The next morning saw Pebble awake, and charmingly eager to help. So eager, in fact, that it humped up on its stubby legs, trundled itself down to the gate, and waited politely for the guards to let it out, like an eight-legged stone puppy. The guards sent for Kordas, of course, who told them to open the gate for it. He assumed that now that Pebble had politely said its thanks, it was going to go back to its mother. He’d brought a coat just so he could see Pebble off.

I don’t want Pebble to go, he realized, as the gate opened, and he followed the “young” Elemental out into the snow. The connection . . . it’s a lot more powerful than I thought. We both suffered at the hands of the Empire. And we both are responsible for the Emperor’s downfall.

But no, Pebble apparently had no such ideas. No, it proceeded to push and melt its way down to the fields where the rest of the stock was being kept, as if it knew it was making a nice, clear road for them, while Kordas followed it, bemused.

The stock were kept in their fields by virtue of those same charms that kept them close to the barges of their owners. Each charm had been firmly attached to a rock in the center of each field, so the animals would stay within the confines of their designated area.

Pebble stopped at the edge of the field furthest from the Vale, as if it sensed where the invisible boundary was. “Pebble go in?” it asked politely. It was already much better at human speech than it had been last night.

Kordas had a moment of alarm. Did it want to eat the stock?

“Pebble melt snow.” As if it had read his mind, the Earth Elemental supplied the answer to his unspoken question.

That’s—not a bad idea. There’s still plenty of edible grass and weeds under that snow. “Yes, please, Pebble. Go in and melt the snow. The animals in there will be very happy if you do.”

A quick wave of warmth flushed over him from the Elemental; it felt awfully good out here in the freezing air. “Good! Good! Make animals happy!” And having been given permission, it trundled into the first field.

There were no fences or actual boundaries yet, because as long as the animals were all being held in their respective groups by the charms they were still wearing and the ones in the center of each field, there really was no need. There was a little mingling of creatures at the edges of each field, but cattle, horses, sheep, and goats generally had no problem sharing a field with each other.

Pebble seemed to sense exactly where the boundaries of the charms were, however. It started right at the edge, and simply walked back and forth, like a plow, leaving matted-down, brown-green grass in its wake. It must have increased the heat it was giving off, because the snow melted very rapidly. And the horses in this first field, while shying off away from the moving rock at first, were quickly tempted by the uncovered grass, and when Pebble made no aggressive movements toward them, slowly edged their way over to the cleared sections. They still kept their eyes on Pebble, but when all the Elemental did was continue to melt snow, they gradually began to eat.

Within a mark, Pebble had cleared the first field and moved on to the next one, this one with cattle in it. The cattle could not possibly have cared less, perhaps because they had already watched Pebble clear the horse field, and had seen nothing to alarm them. The herdsmen drifted over to watch along with Kordas, clearly bemused at their new helper.

Then Grim frowned, shaded his eyes with his hand for a better view, then stepped gingerly into the field. He looked around for some time, as Kordas wondered what on earth he was looking for. He returned to Kordas’s side, now wearing a puzzled expression on his weathered, bearded face.

“M’lord Baron,” the Horsemaster said. “Would that thing be eatin’ the dung?”

Kordas blinked. “I don’t know,” he replied. “Maybe? Is that a problem?”

Grim snorted. “The opposite. Means no dung for the mages to dry up and us to collect, and nothin’ to burn the grass. Until we get these beasts spread out into their owners’ fields, I druther yon rock eats it than the boys shovel it.”

One of the junior mages had just come down from the Vale in time to overhear this, and his whole face lit up. “Does this mean we aren’t on drying duty now?”

Kordas could only shrug. “I suppose it does, at least down here. We’ll have to see if Pebble wants to clean up in the Vale as well.”

Pebble was still at work—if, indeed, this constituted “work” for an Earth Elemental—when Kordas left to get his breakfast. Maybe it wasn’t work. Maybe it was the equivalent of grazing.

When it came close to the watchers, Kordas called to it. “Pebble?” he said. “Are you eating?”

“Yessssssss,” the Elemental said, with what sounded like great satisfaction. “Eating. Very good. Is more?”

