The Gypsy Morph

TWENTY-FIVE

SOMETIME DURING THE NIGHT, Catalya disappeared.

She had insisted on staying behind when the remainder of the camp departed with Hawk and Angel, arguing that she could do more good by staying than leaving. When pressed for an explanation, she had shrugged the matter away by telling Logan it was obvious if you thought it through. Hadn’t she saved him once already? What if he needed her to save him again? She was only halfjoking about this, and her determination to remain close to him was unshakable. What was really at work was her fear of losing him again, something she seemed terrified would happen. He had almost died once already and then disappeared for days afterward in search of the Elves and their talismans and been seriously threatened a second time. Apparently, she had decided that enough was enough; she would take her chances sticking close to him rather than seeking safety by leaving.

He had chosen not to press the matter. When Panther’s attempts at talking her out of it failed, including a futile effort at insisting that if she stayed, so would he, he saw the handwriting on the wall. Somethings you had to back away from. She was sufficiently grown that she could make her own choice in the matter. He did not feel that she really belonged back with him or that her staying made him any safer, but if she felt so then it was better to let her have her way.

That was what he had thought the previous day. Now he was sorry he had not insisted she go. Early that afternoon, when his attention was focused on other things, she had suggested almost casually that she should go out in search of Chalk and the other children. She had a better chance of finding them than anyone else, she insisted; she was more experienced in these sorts of things. He had no idea why she thought that this was so, but it didn’t matter because he wasn’t about to agree. He told her no, pointing out that the creature stalking the children of the camp was far too dangerous to take chances with.

“Why would a monster stalking human children want anything to do with me?” she asked at once. “I’m a bigger freak than it is.”

He stuck to his refusal, and when she shrugged and walked away without saying anything more, he thought that was the end of it. Obviously, he had been mistaken.

Sometimes he wondered what good he was doing. He was supposed to serve and protect those weaker and more vulnerable than himself. He was supposed to keep them safe. But when no one would listen to him, when they did whatever they chose despite his warnings–which was true of almost everyone, it sometimes seemed–what was he supposed to do? Even Simralin had refused to listen to him when he told her she should come with Kirisin and himself and flee the Cintra, that it was too dangerous to remain behind, that she would not be safe.

He hadn’t allowed himself to think of her during the past few days, keeping his concerns carefully locked away and separate from his responsibilities for the inhabitants of the camp. But with the disappearance of Chalk and now Catalya, all his doubts and fears resurfaced in a rush. It was like a dam breaking, its walls giving way all at once under the crushing weight of his emotions.

He could tell himself whatever he wanted to about her, but it didn’t change the truth of things. He was in love with her, and he couldn’t come to terms with the idea that something might have happened to her, too.

By midday, though, two things happened that diverted his attention once more. The first was that Catalya returned, sauntering into camp with Rabbit hopping along beside her, seemingly unaware that she had done anything either unexpected or wrong. Her search had been unsuccessful, but she hadn’t looked everywhere yet. There were still places she needed to search. She hadn’t seen any sign of the creature or anything else, and she had never been in any danger.

It took everything Logan had not to tell her what he was really thinking, but instead to let it all pass unmentioned. He did suggest that if she was going out again, maybe he should go with her. At least they should discuss it.

Then a short while later, as he was still weighing the advisability of his suggestion, an alarm rose from the defenders on the bridge. He hurried down to see what was happening and found the men and women on watch gathered together at the bridge center pointing and gesturing toward the other side.

Skrails were landing in small groups of two and three, perhaps a dozen with as many as fifty that were still airborne. They clustered safely back from the bridge defenses, hunched over like ghouls as they stared across at the humans, eyes baleful and calculating. Beyond them, the slopes of the Cascades were blanketed with dark shapes flowing down toward the banks of the Columbia. Thousands of misshapen, nightmarish forms, they stretched away into the hazy distance for as far as the eye could see.

Logan Tom took a deep breath and exhaled slowly.

The army of demons and once–men had caught up to them.

