THE STUFF OF LEGENDS
by Jody Lynn Nye
". . . Then Verrol and Liaya challenged the Dark Queen herself," old Mikal said, drawing light from the hearthfire into pictures to illustrate his tale. Minute figures in jewel colors sprang into being, moving and reacting as if they were true beings. "Armed with the sacred Spear they could not fail, but they were sore afeared. On the battlefield, Red Nachriia turned her three faces toward them, ail eyes glittering. They moved together. . . ."
Out of the corner of his eye, Duffy noticed something else glittering, something that looked familiar, in the hands of the Wanderer female who'd been sitting beside him when the old mage began his storytelling. He felt the sheath on his belt. His dagger was gone. The wretched creature had stolen it!
"Give that back," Duffy said, standing over the Wanderer with his hands on his hips. The rest of the folks in the tavern stopped to watch. Mikal fell silent.
"I was only just looking at it," the Wanderer said, blinking up at him winsomely. She held out the dragon's-head dagger she had taken off his belt. He hadn't felt a thing, which was part of what was making him furious. Teeth bared, he snatched the dagger back and put it securely into his belt. "Pretty, isn't it? I saw one like it these fifty years back, oh, where was it?"
"We don't like thieves in our town," Perog, the landlord, said, coming up to add his bulk. The child-sized creature nearly disappeared in the shadows cast by the two big men.
"Oh, I didn't steal it. I just picked it up," said the Wanderer, imperturbably. All wanderers were unflappable.
"And I suppose it wouldn't have gone into the pack with this collection of junk?" Perog said, picking up the Wanderer's knapsack and shaking it. It clattered noisily, and the landlord looked inside. "Them's my wife's candlesticks! Put her out, boy," he growled.
"With pleasure," Duffy said. He picked up the offender by the ragged collar at the nape of her neck in one hand and the sack in the other.
"I've done no harm! Put me down!"
Duffy paid no attention to her protests. He'd been interrupted in the middle of hearing his favorite legend—just as they were getting to the battle. The pleasant rapture of imagination was broken, as thoroughly as if he'd had a bucket of water dashed in his face. At the very least, Duffy wanted the source of his discomfiture out and gone. One of the other patrons of the pub opened the door for them, and he carried the kicking Wanderer out into the moonlit night.
"The road's that way," Duffy started to say. "The r—"
He swallowed and tried again.
"The r—"
"That's a dragon, isn't it?" the Wanderer asked brightly, swinging from his right hand. "My, a well-grown specimen it is too. Its tail goes clear around the building and comes back again. I didn't know dragons slept like that, did you? Oof!"
Duffy dropped the gnome-creature on the ground and scrambled back into the pub.
"There's a dragon out there!" he bawled. The pub's twelve patrons crowded around the single small window, and the publican, with the greatest of care and a broomstick, urged the casement open. Moonlight shone into the smoky room.
"There's nothing outside but that dratted Wanderer," Perog said, shaking his head.
"I tell you, I saw it," Duffy said, goggling. "Big, shiny dragon, curled around your pub like a cat on a hearth."
"No more for you tonight," Perog said, grinning and shaking his head. "Go on home, Duffy. Sleep it off."
"I'll start again for you on the evening," Mikal promised, with a wink and a finger laid aside his nose. "See you tomorrow, lad."
The others, relieved to find out the alarm was a false one, called out their good nights and went back to their pints and jokes. Duffy, disgusted, slammed out into the warm night.
"I saw it, I did," he said.
"We saw it," the Wanderer corrected him, falling into step. "And then it was just gone—blink! Like that." She flicked her dainty fingers outward.
"Get lost," Duffy said, opening his stride. The small woman, barely waist high to him, hurried to catch up.
"Can't," she said cheerfully. "I've been about everywhere. This town used to be bigger once. I know it. Back along, oh, thirty years it was. Is this your house? What a fine place!"
Duffy growled a little under his breath. He didn't need the sympathy of gnomelings. He knew what the great house looked like, with the burnt husk of one wing indifferently cleared away, and holes in the wall patched with white plaster because the man who'd made the original blue wash had been killed by the last raid of Voern's Minions passing through here. If he'd been more than a fourteen-year-old stripling back then, he'd have shown those misbegotten, overgrown lizardfolk what he thought of their destroying his home. But, he thought with a sigh, his strength lay in the future, and his family's glory was fast receding into the past. Like everyone else, the gentry needed to work to survive.
A single candle in the upper storey showed his mother must still be awake, then he realized it wasn't even moonset yet. The Dragon's eggs be blessed, but why did a vision of one of Her offspring have to interrupt a nice evening's drinking and tale-swapping? He unlocked the latch with his key, and glanced over his shoulder. The Wanderer hung back on the path, gazing up at him hopefully. He realized she probably had nowhere to go, might even have been thinking of staying at the pub, until she was caught stealing.
"You can sleep in the barn," Duffy said, pointing past the shell of the west wing. "There's straw, and a horse blanket or two. But don't talk my cows' ears off, will you?"
"Not a word," she promised, beaming, clutching her small hands over the strap of her carryall. "Thank you most kindly for your hospitality. Good night. Sleep well—"
Duffy fled inside and shut the door on her chatter.
"There's a lizard outside," Gillea, Duffy's six-year-old sister, said from the doorway. "I went to let out the cows, and it looked at me."
Duffy lifted his head out of the pillow, his eyes only half focusing. The sun was no more than a red streak at the horizon. "Oh, aye?"
"The cows won't go out. And there's a Wanderer in the barn. She's only as little as me, fancy!" The girl's blue eyes were round as eggs.
Duffy sat up, fully awake, the events of the night before registering. "So it's not a dream," he said, pulling on his tunic.