“In every field with animals, and you should eat as much as you want,” he told it. There was that sound like tumbling pebbles again.

“Thank Saver! Is good!” it said with great glee, and proceeded on its slow and careful way.

I guess I can leave it to work unsupervised, he decided at last. Though how on earth I would stop it, I have no idea.

When word got around that there was a helpful Elemental here, though, Pebble had no lack of requests. Kordas finally made a ruling: no jobs for Pebble that could easily be done by hand. That cut back on the requests, but there was one that Kordas particularly supported. It turned out that Pebble understood what scale was. After some quick sculpting of a model and some coaching, Pebble walked into the river. Not half a mark passed until the first of many bridgetowers to come erupted from the icy span, with a giggling Pebble atop it. Steam roiled off of the stone as it moved and blended into layers, each stretching laterally a little more than the last until a surface wide enough for three wagons ramped up from the riverbank. Then Pebble rolled sideways into the river with a tremendous splash, and the next one came up the same way. The “little” Elemental was apparently having the time of its life, casually making bridgetowers that would have taken Kordas’s people years to even attempt. The Tayledras didn’t use bridges—they probably had Gates if they needed to get across the river—so Kordas had been resigned to his people only having access to the other side of the waterway via boat, and only at certain times of year. If need be, the Gate-arches could be employed for the “short hop” across the river, but they’d decay away eventually. Now, Valdemarans could reach the far shore via bridges that looked like they’d last a thousand years, and reach the beautiful Grove there that he’d seen on brighter days.

It turned out that Pebble had helped the livestock just in time. That afternoon, a blizzard moved in, and if Pebble had not cleared the fields, the animals would have been in real danger. As it was, Pebble and the mages together were able to make three-sided snow shelters, roofed with branches hastily cut from anywhere that they could be spared without killing the bushes or trees, that all the various herds could huddle together in. Pebble extinguished most of its warmth in order to plow snow rather than melting it, the mages packed it down, and Pebble then warmed up just enough to melt the surface of the wall and let it freeze hard again, so the walls would hold up almost as well as walls made of stone.

Pebble did not like the cold, however, and came back up to the Vale. Inside the Vale, the mages had figured out a way to manipulate the Veil to shed the snow instead of melting it into rain. Whether this was a good idea or not—Kordas wasn’t entirely sure. It could mean they’d end up with a wall of snow overtopping the rock wall, or worse, ice. But for now, this seemed to be the best temporary answer, because otherwise they’d all be ankle-deep in water with nowhere for it to go.

Kordas had another “meal” set out for Pebble in that strip of meadow it seemed to like, and as soon as the Elemental got there, it fell on the dried dung as if it was starving. Literally fell on the dried dung—its legs disappeared into its body and the dung vanished underneath it.

“Good. Good,” it sighed when it was done. “Good eat.”

“We’ve got thousands of people, and plenty of livestock. We’ll make sure you’re not hungry,” Grim told it, patting its side with caution.

Kordas got a sense that it had turned its attention on the Horsemaster. “Who?” Pebble asked.

“Grim. This is Grim, and he is a friend,” Kordas replied immediately, just as Sydney appeared, scrambled up onto the Elemental, kneaded with his paws for a moment, and settled down, purring loud enough to make everyone smile. Sydney was followed to Pebble by Jonaton, dressed at last in one of his fancy, embroidered robes. Jonaton’s ability to grasp almost any task meant he was always in demand, but he had finally come to have a look at the creature. Jonaton strolled around it, fascinated.

“It makes legs?” the mage asked Kordas, eyes wide. “Can you get it to do that now?”

“Not make legs,” Pebble said, startling Jonaton so much the mage jumped. “Not wake rumble friend.”

Rumble friend? Oh! The cat!

“That’s a cat,” said Kordas. “One of the things we call him is ‘Sydney.’”

“Like cat,” replied Pebble. “Sydney is good boy.” And as they said that, Kordas noticed that Pebble had dished its back a very little bit, the better to cradle the now-dozing Sydney.

“You wouldn’t like it very much if you weren’t made of rock,” Jonaton muttered, looking at his scratched hands ruefully. “Kordas, why is it that damned cat lets your boys toss it around like a rag ball, but when I try to pet him, he lacerates me?”

