King Kobold revived-Warlock-2.5 (8 page)

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on to glory and an early funeral. Which was his own business—but Rod’s business was making sure Toby’d still be alive afterwards for his main assignment. Which would be more than dangerous enough. The young man stepped back, smoldering.

Rod turned back to the beach just as the beastmen saw Styenkov’s soldiers. Whatever they yelled to each other was lost in a rumble of thunder, but they quickly scuttled into place, pulling themselves into a rough semblance of a line. Then they began to move forward slowly. One or two of Styenkov’s soldiers began to march toward the beastmen. He shouted them back into line. Good man. The rest of his men brandished their pikes, waiting for the enemy. The beastmen were halfway up the beach now. Rod could hear a low rumble as they called to one another. They were beginning to realize something was wrong; their tone was one of alarm, and their advance was grinding down to a halt. What was tipping Rod’s hand? He darted a glance at Styenkov’s soldiers, then looked again. Here and there, a man had straightened up a little, pike drooping—and stood frozen at a completely improbable angle. Rod realized they were the ones who had forgotten the standing order and had looked the enemy square in the eye. Now they were temporary statues, frozen by the Evil Eye.

So it really worked! It wasn’t imagination!

But the rest of Styenkov’s men were watching the enemy’s hands, or feet—and were still very much a menace. The beast-men slowed and stopped—apparently they didn’t have too much taste for an even fight. They hunched in on themselves, heads hunkered down; they seemed to be waiting. For what?

The beastmen began to make bellowing noises in deep rumbling bass voices. Rod suddenly realized that they were calling out in unison. He strained, trying to pick intelligible phonemes out of booming voices. It was getting easier, because they were getting their timing better; it was almost one unified shout now. Rod listened, then shook his head; there was no way of saying what it meant in their own language. To him, though, it sounded like:

“Cobalt! Cobalt! Cobalt!”

… Which was ridiculous; at their level of technology, they couldn’t even have the concept of bombs, let alone atomic fission.

Thunder rocked the land, and the beach lit up with an explosion of lightning. Then there was only gloom again, darker for having had the sudden light. Rod peered through the murk—and stared. Sir Styenkov’s men stood frozen in their buskins!

A ragged cheer rumbled up from the beastmen, and they waddled forward, making a grating sound. With a shock, Rod realized they were laughing.

But they were moving so slowly! Why? Didn’t they want to reach their in-tended victims?

Then Sir Styenkov’s whole line lurched forward. Then they lurched again, and again—and, step-stumbling-step, they marched toward their butchers!

Something bumped into Rod’s shoulder. He whirled—just in time to catch Toby. The young warlock’s body was rigid, and his eyes had lost focus. Had he been tuned in on a soldier’s mind when the Evil Eye
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froze him?

Then Rod saw one of Styenkov’s soldiers slow and stop. His head lifted slowly; then he shivered, looked about him wildly, realized what had happened, set his pike on an enemy, and started marching again with grim purpose. Further down the line, another soldier began to waken, too. Rod stared down at Toby. The young idiot had found a way to get into the fight after all!

Thunder broke over them, and lightning stabbed the land again. The soldiers froze solid again, and Toby’s whole body whiplashed in a single massive convulsion; then he went limp, eyes closed.

Rod stared, appalled. Then he touched the carotid artery in the boy’s throat and felt the pulse. Reassured, he lowered the young warlock. “Fess!”

“Here, Rod.” The great black horse loomed up out of the darkness.

“Just stand over him and protect him.”

“But, Rod…”

“No ‘buts’!” Rod turned, sprinting away toward the battle-line, whipping out his sword. “Flying Legion!

Charge!”

Fess sighed, and stepped carefully over Toby’s still form, so that the young warlock lay directly beneath his black steel body.

Rod caught up with Styenkov’s line just as they began stumbling toward the beastmen again. He looked from one to another frantically; their eyes were glazed, unseeing. The beastmen began to waddle forward again, making the chugging, grating noise that passed for laughter with them. Rod whirled about, staring at them, just as they broke into a lumbering run. Rod glanced back at the stumbling soldiers, then ahead; the enemy were only huge, hulking shadows against the gray of stormclouds, great shadows looming closer.

