Give the Devil His Due (The Sanheim Chronicles, Book Three) (51 page)

The Horseman wheeled around and sheathed his sword, riding a short distance away from the caorthannach line. At first, Janus thought he was retreating, and even the caorthannach started to turn their attention to Buzz’s line of troops, which were now entangled with the snake-leopard beasts.

They’re
mortlats
, Janus realized suddenly, still unsure how he had this information. He was beginning to think Quinn’s theory of his role was correct. He opened doorways and saw paths. Personally, he would have preferred a different superpower, like laser-beam eyes or the ability to fly, but he supposed he had to work with what he had.

Instead of riding away, however, the Headless Horseman turned back with a flaming pumpkin in his hand. Janus had never seen Quinn in action before, and he was both amazed and a little scared. The Horseman launched pumpkin after pumpkin, firing them as if they were grenades. He was, quite literally, fighting fire with fire. The caorthannach turned almost all their attention back to the Horseman, whose horse weaved through the fire blasts so gracefully it might have been dancing.

The Horseman’s pumpkins started inflicting a heavy toll on the caorthannach. They never touched him, but each pumpkin he lobbed found its exact target. There were hundreds of caorthannach, but the Horseman was keeping nearly all of them busy. Janus watched as he plunged once again into their midst, using his momentum to knock many of them over. Some tried to fire at him from point blank range, but he was too quick, riding through them with speed and force. The problem was sheer numbers. No matter how many pumpkins the Horseman launched, it wasn’t making a significant enough dent to destroy them. As he rode through to the rear troops, Janus could see the front line turn their attention back to Buzz’s soldiers, who had no real defense against the fire bombs they launched. The Horseman began attacking the back of the line, but the caorthannach had gotten wise to his game. He wouldn’t work as a distraction anymore.

Janus watched in horror as the front line launched another assault. But he saw a cannon blast explode in their midst, obliterating the caorthannach that were standing there and sending wood and twigs flying in all directions. Janus looked at the hill to see Buzz’s artillery finally set up, with the cannons belching back their own fire.

The logistics of it all eluded him. How could Quinn produce pumpkin after pumpkin from thin air? Why could Janus only make a flashlight, yet somehow Kate’s army was equipped with artillery and guns? He remembered something Quinn had told him — that in death ghosts often clung to what they knew well in life. It didn’t seem to matter whether it was complicated or not. They may not be ghosts anymore, but they could still conjure up a cannon because it was an extension of who they were.

If that was true, there was one item Janus needed. This mental camera wasn’t cutting it. He closed his eyes, concentrated and felt success immediately. He opened his eyes to find himself holding his own old black camera, just the way he’d left it, complete with scratch marks and scuffs from when he had dropped it.

With a smile on his face, he lifted it up, aimed it at the battlefield and starting taking pictures. The Horseman was now obscured by smoke from the cannon blasts and burning grass where the pumpkins and caorthannach
had started fires.

He zoomed out and turned his attention to another part of the battlefield.

*****

Janus could identify Parker almost immediately. All the spiders seemed alike — they were black, hairy and without many distinctive marks. But Janus could see that Parker had a slightly different coloring to him. When he zoomed in with his camera, snapping away, he noticed that Parker’s legs had patches of bright red.

He smiled in spite of himself. Parker had obviously added the red for impact, effectively serving as epaulettes. The enemy probably wouldn’t notice anything, but Janus realized it helped Parker stand out to his own troops. The coloring was a kind of uniform, making it clear he was their general.

Janus watched the spiders battling small, hairy beasts with pig-like noses and simian features. After focusing on them, the name came to him immediately,
trowes,
a mythical creature from Scotland. They moved on their knuckles, pushing themselves forward. While their bodies were small, their arms and hands were disproportionately huge, possibly as a result of sheer muscle. The creatures didn’t just use their arms for movement, but also as giant clubs. Janus watched one leap across the battlefield and swing a beefy arm against a spider, smashing into its more vulnerable human torso. The blow caught the spider unprepared, landing directly on its back. The spider collapsed and Janus saw its legs shake for a few seconds before going still.

Elsewhere, the spiders were holding their own, shooting webs at the trowes as they came close, making them stumble and fall into the dirt. Janus snapped a photo as a spider practically pounced onto a fallen trowe, jamming a single, black leg through the creature’s head.

The battle formations on both sides had all but vanished, as they fought hand to hand. Janus saw one spider squaring off against a larger trowe, keeping its legs in the air as it shot webs at the trowe. He watched as another trowe moved quickly behind the spider’s position.

“No!” Janus shouted, but the creatures couldn’t hear him. As he watched, the second trowe slammed its arm into the spider. It wasn’t a crippling blow, but it caught the spider off guard, forcing it to turn its attention away from the first attacking trowe. That one then landed a solid blow on the spider’s torso. Janus watched helplessly as the two trowes beat the spider to death.

His eyes were drawn to Parker, who now seemed to be rallying other spiders to him. With a start, Janus realized he was dragging a trowe’s body on the ground. He was pulling it back from the attacking line, making Janus wonder if he was retreating.

“What the hell are you up to, mate?” Janus muttered to himself.

Parker was shouting at another spider, and then he started doing something odd. He poised himself on top of the dead trowe and started to wrap webbing around it. It was slow at first, but then it picked up speed. In less than 30 seconds, Parker had wrapped the trowe into a tight web.

“Please don’t eat it,” Janus said out loud. “That would be so gross.”

Instead, Parker tossed the cocooned trowe body to one of his companions, who flung a web at it like a string and swung it around and around in the air. Janus didn’t see the point until the spider released the web, catapulting the cocoon directly into a row of attacking trowe, knocking them over.

It was the best bowling shot Janus had ever seen.

“Strike!” Janus yelled in triumph.

