Shadow Spell (26 page)

Stanley seethed with fury. He had lost most of his first line, though it could have been far worse.

Jibbit clung on to Stanley's helmet as the CO charged
to the left, spotting a narrow wall between two pits where he could cross. As he went by, he looked down. Most of the victims were dead, thanks to the spikes at the bottom. Those that weren't soon would be. Hopefully for them.

Dunvice howled a war cry, rallying the tiger-men to her. She led the way, charging over the last stretch of ground towards the clover fields on the edge of Hilfian where the townsfolk had stopped running and regrouped. Where they stood now, their weapons ready, watching a tide of death pour towards them.

Watching the tide of death pour down the hill, Taggit, leading the townsfolk army, tried not to let fear take hold. He knew about Strood's army of tiger-like warriors from Skerridge, and had even passed it at a distance on his way to Hilfian, but knowing about it in his head, and seeing it hurtling towards him in all its golden-coated, deadly-eyed glory were two very different things.

Worse, he could feel the townsfolk around him beginning to doubt their ability to stand against a force this great. He didn't want them to lose courage, they would need every ounce if they had any hope of surviving.

‘Hold yer ground,' yelled Taggit, determined to ignore the growing panic pressing in around him as the townsfolk stared into the savage teeth of the approaching enemy. ‘Let them come to us …'

As if anybody was likely to charge!

There was movement at the rear and the wedge of townsfolk opened, heads turning as someone strode through them towards the front line.

‘Jonas?'

The boy just kept on walking. It had to be Jonas, it looked like Jonas, and yet … He seemed taller, older and stronger and even his old black coat had taken on the look of dark iron. You could almost hear it clank like armour. And no Quick ever burned with power like that. It came off him in a wave of light that swept over the band of Quick.

‘Galig's teeth!' muttered Taggit, standing aside. ‘What's come over ‘im?'

Jonas raised his arms, both hands folded around a great sword rimmed with white fire. Behind him, the townsfolk raised their own weapons. The light broke into glimmers that settled over the villagers, sinking into them. Changing them. Suddenly, the Quick looked less like Quick and more like Grimm. The Grimm looked … terrifying. Galig had brought the spirit of his army with him and that spirit was giving them strength.

Taggit felt exhilaration sweep through him. This was real magic. Sorcerer magic, forged in the old world of Celidon where Fabulous walked the Land and the sorcerers were the greatest of the Fabulous. And it was on their side.

Jonas didn't stop, he just kept on going, holding the sword aloft as his pace increased until he was running, charging to meet Strood's army as it hurtled towards
them across the grass.

A massive roar rose from the throats of the townsfolk as they fell in behind the shade of Galig, stampeding towards the enemy.

Although Jonas had no control over anything his body did, he could see the misty shades of the past warriors as they settled over the townsfolk, giving them strength and skill beyond anything they had prayed for. And more. As his vision adjusted and he saw more clearly through Galig's eyes, it was soon the townsfolk who were shadows.

He could see now how Galig's army must have looked in the past, when his warriors were alive and at their peak, and stared in astonishment at row upon row of long-dead Fabulous he would never see in real life.

There were ranked hordes of roaring, chain-mail-clad goblins and werewolves that streamed over the ground in a flood of shadow. There were steel-clad sorcerers, and elves too, tall and willowy with shining skins. There were things that Jonas could not name but that made him shudder, things with beaks and talons and eyes like night, and things that ran in a spiderish way that made him want to look elsewhere fast.

Jonas thought that, if Galig was using him as a bridge to channel all this Fabulous strength into the present, it was going to be a very short battle.

Until he saw the opposition.

Strood's goblins loomed from the charging horde like solid, spiked-ball-on-a-chain-waving, metal mountains. His armoured Grimm bristled with gleaming weapons. But it was the tiger-men that made Jonas's heart clench with fear. Their gold and dark mass covered every inch of ground, they were so many. The flood was so vast that even though the front of the army was almost at the foot of the hill, there were others still cresting the rise, pouring over it with no end in sight.

The horde was close enough now for him to see the bared needle teeth and unsheathed claws. In that last second before the two armies met and clashed together, the heat of breath and burning energy from the tiger-men hit Jonas like a wave. All he could see was their purple eyes, on fire with excitement at the thought of killing.

As strong as Galig's Fabulous army had been in the past, it was still only a ghost army in the present, fighting through the bodies of living Quick and Grimm. Jonas could only hope that it brought enough of its old glory with it to help them survive.

The tiger-men sprang with easy grace, their muscles like steel under the silken coats, their fangs bared in a roaring scream of eagerness for the fight. Then, as the armies finally came together, everything became a blur of action around him, full of savage tiger faces and glinting metal, the sound of shouts and snarls and clashing steel. He saw Taggit whirling a great axe, his skin shining with sweat as he faced a goblin as massive as
himself; and Jik battling with another, a female. Jik was doing a good job of keeping his enemy confused, jumping over her and diving into the earth, then springing out like a leaping fish right under her nose. She had already wounded herself badly by getting tangled up in her own spiked ball-and-chain.

