sloppy looking.”

“Marshes like this one were a common Skin Clan defense,” Wraith Arrow murmured. “There will be black willows someplace close. They guard against large predators and keep would-be deserters from fleeing their post.”

Wolf cast a fire scry. He picked out a score of black willows currently standing motionless among scrub trees at the far southern end of the marsh. The lack of cover, the unstable ground, and the black willows made the meadow a death trap. Even if he removed the dam, he couldn’t make the area safe to cross.

He kept his scry active, studying the signatures returned by the spell. While it couldn’t have been seen from where they stood, the oni had dug a narrow trench before the wall, filled with wood spikes coated with something organic that was no doubt poisonous. The seething fort was filled with a confusion of potential magic. There was something huge and covered with active spells trapped within a magically reinforced ironwood cage at the heart of camp. Wolf guessed that it was a horror by the size. Wolf ignored it for now, searching for sign of the nactka. There didn’t seem to be anything like them within the camp. He focused back on the horror.

Even as he considered the signatures of the huge creature, the horror’s presence faded from his scry.

He recast the scry. The giant horror appeared again, easily large as a wyvern with more limbs. Was it some kind of spider? No, it seemed to have some type of wings. He noticed that there were faint echoes of similar creatures in small cages near the western wall.

All the signatures from the horror and smaller versions of it faded away a second time.

What was happening? The fire scry picked up on the combustion potential of everything in an area. Most organics burned at different rates. He should be able to feel the differences as long as he maintained the scry. Were the reinforcement spells on the cages’ timbers absorbing the magic?

Wolf switched to a wind scry. The signature was full of confusion as the thousands of shifting bodies echoed back as a chaotic chop of charged particles. While he could determine little of the horror sheltered by the cage, the power of the scry didn’t change as he held it.

“What’s wrong?” Wraith Arrow asked as Wolf changed back to a fire scry.

“I think there’s more than one horror in this camp. There’s a big one but there’re several smaller creatures of a similar type on the west end. They’re all fading from my scry as if…” He hissed as curse as he realized what it could mean. “I think they’re phoenix scorpions.”

“Are you sure?” Wraith Arrow said. “The Fire esva is worse than useless against them. Fire empowers them.”

“It matches with what I’ve been told of them.”

All the Skin Clan’s horrors like the phoenix scorpions had been hunted down and killed long before Wolf’s father was even born. Maybe even before True Flame had been born.

Had his older cousin noticed the results of Wolf’s scry? Would he realize what it meant? Wolf’s scry would be nearly invisible to the Stone Clan domana; they would only be aware that he was casting spells. Not that it mattered much — they were at a point of no return. The oni were arming themselves. If no attack came, they could pursue the elves, vastly outnumbering them.

“How many of the smaller scorpions?” Wraith Arrow asked. “How much smaller?”

“Four about the size of a horse.” Wolf felt True Flame pull from the Spell Stones and cast a scry. He sensed the signatures as if he’d cast the spell himself. He focused on the smaller scorpions covered in the odd runes. There was something disturbingly familiar with them. “Get the laedin away. I’m not going to be able to protect them while fighting. I’m casting call-lightning on the horror.” The spell needed two hands to cast, which meant he couldn’t keep a shield up. He doubted he could kill the horror in a single shot and it was known to be smart enough to rush its attacker. “Have the laedin swing south and join Sunder. They’ll be safer with the Stone Clan with phoenix scorpions on the loose.”

He could feel True Flame recast his scry. The male wasn’t attacking, which probably meant he’d identified the horror.

Darkness’s gossamer came soaring over the ridge. The oni armed with rifles opened fire on the airship in a panic. Cana Lily, though, was holding a Stone Clan shield on the entire craft.

The gossamer dived toward the camp, its machicolations opening to drop war fire down on the oni.

“No, no, no!” Wolf cast wind blast, trying to shift the chemicals away from the phoenix scorpion.

Flames erupted as the chemicals mixed, water igniting the naphtha and quicklime mixture. The sheets of fire roared up and then snuffed out as the energy of the flame was sucked in by the giant phoenix scorpion. The horror started to glow like a landbound sun. It shattered its cage. It was a nightmare taken form with a scorpion-curled stinger tail, large crab-like pinchers, and transparent wasp wings.

The gossamer paused over the eastern edge of the camp. Its gondola hatch opened. Darkness and his people dropped down, in among the oni, shielded by Darkness. The laedin and sekasha were all armed with spell arrows. They landed and released their arrows. The spells printed on the shafts were activated by the whistle of them cutting through the air, changing the bolts into brilliant piercing energy.

“Is he mad?” Wolf cried. “Why would he not abort? How could he miss the phoenix scorpion?”

“He’s dropped into the heart of the enemy a thousand times before,” Wraith Arrow said. “He would not see any reason to not do it again. Here, put this in your ears.”

“What is this?” Wolf asked.

“Beeswax and cotton.” Wraith Arrow held out two plugs that he had made from his medicine kit. “Be quick about it.”