"Your dragon's back," the Wanderer said happily. She sat on a stone in the sun, sorting the contents of her bag. There were bits of colored stone and glass, a short length of bright chain, and a few interesting twists of metal. Duffy heard the distressed mooing and shuffling hoofsteps of his herd inside the barn.
"It's not mine," he said heatedly. "You brought it, didn't you?"
"I?" The Wanderer wasn't interested. "Oh, no. If I had a dragon I'd talk to it myself. It's yours."
"This way. It's back here now." Gillea tugged on Duffy's tunic hem, and guided him around the side of the building.
They peeped around the corner. Beyond should have been the fields, with the hundred or so head of cattle that belonged to the village grazing placidly. Instead, the green was empty, but for one dragon. Not even birds sang in the trees. A few farmers huddled on the common concealed from sight of the thing talking in low voices.
Duffy eyed the great beast. No doubt about it, it was the dragon he'd seen the night before, silvery white and immense. The creature had to be a good fifty feet long. It opened its eyes and looked directly at Duffy. Then it disappeared.
The village elders at once called a meeting to discuss the dragon. By virtue of his family's position, and his late father's office as a knight of the Dallen, Duffy was titular headman of Greenton, but the seniors talked over his head, oblivious of the blow to his seventeen-year-old feelings.
"Just poof, vanished!" Farmer Orack declared, raising his hands to witness the truth of his statement. "But my cows are scared that witless they still won't go out. I'm having to feed them in the very barn!"
"Mine dropped a calf early out of fear," Farmer Eise said. "Praise be to Her on high, and to Mikal's skill," he nodded to the old hedge-magician, "that we could save it."
"What's it doing here?" Miller Varney, the tallest man in the village, asked. He didn't mean the calf.
No one had a clue.
"This daughter of the Silver One has to go," the blacksmith declared, folding his massive arms. Sandor was short and dark, not unlike the dwarfish mountain folk.
"Why? It's giving no offense," Mikal said mildly.
Orack stared at him. "The milk turned—none of my cows escaped it. I've got vats of sour milk—what are you going to do about that?"
"It looked at him," Eise said, pointing at Duffy.
"Then you're responsible for it," Varney said. The elders, as one, turned toward Duffy. The youth stared at them.
"Aye, Duffy," the others agreed.
"What am I supposed to do about a dragon?" he asked, incredulously.
"You're the headman, right?" Orack only remembered that when it was convenient, or when there was an unpleasant job to do, as now. "Kill it?"
"Kill a daughter of the Protector Liaya?" Varney sputtered. "Do you want to bring the wrath of the elder gods down on us? Send it away,"
"Find out what it wants," Mikal suggested.
After an hour's bickering, the group still couldn't come to a consensus on what they wanted done with the dragon, but they all agreed it was Duffy's responsibility to do it. After another hour's persuasion, Duffy agreed to try and find out why there was a silver dragon in Greenton.
The dragon turned up only where and when it had wanted to. Duffy decided that the logical thing to do was start out where it had last been seen. Feeling like a fool, he walked around and around the empty common. Gillea and the Wanderer went out with him.
"Should I call it?" he asked, pausing in mid-stride after pacing out the circumference three times. "What do you do to attract a dragon's attention?"
"Let's sit down," the Wanderer said, grabbing his hand. "Not for me, you understand, I could walk forever, but this lass is about to fall over. She's only about as tall as your legs, and there's two of them."
Gillea was trailing behind them. She wore a game expression, trying to show she was tough enough to keep up, but her strength was flagging. Duffy walked back and scooped her up. "Sorry, gillyflower, I'm not thinking too well."
"I'm all right," Gillea said, but she wound her arms around his neck.
With the Wanderer running alongside chattering soothing talk at the child, he carried her over to a big flat stone on the edge of the field that lay against the boles of a semicircle of oak trees that had grown up around it. It was a favorite place for children to sit on hot days. Gillea pried herself loose and claimed the coolest hollow at the rear of the stone. Duffy sat at the fore with his feet dangling off the edge. The Wanderer sat companionably beside him.
"How do I find out what a dragon wants with us?"
"With you," the Wanderer corrected him. "Why not talk to it?"
"Talk to it? A dragon?"
"I do speak," a voice said behind them. Duffy jumped. A dragon head the size of his whole body poked through the tree trunks. For a moment he couldn't see Gillea.
"Where's my sister?" he demanded.
"Here," said a very small, scared voice. The child scrambled out on hands and knees from under the great neck, and hid her head in Duffy's lap. The great head turned, and one huge, jewel-like eye studied him.
"You have questions, ask." The voice came from within the dragon, not from its mouth and tongue.
"Ask," the Wanderer said, eagerly. "Ask her. Shall I ask her for you? I think I've seen this lady before. Now, when did I see her? Fine and beautiful, but that's all silver dragons. But I'm sure this is the same lady."
"Shush! Uh, honored dragon person. . . ." His voice died in an embarrassing squeak. Duffy's mouth kept moving, but no sound came out.
"I have a name," the dragon interrupted. "Shortened for use by you humans, it is Soraya."
"I'm Fernli," the Wanderer said. "I'm pleased to meet you. Or is it re-encounter? I don't remember if we were introduced, back along."
Duffy realized he hadn't ever thought to ask the Wanderer's name. "What are you doing in our village, er, Soraya?" he asked, pitching his voice over the Wanderer's incessant chatter. "A silver dragon, well, I'd think you'd be in one of the great cities, or out in the mountains of the south. It's small, I mean our town."
The vibrations of the great voice made his chest throb. "I am here to fulfill a pledge made to Sir Karal Zovali. He marched under my banner in the last war. That is his symbol, is it not?" The head tilted toward the silvertopped dagger in Duffy's belt.
