“I don’t think the forest needs protecting,” Tinn breathed. His face paled. “If the townspeople walk into this, they’ll be massacred.”
A single figure detached herself from the group and stepped into the center of the clearing. Her bearskin cloak swept the dusty ground. Hundreds of glinting eyes followed the Queen of the Deep Dark.
A series of harsh, hissing clicks followed. Fable held her breath as her mother turned to face a feral crowd.
“I stand,” the queen declared loudly and clearly, “with the forest.”
And then the first shot rang out.
TWENTY-SIX
Crouching at the edge of the clearing, the children watched as the puff of smoke lifted into the wind. It wasn’t a loud boom. It was hardly even a bang. The gunshot that cracked the air was no louder than a thick branch snapping off a tree. For one slow, breathless moment, silence followed—a sizzling quiet, like a burning fuse.
Albert Townshend had been the first to pull the trigger. He was a quiet young man only a handful of years older than Tinn and Cole. Albert collected bottle caps and washed dishes at the Lucky Pig. He had never aimed that heavy pistol at a living thing before. Truth be told, he hadn’t properly aimed it this time—he had merely lifted the muzzle in the general direction of the unholy horde and squeezed. His hand was still shaking after the smoke had drifted away.
The shot hummed over the pointy hats of the gnomes and sang over the naga’s scaly shoulder until it buried itself in the rough hide of Skoll, fiercest wolf of the Warg. Albert did not know that Skoll was the fiercest wolf of the Warg, just as Skoll did not know that Albert was the most average dishwasher in the Lucky Pig on Tuesdays through Saturdays. What they both knew—what every anxious observer around that silent clearing knew immediately—was that Albert Townshend had made a terrible mistake.
The great wolf flinched as if stung. He glanced down at his flank and then up the sloping hill at the shaking Albert. His lips curled back over razor-sharp fangs. Muscles rippled under layers of coarse hair. Skoll growled, a noise so low it was barely a noise anymore.
“This is going to be bad,” Tinn muttered, just before the field erupted into complete chaos.
Skoll made straight for Albert, but he was not as fast as the arrow that caught the dishwasher in the shoulder and sent him falling over backward with a yelp. More shots were fired, cracking and popping in irregular bursts. Sunlight flashed off of wicked blades, and deafening cries of pain and outrage filled the air, along with clouds of acrid gun smoke and buzzing, flapping wings.
“Ow!” Mr. Washington shrieked as a blur of wings swarmed around him. “Ow! They’re biting!” His flailing arms made contact and a stunned pixie spun to the ground with a squeak.
In all the madness, Fable had lost sight of her mother. She squinted through the scuffle and the smoke, her eyes searching. A flinty-faced spriggan in the center of the bedlam opened the pouch he kept slung around his neck. He tossed his head back and threw something in the back of his throat. Was that little ruffian having a snack in the middle of a battle?
“What do we do?” Cole whispered.
Fable didn’t have an answer. More townspeople were pouring down the hillsides now. A woman in a soot-stained apron pulled at her neighbors’ arms, but they shoved past her to join the fray.
“Is that Mom?” Tinn breathed. “Oh, jeez, she’s right in the middle!”
Even over all the other voices, Annie Burton’s fruitless pleas carried on the wind. “Stop! Don’t do this!” she implored.
“There’s my uncle Jim, too,” Evie whispered. “What are they all doing? They’re going to get killed!”
Fable looked where Evie was pointing. Old Jim Warner had paused atop the nearest hill, overlooking the melee. He lifted the rifle and focused his aim on a target the children could not see within the fight. His jaw tightened. For all his mean talk, he did not look enthusiastic about pulling the trigger.
Fable wondered with icy dread which of the forest folk might be standing at the other end of his muzzle. Kallra? Chief Nudd? Her mother?
Old Jim’s thumb slid to the hammer, but before he could fire his first shot, the swirling smoke of the battlefield parted and a giant erupted before him like a whale breaching the ocean’s surface.
Old Jim stared, gaping.
The impossible behemoth loomed over the heads of even the tallest trolls, its skin like hardened slate and its expression murderous. The monster’s features blurred at the edges, and Fable found it hard to focus on the giant for too long. It made her eyes hurt.
Old Jim slowly lowered his rifle. Across the next hill, Annie Burton froze. The colossus was growing larger still, right before her eyes. It was thirty feet tall—then forty—then fifty. The ground shuddered as it stepped forward, and the children could only stare, stupefied. Gunshots rang out to the left and right, but bullets whizzed right through the giant’s skin and out the other side as if it weren’t even there. The giant took a slow step toward Annie.
“Mom!” Tinn yelled. “Look out!” If she could hear him, she was too stunned to react. Cole felt his heart lurch.
Jim Warner jogged toward Annie. “Move!” he bellowed. Annie blinked. Old Jim caught her by the shoulder and she snapped out of her daze. The two of them leapt just as the giant swung one mammoth hand downward.
Annie dove to one side, Jim to the other. Annie rolled to safety.
Evie screamed as Old Jim’s body flew fifty feet in the air to land in a heap in the center of the smoky field. His rifle tumbled across the grass and slid to a stop against the roots of the felled
