Carnival of Fear, page 22
part #6 of Ravenloft Series
"They'll eat," Hermos said. He slipped from the rail and seated himself beside the blind woman. She seemed small and fragile next to his looming frame. She was no longer the orator, the general of the freakish nation, but only the blind juggler. Hermos set his arm around her. She stiffened for a moment. Then, releasing a tiny sigh, leaned against his tall, gaunt frame.
"Do you think, Hermos, that Tidhare can hear us?" she asked, her voice small against the heath wind. "Or, do you think the other gods have already tied his ears and stuffed his mouth?"
Hermos shuddered slightly, his expression blank and somber. He drew her to his side. A shrill neigh rose up from a frightened horse in the stable below.
Marie continued, "Perhaps Qin-sah will save us, if only for the horses' sake."
"Shush," Hermos said, setting a finger to her lips.
Laughing humorlessly, Marie stood up and sloughed off the man-giant's arm. She approached the rail and set her slender hands onto the charred rubble there. The wide heath and the triangular mountaintops beyond reflected In her white and sightless eyes.
"How long has it been, Hermos? A fortnight? A month? I can't remember when this whole thing began. What have we gotten ourselves into? We chased a murderer and caught a war. In the name of escape I've led everyone to doom. And my dream city is built on a grave. It was the war that saved us, you know; it was the approaching armies that kept us from killing each other.
Maybe we need the Puppetmaster after all: its better to have him kill us one by one than break into factions and kill ourselves."
Hermos stood and hovered behind Marie, his arms reaching out to comfort her. A chill wind swept between them, lifting Marie's black hair from her shoulders. A pang flared through Hermos's giant heart: Marie looked like a china doll, pale and fragile and beautiful.
A harlequin in filthy tights approached them. "Marie, we can't get anyone to work the well."
She whirled about, her face fierce and iron-hard. "Damnit. The boiling water's what'll guard the rubble walls long enough for them to set. Doesn't anyone want to survive the night!"
*****
As evening came, the sandy floor of the arena bus-tied with activity. The odor of sweat and fear filled the air, mixed with smoke and harsh laughter and crude jokes. On one side of the arena, a painted harlot served supper. Minstrels and harlequins sat beside freaks and hawkers; an ogre and a dwarf ate from the same bowl; two harlots told bawdy jokes to the midget contingent.
Marie's army was eating, singing, juggling, telling stories, wringing harsh, defiant guffaws from their anxious fellows.
On the opposite side of the arena lay a broad field of cots and beds and mats, where at least two hundred of the performers lay bundled in fitful sleep. Their ghosty breath rose white from them,.whirling into the cold night air.
Only the horses and sheep were under cover, two or three per stall in the crowded stable beneath the stone seats. They champed and stomped, slurping from the troughs that lined the walls and gorging themselves on piles of hay. Their stink poured out into the arena at large, and, consequently, the entrance to the stables enjoyed clear passage.
Nearby, lanterns beamed over long tables. There, Marie and a group of amateur generals pored over hastily drawn maps and battle plans. A steady stream of scouts and messengers, most of them children or members of the midget coalition, brought news from the heath road, the mountainside, and the moorlands below.
"Still no sign of movement on the road," croaked a midget messenger to Marie.
She nodded toward him, then granted him a fleeting, appreciative smile. "That's good news. 1
want to get some screens and shelters set up down here before the arrows start flying. Have you gotten a glimpse of the aimy?"
"No," the midget replied, snapping the response with a militaristic relish. "All reports indicate, though, that they're still gathering and drilling outside the Council Hall."
"Now's the hour they should be attacking," Marie mused aloud. "The night gets shorter from here on out.
They'd not be drilling if they intended to attack tonight." Marie's expression hardened,
"You've got damn sharp eyes."
"Damn sharp," the midget repeated proudly.
"See if you can get any closer to that council chamber-or if you can't, find someone who can.
I want to know how many archers they've got, and how many pikemen. I want to know if they're bringing a ram, or ladders, or grapples."
