The bandits were almost to the row of wagons now; their original neat line had broken as the faster horses pulled ahead and the slower lagged. The foremost attackers were reining in, rather than barreling straight on into the sides of the wagons, or charging past their objective entirely.
The battle was about to be joined when the first black thing popped out of the ground.
At first Kelder wasn’t sure what he had seen, but then others appeared, so fast that he couldn’t say where the second or third had emerged; there were none, there was one, and then there were hundreds, faster than he could react, a sea of them springing up from under the caravan. Like water from a fountain, they came from beneath the wagon where the man in black stood, still chanting.
They were shorter than people, perhaps three or four feet tall, but as broad across the shoulders as most men. Their limbs were crooked, but clearly powerful. Their bare skin and shaggy, unkempt hair were black or dark gray. They wore no armor, and for that matter no clothing, but charged into the fray naked — but not unarmed. Axes, swords, knives, sticks, weapons of every kind were clutched in their misshapen hands, the blades as naked as the creatures that wielded them.
And the creatures’ faces were truly hideous. Great staring white eyes, noses like blades or blobs or broken rock, mouths that gaped in enormous yawning grins, full of jagged yellow teeth — Kelder was very glad he was no closer, and could not make out all the details. He had never seen anything so ghastly.
At least, not until the fighting began.
The creatures made no distinction between man and mount; it seemed they would gleefully hack at anything that moved that came within reach and was not a part of the caravan. Horses screamed in agony as the axes and knives chopped at their legs and flanks; they fell, and their riders screams joined their own.
“Demons!” Irith called from overhead. “The man in black’s a demonologist!”
That made sense to Kelder. It also sent a shudder through him, and he began backing away. He wanted to turn and run, but the idea of turning his back on those horrors was at least as bad as being this close to them.
Wasn’t demonology illegal? Weren’t all demons banished from the physical world hundreds of years ago, when the Great War ended? How could this be happening?
He watched in horrid fascination.
One of the demon-things spotted a new target, but this one happened to be one of the merchants who had accompanied the caravan; the creature leapt toward her, then stopped, as if in mid-jump, and turned away, holding its nose.
Enlightenment burst upon Kelder. The smell Irith had insisted she smelled — it was real, it was magical, and it protected the caravan from the demons!
But why could Irith smell it, and not himself? Was it because she was a creature of magic, like the demons, while he was a merely ordinary human being?
That had to be it — but this was no time to worry about it, when the hideous spectacle before him yet continued.
Some of the bandits had tried to turn and flee, but none had gotten more than a few yards before dozens of the creatures were upon them. Then the last of the bandits was down, but the demon-things did not stop; they continued hacking and hacking, knives and axes rising and falling, as blood sprayed and spattered. They gibbered and shrieked in an inhuman chorus as they chopped and stabbed, until the caravan’s own people were cowering in terror, retreating southward away from the highway, as the creatures reveled in the destruction they had wrought.
The entire battle had lasted only a few seconds. It had happened much too fast for the reality, the horror of it all to sink in.
“Eeeww,” Irith said loudly, somewhere above Kelder’s head. “Gross!”
Half a dozen of the demons heard that, turned toward her, and saw her.
And below her, they saw Kelder.
Chapter Six
Kelder began to back away more quickly; above him he heard a strangled squeak, and the beating of wings fading into the distance, and then nothing.
The demon-things were grinning at him, and making weird whooping noises. Then one began to run toward him, axe raised, and a second followed, waving a short sword. The black-robed man atop the wagon was waving his arms and chanting again, and Kelder took an instant to wonder why before he turned and started running for his life.
The demons came shrieking after him as he fled, the noise growing closer with every step he took — until it abruptly stopped.
The total silence was so astonishing that he stumbled and fell. His arms came up instinctively, shielding his face; he curled into a ball and rolled in the dust of the highway, waiting for the first blade to cut him, the first club to batter him.
Nothing happened.
Carefully, he opened his eyes, lifted an arm from his face.
There was the caravan; the man in black was climbing down from his perch, and the merchants and guards were returning to their places, preparing to move on.
There were no demons.
There was no sign of them anywhere.
The only evidence that any demons had ever existed was the mangled corpses of the bandits and their mounts.
Kelder slowly uncurled, and got cautiously to his feet.
There were no demons. The demonologist had presumably sent them back wherever they had come from, and they were completely, utterly gone.
One of the caravan guards on foot had drawn his sword and was whacking the heads off the corpses of the bandits. This was obviously not necessary to ensure that they were actually dead; even from this distance, Kelder had no doubt at all that they were all dead. The guard was presumably collecting trophies. The battle was undeniably over.
Kelder stood for a moment, considering, and then began stumbling toward the caravan. It was not that he particularly wanted a closer look at the corpses, or the wagons, or anything else, but he was afraid that if he turned and fled the demonologist might decide he was a bandit after all. Kelder looked up, seeking Irith, intending to urge her to join him.
She wasn’t there. There was nothing above him but empty sky, clear and bright blue, with a few fluffy white clouds drifting here and there.
Kelder stopped dead in his tracks. Where had she gone?
He slowly turned, studying the heavens, and finally spotted her, far to the west; she was little more than a dark speck against the sun. For a moment he panicked; he didn’t want to lose her. He
He considered running after her, but the speck seemed to be growing; he stared, and decided that yes, it was definitely getting larger. She was coming back.
He stood and waited for her while, three hundred yards to the east, the caravan regrouped and moved on, ignoring him and the flying figure. By the time Irith dropped to the earth beside him the wagons were almost out of sight over a distant rise. Only by shading his eyes with his hand and staring hard could Kelder make out an upright pike at the back corner of the last wagon, and a bloody head impaled upon it.
Irith’s wings fluttered, stirring Kelder’s hair, and he turned his gaze on her. “What
Irith shrugged prettily. “
“You didn’t learn about them when you were an apprentice?” said Kelder.
She stared at him as if he had said something exceptionally stupid; when it sank in that indeed he had, she