Kordas tried not to laugh. “He’s your cat, Jonaton. Why ask me?”

“Good cat,” rumbled Pebble. “Who?”

“My name is Jonaton, Pebble,” Jonaton replied. “A friend.” He was already grinning; Pebble, Kordas had noticed, tended to have that effect on people.

Well . . . it’s a very sweet creature. And resilient. It seems to have recovered very well from being a tortured captive for so long. Perhaps that was the nature of Elementals. They were so long-lived, practically immortal, that “a long time” by human standards might just have been the equivalent of a short while to Pebble.

By this point, most people seemed to have gotten over their fear of Pebble, and had come to the strip of grass to have a look at the heat-emitting, talking rock. And more cats than just Sydney had decided that Pebble’s back was the best place to sleep, ever. In no time at all, Pebble was playing host to almost twenty cats, and the Elemental was surrounded by the curious. Kordas left Jonaton and Pebble to answer their questions, and returned to his family barge, only to meet a barrage of questions from his boys. The youths had all been kept away from Pebble until it had been determined that the Earth Elemental was safe. And they wanted to know everything he knew about it.

As long as it wasn’t raining, people still living in the barges preferred to spend as much time on their barge as in it. So Kordas gathered the lads up and took them to sit on the roof. Moments of rest, or even just calm, had been rare in his life for too long. He wasn’t prepared to settle down too much, but at a time like right now, it was appropriate. Taking a moment is all right. I let the Plan and this expedition steal too much away from me. I resent it, and I damned well will have time with my family now. We made it here. I don’t have to feel guilty over doing anything even for a minute that isn’t for the people of Valdemar. I can ease up.

But he hadn’t even begun to answer their questions when Rose came sprinting up the path to their barge. “Baron! Baron!” she called, and for the first time he could remember she had fear in her voice. “Pebble is calling for you!”

She stopped below him before he could reply. “It thinks something bad is coming. And—we feel it too!”

Delia was fascinated by Pebble, and she wished with all her heart that Jelavan was with her to see the “little” Elemental. Jelavan would have been beside himself, and asking all sorts of questions. Pebble’s vocabulary wasn’t large—at first—but the more people asked it questions, the more it seemed to learn, and learn quickly. It made an odd little interrogative “Uh-errr?” when it didn’t understand something, which was strangely charming, and always elicited the response of the questioner carefully rephrasing their question in simpler terms.

It was impossible to tell Pebble’s “head” from the “tail”—if, indeed, there was any meaningful difference—but most people were clustered around the end where the voice seemed to come from. There wasn’t anything like features to read, and yet, Delia was absolutely certain that Pebble was curious about the people around it, delighted with the purring cats lined up on its back, contented with its surroundings, and—even though the poor thing had been held captive and tortured by other humans—trusting of the people around it. Did it have some sort of Empathic sense, as Healers did? Was that why the Dolls all loved it?

She had the irresistible urge to pet the thing, even though it was taller than she was, and about as long as two horses and carts, and looked like nothing more than a big, water-smoothed boulder. Finally, she gave up trying to resist the impulse. Gingerly, she reached out to put her hand on it, and found that it was about the temperature of sun-warmed rock. Just comfortable, although if you leaned against Pebble for too long, or sat on it, she reckoned you’d probably be sweating and overheated before too long.

The cats loved the heat, though. And even some of the encampment dogs were coming to Pebble, putting their backs to it, and curling up for naps—with one wary eye on the cats.

And in the space of a breath, all that changed.

Beneath her hand, Pebble—stiffened. That was the only way she could describe the feeling. Pebble’s surface texture changed from smooth to undulating waves of stubby points. The dogs immediately alerted, jumped to their feet, and fled—perhaps back to their masters. The cats woke up, all at once, and scrambled en masse.

A throng of Dolls appeared from nowhere.

“Kordasss!” Pebble wailed. “Need Kordasss! Need Kordassss!”

What? she thought, with a sudden feeling of dread. This was not helped when Kordas came running as fast as he could, accompanied by Rose, as the once-attentive crowd backed away from Pebble in alarm.