With Helen rice DIRECTING TRAFFIC, Logan Tom reset their defenses. It was something that had been discussed at length in the time they had been waiting for the enemy to arrive, so it didn’t require much discussion now. Mostly it was a matter of making the best use of limited resources and a superior defensive position.

Logan had no idea how many of the enemy there might be, but from the look of things they numbered well over ten thousand. His own force of men and women was less than two hundred, a small contingent even against an enemy a quarter of the size of the one approaching. They would be fighting a battle they already knew they could not win. At best, they could delay the assault, could tie up the attackers long enough to allow the children and caregivers already in flight to put even more distance between them. When it became clear that the enemy was going to break through, they would blow the bridge and retreat, effectively stopping any pursuit until a second bridge or shallows could be found. Helen Rice had sent scouting parties up–and downriver for thirty miles in both directions days earlier, and neither was in evidence.

The forward defenses were situated about halfway across the bridge and consisted of steel buttresses and overturned trucks scavenged from the prior defenders and repositioned to suit Logan’s needs. Heavy–caliber sprays and cannons filled the gaps. In addition, the arched bridgework formed a heavy metal canopy over the heads of the defenders. The dense foliage that Hawk had summoned to secure the bridge several weeks earlier was still flourishing, and it covered the whole of the bridge spans and trusses, forming a thick screen behind and under which the defenders could hide. From an enemy’s viewpoint on the far bank, it would be difficult to tell exactly where their targets were positioned or what sort of weapons they had at their disposal.

In any case, the attackers would be forced to rely on small arms and light–caliber field weapons in making an assault. Anything heavier would chance compromising the stability of the bridge, and losing the bridge would defeat their purpose in attacking in the first place. The enemy needed it in one piece to cross.

The defenders had no such problem. Their only purpose in defending the bridge was to delay the enemy advance. If they were forced to blow the bridge earlier than planned, it wouldn’t matter. Blowing the bridge was a given. But the enemy didn’t know this. It didn’t know that they had the necessary explosives. It would have to attack to find out. It would have to strike as hard and fast as it could in the hope of overrunning the defenders before they had a chance to do anything.

But Logan had a few surprises planned. Midway between the far bank and the forward defenses were trip wires that would trigger dozens of cluster mines designed to shatter any assault. A line of flamethrowers secured to the bridge trusses just in back of the mines could be ignited from behind the defenses. Snap spikes–wicked spring teeth secured to the bridge planking–were layered all across the two dozen or so yards right in front of the forward defenses.

If all that failed, banks of weapons were mounted three–deep behind the forward defenses in small redoubts where the defenders would make their last stand. When the defenders were overrun at last, the charges that would blow the bridge, packed in place beneath the steel spans and all along the cross–ties, could be detonated from a command station situated just at the edge of the north bank. When the bridge went up, it would take everyone with it and stop any advance in its tracks.

Logan shook his head, thinking it all through. It wasn’t the greatest plan, but it was the best he could come up with. Maybe Michael, if he were there, could have come up with something better. He was always smarter than Logan when it came to battle tactics. But like so much else, that was all in the past.

The defenders finished their preparations and took their positions, watching the demon–led army advance out of the mountains. Attackers continued to flood down out of the broad slopes all afternoon and into the night, gathering on the south riverbank, where their leaders began forming them up for the attack. Logan watched impassively. The attack wouldn’t come until dawn; this sort of full frontal assault required a reasonable amount of light to coordinate and maneuver, and the glare from the rising sun would be in the eyes of the defenders. A flat–out strike relying on strength of numbers alone would work, too, but it would sacrifice an awful lot of men and risk mistakes that could cost the demons possession of the bridge. So they would wait.

At one point, with the sun already sinking behind the mountains, Logan went looking for Catalya, thinking to speak with her again about searching for the missing children. But no one had seen her, and his efforts to ferret her out failed. After a long, frustrating hour searching, he was forced to admit the obvious. She had ignored his advice and once again gone out alone.