"Uh, yes," Duffy said, wiggling his bottom as close to the edge of the rock as he could. If the dragon made a wrong move, he was going to grab Gillea and run for his life. "It belonged to my grandfather, then it passed to my father. One of his companions brought it home to us over a year ago."
The dragon inclined her great head. "Then you are the one I seek. Karal saved my life, and in so doing, lost his. His last wish to me was that I protect his son and see that he receives teaching to become a knight. His efforts were in vain—I perished later on that same day—but I honor his bravery, and my word." Its pupil opened up to consume most of the glittering iris, and Duffy was drawn toward it. He saw a man lying braced in the curve of a huge silver claw, gasping for breath. A great wound split the armor covering his chest. Duffy caught a horrific glance of sundered bone and flesh through the welling blood. He swallowed, and the vision faded. The dragon's eye returned to normal.
"You say you perished later?" Duffy asked, glancing down the great neck. It was sticking through the tree boles, not between them. Through. "That makes you a g—a gh—"
"A ghost?" the Wanderer finished for him, now intent on the shiny scales of the dragon. She appeared to be counting them.
"But a ghost of a servant of Good. A vow of honor supersedes even death. As a knight of the sword your father understood that." The dragon looked into the distance as if seeing visions of the past. "He would have been raised to the Order of the Heart, had he lived. He had similar hopes for you."
Duffy was awed.
"But my father died three years ago. Why are you here now?"
"It was not necessary to protect you before this," the dragon said simply.
"You mean I'm in danger?" Duffy asked.
"Ooh," Gillea said, picking her head up and staring wide-eyed at the dragon. "What's going to happen to Duffy?"
"I am but a dragon, not an oracle," Soraya said, baring her huge, pointed teeth. "It is time for you to become the leader your father knew you could be. You need to muster your village. Time is short."
"Muster? For what?" Varney asked. He grunted as he bent to pick up a sack of grain half his own size,
"An attack!" Duffy said, following the miller up the stone steps to the storeroom. "Soraya didn't say what, but she knows it's coming soon! You can't ignore the warning of a ghost, and a dragon ghost at that, now can you?"
Varney dumped the sack on the floor and blew chaff out of his graying mustache. "I suppose not, but what if she is an illusion sent by the evil ones? What they couldn't do with armies, they'll do by frightening us into tearing our own village apart?" He shook his head heavily. "Save them the effort. No, if there's trouble, we may as well surrender or flee. There's nothing left in this place but children, women, and old men."
"And me," Duffy said, stung. He drew himself up to his full height, which put the top of his head just underneath the miller's white-daubed nose.
"And thee," Varney agreed, kindly. "And a ghost, for all the good that does us. Some are saying it's unlucky that it's come here. Orack thinks it means death for all of us."
"Well, it won't," Duffy said, wishing his voice wouldn't crack when he was under stress. "I swear it, by my father's name."
"Lad, if you don't have more in you than your father's name, all is lost," Varney said. "I'll help. But you'll have more trouble convincing the others."
As Varney had predicted, the men were skeptical of the dragon's warning but promised to cooperate just the same. The Hearthstone Tavern became headquarters for the defense of Greenton. The adults, men and women alike, clustered together to plan for the coming attack. It was difficult to make plans without knowing what for.
Barata, Orack's wife, stood up.
"What are we doing, mustering for war?" she asked. "Old folks and children! If only some of our fighters had survived, if only Sir Karal lived, this exercise would be reasonable. I say to stop the nonsense right now."
"Unless we defend ourselves, we'll have to flee," Duffy said from the foot of the table. "Evil things are marching this way. Soraya wouldn't lie. Silver dragons are the children of the One who protects us."
"Now, don't you quote your lessons at me!" Barata said furiously, leveling a finger at him.
Duffy's mother stood up.
"I offer the shields and spears which hang in my family's hall," she said quietly. "They are old, but there is still some virtue in them."
Duffy was proud of her upright carriage and dignity. He remembered that before their fortunes fell and Sir Karal died, she had been a court lady, trained to the sword and shield.
After such a generous beginning by the highest lady in the town, the others put up their donations.
"Strawing hooks!" "Cooking knives!" "Any of my hammers ye can wield!" "The millstone!"
Miller Varney looked around in satisfaction. "And the rest of you can offer your two good hands," he said. He glanced up at Duffy. "I'll start organizing this lot, with your permission, General, laddie. You take the rest." Gratefully, Duffy nodded.
"The rest" consisted mainly of the village children.
"Since we're without weapons or magic," Duffy said, leading his band of youngsters along the forest path toward the main road, "we have to outthink our attackers."
"When will we learn to fight?" one boy asked loudly, and was hushed by the others.
"Never, I hope," Duffy replied, wondering if blatant honesty helped in being a general. "You're going to set traps and act as spies."
"My mother doesn't want me out in the forest by myself," complained Dirk, the small son of Eise. Some of the others made fun of him, but their eyes were worried, too.
'"We'll work in teams," Duffy said, looking back over his shoulder at all of them. "Everybody will have a partner, and I'll go around between all of you to make sure nothing is going wrong. You're all being very brave. Between us we'll keep the village safe."
Soraya, glimmering like a star, flew through the tree boles across their path, her claws stretched out, and came to a perfect landing before Duffy.
"Time is short!" she cried, her great voice booming. "Ogres! Ogres from Voern's Minions are coming. The foe is within hours' march of here!"
Some of the children screamed. Orack's daughter snatched up her younger brother and sister and fled back toward the village. Her threshing footsteps resounded in the quiet forest, scaring small animals and birds into flight. The rest of the children remained, huddled together, staring at Soraya.
"Ogres," Duffy said, his eyes wide as saucers. "Then we're lost. We'll have to get everyone together and hide them in the caves along the rivercourse."