Pebble emitted a high whine, as if it was struggling with speech; Kordas placed both hands on its “head” end, but he couldn’t seem to calm the Elemental enough to get it to speak properly. And now the entire creature trembled, as if with its own internal earthquake.

Finally, words came out of it again. “Bad thing!” it cried. “Bad, bad thing coming! Big bad thing!”

Kordas did not hesitate a second. “Rose, get all the herders to bring their stock in from the fields and get them behind the wall. Tell my Guard and all the mages to man the wall—” He paused. “Pebble, where? Where is the bad thing coming from?”

“Riverrrrrrrr!” Pebble whined. “Riverrrrrrrr!”

River? Where Pebble made the bridges earlier?

“Lift me up high, Pebble! Show me the direction!”

Pebble grew legs again, and an extra two at its “face” end. Kordas stepped in toward Pebble, and those two legs formed into stony platforms backed by broad, crude “thumbs.” Pebble “sat up” and raised Kordas above its head. It was noticeably calmer with Kordas there, physically touching it. Kordas braced himself against Pebble’s thumbs and covered his eyes. He knew there was a risk of being scorched by his own mage-sight, but he hoped he’d get lucky by invoking it while he was being lifted, looking downward and opening his eyes slowly. Easing into it, he couldn’t see much of anything except the blizzard, but mage-sight showed him some strange things. Strangely vague things. Normally, when Kordas focused his attention on something, using mage-sight, it enhanced its detail. Mage-sight itself was something like a hyperfocus: seeing something so well you see past its physical form and into its energy traits. This time, though, gazing in the direction Pebble turned him, a “glow” marking a large life sign was an uneven, but moving, cloud, many furlongs away but closing. It matched the contours of the land, and flares and spits of energy discharges were in its wake, occasionally exploding as far as he could See. When he refined his mage-sight back onto the nearing cloud, though, it didn’t appear to be a cloud at all. Its collective aura broke into thousands of moving vertical ‘sticks,’ like toothpicks, whose energy peaked at either end, flowing over the landscape like a—

Like a swarm. The mage-sight is right—it isn’t a cloud, it’s thousands of individuals traveling like one, alongside the water.

Water—swarm—the—the knife-water-spiders? He pushed that thought aside. Right now, I do not need that in my life. From spending time with my boys directly into a swarm of giant death-spiders? Just the thought of it angered him.

“Man the wall on the river side!” he shouted from his impromptu command tower. “Incoming danger! Guards and Auxiliaries, all hands, all muster! Report to wall stations! Gunners, to revetments! Dolls, support the Guard! But get everyone inside the wall, now! If stock has to be left behind, so be it, but I want every person inside this wall now!”

Delia didn’t wait for instructions; her Fetching Gift could well be useful, so she ran for the wall on the river side and sped up the steps to peer through the thick curtain of snow toward the largely invisible river. If she was needed somewhere else, well, they had plenty of ways of contacting her.

More and more people, most of them inadequately armored, but armed to the teeth, came running up to join her on the wall. She moved as much out of the way as she could while still being able to look toward the river, but the jostling of the Guard made her want to hit back at them. It irked her maybe more than it should, but—and then she felt it.

Hate. Waves of rage and hate, coming from where the riverside should be. And just for a moment, the skeins of snow parted, and she got a glimpse of a red blur. A disheartening ululation, like momentary shrieks spreading outward through a crowd, made everyone stop what they were doing. Most arrayed on station just stopped their preparations and stared unhappily into the blizzard. Two Guard auxiliaries stumbled against each other, and the first of them smacked the second right across the mouth.

Her heart plummeted, her mouth dried, and her throat closed. No . . . no, it can’t be.

The snow swirled as if a curtain had descended. But the feelings didn’t go away; and as she glanced around her at the Guards and mages clustered up here on the wall, with the Veil streaming water a scant arm’s-length away, she saw from the looks on their faces that they felt it too. And they recognized it. The damnable ululation sounded again, only much, much closer.

