Demon Rider

darkness beyond the tent. Hard to say — he was too fascinated by these gracious nobles.

'Who approaches?' shouted the man in Castilian. He had a hand on his sword.

'One hungry traveler, senor! I am unarmed and come in peace.'

'Come forward so we may see you.' The man gestured to his lady to keep back while he advanced to meet the stranger.

Hamish walked forward until he entered the firelight. He bowed.

The nobleman smiled.

Then the fire roared up, much larger than before. Hamish jumped and looked toward it. The source of the delectable odor was a human torso with the remains of a head still attached. It had been skewered lengthwise by a rod about eight feet long, supported on a metal tripod at each end. The underside was charred and the top raw. There were remains of half a dozen other corpses scattered around under the trees.

Hamish turned back to the handsome caballero, but he had gone. The tent and the beautiful maiden had vanished also. The thing standing in front of him, leering at him, was a demon.

CHAPTER THREE

During his last few hours in the baron's dungeon — they might have been around midday or midnight for all he had been able to tell — Toby had started falling asleep, and for once falling had been the appropriate word. Time and again he had awakened with a sickening jar, tearing his wrists on the manacles and bruising his back against the wall. His shoulders still ached as if his arms had been pulled from their sockets.

Nevertheless, the moment Hamish disappeared over the wall he lurched up and grabbed his hose from the bush. He hauled them on, and fortunately the wet cloth clung to him well enough that he could trust them not to fall off, so he left his doublet where it lay. He pushed his feet into his buskins, grabbed up his staff, and followed Hamish, veering to the left to move parallel to him and confident that he was making a lot less noise.

Hamish could argue all he liked that there was no such thing as prophecy, but those three visions had been utterly convincing. Three times Toby had found himself somewhere he could not possibly be, and yet sights, sounds, smells, and in the last case sheer agony, had all compelled belief. The hob used him as a mount to ride around and see the world, and it cared for him much less than a man would care for his horse. It was stupid, childlike, and treacherous, but it had never played this sort of joke on him before.

Certainly the visions were not exact prophecies. The street in Valencia had turned out as he had foreseen it, a litter of rubble between burned out buildings, but the man he had expected was absent. Hamish seemed to be constitutionally incapable of disbelieving anything he had read in a book, but if he now stumbled upon the tent and its occupants as Toby had described them, then even he might have to change his mind. Then he might be able to think up an explanation, for the teacher's son was a lot smarter than big, dumb Toby Longdirk.

Hamish was still creeping gently along through the trees like a stampeding herd of buffalo, although Toby could see a twinkle of firelight ahead already. Be fair! Not many men would make less noise. Hamish spent every spare minute reading and thus was an invaluable source of information. Toby never read. He preferred to practice useful skills like fencing, marksmanship, wrestling — and stalking. In the middle of this smug self-praise he stepped on something squishy and recoiled so fast he almost fell.

The revolting stench told him it must be a corpse. Too small to be a horse or cow. Goat? Sheep? He was about to move around it when something reflected the starlight. He poked with his staff and concluded it was a steel helmet. Gagging, he stooped and forced himself to explore further. Slime, maggots… The man must have been dead for weeks. He found the prize he was hoping for, a sword. He wondered if the hob had guided him to it, then dismissed the idea as absurd. Any stray dog was smarter than the hob. Still, a sword would be very useful if he was about to encounter what he feared.

He wiped his hands on the grass and rose. Hamish was shouting in Castilian, hailing the camp. Trailing his quarterstaff and carrying the sword, Toby moved faster, heading straight for the fire. Even without the vision he would have been suspicious of this lonely campfire. Only a strong, well-armed group would advertise its presence in this lawless, starving land, and there was no sign of such a camp here. In a few moments he was close enough to see Hamish through the trees, and his worst fears were realized.

Hamish stood near the blaze, apparently quite oblivious of the revolting object suspended above it. He was smiling and talking, but the creature stalking him was obviously a demonic husk. Once it had been a woman, and there was probably some life left in it even yet, but when demons managed to possess people, few of them could resist the temptation to torture their hosts and enjoy their pain. The thing that had lured Hamish into its trap was naked and scarred with burns. It had torn out most of its hair and chewed on its own limbs. Its eyes were empty bloody sockets, but the demon would be able to see without them. Hamish Campbell was a dead man.

Any army employed hexers, so it was not surprising that a war demon had escaped its controller and remained behind to add to the miseries of Aragon. But it had not yet detected Toby. With luck, he might be able to slip away unseen. His legs trembled with the urge to flee.

It lifted its web of illusion from Hamish. He screamed, flailed his arms, and tried to run, but his feet did not move. He swung his staff. The demon cackled shrilly and wrested it out of his grip as if he were a child, then tossed it away. Then it clasped his face in the ravaged claws that were all it had left of its hands.

'Pretty, pretty!' it gibbered. 'The pretty man is welcome. You will find happiness here — food and love, yes?' It pulled Hamish's head down to its breast in mock affection.

Hamish was doomed. It would take possession of this new victim and torture him also until he died and someone else walked into the trap — which happened first would matter little. In theory a creature and its resident demon could be slain with a blade through the heart, but that was only in theory. In practice the demon would freeze an attacker to the spot or throw lightning bolts at him or pick up a tree and hit him with it. No one except a hexer could creep up on a demon undetected, or evade its powers.

Or possibly the hob. Capricious and unpredictable though it was, it did hate demons. Toby could not abandon his friend. If the hob would let him, he must try to do something.

Hamish was squirming in the creature's grasp, retching at its stench, but powerless to avoid that odious mouth approaching his. The horror was about to kiss him, and even Toby's stomach turned over at the sight.

'Stop!'

The husk released Hamish and spun around, staring with festering blind sockets toward the sound.

Toby took a step forward, and neither the demon nor the hob blocked him. 'Stop, monster! Here is a larger, stronger body for you to claim. Let the boy go and take me.' He blundered forward.

'Idiot!' Hamish screamed. 'Get out of here!'

'Come!' the husk shrilled gleefully. It jiggled and waved its arms. Its torn dugs flapped up and down. 'Two of you to play with! Much feasting and loving and pain! Come to my embrace, lover!'

Toby felt it take control of his feet, rushing him forward to his doom. Hamish was still rooted to the spot, still cursing Toby's folly.

The ghoul spread its arms to embrace its new victim. At the last moment Toby's arm brought up the sword. The hob must have revealed itself then, for the demon screamed, but it was too late to stop the blade. It slammed into the woman's chest, straight through the heart. Corpse and Hamish collapsed at the same moment. Toby felt his limbs returned to his own control and staggered, grabbing a branch to support himself.

His hose dropped around his knees, and he started to laugh.

Even after he had managed to choke down the laughter it was a few moments before he could do more than just shake. Then he pulled up his hose and retrieved both sword and staff.

Hamish had scrambled away from the dead husk. His face was chalky in the firelight. 'You flaming fool! That was crazy!'

'Don't thank me, friend. Thank the hob.'

Apparently not yet trusting his legs to support him, Hamish sat where he was and stared up incredulously. 'I didn't know you could control it that well!'

'I didn't control anything,' Toby said. 'I just remembered how it hates demons.'

'You knew there was a demon here, and yet you let me come?'