Lightning flashed, and the beastmen roared a cheer. And Rod froze solid, but only with shock—because, for the first time, he had a really good look at a beastman. And he recognized it.

Neanderthal.

There was no mistaking the sloping forehead, the brow ridges, the chinless jaw, the lump at the base of the skull… He had an overwhelming desire to look one in the mouth and check its dentition. Then a chill hand clutched his belly. What could Neanderthals be doing on Gramarye?

Attacking, obviously. He noticed two war clubs swinging up, then starting to swing down toward him. He leaped aside just as the first whistled past him, then threw himself into a lunge, sword arrowing toward the other clubman. Its round shield swung up; the beastman caught Rod’s point neatly. For a
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moment, Rod stared directly into the little piggy eyes over the top of the shield—little piggy eyes that seemed to grow, and glow, with a bright, flaming bead at their centers that probed into his brain, leaving a trail of cold fire that didn’t burn, but froze. It fascinated; it held all his attention, numbing his brain, stopping all thought. Dimly, off to the side, he noticed the huge war club swinging up for another blow; but that didn’t matter. All that really mattered was that bright, burning bead at the center of the eyes…

A furious scream rang in his ears, blotting out the sounds of battle, a scream such as a Valkyrie might make if she were actually allowed to attack; and a sud-den warmth seemed to wrap around his mind, pushing away the bright, burning bead, away and away until it was only a pair of eyes again… the eyes of a war-rior beastman whose huge war club was windmilling down to crush Rod’s head. He leaped back, yanking his sword free from the shield, and the club whis-tled past harmlessly. Behind the round shield, the beastman snarled and swung his club up again. Rod advanced and feinted high, at the face. The shield snapped up to cover, and Rod riposted and slashed downward. The sword-tip whipped across the creature’s thighs, tracing a line of bright red. It shrieked, clutching at its legs, and collapsed rolling on the ground. Rod didn’t stay to watch; he turned to glance at the battle-line—and saw a war ax swinging straight at his sinuses, with a broad gloating grin behind it (yes, the dentition was right). Rod leaped to the side and chopped down, lopping off the ax-head. High above him, the Valkyrie screamed again—now he recognized it; he’d heard it just last week, when Gwen had caught Magnus teleporting the cookie jar over to the playpen. Confound it, didn’t the woman know he couldn’t fight as well if he was worrying about her safety?

On the other hand, she was staying far above the battle—not really in any immediate danger, especially since the beast-men were limited to clubs and axes; not an arrow among the lot of ‘em. He swung about, chopping at another Nean-derthal. Snarling, four of them turned on him. Beyond them, he saw with shock, half the soldiers lay dead on the beach, their blood pouring into the sand. Fury boiled up in him, and he bellowed even as he gave ground, sword whirling furi-ously in feints and thrusts, keeping his attackers back just barely out of club-range. Beyond them, he saw frozen soldiers coming to life again; and a ragged shout of rage went up as they saw their dead companions. The nearest beastman looked back over his shoulder, his swing going wide. Rod thrust in under his shield, and he screamed, doubling over. His companions gave ugly barks, and pressed in. Behind them, two soldiers came running up, blades swinging high. Rod darted back out of the way and braced himself at the sickening thud of steel into meat. Their targets dropped, and the remaining beastman whirled on his two attackers in desperation. Rod shouted “Havoc!” and darted in. Startled, the beastman whirled back to face Rod—and doubled over Rod’s steel. Rod yanked back just before a pike slammed down to end the warrior’s agony. Its owner gave a bloodlust-bellow of victory, and turned back to the battle-line. Rod followed, fighting down sickness. No time for it now; he had to remind the soldiers. “Their eyes! Don’t look at their eyes!”

So, of course, half of the soldiers immediately confronted the enemy stare-to-stare, and froze in their tracks.

The Valkyrie screamed again, and the soldiers jolted awake. Their pikes lifted just in time to block war axes…

And lightning seared, thunder exploding around it.

As the afterimages ebbed, Rod saw the soldiers standing frozen again. High above him, a sudden wail trailed away.