Then the snow parted again, and what had been a red blur became something she had never expected to see again. A red glow, disturbingly wide, diffused through the snow. The ground rumbled, and Delia noted that the rumble made wave patterns, and significant softening, in the mud below. She heard people yelling and livestock leaning toward panic—and possibly, stampede. Dogs barked at the previous ululation, but this time, they stopped barking entirely.

The red glow pulsed, from one center point, outward from horizon to horizon from Delia’s viewpoint. It pulsed again, brighter, but from two points of origin outward. Then three. Brighter each time. Closer.

Blizzard snow billowed as if pushed against the Veil by breath, backlit by a steadily pulsing red glow, and the third breath later, it appeared.

The Red Forest. Only now it was moving, and moving uncomfortably quickly, one gigantic living thing that filled the river valley. Even from this distance, all of the trees visibly seethed and writhed, and the thing was moving at a terrifying speed, like a flash flood, coming down the riverbank and heading straight for them, thousands of voices shrieking.

Now all that preparation, using Mindspeakers as well as the Dolls, paid off. Rose kept pace with Kordas as he raced for the nearest barge containing the Poomers and the Poomer ammunition. Six Dolls fell in behind them, keeping pace, while Rose kept a running update on what was happening elsewhere.

And just what it was that they were about to face.

That made him slow and then stop in his tracks. The Red Forest. The ‘Blood Forest.’ Hate and rage will hunt you forever, he thought, for no apparent reason. When he caught his breath back, his thoughts tasted of despair. Is it here because of the Empire? Is it their revenge against us? Would Poomers be of any use against that thing? Ball, maybe, if they gather up close . . . bolt bundle—useless, caltrop lines—useless, stinging gas—double useless. We’d only flavor them. Assuming attrition as a primary principle, reducing their numbers is most likely to succeed—because of course, they could have dead-switch reflexes or Final Strikes, the sort of end-game that ends the game for both sides. Chainshot could slow the thing down, but they’d have to aim very low to strike below the canopy. And chainshot’s heavy, so increased load times would impact the rate of fire, and the only deployed Poomers are all on the perimeter of the Vale. So the one thing we’ve got that’s sure to cause damage is too far away to use. Of course it is, because I wasn’t smart enough for this. I took time for myself, and my boys, and Isla, and now we’re all going to die, because I didn’t spend that time making better emergency plans. I could have spent that time saving them! I hate myself for that. I just assumed everything would be all right. Just because we reached the milestone of a settlement. I let my guard down at the last moment. The last moment of the expedition. Oh gods, can it really be that? I slowed down, I wasted time on myself, and I could have done without that time if I’d known it meant I was going to get people killed. People who trusted me.

“I do not believe that standard projectiles will be of much use, Baron,” Rose said, echoing his earlier thoughts. “But . . . perhaps the things that send the projectiles might be? The cartridges?”

“Yes, maybe we could make them explode, but how, without it being a suicide mission? Every one is locked against enchantment and force, and breaking that would take too much time—also, worth mentioning, they might explode. We didn’t steal any clockwork strikers or tread-on webs, or we could just throw them. Firing crossbow bolts at the cartridges is more likely to waste arrows than—”

People who trusted me. People who still trust me. People trust me. And if I can’t make everything all right like they trust me to, I can at least feel hope for longer. I can act like things are all right, and they won’t have as much fear. I know how to act. I’ll make the fiction create the reality. I can do that. If I know anything, it’s how to fake looking competent.

And then it occurred to him. “Delia! Where’s Delia?”

“On the wall facing the river, Kordas,” Rose replied.

Perfect. “Get me a floating barge and a fast heavy horse to pull it, and have them meet me at the storage barges.” Nobody believes a heavy horse can be fast until they’ve been shoulder-checked into the next county by one. He tried to pick up his pace, but now his path was blocked by herds of frantic sheep mingled with frightened horses, chased into dubious safety from outside the wall, to interfere now. I should have thought of that, he cursed, and tried to shove his way through—