Darkness settled in, and watch fires burned all across the far bank, their glow visible for miles in all directions. There were so many attackers by now that the defenders were growing disheartened. These were tough–minded men and women, guerrilla fighters from outside the compounds, experienced fighters. But even these could be intimidated by what they were seeing. Logan went out with Helen Rice to reassure them, to point out that only so many of the enemy could crowd onto the bridge at any one time and there was reason to hope that they would get in one another’s way when they did so.

Afterward, he spoke alone with Helen about what to expect. She was not battle–tested, had never faced an adversary of this size, did not have the training in tactical combat that he had. Fortunately, some of her lieutenants did. They would take command of various units when the attack came. But even though Helen would cede authority on the battlefield, she would still be the one nominally responsible for deciding when it was time to give way. Logan would advise her, of course, would do his best to prepare her, but as leader of the camp the decision would be hers.

He stood down by the bridgehead after that, thinking through how the battle would be fought, searching for loopholes in his defensive plan, for possibilities he might have overlooked. Mostly, he decided, it didn’t much matter. He had so few men and women fighting to hold the bridge that if they could hold the demon army off even for a single day, it would be a miracle.

He thought, too, about that old man in the gray cloak and the slouch hat. The demon Kirisin had seen in his vision. The one Angel had fought against in Anaheim. The one that kept sending its minions to kill them. The one to which Logan had lost his family twenty years earlier. He could still see the old man’s face, smiling at him approvingly as he fired the Tyson Flechette into a horde of once–men attackers.

He had been promised a chance to right things with that demon if he fulfilled his mission to find and protect the gypsy morph. He thought he had done that. He had kept his bargain, and now he was beginning to wonder if the Lady intended to keep hers.

“Logan.”

His thoughts scattered as he heard his name called. He turned around to find Catalya standing behind him, holding Rabbit in her arms. She was a mess. Her clothes were torn and filthy, her face streaked with dirt and sweat, and her eyes haunted. Her cat was hunched down in the cradle of her arms, eyes wide with a mix of fear and readiness. Something had scared them both badly.

“We found them,” she said.

He knew at once. “The children?”

She nodded. “Rabbit and me. Rabbit, really. He led me to them. They were hidden behind some rocks and earth, half buried in a ravine. I might have walked right by them yesterday, but it was dark by then so I can’t be sure.”

“All of them?” He didn’t want to ask, but he couldn’t help himself. “All those that were missing?”

She took a deep breath, held it a moment, and then exhaled slowly. “I think so. They were in pieces, so it was hard to be sure.”

She waited for his reaction, her face expressionless. No, he decided suddenly, changing his mind, she wasn’t waiting for anything. She was in shock. She had seen something so terrible that she had been forced to lock down her emotions and retreat inside herself. It was taking everything she had just to stand there and talk to him in a composed way about what she had discovered.

“I’m sorry it had to be you,” he said, wishing she had listened to him about not going out alone. He gestured at her. “Did anything happen to you? Are you all right?”

She stared at him a moment, and then looked down at herself. “Oh, this. It’s nothing, Logan. I’m not hurt or anything. I just stayed long enough to bury them, to give them someplace to rest that wasn’t out in the open where they might be …”

She shuddered, shaking her head. “I didn’t have any real digging tools, and the ground was hard. It took me a while to get it done.”

“You did the right thing. It was brave of you to go out like that and then stay out.”

She shrugged. “I wasn’t in any danger. Not really. See?” She lifted her mottled face as if to demonstrate.

“Better go get cleaned up and get some sleep,” he told her. “Wash off, change your clothes, have something to eat. The demon army is here, across the river. They’ll attack at sunrise.”

She didn’t move; she just stood there. “I’m tired of all this,” she said finally.

“We all are. We all want it to end.”

She bent down and set Rabbit on his feet next to her. The cat moved over at once and rubbed up against her legs, a small cry escaping. “You’re all right, toughie,” she said.