"You want me to get close enough to hear their plans?"
"If you can," Marie said grimly. "But don't take any foolish risks. We need every warrior we've got when the armies march on us, and we don't want their discovery of spies to trigger them to march any sooner."
The midget grabbed hold of her hand and shook it vigorously. "I'll tell you what gods they're praying to."
Marie smiled and allowed herself a laugh as the messenger charged away into the bustling arena. Hearing his footfalls retreat toward the pulley platform, Marie said to her generals, "How far is the gate from the arena?"
A round-faced glassblower in a greasy smock leaned on the maps. He pointed toward the round arena and the roughly sketched gate along the heath road. "Just over three hundred yards, if I paced it right."
"Just out of bow range," Marie noted flatly. "Any way we can defend it?"
"No point," said another general, a square-jawed hypnotist. "The ditch along the heath road will prevent them from crossing except at the gate, 'less they throw planks over it. Anyway, the south, east, and north sides of the carnival are open to the heath. Only a hedgerow stands between the heath and the carnival. We can't defend from the hedge, nor the gate, neither."
?"So, the arena's our best hope," Marie said with a flod. "Thank Tidhare it's limestone and granite."
"Tidhare?" asked the glassblower.
"God of the Freaks," Marie explained without pause. "Deaf and dumb and deformed like us."
The hypnotist blinked solemnly. "Praise be to Tidhare."
*****
Marie sat drowsily at the table, her limp hands resting on a crinkly pile of the maps her generals had sketched through the night. The sun was going down again, and the cold shadows of evening had already welled up and engulfed her. She shivered. She wished she had a blanket, but was too exhausted to find one.
The ceaseless thunder of her heart had slowed, quieting to a dull rumble. Likewise, the frenetic clamor of the freaks had eased as each performer found his or her place in Marie's army.
They had spent two days preparing for the war; panic had given way to patience.
During the day, the midget scout Marie had sent indicated that workers could scavenge the carnival grounds for planks and wooden frames. They did so, lifting them via pulley to the top of the wall. There, other workers assembled them into boxy redoubts where the archers could fire and reload their crossbows without fear of being hit by arrows. They also set up small barracks, a mess hut, a shelter for the well, and tunnels to protect the bucket lines from missiles. The food was stockpiled; the water was drawn; the performer-soldiers rested.
They were ready for war.
Marie felt the tug of a small hand on hers, and the voice of Valor spoke. "You should get some sleep. Everything is prepared."
Marie shook her head grimly. "We're not prepared. We've been granted a day's reprieve from our sentence, thanks be to all-gracious Tidhare-" she added with gentle sarcasm "-but the sentence will come down all the same."
Valor looked about, his eyes fuming. "Listen to yourself. You need rest. If somebody else said what you just said, you'd slap his face, knock him over, preach about freedom and responsibility. Do 1 have to do the same to you? I'd rather slap you than let you go on like this."
"Save your sentiments," Marie said irritably. "The sun is setting. We both know that's the most likely time for an attack."
"You've forced everyone else to lie down for at least two hours today, whether they could sleep or not. And though some of them griped, just like you, they ail felt rested and hopeful because of it," Valor said, lifting his hand to slap her. "What kind of example are you set-, ting?
If anyone else acted this way, we wouldn't have an army!"
Marie waved him off and rose. "All right, all right. I'm going to bed."
Valor smiled, leading her toward the barracks.
A scout in tattered robes approached them. "The army of I'Morai marches," was all he said.
Marie drew her hand away from Valor, and her weary face grew stern. Whirling about, she stepped onto the chair where she had been sitting, and then onto the tabletop.
"To armsl To arms!" she shouted through cupped hands, her clear, impassioned voice ringing through the arena. "The army of I'Morai is on the march. This is our night of liberation!"
*****
The noise of running feet and barked orders and sloshing buckets had dissipated by the time they heard the drums of I'Morai. On the moaning heath road they came-distant and dark, children of the deepening night. The sentries shifted and mumbled prayers to their new god, Tidhare.