And found himself picked up bodily by Rose, who threw him over her shoulder and somehow managed to shove her way through the livestock. He twisted around to something approximating sitting up like he meant to be there. What in all the Hells. I’ve learned to depend more and more of my rule upon others, and now I’m literally being carried by them? If it wasn’t so funny for its absurdity, I’d be offended at the thought. By then, he was only in a seated position as far as regally wrapping one arm entirely around Rose’s head while flailing the other. More terrified animals filled the spaces around all the storage barges, but the Doll leapt twice between wildlife-islands and closed ground that much more quickly. There were three more Dolls, and a Tow-Beast with an empty hay wagon, waiting for them when Rose put him down, twisting Kordas to face him the right way. Without needing to be told what to do, Rose calmed the Tow-Beast, who was taking his cues from the milling horses around him, and the three Dolls formed a chain, passing the Poomer cartridge loads out of the barge and into the wagon at an alarming rate.

Thank the gods that those things are meant to take rough handling. They had to be; after all, the Empire only had heavy wagons or canal barges to move their stores, and once out of the Empire and onto the battlefield, there were no canals, and probably no roads, either. So transit would not be kind to lesser builds. Unlike the Spitters, which used stone balls or stubby “bolts,” the ammunition for a Poomer was whatever the Poomer loaders fancied, from glass fragments and pottery shards to chains to solid projectiles. Those were all inert enough until fired to be handled roughly, but the explosive cartridges—if those went off prematurely, you could lose half a supply column. So they had to be triggered, very precisely, by a spring-loaded mechanism on the Poomer itself that snapped into a special divot on the back of the cartridge.

They loaded the barge with all it could carry, and without being directed, one of the Dolls took the Tow-Beast’s head and led it toward the river wall as fast as the Doll’s legs could go—which was a lot faster than a human, and just about matched the Tow-Beast’s trot. Mud roared up as high as the Dolls’ heads with every beat of the heavy horse’s hoofbeat. Ten more Dolls formed a flying vee and pushed—and in a few cases, threw—the livestock out of the way, for the speeding barge to get through the maze wall’s nearest gate. Out of the crowd of milling animals and herdsfolk came a floating barge, another Tow-Beast, and another Doll leading it. And three more Dolls on top of it, to add to the work crew.

“I need—” he said to Rose.

Before he could finish the sentence, she had picked him up in her arms again and was running for the wall.

Thankfully, she put him down at the foot of the stairs, although at this point, the last thing he was worried about was his dignity. His heart racing, he ran up the steps two at a time, and with Rose close behind, impatiently shoved his way past the guards until he reached Delia, whom he found in the middle of the pack of mages.

“It’s the Red Forest,” Sai told him, expressionlessly. Jonaton was cursing, fluently and fervidly, under his breath. “I thought those damned Tayledras said it would be no problem!”

“I guess we just found out they’re fallible,” he replied, peering through the curtain of snow at the huge red blur charging up to the wall. “Careful with your mage-sight, but it’s left a trail of magical damage behind it. What the hell is there in magic that we can use against that thing?”

“The green mages seem to be able to sap it, a little, but they tell me it’s like handling poisonous thorn-branches with thorns as long as your hand. They’re having to be careful or it can turn against them and infect them. They’ve slowed it down, at least, but they can’t do more than that.” Sai shaded his eyes with his hand, and finally spat in disgust. “I didn’t want to do this, but—” He cleared his throat. “Schwande! Logan! Sera! Moklas! Clear this damned snow away!”

Those were their only weather mages, who normally confined themselves to predicting weather, and occasionally steering it gently. Back in the old land, they’d limited their powers to keeping actual disasters at bay: slowing a downpour so it didn’t become a flood, carefully coaxing rain into being when things were too dry, steering rain away from fields that still needed harvesting so that if you happened to be there, you would see the unharvested field dry and ready, and the harvested one next to it getting dumped on. They had never, in all the time he had been the Duke, used their powers to directly disperse weather. Such large-scale interference in weather was the provenance of Imperial weather mages with the Army. Generals did not care what collateral damage occurred, as long as they got the result they desired, so the four had been especially secretive for years.