The other spiders immediately attacked the fallen trowe, stabbing many of them before they had a chance to get up. Janus watched Parker start his bowling maneuver again, dragging a trowe body back and beginning to wrap it in a web.

He didn’t have time to see what happened next, however, as he heard a shrill scream from another part of the battlefield. Janus turned just in time to see Kate almost overwhelmed by mortlats.

*****

There were easily four dozen mortlats closing in around Kate, but the banshee’s scream stopped many in their tracks and forced others to stagger away. The ones it stopped fell to the ground, their snake-like heads writhing in obvious pain.

But as the banshee stood like a screaming statue in white, several mortlats tried to approach her from the sides and rear.

Watch your flank
,
they’re regrouping,
Janus thought at her, wondering if she could hear him.

Whether she heard him or not, she stopped screaming just as the first mortlats pounced at her from the side. She suddenly turned transparent for a moment, as two mortlats jumped at her from either side, intending to tear into her. Instead, one sailed right through her now incorporeal body and slammed into the other. In less than a second, the banshee appeared solid again, and she swung her sword into the two attacking mortlats, neatly cutting off one’s snake head from its leopard body.

The mortlats in front of Kate had recovered from the scream and were coming at her again.

“Ready, aim.”

Janus heard a voice shouting and turned to see Buzz standing by a line of Civil War soldiers with their guns raised to their shoulders.

“Fire!” Buzz shouted.

All in one moment, the banshee again turned incorporeal, while the line of soldiers fired at the mortlats pounding toward her. The volley passed right through Kate, but connected with the mortlats, bringing down several and slowing others. It didn’t stop all of them, however, and the remaining mortlats charged past Kate, nearing the Civil War line.

“Fix bayonets,” Buzz yelled just before they crashed into them.

Janus watched as one mortlat leapt into the air and landed in the middle of a group of soldiers. The thing hissed at a soldier and then struck like a cobra, tearing a chunk of his neck. In a movement so quick Janus could barely see it, it reared back its head and decapitated another soldier. That was as far as the creature got, however. A soldier behind the mortlat jammed his bayonet into its side before it could leap away, and another stabbed it in the back. The mortlat tried to strike back at its attackers, but shuddered and fell to the ground.

Janus could see fierce fighting all down the Civil War line, the mortlats pouncing and running between soldiers.

“Fire at will,” he heard Buzz shout and there were scattered gun shots. Janus watched as some mortlats were hit and others leapt over their comrades to tear into the soldiers.

Janus lowered his camera and looked up and down the line of soldiers.

There aren’t enough,
he thought.

When the army had been marching, there seemed like so many. Now, committed on the field, their numbers felt far fewer. Maybe he had miscounted earlier, or perhaps it was just in comparison to the enemy’s forces. Janus looked out over the field with fighting trowes, soldiers, spiders and caorthannach. Despite the vast numbers already entangled with each other, he could see more lines of enemy soldiers moving up.

Oh shit,
he thought.

A mass of new shapes were moving toward Buzz’s men. They ran forward on legs that looked like the hooves of a goat, but with a man’s body. Horns sprouted from their heads, curled forward and their faces were a mixture of human and beast. They carried short swords in their hairy arms.
Dusios
, Janus thought, though he knew these creatures had many names. The Romans had called them fauns. They came running at a sprint from the far hill, and Buzz and Kate appeared totally unaware of their existence. At their current speed, they would slam into the main line within a minute or two. Between the mortlats and the dusios, Janus didn’t think his side stood a chance.

You’ve got a new brigade heading your way,
Janus thought at Kate.
At about your 3 o’clock.

On the field, he watched as Kate gutted another mortlat and then whipped her head around to look in the direction Janus had noted. Apparently she could hear him after all. Janus heard her command even though it wasn’t meant for him.

Elyssa, now!
Kate thought.

Janus heard a series of howls and a new creature practically ran him over as it burst past him and over the hill. It was large and black, almost the size of a bear, but it ran like a large cat. As it passed by, Janus got a glimpse of yellow eyes and rows of sharp, fanged teeth. He realized the animal that had run past him was Elyssa herself, in the form of a dobhar-chu.

A huge pack of more dobhar-chus came right behind her, and Janus wondered where they’d come from. He didn’t think Elyssa had been given any soldiers. But the dobhar-chus behind Elyssa looked subtly different from her. While she was a mass of black fur, the others were white and made of… mist? Janus couldn’t describe it. Instead of actual dobhar-chus, they looked like ghosts of the legendary creatures.

They’re wraiths,
Janus realized.

Quinn had mentioned that Kate had run into some and that they had even come through the portal with her. But Janus hadn’t seen any before now. There were scores of them, he realized, counting at least one hundred, then two hundred before stopping. He wasn’t sure where they’d been hidden, but they seemed to catch the enemy off guard as well. Elyssa’s pack plowed into the line of dusios without slowing down. Instead of racing toward the soldiers, the dusios were now struggling to survive against a new horde of beasts.

Elyssa grabbed one dusio with her teeth, tearing it to shreds in a spray of blood and then tossing it back into a row of its companions. Her pack began to follow suit, ripping through the dusios as if they were made of tissue paper. Janus noticed something else about Elyssa. In addition to attacking, she periodically seemed to be herding her own pack back into the fray just as they seemed to go off track.

She’s keeping them in line,
Janus realized. Elyssa would howl and the pack would move in a new direction. He even watched as she nipped at a few who appeared to have trouble staying with the group.

The dusios began to recover their composure even in the grip of panic. He watched as a few began to battle back using their horns and swords. Still, the ferocity of Elyssa’s initial push had already done tremendous damage. There must have been five times as many dusios and yet they seemed barely able to keep up with the pack of dobhar-chus.