"No, we will fight them," Soraya said. Her eyes gleamed with a formidable inner fire that surprised Duffy into taking a step backward.
"How?" he asked helplessly.
The light in Soraya's eyes flared. "First, you must set your traps. Then we must make plans."
With difficulty, Duffy persuaded his small force to continue with their tasks. With coils of rope and sinew, they set snares at intervals where a foot might fall. Thanking the gods for the copious rain that Greenton had had recently, Duffy helped a group of boys deepen pits in the roadway and plant sharpened spikes in each. Carefully, an elder girl in hide gloves up to her elbows painted the stakes with brownish goo from a lidded pail. Very small girls and boys filled up the pits with debris to disguise the trap. The Wanderer was here, there, and everywhere, offering advice to the children, and telling them merry stories of her many years of travel. A few were distracted by the gnomelings silly talk, but most of the children couldn't forget that what they were doing was no longer a game. All of them had been brought up in wartime, and knew that those who fell in battle never came back.
Gillea comforted her best friend, who dashed the back of her hand at weeping eyes and nose even as she tied triplines around the boles of trees.
"I don't want to die," Loie said.
"Duffy won't let you," Gillea assured her, dabbing her friend's face with the edge of her own increasingly dirty apron. "If he did, Mother would kill him."
Duffy, a few yards away, helping another boy tie back a springy tree branch with a length of rope, hurried what he was doing and sought out Soraya. The silver specter hovered a man-height above the ground, watching each pair of children in turn. She settled disconcertingly through the undergrowth as the agitated boy approached.
"I'm responsible for the protection of all these children—in fact, all the people in the village," he burst out, guiltily. "What am I doing? We can't outfight ogres, or even outrun them. Varney was right. There are no warriors left in Greenton. What can a bunch of children and old people past their prime . . ."
"And a dragon," Soraya interjected calmly.
"Well . . . and a ghost dragon do to stop a force of ogres? You can't breathe on them or claw them or even stand in their way." Duffy put his hand out, passing it without obstruction into Soraya's muzzle. "There's nothing that will keep ogres from marching upon Greenton and tearing us to pieces."
"We've got you," Gillea said, coming up and tucking her hand into his. "The one shining hero who will save everyone, like in all the stories."
"Sounds familiar," the Wanderer said, intent on her bits and pieces of broken glass again. She seemed to like tumbling them over and over in her fingers. Duffy wondered in some irritation if she liked them so well to be interested in nothing else, why had she spent the fifty years she'd claimed wandering all the lands of the Dallen? "Sounds like the tale the old man was telling in the tavern t'other night."
"The story of Verrol and Liaya?" Duffy said. He turned to Soraya, whose giant eye grew even brighter.
"That is the answer," Soraya said.
"What?" Duffy demanded. The image that grew in the dragon's eye was such an obvious solution that it made the young man laugh out loud.
"What is it? What is it?" Gillea demanded, jumping up. Duffy caught her in his arms and swung her so she could see the dragon's face.
"Soraya is a spirit," Duffy said. "The enemy can fire arrows or swing clubs but they can't hit her. Anyone who sees her with a rider will think that he's a ghost, too. We'll be the ghosts of Verrol and Liaya. Ogres are terrifying warriors, but they're as superstitious as sailors."
Soraya blinked her approval, and turned her eye toward Gillea, so the child could see in it the image of a young man, all in white, a-dragonback and wielding a great spear. The children abandoned their tasks and gathered around the huge dragon's head, chattering excitedly. They all knew the tale by heart. Duffy himself had heard it several times a year since he was a baby.
"But you can't ride a ghost dragon," Gillea said, practically, pitching her shrill voice over the hubbub. Duffy's heart sank in dismay. He turned to the dragon.
"Leave that to me," Soraya said. "For now, we need what magic we may muster, and the disguise."
Duffy ran all the way back to the Hearthstone, and burst in through the door. The elders were holding their own worried conference over the hearthfire.
"Is it true, boy?" Perog asked. "Ogres are coming?"
"It is. Varney," Duffy panted, as the miller turned to stare at him. "I need a bag of flour, at once!"
"A what?" Varney asked. "Have you gone mad, son? We've things to do before the force gets here."
"It'll save our homes!" Duffy insisted. "A bag of flour. A small one. Please, Varney. Mikal," he said, catching his breath, "we need you, too."
The old mage rose to his feet and squared his shoulders proudly. "With pleasure, General Duffy. Lead the way."
Soraya stood by, enjoining them to hurry, while Mikal and the women of the village made Duffy up as the ghost of Verrol the hero. Eager to help, everyone donated something to the effort.
"Thank the gods for something to do," Cara the Weaver said.
She quickly stitched together a pair of breeches out of freshly bleached cloth and tied the waist shut around Duffy's middle. Barata brought out the white tunic Orack had worn when he married her. His own mother sacrificed a fine, snow-white tablecloth to make him a cloak. With a small kiss on the cheek for bravery, she tied the cloth around his neck and left him, to go help with the preparations for defense. For luck, Duffy tucked his father's silverheaded dagger into his belt.
"And the flour to make you a ghostly color," Mikal said, pressing it to Duffy's skin. By virtue of some cantrip the old hedge-wizard recited, the stuff adhered to Duffy's face and hands, leaving them looking chalky and dead.
Gillea sputtered with laughter. "You look like you got into a fight in the kitchen." Her brother made a face at her, which made her giggle more.
"It won't look so in the forest," her mother admonished her. "Have we time?" she asked the spirit, who was wavering around the edges in impatience.
"They are near. Four ogres and a handful of takkin," Soraya said. She vanished, and reappeared almost instantly, "They are a half-hour's march, no more!"
"Well, I'm ready," Duffy said, brandishing a washing pole that Cara had donated. The whitewash painted on it was still damp, but that tackiness would keep the makeshift lance from falling out of his hand.