Marie had withdrawn all the scouts and messengers when she learned the force was marching. She wanted everyone within the walls before the attack. But with scouts inside, no one knew the march formation of the approaching army. No one knew who led them, or when and where they planned to attack. They only knew that the siege army numbered at least two thousand, with five hundred archers. Marie's midget scout, sent out one final time to the city, had never returned.
The drums sounded again.
The rhythmic beat was nearer now, mixed with the distant, heavy tread of booted feet. Marie stepped to the rim of the arena and listened. The rattling cadence echoed from the gorge walls on the heath road. "Still about a mile off," she murmured aloud, running her hand through her black hair. "At least a score of drummers."
"What?" a guard who stood near her asked. His makeshift breastplate and greaves rattled dully as he edged toward the supreme commander.
Marie shook her head. "At least twenty drummers. My guess is that they wouldn't waste that many men to drums unless they had five hundred warriors."
"Yes," the young man groaned quietly, a hand straying up to his fire-scarred features.
"Don't listen to the drums, soldier," Marie commanded suddenly. "The drums'll unnerve you, hypnotize you with the rhythm, fill your head with marching feet and shouted commands. Shut them out."
The man snapped to attention.
A mild smile played about Marie's lips.
The drums sounded again, louder, without the echoes of stone walls. The heath wind carried to them the stomp of feet and the toil of wagon wheels.
"Look down the road, soldier, and tell me what you see."
The soldier turned away from the commander and gazed down the highroad. He muttered, his voice quavering, "There'd been a kind of fiery glow a while back, and now I can see the torches individually."
"How many?" Marie asked.
The soldier replied. "They stretch out from about a quarter-mile down to the gorge. I'd guess about twenty, so far."
"Does every warrior have a torch?"
"No," the young man replied, straining his eyes toward the road, "too far apart for that. One in every ten, maybe."
"Two hundred men so far," Marie mused aloud. "If the scouts were right, that means another three hundred will be coming through that gorge. Who's leading mem up?"
"A pack of drummers. Looks like about ten at the head, and another ten or so back a quarter-mile. In front of the drummers, there's a dark form walking. Probably the general, but I can't quite make him out."
Marie stiffened. The guardsman cast a concerned eye on her, but she said, "Wait till they reach the gate. We'll see then."
Nodding, the guard faced the string of lights along the heath road. All the guards were watching, their young faces blanched, their feet shuffling on the ash-strewn parapets. No one could distinguish who led the army, but everyone saw now what made the toiling noises. A giant ram.
The massive siege weapon rolled heavily down the road, borne on four sets of wheels, and drawn by six stout war-horses. The shaft of the ram was a great tree, Some ten feet in diameter, and its massive head was gleaming steel, reflecting the golden tongues of flame all about it. The ram moved along in the midst of the marching men, a ridged segment of the snaking army. As it drew nearer, the guards on the arena wall gasped and pulled back, staggered by what they saw.
The steel head of the ram bore the face of Marie.
Her lovely, well-turned features, her long hair, her glowing, sightless eyes.
"It's you," the young guard murmured to the commander. "The ram has your face." He stared at her impassive, iron-hard features, looking for incredulity and fear. But Marie was silent and still. Only the slow clench of her jaw betrayed any emotion. The guard looked back to the road as she spoke.
"Forget the ram. Who's leading the army?"
The army had just reached the gates of the carnival, and suddenly, the identity of the black-garbed general was clear.
The Puppetmaster. Despite the burns, despite the knives, despite the pursuit through the forest, the man lived. He didn't so much walk as propel himself forward with spasmodic jerks and surges. Black woolen bindings wrapped him, swinging with each shambling step, and, beneath them, white gauzy bandages covered his body.
"It's the Puppetmaster," the young guard whispered, his throat bone dry.
"I expected as much," Marie replied quietly.