“Let’s not say anything to Fixit right away,” he told her. “Let’s give it a day, get past whatever’s going to happen tomorrow. He doesn’t need to hear about this until then.”

She smiled bleakly. “He doesn’t need to hear about this ever,” she said as she walked away. “I wish none of us did.”

She disappeared back into the darkness, Rabbit hopping at her heels.

THE ONCE‑MEN ATTACKED JUST AFTER SUNRISE, just as Logan had known they would. They dispensed with preliminaries, eschewing any sort of effort at softening up the defenses with light–weapons fire or small cluster shells, and just threw themselves into the fray. They swept out of the fading shadow of the mountain range and through the glare of the morning sun in wave after wave of screaming, howling insanity. Some carried automatic weapons, but many had nothing more than rudimentary blades and lengths of pipe and wood. Weapons seemed of little consequence to them. Rational behavior was swept away by undisguised bloodlust. There was no coordination to the attack, no semblance of order or sophistication of battle tactics in evidence. It was primal and raw and bereft of anything but maddened determination.

Feeders followed in their wake, thousands strong, bounding across the terrain like wild animals.

The defenders did what Logan had ordered them to do. They crouched behind their protective barricades and watched. The first waves of attackers triggered the cluster mines and were blown apart. The second and third waves triggered the flamethrowers and were burned to ash. The next wave, struggling now just to get past the carnage that the first several had created, triggered the snap spikes. At the unmistakable sound of the spring traps releasing, the defenders opened fire on the attackers. Hundreds died in the five minutes or so that followed, bodies mounding up on the bridge floor in blood–soaked heaps, the whole of the bridge itself wreathed in smoke, the air rank with the smells of weapons fire and death.

The last of the attackers expended their lives under the withering crossfire of the entrenched defenders, and then as suddenly as the attack had begun it stopped. A deep silence settled over the bridge and the flats leading up to it from the south bluff, as if somehow all the attackers had been killed and the battle was over.

Logan knew better. Crouched down, moving quickly from position to position, he warned the defenders to be ready. “They’ll come again right away,” he told them. “When they do, trigger the flamethrowers first. That won’t stop them, but it will slow them. Fire into those who get past for as long as it takes them to reach the last of the snap spikes, then fall back to the redoubts.”

He could have ordered them to hold their positions, to keep the enemy from breaching the forward defenses. But he already knew that this would be impossible, that they wouldn’t last the day no matter what they did. He didn’t want them all killed when they were only delaying the inevitable. They would have to blow the bridge if they were to escape.

Helen Rice came up to him, crouched low, face stricken. She gestured at the carnage. “How much more of this can they take?”

“More than we can. These are once–men, Helen. They don’t feel anything the way we do. Dying isn’t a deterrent. They’ll keep coming at us until they break through.” He put his hand on her shoulder, steadying her. “I’m sorry, but we aren’t going to be able to hold them for long. Go back and tell them at the command post to stand ready to blow the bridge. When we fall back from the redoubts, I’ll give you the signal. When you see it, trigger the detonator.”

She fled back off the bridge at once, happy to be away from the killing field. Logan took up a fresh position at the center of the barricades. He peered out across the carpet of dead and wondered what the enemy would try next. He was already worrying that the bridge defenders weren’t sufficiently prepared to deal with it.

He was right. When the attack came, it took an entirely different form. While they were searching the far shore for signs of movement, dozens of skrails swept down out of the skies in long, looping lines and dropped canisters of flammables that exploded on contact. In seconds, defenders and defenses alike were engulfed in flames, and everything at the center of the bridge became clouded with roiling black smoke. As soon as that happened, the once–men attacked again, charging out of the flats and onto the bridge, clambering over the remains of their fallen comrades, rushing through the invisible, porous bodies of the ravening feeders.