"Wait, wait!" The Wanderer rushed up and planted something in his other hand. "It's only a loan, mind. I want it back, but it'll help you, I'm sure."
"What is it?" Duffy turned over the contraption of wires surrounding two round bits of glass.
"A gnomish invention," the Wanderer said. "Useless. Pretty, though. I liked it, and no one seemed to mind me taking it. Had it a long, long time. Thought I lost it once, but here it is again! Put it on. Over your eyes. It'll make them look like spirit eyes."
With the Wanderer's help, Duffy slid the half loop between the glass lenses over the bridge of his nose and hooked the loose pieces of wire over his ears.
The gnomish device must have retained some magical aura, because suddenly Duffy could see more clearly. Every object took on a deeper dimensionality than he had ever known.
"Why, thank you, Fernli," Duffy said, looking around in awe. He glanced down at his feet, shod in white riding boots saved from the bequest of someone's grandmother. They seemed very far away. He took a step and staggered because the ground was not where he expected it to be.
"Ooh, scary!" Gillea said, with delight. "You look like a week-dead fish."
"One more thing," the dragon said, her deep voice a murmur. "Find you a feather."
With difficulty, Duffy tottered toward the farmhouses, aiming unsteadily for Orack's goose pen. In a short while, he returned, clutching between his fingers the largest goose feather he could obtain, culled at great personal peril from the threshing wing of one of Orack's highly territorial geese. Soraya looked at it disappointedly.
"It is small but it'll have to do."
"Small?" Duffy exclaimed, measuring the feather. It was easily a foot long. "Compared with what?"
"A roc feather, an eagle feather," she said, trying to make him understand. When Duffy continued to look blankly at her, she brought forth images in her great eye of huge birds, perching next to a knight. Whereas the head of Orack's goose came up to Duffy's waist, the head of the man in the image barely touched the breast of the crouching roc.
"Uh," Duffy said, somewhat inadequately.
"Put the feather in the small of your back. Yes, under your clothes. There. You are ready," the deep voice said.
Duffy disliked the way the feather tickled, and the point dug into his spine like a guilty reminder. But he held himself upright, and walked into the town center proudly. Gillea, claiming the honor of serving as a squire, tagged along behind him. The fascinated Wanderer followed.
The villagers had bare moments to snatch up the elderly or makeshift weapons they possessed and get into their hiding places before Soraya's ghost swept through, warning them the enemy was upon them.
Duffy, hidden in the heart of a hollow tree at the edge of the village common, heard the force from the Red Horde before he saw them. The tramping of their feet sounded like a fire burning down the forest. In his mind's eye, he saw them coming nearer and nearer. The front line must be almost on top of the buried stakes—now!
Angry bellows ripped through the air. Some of the fell warriors at least had stepped into the hidden pits. More howling and yelling resounded as the rest of the enemy stomped by their wounded members, and stepped into more of the concealed traps. Pretty soon, those who had trodden on the stakes would be ailing, maybe dying, when the rodent poison took effect.
Not all the evil force stepped into the pits. Threshing footsteps grew closer. The foreline would be getting closer to the snares. Some of the triplines were set high, some low. Even if by chance, a few of them had to close on prey! Duffy clenched his hands closed against the damp, shreddy interior of the tree, and hoped.
Twang! Twang! A couple of the line traps went off before there was an outcry alerting others to the danger, followed by harsh orders from the enemy. Duffy heard the unmistakable clash of steel on steel as swords were drawn. Whistling and chopping noises followed, as the point guard slashed through the remaining snares. Duffy wondered how many had died, and how many remained. Soraya, who could have told him, was remaining concealed until the last moment.
The next obstacle was the most dangerous, but not for the ogres. Old Mikal, liberally daubed with flour, waited in a clump of bushes, to try and scare the warriors off—or at least put the fear of the unknown into them. He'd argued in conference that he was the only logical person for the job, being old and mostly expendable. Varney and Eise had shouted him down, insisting that one of them be the one to show his face. In the end, Mikal bluntly refused to enchant anyone else for the job. He was doing it, or no one was. Duffy could just see him flit out of his hiding place and take to the air.
"Bewarrrre!" the old mage cried, waving his arms, and then he floated out of Duffy's view. "Bewarrrre! Tuu-urrrrn baaack! Tuuurrrrn baaack lest the spirits of this place consuuuume you!"
The heavy footsteps halted, and Duffy heard muttering in the ranks. He fancied he could count at least eight voices, but only half were the ogrish grunt. The rest were a sibilant hissing that he remembered from his early childhood, and his insides turned to water.
"Tuurrrn baaack!" Mikal cried again. Then he screamed sharply and fell silent. There was harsh laughter. One of the bolder warriors must have called the seeming ghost's bluff. Duffy prayed that Mikal hadn't been killed.
"Be ready!" Soraya's voice hissed. One huge eye opened up inside his hiding place. Duffy gulped. "They come! Now!"
Summoning all his courage, Duffy stepped out of the tree trunk. Soraya manifested only her face so he could see where she was. The dragon's voice hissed out a rhyme in an ancient tongue that tasted of power.
"What do I do now—whoooaaa!" he cried, as he was lifted, scruff first, ten feet into the air.
"Don't lose your lance!" Soraya's voice warned. "Now, hold your legs apart—no one will care about proper riding form—and keep them that way."
His cloak flapping, Duffy hovered above the long silver back, trying to make it look like he was riding the dragon. He fought nervousness to keep hold of the washing pole, now glowing with the same fight as Soraya's scales. To his surprise, the light also issued from his borrowed clothes and his flour-covered hands.
"Here we go," the dragon said.
