The Orphan Army (23 page)

Milo screamed.

The Huntsman listened to his scream.

And laughed.

Then he shook Milo until the screams stopped, until Milo was jolted to a teeth-clenching silence. The Huntsman studied him, searching Milo's boy eyes with his own monster eyes. The creature's mandibles clicked and clacked, and its human lips moved as if trying to speak.

It did.

But the words it spoke were badly misshapen by that hideous mouth. They came out broken and wrong, as if this were the first time he'd tried to speak since his transformation.

“How . . . ?” whispered the Huntsman. “How . . . did you . . . do . . . that?”

“I—I d-don't know,” stammered Milo. It was the truth. The entire experience was a million miles beyond anything he could begin to understand. “It . . . just happened.”

Hot drool swung from the Huntsman's lips and splashed onto Milo's face. He winced and gagged, trying to twist away.

“The . . . black jewel,” whispered the Huntsman, and already he was speaking more normally, though his voice was still horrible to hear. “I see it in your mind. The pyramid. You were there. The wolf. The girl. You were there.”

“I . . . I . . .”

The Huntsman touched a small pouch attached to a strap on his harness. The pouch had a bulge about the size of a robin's egg. “This stone. You know what it does, don't you, boy?”

It took a moment for Milo's terrified brain to make sense of the question, but the answer was there. As the Huntsman touched the pouch, his memories flared brighter for Milo to see. There was a fractured image of a broken tower of stones and an armored hand reaching out to tear something small and dark from the center. The thing was round and faceted like a diamond. It glittered as the Huntsman turned it over to examine it. The Huntsman put it into the pouch he now touched. Milo relived that memory as if it were his own.

A black jewel taken from the shrine.

The Heart of Darkness.

That's what this was about.

That's what all of this was about. The Dissosterin had the Heart and they wanted to know what it was. What it did. And because the Huntsman had seen Milo's memories—­­or some of them, at least—he'd seen the boy at the pyramid only yesterday.

“What is it?” demanded the Huntsman in a voice like a graveyard wind. Low and cold. “Tell me what it does and I will kill you quickly. Without pain. Lie to me and you will spend years screaming.”

Be strong
, cried the witch.
Be the hero and not the dreamer.

He tried to tell her that he was just a boy. No hero. No dreamer. Just a boy who should never have been a part of this. A boy who had no idea at all what the Heart of Darkness actually was. How could she not know that?

It did not even occur to him that she was only the product of his dreams, that she was not real at all.

“Tell me!” The Huntsman shook him like a rag doll.

I beg you, child of the sun
, the witch pleaded.
The world begs you. Speak and the Swarm will conquer all of space, all of time, and all the worlds between. Universes will fall.

Universes. Not universe.

Milo had read about that. About how there might be an infinite number of universes instead of the one he knew. About how there could be worlds where anything was possible. Worlds in which even magic was real.

Worlds that, at the moment, were closed to the unending appetites of the Swarm.

“Tell me, boy,” growled the Huntsman. “Tell me, or I will tear the life from you.”

If Milo knew, he might have told this creature everything. Anything. He was that terrified. He was eleven. Small, skinny, not any kind of hero. And this thing was the most awful monster Milo could even imagine. How could he not tell him whatever he wanted to know?

“I don't—”

That was as far as he got.

Because at that moment the sun fell below the far horizon.

And a split second later the wolf attacked.

T
here was no howl, no snarl of warning as the wolf hit the Huntsman. Milo saw white teeth in a red mouth, and then the impact knocked him flying. He hit hard and rolled into a painful sprawl. Three yards away, the Huntsman staggered sideways, bellowing out a cry of pain.

For a moment Milo could not understand what was happening because he could still feel the monster's fist clutching his shirt, but the monster was now six feet away. Then he looked down and saw the fist and two inches of wrist and then . . . nothing.

With a cry of disgust, Milo slapped the severed hand from his clothes and scuttled backward from it. The hand fell to the ground, and the fingers slowly opened like the legs of a dying tarantula.

The Huntsman stayed on his feet even though blood—mingled streams of red and green—shot from the stump of its wrist. He clamped his other human hand to the wound to stanch the flow of blood.

The wolf landed and turned, crouching low as it wrinkled its muzzle at the monster. Milo was amazed to see that the animal was no longer injured. The terrible wounds it had sustained in the fight with the Stinger were gone as if they'd never existed. If it hadn't been for those luminous eyes, Milo might have thought this was a different wolf.

It wasn't, and he knew it as sure as he knew anything.

The Huntsman bellowed out a call, and immediately the sound of approaching Stingers tore through the air. Milo got to his knees and cast wildly about to see from which direction the scorpion dogs were coming. Their hunting calls seemed to come from everywhere.

The Huntsman stood wide-legged, chest heaving, pain etching deep lines in his hideous face. He released his maimed arm, drew a pulse pistol from his belt, ignited the glowing blue blaster lens, and then jammed it against the stump of his wrist. He threw back his head and howled out his anguish. But his hand was steady as he held the lens there to cauterize the wound. The stink of burning flesh filled the air.

“Stop gawking and get up off the ground,” someone said from behind him.

Milo twisted around, startled to hear this voice so close to him.

