The circle was shrinking fast. At their backs were the trees at the centre of the campsite, their branches full of children and women, though some of the women had taken up weapons and were fighting alongside the men. Michael saw one woman dragged into the black throng of the enemy and then carried off screaming by a dozen of them. Her mate lurched after her, but his mad thrust only put him in the middle of his foes and they slashed at him until he collapsed.
We'll die here, Michael remembered thinking with perfect clarity. He was fighting at Cat's side now, and his body was looking after itself. He was filled with a sense of exaltation as he spun and swung and stabbed and kicked out. Perhaps it was the unreal, nightmarish quality of it, but he felt that were he to die here he would wake up in bed at home to an autumn morning.
Tired, though. He was tiring quickly, blocking more attacks than he launched, lunging less violently so the creatures before him were able to evade his thrusts. One set of claws fastened on his arm and tugged him forward to where the ravening maws waited. He stumbled, punched, cutting his knuckles on a set of teeth, and fell on his knees in the scrum, unable to swing the sword properly. A bone knife was pushed with incredible force into the top of his thigh and he shrieked with pain and anger, toppled helplessly and felt the black bodies close over him.
But then Cat and Ringbone were there battering the enemy aside, clearing a way to him. He was dragged backwards, one fist closed about the bone that protruded obscenely from his thigh, the other hanging grimly on to his sword hilt.
Clear. He screamed again as he yanked out the bone sliver and a jet of blood followed. For a moment he felt faint, and the night swam in his eyes. Ringbone and Cat had already returned to the fray.
Children were wailing above his head and looking up he saw that the goblins were in the lower branches of the trees. The circle had broken. The horses were neighing in terror and Fancy reared madly with a black form clinging to her neck. The defenders were no longer a line, but straggling knots of people surrounded by a swarming sea of bestial monsters. A child was thrown from its perch and swallowed up by the teeming crowd. A warrior beat at the jaws which had fastened about his wrist. A man dragged his unconscious friend away with a goblin clinging to his shoulders.
That's it, Michael thought. It's over.
A massive roar rose over the noise of battle above the screaming and the striving, and a hulking shape loomed to the rear of the goblins with two lights blazing in its head and two long arms sweeping terrible destruction on every side. It plucked two goblins from their feet and swung them like clubs, breaking the attacking mass to pieces and picking up two more when the first pair fell apart. The enemy recoiled in confusion, and Michael heard some of them cry out in fear.
Above, along the branches and trunks of the trees, a green light shimmered like arcane electricity, and the goblins that were grappling with the children there shrieked as they felt its touch. They smoked and burnt, fell to the ground in flames and bounded off trailing fire towards their fellows. When the flame, still burning and filling the air with the stench of charred flesh, hit the rest of the goblins it leapt from one to the other as though alive. The wood was lit up by the hellish light of the creatures cavorting and screeching in molten agony, though the fire did not seem to harm the trees.
The attack was melting away. Scores of the monsters were afire and many were streaming away like demented fireflies into the forest. The huge, hirsute shape that had wreaked such havoc upon them was clearly visible now. The face was brutal but merry, the eyes green glints under an overhanging crag of a brow and the lower jaw outthrust to accommodate the laughing tusks.
'Dwarmo!' Cat shouted joyously. A twig smote Michael on the head and he looked up to find Mirkady peering down at him from the branches of the tree.
'Told you I'd keep an eye on you,' he cackled. The bark around him flickered harmlessly with green flames.
'Yeah, right,' Michael muttered. The world was a swimming dance in his eyes, shot through with the retreating light of the flaming goblins. Their screams were dwindling, fading into the forest. Dark shapes moved about, and he was conscious of Cat talking at a great rate, reassuring what was left of the warriors. 'Cymbr,' she was repeating: 'Friend.' And Dwarmo was still grinning all over his great troll's face. But the women were weeping and the air stank of blood and burning. It swooped in on Michael like a cloud, and he sailed away into the core of its darkness.
FIFTEEN
HOT, CLOUDLESS, THE sky lowered smog-grey on the topmost floors of the highest buildings, buoyed up by the traffic roar and battened down by the crushing sunlight. He swallowed carbon with every breath, was bumped and jostled like a pinball in his progress up the street. Big steps, little steps, never one long, uninterrupted stride. Big steps, little steps, the pavement awash with litter and blaring reflected heat up into his face.