The effect was impressive even though he knew what was happening. A little at a time, the dragon emerged out of invisibility and glided smoothly into the open common. First the head, then the horns and ears, then the snakelike neck, then the gleaming scales of the breast, and finally the back apparently bearing Duffy issued smoothly into the sunlight. By the time the long tail emerged from shadow, the whole green was silent.
"Stop, foul spawn of Naehriia!" Soraya's melodious voice commanded.
"Go back, evil warriors! You are not welcome here!" a deep man's voice cried out. Duffy was astonished to realize it was his own. He straightened his back and proudly held the washing pole on high.
For the first time, he could see the Minion horde.
In the front hulked four ogres. He had heard stories of the ogres that served the usurper Voern, but had never seen one alive. Mikal's stories did not do them justice. The manlike giants were more fearsome and uglier and more evil than any illusion the herb-mage had drawn on the hearthstone. Easily seven feet tall, the monsters' massive arms and chests were clothed in leather armor covered in scales each the size of a man's hand. Their faces were studded with knobby bones that parodied the contours of human visage. Teeth bared, they ignored bleeding wounds in their feet and slashes from the whiplike strands of the snares, intent on their task of destruction.
Behind the ogres came two files of scaly beings with doglike faces—takkin. Those Duffy had seen before. The usurper sent a force through Greenton the first time, forcing his father and the other young men of the village to fight for their homes and families when Duffy was only a boy. These dragonchildren were canny warriors, much smarter and subtler than the ogres, and as evil as any creature created by the Queen of Darkness, the Red Dragon Nachriia.
For the first time, the Horde force could see Duffy and Soraya.
They were paralyzed, staring. Suddenly, an ogre burst out laughing, and raised an axe with a head the size of Duffy's chest. The beast-man flung the weapon. Spinning head over haft, it arced toward the silver apparition, and went through without touching anything. Duffy felt the breeze it caused as it passed harmlessly inches from his leg. The axe head buried itself deeply in the ground. The ogre stared from his missile to the dragon and back again. His mouth fell open.
"Fools!" Soraya boomed. "Ye cannot touch us, for we are the spirits of Liaya and Verrol! We bear the Spear of Truth! We defend this place with its light. Flee, or die!"
Gibbering in fear, some of the takkin turned lithely and dashed down the path into the woods, never to return. The rest stood and stared defiantly at Soraya and her rider.
"Ready your spear, Verrol," Soraya announced loudly. Duffy couched the washing pole against his side, and hoped fervently whatever spell was holding him up wouldn't run out of virtue. As he watched, the homely rod became a lance, sharp pointed and beautiful in proportion. It gleamed with righteous silver light. Duffy let out a war cry. Together, man and dragon swooped in toward the horde.
No being, however stupid or stubborn, would stand still while one of the most fearsome weapons in the land was charging toward it on the back of an angry dragon, let alone in the hands of a legendary ghost rider. The files of takkin and ogres broke apart, and each warrior fled in a different direction.
That was the moment the other villagers had been awaiting. With a wild cry, Sandor the dwarf blacksmith jumped out of a tree onto the head of an ogre. He pounded on its helmet with his largest hammer while the manbeast whirled around, blindly clutching at his passenger. The clanging sounds of hammer on helm alternated with the ogre's cries for help. Sandor, grinning like a skull, locked his short legs around the ogre's neck. In a moment, he knocked the evil warrior's hands out of the way and managed to undo the fastening on the helmet. The next hammer blow lacked the mellifluous clang of metal upon metal, but it was far more effective. The ogre staggered and toppled. Nimbly, Sandor rolled off before his victim hit the ground, and looked around for another tree to climb.
"We go this way, Duffy!" Soraya warned him.
The invisible hand clutching the back of his clothes shifted him sideways, and Duffy found himself charging toward a cluster of takkin. From nowhere, the besieged lizard men were pelted with stones ranging from pebbles to handsized rocks. Duffy caught a glimpse of Gillea and her friends standing on the roof of the smithy with a large heap of ammunition. As the takkin ran away from the legendary ghost, the children followed, leaping from roof to roof, tossing stones, garbage, old birds' nests, and whatever came to hand.
"This way!" Varney cried. "Drive em this way!" The old miller beckoned from the narrow alley that led between the mill and the house next door. The takkin saw what Duffy intended, but were unwilling to dive underneath Soraya's feet to escape. It might be safer to risk fighting humans than the ghost. One daring lizardling tried to slip around Soraya's wingtip. Duffy swept the mock Spear of Truth down and caught the beast in the chest. Suddenly, fire ran down the rod's length, and the takkin's armor burst into flames. Screaming, the lizard man dropped to the ground. Duffy was so startled he almost dropped the pole.
"Hold on," Soraya said. Duffy swept his "spear" around in an arc, urging the takkin into the trap.
The lizard men were canny warriors, but the villagers were prepared and on their own ground. Experienced swordsmanship was no match for the anger of the besieged farmers. As Duffy herded his prisoners toward Varney and his cohorts, he heard screams and splashes from the other side of the wall. The men were throwing or forcing the takkin into the millrace. The powerful current of the river could drag a cart horse under the inexorably turning paddlewheel. The takkin emitted desperate cries as their heavy armor weighted them down. Women with straw forks and hooks jabbed at any hand or head that showed itself above the water's edge. Varney and two of the old men armed with ancient polearms held off two more takkin who had eluded the trap. Duffy gasped as one lizard man whisked his sword in an arc and swiped off the axe head from one farmers weapon. The old man jabbed his attacker in the face with the stub, and got the sword blade in his ribs for his trouble. Duffy gasped.
Soraya roared, and an insubstantial looking silver arrow appeared transfixed through the lizard's eye. The warrior toppled to the ground beside its victim. By anger and main strength rather than skill, Varney took care of the other takkin.