Standing where the wolf had stood was a slender figure who casually wiped red and green blood from her lips.

Milo mouthed her name. “Evangelyne.”

She frowned. “How do you know my name, boy?”

There was no time to answer that question. The Stingers were getting close.

“I will hang your skulls on my belt,” hissed the Huntsman through his pain. He shoved the gun into its holster and reached for a coiled whip that hung at his side. He shook it out with a snap of his wrist. Milo saw that its entire length was set with gleaming metal hooks, and the tip was a Stinger's barb sheathed in steel. Another flick and the whip cracked like a gunshot in the air between Milo and Evangelyne.

Evangelyne, despite overwhelming odds, smiled. She had a pretty face, but it was not a pretty smile. Her teeth were very white, and Milo thought they looked very sharp. She dabbed at the blood on her chin, tasted it with the tip of her tongue, and spat it at the Huntsman. Then she straightened, trying very much to look like an adult—tall and imperious and confident.

“You taste like a stinkbug,” she sneered.

Despite his agony, the Huntsman smiled back.

Milo didn't think anything good was going to come from all those smiles.

“My pack will tear you to pieces and gnaw on your bones. I will . . .” His voice trailed off because the forest around them suddenly seemed to twist and change as if the trees themselves were coming to life. The Huntsman stiffened and looked around. The Stingers all turned and sniffed the air, clearly disturbed by whatever was in the trees.

Something was coming. Even Milo, having only ordinary human senses, could feel it.

One of the Stingers whined nervously.

Evangelyne edged toward Milo.

“Get ready to run,” she murmured to him.

He wanted to say something. To make a joke about how he was born ready to run. Or something snappy. But his brain and his tongue were in separate gears, and neither was the right gear. He said something like, “Um . . . oh . . . yeah.”

It was the best he could manage.

The Huntsman laughed. It was a small thing. A faint chuckle, but it was enough to show his utter contempt for whatever was about to happen.

“You've actually set a trap, haven't you?” He shook his head. “That's almost charming.”

“See how charming it is when your bones lay bleaching in the s-sun.”

She stuttered on the last word.

The Huntsman yawned. “You can't even make a threat without your voice shaking. So sad.”

Evangelyne hunched forward, eyes filled with hatred. “This is our world.”

The things in the shadows growled.

They all looked toward the woods for a moment; then the Huntsman smiled in a mockery of humanity. His steel teeth dripped with saliva, which ran down over his chin. He held out the severed stump of his arm and showed her the burned flesh. The way he did it was like a threat. Or a promise. His mouth pincers snapped and clacked in what Milo could only interpret as some kind of laugh.

“I've already taken your heart, girl,” he told her. “Now I'll take your life. No—maybe I'll kill everyone you love and keep you on a leash so you can watch.”

The Huntsman cracked the whip again, and this time the pack of Stingers burst from the woods and rushed in for the kill.

E
vangelyne stood her ground.

As the pack rushed toward her, she raised one small fist in the air.

“Orphans—NOW!”

She slashed downward with her fist as she let out a fierce cry. It did not sound even remotely human. More like the howl of a night-hunting animal.

All around them the forest wall seemed to come alive.

Milo cringed back, terrified at what was happening as bizarre shapes erupted from the shadows.

“Oakenayl—now!” cried Evangelyne. “For all the forests they've burned, rend and tear them!”

As one Stinger raced forward, the leaves and branches of the trees seemed to reach out for it. Branches curled like long fingers around the mutant's forelegs, tripping it. Creeper vines tore loose from tree trunks and whipped around the hind legs. Thick branches came out of the shadows and wrapped around the barrel of the scorpion dog's chest. At first Milo couldn't understand what was happening. Then the truth forced itself through his shock. It was not the forest that attacked the dog. It was a single
thing
whose body was like a tree trunk, and all of the many branches turned and bent like arms; all of the smaller branches and twigs combined to form a dozen clutching hands. Framed by leaves and moss was a face that could have been the carved face of a teenage boy, except this was no piece of art. The face grimaced with effort and anger as it engulfed the struggling Stinger and bore it forcibly to the forest floor.

Milo understood now who—or
what
—had grabbed him yesterday. Not a group of people, but one impossible figure. A boy made from tree. Or one who somehow
was
a tree.

He mouthed the name.

Oakenayl.

The Stinger howled in pain as the forest creature fought to crush the unnatural life from it.

“Halflight—
now!
” cried Evangelyne, and Milo turned to look. “For seas boiled and meadows turned to ash, burn them!”

Something flew past him so close he could feel the cool air of its passage. For a moment he saw nothing more remarkable than a brightly colored hummingbird.

Except that there was something mounted
on
the hummingbird. A tiny figure of silver and gold that rode the bird like a warrior riding to battle on a warhorse. It was a girl no larger than his little finger, with hair that seemed to be composed of a cloud of bright orange fire. She raised her little arms, and suddenly the air exploded with fireworks of every color. Brilliant balls of flame that burst into view with sharp cracks and showered two Stingers with multicolored sparks. The Stingers tried to stop, to twist away, but the sparks fell like rain, and wherever they touched, the creatures' armor began to smoke and sizzle and then burn.