Wolf pushed the wax into his ears. All sound became muffled like he was under water. A moment later, the scorpion began to make a horrific noise. It was like the song of a cicada, only louder than a hundred human sirens combined. Even with the plugs in his ear, the sound seemed to pierce through his head.

“Ready shields!” Wraith Arrow signed using blade talk.

The sekasha gathered close around Wolf.

Wolf called on the winds in order to summon his lightning. Magic thrummed around him, ready to be used. He shifted through his call-lightning spell. His right hand primed the clouds as his left hand readied the ground. Magic flooded over the rocky outcrop on a hot wave. The hairs on his arms rose as the magic shifted into potential. He felt it reach its critical point and brought his hands together, aiming the channel through which the lightning would run. The faint leader flashed downward out of the belly of the clouds, and then the return stroke leapt from on top of the scorpion, up to meet the leader with a deafening clap of thunder. The blinding column of light flared the area around the scorpion to white haze, and the thunder rumbled as the stroke climbed up into the sky.

The horror shrieked in pain. The lightning licked the sky, as leader and return stroke danced back and forth over the open channel. There was a strange magical pulse from the scorpion, something akin to a fire scry, but filled with static. It washed over Wolf, identifying him as holding an active attack spell.

“Here it comes!” Wolf shouted and started another call.

It had been huge at the distance of a quarter mile. It grew in scale as it winged toward them. Its chitin exterior glowed molten gold with stored magic; it set fire to the cattails when it landed in the center of the marsh. Steam rose hissing where each of its eight legs touched the damp earth. The keening noise it made grew louder as it neared. Wolf could feel the vibration of it in his bones and under his feet. It felt like nails were being stabbed into his head through his ears.

Wolf brought his hands together, bringing down another leader at the horror. It was his last chance to hit it. Call-lighting was a wildly inaccurate weapon. He couldn’t risk hitting his own people once the beast closed with them.

The lightning flared again and again. The flash within a few yards from the rocky outcrop was blinding. Thunder followed instantly, loud enough to feel. Wolf cast call-lighting again, rushing through the motions, hoping for one last hit as it visibly staggered.

Wolf could feel Darkness in the heart of the fort, maintaining a shield around his people as he slammed Force Strike after Force Strike through the oni. True Flame had started to blast oni escaping to the north. Where were Sunder and Cana Lily? As if in answer, Cana Lily cast a large inclusive scry that let even non-Stone-Clan domana sense what was going on in a one-mile radius.

The horror rushed forward, its eight long legs propelling it like an arrow released from a bow. It was on them faster than Wolf could even follow. The horror was so massive that it towered over the rocky outcrop. Wolf dropped the call-lightning and started to cast a wind shield as it slammed into his sekasha. Their shields weren’t strong enough to stop the monster, but his people overlapped as they fell back, so the warriors behind them protected those in front even as their spells failed. Even as they slid sideways and back, they slashed at the massive claws that hammered down at them. Wolf had trusted his people to know what to do; still, the tactic surprised him.

The massive barbed tail, the size of an automobile, came slashing forward.

Wolf jumped backward and shouted the activation of his shield. It snapped into existence, buffering the head-splitting noise that the horror was making.

He paused, panting, holding his shield.

The horror was staggering even though there seemed to be no visible damage to it. All the sekasha’s hacking slashes at the claws had done nothing to mar the gleaming gold chitin. The delicate transparent wings weren’t even scorched. The only markings were odd yet familiar spell runes.

“Oh, no!” Wolf whispered as he recognized it.

Wraith Arrow couldn’t have heard Wolf but a glance at his face made Wraith Arrow flash “What is it?” in blade talk.

Wolf signed: “Conference with me.”

Wraith Arrow stepped closer so that his personal shield overlapped Wolf. The howl of the horror reduced enough that they could hear each other shout.

“The runes on the horror! It’s the same spell that the oni used on little dogs to make them bigger than a horse. It’s why your blades aren’t damaging it; the outside is a solid illusion created by magic. The other four small scorpions in camp can be this size instantly; all the oni need to do is trigger the spell.”

Wraith Arrow nodded slowly as he grasped the implications. “Stormhorse said that you needed to kill the beast within the illusion, but that his bullets wouldn’t pass straight through the outer layer. They were deflected from a killing blow within the illusion.”

“The metal of the bullet would be influenced by the spell. A spell arrow would fly straight.”

“If we could see the inner flesh,” Wraith Arrow pointed out. “There’s no guessing where the beast actually is inside that monstrosity.”

The horror in front of them was larger than a building but the creature at its core was only the size of a horse. The sekasha would need to see the vulnerable heart protected within the illusion. Tinker had disrupted the constructs at the junkyard with the powerful magnet that she used to lift automobiles. How could he replicate that effect with his magic without making the scorpion more dangerous? Wait — when he had shot the dogs, the metal within the bullet disrupted the illusion momentarily even as the spell changed the bullet’s path.

“Try shooting it,” Wolf said.