The dragon's great head swiveled bonelessly over its shoulder.
"We are needed elsewhere," she said. She turned in her own length in the narrow gap, nearly brushing Duffy into a wall. He clapped his legs together so they disappeared into her body, and opened them out again as soon as she was back on the green.
Soraya lifted her feet off the ground. The spell keeping Duffy aloft raised him, too, and the two of them glided swiftly into the forest toward the sound of screaming and fighting.
An ogre lay in a clearing nearest the path. He reached up to grab weakly at Soraya's legs as they flew over him, then collapsed, as if the effort took too much strength. The rodent poison had begun to do its job. Two down, and two more to go.
The three children minding the snares and branch slings were clinging for their lives high in the branches of a tree. Below them, a third ogre was shaking the trunk to make them fall out. The invisible hand keeping Duffy in the air lifted him straight up to where the children huddled. He held out his arms to them. The smallest, a little girl, started to lean away from the bole towards him.
A dagger whisked between them and buried itself, humming, in the bark. Soraya, left on the ground, stalked the ogre, growling at it and manifesting terrible images of the heroes of Good. The ogre continued shaking the tree, unafraid of a ghost. Duffy was scared. They needed a distraction for him to free the children.
"Yoo hoo!" the Wanderer called out. "Hello there!"
The ogre stopped and looked back and forth. Ferali appeared standing on a rock only two paces away from the manbeast. She waved at it. It dove for her, but she was no longer there.
"Oh, I'm so sorry," she said, turning up beside him, her hands busy at his waist. "And what a pretty belt buckle that is. Mind if I have a look at it?"
The ogre roared and reached for her with both arms. Fernli backed up. The ogre took two steps, and fell over his great feet as his sword belt slid down around his knees.
"Oh, thank you so kindly," the Wanderer said, again standing on her rock. She had the buckle in her hands, and was examining it with care. "This is very old, did you know that? I bet this is something from your grandda, or could it be your great-grandda?"
The ogre threw aside its belt and went after Fernli with its axe.
Nimbly, the Wanderer skipped along from branch to stone to clod of earth with the ogre in heavy pursuit. Not wanting to waste the opportunity, Duffy clasped the children in his arms, and called out to be lowered to the ground. The two small girls were weeping, but the boy was game for more adventure. His eyes were shining.
As he set them upright and took his place once more astride the ghost dragon, he heard a shout and a splat! followed by roared obscenities. Soraya turned her head back toward him, her eyes glistening.
"The Wanderer is resourceful," she said.
"I recognized it," Duffy said, grinning. "She led him into the midden pit."
"Sounds familiar," the Wanderer said, intent on her bits and pieces of broken glass again. She seemed to like tumbling them over and over in her fingers. Duffy wondered in some irritation if she liked them so well to be interested in nothing else, why had she spent the fifty !
The fourth ogre, commander of the force sent to level Greenton, found himself almost alone in the midst of the village. The takkin had fled or were being trounced by a ragged, disorganized troop of peasants. His own men were nowhere to be seen. That left him alone to fulfill the task on which Lord Voern had sent them. Fire was the quickest tool for destroying houses and killing trapped villagers. From his pouch he took a red-gold amulet in the shape of a dragons head. If only Liaya and Verrol did not come back too soon. . . .
As he approached the houses, tiny arrows rained down on him from the rooftops. All but one of the missiles bounced harmlessly off his armor, and the dart that penetrated was as weak as an insect bite. He peered upward to see who'd fired them. Verrolnspawn, nothing more. The ugly little creatures would roast to death when he set this place alight. With an act of will he ignited the small device and held it to the eaves of the nearest house.
Duffy smelled smoke and cast about to find where it was coming from.
"The green," he called. Soraya's long, sinuous neck arched in comprehension. She lifted her legs, and they flew toward the common.
Smoke was pouring from several rooftops when they arrived. None had burst into flame yet, thanks to the soaking they'd received from the fresh spring rains, but if the fire was of magical origin, it wouldn't remain quiescent long. Cries alerted the guardians to a corner of the common area, where a cluster of children on top of a house were throwing rocks and shooting arrows at a single ogre holding something up under the edge of the roof.
Shrugging off the defenders' missiles, the ogre tramped from house to house. Led by Gillea, the children followed, leaping from roof to roof, screaming defiance at him. They were running out of ammunition, and Duffy could see flames beginning among the shingles atop the first houses the ogre had set alight.
The children had to stop on the roof at the end of the row. There was a gap of a hundred feet between the last low cottage and the manor house, set back among its gardens and outbuildings at the end of the open square. Duffy recalled suddenly how his house had been fired by the last army to march through, and how helpless the child he'd been was to stop the evil army then. This time, he had a dragon on his side, and he was no longer a babe.
"After him!" he yelled at Soraya, leveling the washing pole lance at his side. The silver dragon had but to open her great wings, and they were on top of the manbeast.
The ogre saw the dragon poke its head out of the woods and come sailing down toward him. The spirit of Verrol couched the Spear of Truth in attack position. His pale face was grim.
The commander knew that the warrior and his mount were only ghosts. Praying for protection from the Dark Queen of All Evil, he ran toward the last house in the row, the big mansion. He would finish his task, no matter what. Hopping the low garden wall, he ran toward the house, his amulet at the ready to apply to the wooden rafters of the roof.
Quick as thought, the ghost of Liaya closed the distance, and suddenly the ghost of Verrol leaped out of the saddle toward the ogre commander and cannoned into him.
Not expecting a solid warrior, the ogre was taken by surprise, and toppled over onto the ground. He struggled valiantly against the spirit of the mighty warrior, expecting a divine force and iron muscles. He found his hands were around the neck of a mere stripling, a young humanspawn covered with white powder. Dropping the lance with a clatter, the boy pulled a dagger from a sheath and tried to plunge it into the ogre's chest. Effortlessly, the ogre flipped the humanspawn onto its back and sat on its chest. The boy gasped. The ogre commander chortled.