The Puppetmaster waved the drummers behind him to a halt. The army pulled up short, marching in place. Then, trudging forward, the Puppetmaster reached the closed and barred iron gate of the carnival, it was the first time those gates had been closed in decades. He fastened his hands on the wrought iron, and his arm and shoulder muscles began to flex.
Along the arena wall, a line of archers lifted their longbows, aiming up into the dusky sky.
The leader gestured for his bowmen to wait, then loosed his own arrow. The string snapped, and, with a hissing whine, the shaft arced through the dark air. it embedded in a toppled caravan some fifty feet short of the gate. Gritting his teeth in frustration, the leader motioned for his bowmen to hold their fire.
The Puppetmaster hadn't even looked up when the arrow struck. He tightened his hold on the gate, leaned back and pulled. The wrought iron squealed and moaned in complaint, bending ever so slightly. The Puppetmaster yanked harder, releasing a feral scream that echoed through the arena. The iron bolts of one gate pulled loose from the cement post. The gate crashed loose, falling into the carnival grounds with a raucous clang.
The young guard beside Marie muttered fearfully, "It's like the fire only made him stronger."
He glanced toward his general, whose expression still had not changed. Swallowing hard, the soldier said, "Well, at least the estimate of five hundred men was right."
"No," Marie said calmly. "Look out to the east."
His brow furrowing quizzically, the guard craned his neck to see over the wall of the arena.
He started.
There, moving without torches and without drums, was a black army, as large as the one on the road. They had come up, silent and dark, through the heath forest.
"There's another army positioning itself in the north," Marie added coldly.
"No." The guard squinted to make them out. "How do you know?"
"I can hear them," Marie replied, "and I can feel their souls. A thousand souls."
AH three armies were moving. The Puppetmaster led his contingent through the gate, just out of longbow range, and formed them into a thick crescent that encompassed the southern and western edges of the arena; the armies that marched through the eastern forest spread out in similar arcs to the east and north. Only when all the warriors were positioned did the torches in the two dark armies blink to light. In a matter of moments, the arena was encircled by an unbroken ring of flickering fire. And the circle tightened.
The captain of the archers shouted for his crew of amateur longbowmen to nock and raise their weapons. The ring of soldiers outside the arena drew closer still. One by one, the archers raised their weapons toward the night sky. The captain held his hand aloft, preparing the signal.
The armies were not quite in range.
A creaking clatter filled the air. followed by a shuddering boom. The army to the south had entered the fringes of the carnival and began toppling caravans to provide shelter for their archers. -Again came the sound, and again, rattling through the stone arena. The first row of I'Morai's archers dropped to their knees behind the toppled wagons. On a silent cue, the drums that surrounded the arena broke into a thunderous roll.
"Damnit," cried the captain of the freak archers, pacing along the wall. Only the first rank of bowmen below were within range, and they already had cover. Fuming, he stepped onto a protuberance of the arena wall and dropped his hand. "Now!"
The twang of bowstrings and whistling whine of shafts overtopped the thunder of I'Morai's drums below. The captain of archers pivoted about on his promontory along the wall. He watched with fearful satisfaction as the arrows and bolts cut like black meteors through the night sky, streaking to the heart of the army below. The shafts descended in a humming mass. Most struck short, clanging on the cobbles or embedding themselves with dull thumps into packed earth. But a few of the rounds swept into the ranks of soldiers. Men cried out in gurgling gasps.
The captain whirled about, triumphant, and called, "Reload!" He watched joyously as the unskilled cross-bowmen set their cranks to work and the ragged bowmen nocked arrows. They rose to shoot again. His amateur archers had gotten the upper hand on I'Morai's elite bowmen.
The captain's smile faded, though, when he saw his own faint shadow, cast long and huge over the stands below.
Turning, he saw flaming arrows streak up from the ground in thick waves, like a thousand fiery falcons rising, soaring, converging on their prey. It was beautiful and horrible. The captain had no time to move, no time to scream. He heard the hiss of extinguished fire as a hot shaft sank into his throat. Off-balance, he lurched backward and fell soundlessly from the wall, crashing to the stone benches below.