The bridge would have been lost and most of the defenders with it except that the prevailing winds blowing down the canyon from the ocean cleared the smoke away in seconds. The fires continued to burn, and a handful of the defenders died in the conflagration, but the rest stood their ground, heeding Logan Tom’s orders and triggering the flamethrowers and firing their automatic weapons as their attackers closed. For the first time since the attack began, Logan used his staff, shattering the center of the enemy rush, leaving the wings to more conventional weapons.

Everywhere, the feeders leapt and dove among the dead and dying, joyful scavengers of the dark, terrible emotions expended.

Again, the attack was broken, leaving hundreds more of the once–men dead and dying on the bridge span.

But Logan had seen enough. The damage to the forward defenses was extensive, and the central portion of the bridge was a shambles. On the next attack, either the defenses or the defenders or both would collapse, and they would all be swept away.

“Everyone back!” he ordered them. “Take cover in the redoubts!”

They retreated at once, crouched low as they backed toward the half dozen redoubts, carrying their weapons with them. Logan went last, still watching the smoke–clouded south bank and the movement he could see taking place within. Another attack was coming, and it was coming sooner than he would have liked.

He took a quick head count of those missing, and then pulled out those too badly injured to do much good and sent them back to Helen and the command post. He redistributed the others so that the redoubts were as evenly defended as was possible. But they were down to less than fifty able–bodied men and women, counting those getting ready for the flight north, so he could count on no more than five or six for each redoubt.

It wasn’t enough. But then, what number would be in the face of this enemy?

He scanned the far bank once more, searching for something that would tell him what was happening. They wouldn’t use the skrails again; they knew the defenders would be looking for that. Something else, he thought. But what?

Then a dark mass pushed through the smoke and crowded onto the bridge. Dozens of Elves, chained together like slaves, their hands bound behind them, their ankles shackled so they could do no more than shuffle, were being marched in front of a fresh body of once–men. The Elves had a desperate, helpless look to them, faces stricken, eyes rolling wildly. He could hear them crying out, begging for help. He could see their terrible injuries and their blood–streaked limbs.

In the very center was Simralin.

Logan Tom experienced a moment of heart–stopping shock. Simralin! The once–men were using her–using all of the Elven prisoners–as a living shield. If you want to kill us, they were saying, first you have to kill them.

For a second he was so stricken that he couldn’t think straight. They must have captured her in the Cintra. They must have forced her to talk, forced her to reveal that he was a Knight of the Word and in love with her. Otherwise, how would they know to place her right at the center of things like this? How would they know that this, of all possible tactics, would undo him? The choice he was being given was both horrific and impossible to make. The defenders surrounding him were yelling wildly, demanding orders, unsure themselves of what to do. He felt frozen by what had happened, unable to act.

How could he kill Simralin?

Then, eyes still scanning the faces of the Elves being marched toward them, he saw Praxia, too. For just a second, he thought he must be imagining it. But no, there she was—Praxia–her small, dark pixie–face unmistakable amid the other, lighter–complexioned faces.

But Praxia was …

He had buried her …

Then he noticed that there were no feeders among the prisoners, not one dark shape in all that hapless mass of potential victims.

He caught his breath. It was a trick.

“Fire!” he ordered at once. He levered his black staff and roared in fury and fresh shock. “Now! Fire!”

The defenders pulled the triggers on their automatic weapons and the Elven wall collapsed and then disappeared in smoke, gone in an instant, vanished completely. An illusion, as Logan had realized just in time—a trick to make the defenders think the Elves were hostages when in fact they were not. It had almost worked. Logan had almost been taken in by it. His feelings for Simralin had very nearly persuaded him.

That old man, he thought suddenly. That old man had found him out and used what he had learned–maybe from his spies, maybe from Kirisin–against him. He could still see the other’s cunning face, the knowing smile, the certainty that he owned an eight–year–old boy whose parents and brother and sister he had just killed.

Or maybe this wasn’t about him at all, but about Kirisin. Maybe the use of Simralin was an effort to flush him out and cause him to expose himself while at the same time overrunning the defenders of the bridge. The old man would still covet the boy’s power over the Elves, and would not hesitate to use his sister against him.