Wraith Arrow nodded his understanding. He flashed instructions in blade talk. His people normally carried custom-made, low-metal assault rifles. The guns still had the possibility of warping the sekasha’s personal shield, so many of the older warriors refused to carry them in active combat. They preferred to rely on spell arrows. With the laedin deployed to the Stone Clan, it meant that only five of his people had rifles. While the rest stood ready with spell arrows, the five opened fire.

The bullets pinged off the glowing chitin.

Wraith Arrow signaled a cease-fire. “We need something bigger to punch through that shell.”

Wolf needed a big piece of metal. Was there something he could use in the oni camp? He focused on the signatures from Cana Lily’s large scry. There was a small knot of oni loading up a mortar launcher. The weapon was a tall tube of metal with an explosive dropped down into it. As the shell soared out, Wolf grabbed hold of the rocket-like round with his wind and jerked it toward him.

“Get ready!” he shouted although he knew that his people probably wouldn’t hear him over the monster’s din. He needed to trust that they would guess what he was doing.

Wraith Arrow must have recognized what spell Wolf cast. His First flashed “Ready arrows!” in blade talk. Those holding rifles swapped quickly to bows.

It was like trying to guide an invisible fish through a raging river. The wind didn’t allow more than violent pushes and pulls. The mortar roared across the distance and slammed into the massive horror. For a moment, the illusion flickered, going transparent to reveal the phoenix scorpion inside like a small gleaming heart. A moment was all the sekasha needed. They released their taut bowstrings. Fifteen shafts of pure light leapt the distance and struck home. The massive form crumpled to the ground, the illusion spell continuing even after the heart was dead.

The sudden quiet was blissful.

“You said that there were four more?” Wraith Arrow asked as he shouldered his bow.

Wolf nodded as he focused again on Cana Lily’s ground scry. Darkness and his people were killing everything inside the oni camp with force strikes and spell arrows. Darkness blocked the eastern gate out of the fort. To the north, columns of fire marked where Prince True Flame fought. With the cages holding the horrors in the west, most of the oni were choosing to flee south toward Sunder. Hir let them come in a massive wave and then cast the spell “liquefy.” The oni foundered in the sudden pool of liquid mud. Hir followed with “condense” and the ground returned to solid, encasing the oni under the rock-hard surface.

The small phoenix scorpions were still in their cages. Wolf started a call-lightning, hoping to kill them before they could be enlarged. Even as he focused on them, someone worked to free them. Like most of the Skin Clan creations, the beasts were untamed monsters, meaning that they would kill even their owners if they came into range. The cages were stout and the oni were having trouble getting close to the already enraged beasts.

Wolf made their life harder by raining lightning down on their heads. The thick ironwood timbers of the magically reinforced cages, though, were protecting the scorpions. The horrors were unharmed even as their handlers were killed. Darkness retreated farther east, his shields flickering as he switched to one that would protect his people from Wolf’s spells.

“Can’t you see that I’m not doing damage?” Wolf growled at the distant domana that had no way of hearing him. “Hit them!”

Forest Moss dropped the shield he’d been holding for Sunder and cast liquefy under the cage furthest from Darkness. The trapped horror sunk into the earth. Once it was entombed, Forest Moss solidified the ground around it.

“Good!” Wolf reported to Wraith Arrow what the Stone Clan domana were doing.

“But will that kill them?” Wraith Arrow asked.

“It will keep the oni from enlarging them. The cages should hold; they’re magically reinforced ironwood.” Wolf cast his shield, waiting to see how the fight within the fort resolved. He couldn’t do much more without endangering Darkness’s people.

Forest Moss carefully entombed two more cages while Darkness attempted to back out of the fort, away from the earth turning to mud. He was hampered by the flood of oni who had realized that the south was a death trap.

Wolf did flame strikes to clear the way for Darkness. Once the Stone Clan moved back, Forest Moss entombed the last cage.

Wolf paused in his attack to take stock of the battlefield. The oni seemed to be moving without plan, attacking whatever lay in front of them instead of acting as units. Were all the oni commanders dead? Or were there never commanders present? Considering the black-willow-infested swamp, the trench of poisoned stakes, and the caged horrors, the camp felt like a huge trap. Wolf couldn’t have taken it alone. He suspected even the Harbingers would have found it difficult. True Flame would have been helpless against the scorpions.

The others might consider it an easy battle, but it could have been very different if they hadn’t worked together. Wolf wouldn’t have wanted to go into this fight with Earth Son or Cana Lily at his back. The Harbingers understood the need to put differences aside.

Did the oni not expect domana from three clans to move against them? Wolf would have been hard-pressed to win by himself. Queen Soulful Ember had been bracing for this battle since before Pittsburgh arrived on Elfhome. The speed at which Prince True Flame had arrived in force meant that his cousin had been standing ready for the call. He could have had his brother Blue Jay here if he’d been wise enough to ask.

Cana Lily cast a wide scry to the east. The oni reinforcements were coming.

There could be no doubt: this was a trap.