In the background was a medley of battle-stained Quick and Grimm, their faces strained, but their eyes alight with the power that Galig had given them. And everywhere was the rippled flood of the tiger-men, drenched in blood and pouring against Jonas in waves, all claws and fangs and savage eyes. In Jonas, Galig sliced through them as if they were made of mist, the white-hot sword in his hands weaving a pattern of light against the darkness of pressing bodies and shedding drops of fire that cut like knives. The noise of screaming, of metal on metal and metal on flesh, and the heat, and the stink of burning and of blood like hot iron was overpowering.

And then, Galig stumbled on a rock and fell to one knee. The rock uncurled and looked at him.

‘Is magic,' it mumbled nervously, glancing at the sword, then rolled aside, tucking its head back under its paws.

Galig bent, caught it up and threw it to a batteredlooking Floyd who had just lost his weapon.

‘Here friend, use that,' cried Galig above the screaming and howling. ‘It might as well be good for something.'

And then, suddenly, a huge shape loomed, so close it
seemed to fall on him, its bulbous face seamed on one side by a network of burns from the fire shed by Galig's sword, its mouth open in a snarl of yellow teeth and its eyes hot with rage. Jonas heard the whistle as Hathor, Strood's giant-Grimm, whirled a spiked ball at his head about to take him down. In that moment Jonas saw the weapon hurtling through the air towards him, dark iron slick with blood and traces of hair, but it was coming too fast for him to leap aside or parry the blow. A splitsecond before it cracked his skull, something shot out of the ground, something that looked like the Land come alive, made of earth and glinting with crystal.

‘Jik!' he shouted as the mudman smashed into the giant-Grimm's face and sent it reeling, dragging the spiked ball with it. Taggit leapt in, with Floyd at his side, and all their shapes were lost in the struggling crowd, leaving Jonas shocked at how near his body had come to death. Galig might be the shade of a sorcerer-king with a magic sword, but he was fighting in a Quick's body.

They fought on, and soon Jonas began to lose track of everything but the sword he was holding and the relentless onslaught of the enemy. As Galig's Fabulous spirit and magic sword cut through the tiger-men in droves, Jonas felt every blow and injury, until it was all one long blur of shape and sound and colour and pain.

At last, on the horizon behind the town of Hilfian, the sky turned to liquid gold as the sun began to drown in a sea of its own light, and Jonas felt the wrench as Galig stepped away.

The sword became too heavy to hold up any more and he staggered, going on to one knee. Looking up, he saw the shade of the Sorcerer-King standing over him. The white-hot light was fading and the shape of Galig was just a silver outline on the air.

Jonas glanced around. The battle was still going strong and he felt cold fear as he realised it was far from done. Half the townsfolk Quick were dead, and many of the Grimm too. The Fabulous werecat was gone and only one of the goblins remained besides Taggit. Strood had lost many of his Grimm guards, and both Fabulous goblins. As he scanned the field, Jonas could see the half-werewolf Dunvice taking on a group of townsfolk, and the two goblin-Grimm, Stanley and Floyd, silently fighting each other. But the worst thing was the tiger-men. With Galig's help they had killed so many, the creatures were piled high, but every townsfolk left alive was matched by at least two tiger-men. And they were tireless, still seething with the desire to kill, whereas the townsfolk were exhausted.

And now they were losing Galig's power too. Jonas could see it, sparking out over the battlefield in flashes of dying light.

‘I wish I could stay,' breathed Galig, his eyes dark holes in the silver shape, ‘but my part is over and I thank you for it. It felt good to be alive again for one last hour.'

‘And I thank you,' gasped Jonas. ‘Without you we would have died for sure. There were so many!'

Galig's last trace was fading now, nothing left but the
eyes and the voice.

‘Great Merlin be with you,' he said, and then the light went out, the shade of Galig was gone and the sword was just a useless lump of metal.

As the sun disappeared into a pool of molten gold and the sky overhead became a translu cent turquoise that would quickly deepen into night-time blues, a bogeyman lay on his back on the hillside, still and silent in the gathering dark. He was battered and bloody and wearing the ruin of a fancy waistcoat. Next to him a pile of burned bones glowed red hot on the scorched and seared earth. The smell of smoke and cooked werewolf was dreadful.

Skerridge coughed. He opened one eye. The other was a bit of a problem as his face seemed to have swollen up, what with all the bruises from the time Greyghast had battered him against a tree until it splintered down to a stump. Skerridge peered blearily at the broken and smoking remains of the stump and then at the broken and smoking remains of the werewolf.

‘'Ow d'ya like
that
, stinky breff,' he muttered.

It had taken a long afternoon of playing chase-and-fight round and round the hill, but finally Skerridge had got a lucky break and had managed to deep-fry the werewolf.
Now the question was, what was happening in the valley below? Had the townsfolk been over-run by mad tiger-men or was Ninevah Redstone's luck holding out?

Skerridge lay where he was, in a heap in the middle of the hillside, staring at the sun as it sank beneath the edge of the world. He should go and find out the answers, but he was exhausted and every bone in his body hurt. Superspeed was beyond him right now, he didn't have the energy, but he thought if he lay still and had a rest for five minutes he might be up to at least a fairly quick shuffle.

The first minute had just begun when he saw the tombfolk.

They came striding over the hill looking like death incarnate, white as bone and dressed in rags of skin and hair. Fortunately for Skerridge they were too far away to see him and walked on past. Moments later his sensitive bogeyman ears heard Taggit shouting the retreat. Someone must have spotted the tombfolk heading towards Hilfian.