"Fool me pretending to be a spirit, will you? Well, now you'll be a real ghost! Hope you haunt your own town for the rest of eternity!"
With a horrible grin, the ogre put out two huge hands and squeezed his neck. Struggling for every breath, Duffy forced his foot outward, feeling for the red amulet. He knew it was only inches away from him. Get it away or the village will burn, his brain sang, even as his lungs threatened to tear apart struggling for oxygen. Catching it with the tip of his toe, he kicked it as far away from the ogre as he could. Then he fainted.
He awoke as something cold and wet slopped into his face. Sputtering to clear his mouth and nose, Duffy sat up.
"The High Ones' blessings on you, you're alive," Cara said, on her knees beside him. "That was the bravest and most foolhardy thing I've ever seen a man do in my life. I thought we'd be burying you in my last good bit of bleaching."
"The ogre!" Duffy tried to shout, but his words were only an unintelligible croak. He touched his throat.
"Your would-be assassin," Cara said, moving to one side so he could see past her. Duffy peered at the lump on the village green. It had arms and legs, all right, but the rest looked like a millstone.
"How . . . ?" he whispered, levering himself upright. The fires on the roofs were out, and people were going up and back between the row of houses and rubbish heap with baskets of burnt shingles and scorched wood.
A little ways apart from him, a row of bodies were laid out on the ground. One of them had its face covered by a cloth, but the rest were alive and groaning as healers worked to ease wounds and burns. Most of them were children.
"It was Mikal," Varney said, coming over and helping Duffy to his feet with an assist from a massive arm. "He raised my millstone right out of its frame, across the green, and dropped it right on the ogre's head. It was a wonder it didn't kill the both of you."
Mikal himself lay propped up against the sitting stone, a gash in his side being tended by Duffy's mother.
"I aimed it better than that, Varney," the old man said weakly. Duffy's mother hushed the herb mage gently, and bound a herbal compress in place over his ribs.
"Sure you did," Varney said, cheerfully. "Nicely placed, truly. Crushed the evil bastard like corn in quern. But you'll have to move yon stone back again as soon as you're well. You borry things in this town, you right well bring them back!"
"Right, and I'll be wanting my gnomish invention back as well," said a little voice. With effort, Duffy turned to see the Wanderer standing beside him. She put out her little hand. He scrabbled at his face, and pried loose the wire and glass contraption. She cradled it happily, and put it back in her pack.
"Many thanks, and glad to lend it. I never saw anything so brave as what you did, except for once," the Wanderer continued reminiscently. "Back around fifty years it was, in the great war. A man with a similar looking dagger as you've got there in your belt—can I see it to make sure?" She fixed the little knife with a hopeful eye.
Automatically, Duffy said, "No." He swallowed. It hurt to talk. The Wanderer shrugged.
"Likewise, I'm sure it was the same one." She peered up at him. "Looked like you, too. Probably your grandda, Duffy. A brave man, like you'll be one day. I'll look forward to telling the story of your fighting here today. Out of your weight class, I thought, but no, you downed the big fellow without trouble. The stuff of legends, you are. Ah, but I've got a couple of nice things today. See, a belt buckle, courtesy of the big fellow there under the stone, won't need it any more, and see here, a pretty gold thing to make fires." Clasping her treasures, she smiled up at the humans and Soraya. "I'll never be cold again nights with this to hand, no, indeed."
Gillea appeared with the rest of the force of children who weren't having their burns dressed. She brandished her birding bow and a handful of the short arrows that went with it.
"We have to go after the takkin!" she exclaimed. "Lots of them got away. We're all ready, Duffy. Will you and Soraya be leading us?"
Having scented blood and come away from their first adventure unscathed, the children wanted another taste of action. Duffy was fit enough to go if he had to, but he didn't want to. He glanced at the dragon for direction. Soraya shook her great head.
"You need not. Those dragonspawn will tell the commanders this place is under the protection of Verrol and the Spear, and they'll never come back again, not without the full horde behind them."
"Oh, no!" Duffy croaked.
"Ah, but by then you will have a militia. The town will be organized into a garrison for its own defense."
"And who's going to lead this?" Duffy asked. "You?"
"No," the dragon said mildly, "you."
"Oh, no. Not me." Duffy raised his hands in protest. Soraya turned a huge, glittering eye toward him.
"Remember your father, to whom I still owe a great debt. It was his wish that you train to be a Knight of the Heart, if your talents and honor are sufficient to the task. I will lead you to my riches once Greenton is ready to carry on in your absence, and that will pay for armor and teacher both."
Duffy found that he was genuinely tempted by the twin thoughts of riches and honor. "Really?" he asked,
"A silver dragon doesn't prevaricate."
"But where does your fortune lie?" Duffy asked curiously.
He noted the amused glint in Soraya's eye. "Are you ready so soon for your second quest?"
Duffy remembered abruptly that he had just ridden a ghost dragon, been instrumental in the defeat of a handful of takkin, and had jumped an ogre in full armor. In reflection, he wondered what in the world he must have thought he was doing. He wasn't a mighty warrior, he was a boy pretending to be a mighty warrior. Hastily he stooped and began to pick up pieces of the debris scattered on the ground, including the borrowed washing pole, now smudged with grass stain and soot.
"There sure is a lot to do here," he said, forcing the words out of his wounded throat. "It could be a long time before this town is ready to defend itself. Years, maybe."
Soraya lowered her head to peer into his eyes, and he felt himself blush.
"Just long enough for you to grow up, perhaps," she said. "I can wait. A ghost has all the time in the world."