Logan felt a rush of hatred so intense that for a moment it threatened to overwhelm him completely.

The foremost ranks of once–men had reached the barricades and taken cover behind them. More were surging out of the flats, hundreds of them, thousands, screaming and brandishing their weapons, swarms of feeders rushing after. Logan’s defenders were firing into them, but the effect was negligible. The once–men had secured a foothold, and they wouldn’t stop now until they had it all, no matter how many were killed.

The bridge was lost.

Logan steadied, his hatred for the demon put aside. “Everyone get off!” he called out, and motioned for the defenders to fall back.

He stood his ground as they did so, using the black staff’s magic to create a wall of bright flames between themselves and the once–men, holding their attackers at bay. The bridge was cleared in seconds, and when it was, he wheeled away, as well, racing for the far bank. As he leapt onto solid ground once more, he gave Helen the signal she was waiting for.

“Blow the bridge!” she shouted, just as he reached the command station.

The man designated to do so threw the detonator switch.

Nothing happened.

FIXIT HAD BEEN CROUCHED DOWN behind the command station through the entirety of the enemy attack, cringing at every assault, barely able to look at what was happening. It wasn’t until he saw the defenders streaming back off the bridge and heard Logan Tom give the order to ignite the explosives that he lifted his head for a look. He saw Cranston, who was the senior explosives expert, throw the switch, stare at it in disbelief when it failed to function, and then throw it again and again in a desperate attempt to get it to work.

But Fixit already knew the problem. He had warned them about it when he had watched them wiring the charges the day before, sent to see if there was something he could do to help by Logan. Nobody wanted his help; nobody cared to listen. He was a fourteen–year–old boy; what did he know?

In fact, he did know something. The detonator was wired to a central relay, and the relay sent a signal to the various charges. If the relay failed to function, the charges would not ignite. No one thought that would happen. The relay was solar–powered and had a backup battery. But it still relied on the wires from the detonator to trigger its internal mechanisms, and the wires, though carefully protected, were still suspect. Too many things could happen to break their connection to the relay. Use Redline wireless, he had argued. Use Bluetooth Extreme. Use something that wasn’t hardwired. It was more dependable, less subject to malfunctions than the more rudimentary system they were using might invite.

So now, kneeling several yards behind them as they struggled to correct the problem from the command station, he knew at once that they were going to fail. There wasn’t enough time for them to do anything from there. Not now. The once–men were coming out from behind the barricades, challenging the cover fire laid down by the retreating defenders, seeing an opportunity to cross the bridge and seize it intact. Even Logan Tom, turning to face this new assault, seemed at a loss.

But Fixit knew what to do. Without stopping to think about the wisdom of it, he came to his feet and charged onto the bridge. Shouts and cries trailed after him, and Logan’s outstretched arm barely missed him. The relay was strapped to a bridge truss fifteen yards away, protected by steel girders and a makeshift steel frame. He raced straight for it, ignoring the ranks of approaching once–men and the stray bullets that whizzed by his head. He threw himself down as the weapons fire increased, crawling and rolling the last several yards until he was behind the steel frame and pressed up against the girders. He raised himself up on his elbows, keeping his head safely behind the steel supports, and snapped open the relay box.

Inside, he found the wires still connected.

He had been wrong.

Furious with himself, he began searching the relay mechanism for other possible failures, convinced that the problem was here, not somewhere else. The weapons fire had grown heavier, and he could sense the steady approach of the once–men. Logan was using his staff to keep them back, aided by the bridge defenders, but the once–men were pressing forward anyway. Even without risking a glance to see how close they were, he knew it wouldn’t be long until they were on top of him.

Then he found it. A tiny bit of debris had wedged itself between the contacts, breaking the circuit and preventing the signal from activating. He blew hard into the mechanism, cleared the contact, jammed the relay box back into place within its protective frame, and was on his feet once more, racing back the way he had come.

His heart was pounding. How long did he have? Didn’t matter. If he was quick, he should still be able to rea