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“Gwen!” Rod bellowed. He stared into the sky, frantically probing the dark-ness—and saw the darker shadow hurtling downward. He spun, scrambling back up the beach, then whipped about, staring up at the swooping silhouette, running backward, tracking it as it grew larger and larger…

Then it cracked into him, rock, bone, and sinew. Pain shot through his head, and the sky filled with stars. A myriad of tiny stabs scored his back and sides, and a chorus of cracking sounds, like a forest falling, filled his ears. His dia-phragm had caved in; he fought for breath in near-panic. Finally air seeped in; he sucked it thankfully, the more so because it was filled with the perfume he’d given Gwen last Christmas. He looked down at the unguided missile that had flattened him, and at a noble bush that had given its life for the cause. He felt gratitude toward the shrub; Gwen was delicate, but she was no lightweight, es-pecially when she was coming down at twenty miles an hour. He struggled upward, lifting his wife clear of the bush and laying her care-fully out just under the next shrub down the line. As far as he could tell, she was perfectly all right; no breaks or wounds. She’d have a hell of a bruise tomorrow, of course… And she was unconscious; but he was pretty sure that had happened before she fell.

Rain suddenly drenched him. He remembered the last lightning-flash, and turned to look down the beach. Through the downpour he could just barely make out frozen forms toppling, and a dozen or so that fought back. Another lightning-flash showed them clearly laying furiously about them with their pikes; and they kept fighting, even as the lightning faded. A few, then, had heeded him and were watching their enemies’ hands and weapons instead of their eyes. Too late to do them much good, though—they were outnumbered three to one.

Rod struggled back to his feet, ungallantly heaving Gwen up over his shoul-der in a fireman’s carry, and stumbled blindly back over the scrubline in a shaky trot. “Fess! Talk me in!”

“Turn toward the sea, Rod,” the robot’s voice murmured through the ear-phone set in Rod’s mastoid process. “Approach fifty feet… turn right now… an-other twenty feet…Stop.”

Rod dug his heels in, just barely managing to counter Gwen’s momentum. He put out a hand and felt the synthetic horsehair in front of him. “Good thing they built your eyes sensitive to infrared,” he growled. He threw Gwen over the saddlebow, then dropped to one knee, reaching un-der the robot horse to lift Toby’s head in the crook of his elbow. He slapped the boy’s cheeks lightly, quickly. “Come on, lad, wake up! You’ve done your bit, contrary to orders; now it’s time to get out of here.”

“What… Where…” Toby’s eyelids fluttered. Then he looked up at Rod, squinting against a painful headache. “Lord Warlock! What…”

“You tried to get into the battle by proxy, and got knocked out in person,” Rod explained. “Gwen tried the same thing and got the same result. Now we’ve got to get out of here, before our few remaining soldiers get wiped out. Come on, lad—up in the air. Let’s go!”

Toby stared up at him painfully. Slowly, he nodded. He squeezed his eyes shut, his face screwing up in concentration; then, suddenly, he was gone. Air boomed in to fill the space where he’d been. Rod leaped up and swung into the saddle, bracing his wife’s still form with one hand as he bellowed,

“Retreat! Retreat!”

The dozen soldiers left standing leaped backward, then began to yield ground a step at a time. The
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beastmen roared and followed, but the Gramarye pikes whirled harder than ever with the power of desperation, keeping the Ne-anderthals at a distance. There were too many beastmen ganging up on each sol-dier, though; given time, they’d wipe out the Gramarye force. Rod didn’t intend to give them that time. “All right, Iron Horse—now!”

Fess reared back, pawing the air with a whinnying scream. The beastmen’s heads snapped up in alarm. Then the great black horse leaped into a gallop, charging down at them. At the last second, he wheeled aside, swerving to run all along their line. The beastmen leaped back in fright, and the soldiers turned and ran. Fess cleared the battle-line; the beastmen saw their fleeing foes, shouted, and lumbered after them. Fess whirled with another scream and raced back along the Neanderthal line. The beastmen shouted and leaped back—except for one who decided to play hero and turned to face the galloping horse, club raised.

Rod hunkered down and muttered, “Just a little off-center—with English.”

Fess slammed into the Neanderthal, and he caromed off the horse’s chest with a howl. He landed twenty feet away, and was silent. His companions stood poised, wavering. On the saddlebow, Gwen stirred, lifting her head with a pained frown. She took one look and grasped the situation.