As a mage himself, he sensed energies moving high above him, but that was the limit of what he could understand. The price to be paid for it, it seemed, was the sudden headache everyone got from the intense change in air pressure. Guard and mage alike winced, popping their ears. Loose snow lifted from the ground before turning to raindrops, which immediately fell back down. The snow in the air vanished from the Vale and the river valley, as if cleared away by an invisible hand. Sun broke through the clouds, which cleared away from above the Vale, as an ever-expanding, rainbow-lined hole in the overcast.

A low moan—involuntary—escaped from virtually everyone on the wall, as the enemy lay fully revealed below them.

Acre after acre of the thing, seething with hate and anger, every “tree”—though only the gods knew what those things actually were—thrashing in seemingly coordinated waves. Is it going to come over the wall? Can it come over the wall?

“Magic might backfire on us, if we try anything like a spell to control it or attack it with pure power,” Ceri cautioned. “It might absorb the magic and become even stronger.”

“Hey! Before we try any more magic on it than we already are, try shooting something at it?” Jonaton suggested, although his worried face and his tone suggested that he didn’t expect anything they threw at it physically to work.

The thing had stopped just short of the Veil; Kordas didn’t know if the Veil had stopped it, or if it wasn’t sure what the Veil was—or even if it had any thoughts at all. The tops of the “trees” were just below the top of the wall, and lower than the parapet—but he had the feeling that if the thing wanted to, or realized that it could, it would climb right over the wall. He raised his voice. “Guards! Fire at will! Any target!”

A veritable rain of bolts arced down at the nearest “trees.” And as he had expected, there was no reaction. The arrows might as well have been dewdrops.

“Someone bring me up one of the Poomer charges,” he shouted, somehow keeping his voice steady. “Delia, come over to me.”

Delia made her way through the mages to his right until she was at his side, crossbow in hand pointed downward. She looked as white as the snow had been, but her voice was steady when she answered him. “What can I do?”

“You know how the Spitters work, right?” he asked, as he took the cask-sized cartridge from Rose, who had gotten it from another Doll mid-staircase who had brought it up from the barge. It was a gray cylinder, flat on both ends, with a spot in the middle of the “back end” where the snap trigger of the Poomer was meant to strike. “This is just like the cartridges for the Spitters, but on a much larger scale.”

She nodded.

“Plant this thing somewhere down there in the Red Forest, and then hit this spot as hard as you can with a bolt,” he said, pointing to the recessed, red-painted spike pit. Kordas held it with the pit facing directly upward.

She looked away from him and stared at a spot just below them, among the thrashing trees. The rippling edges of the Forest advanced, then retreated as they touched the Veil, then advanced again . . . but each time, they stayed in contact with the Veil a little longer. And Delia just stared, as if mesmerized by the movement, while she mechanically cocked her crossbow. He restrained the urge to shout at her. Why is she taking so long?

Suddenly his hands were empty, and the trees just below them winced out of the way of the gray cylinder that appeared to have spontaneously appeared among them, driven halfway into the ground.

Before he—or they—could react, Delia had her crossbow in her hands, aimed, and fired.

POOM!

The cartridge went off spectacularly, blowing a hole in the forest that showed the ground and snow beneath it, sending bits of oozing tree, dripping substrate, and snow in every direction, as the people on the wall ducked behind the parapet. A few of the dragonflies buzzed drunkenly around the mess before seeming to get their bearings and ducking back inside one of the “mouths.” The hole was easily the size of three houses, and at the sight of it everyone cheered.

Until the hole closed right back up again before their very eyes.

“Bring up another,” Delia said steadily. “And if any of the rest of you have some magic way to drop a cartridge trigger-side-up in that mess so I don’t have to—”

“Guards! Loading line for Delia!” Kordas shouted behind her, and four guards formed into a close circle behind Delia, with her as the fifth spot of the circle. They all readied crossbows, and as Delia fired one bolt, the guard on her left took the fired bow and safely pointed it downward, then handed it to the second guard, who pulled it, handed it to the third who loaded it, who then handed it to the Guard on her right, who then placed the ready-to-aim loaded crossbow in Delia’s hands while her previous crossbow began the loading circuit.

Half a dozen of the mages, including Jonaton, made a grab for the cartridge another of the Dolls was bringing up, and within moments, there were more Dolls forming another chain on the parapets to put Poomer cartridges in the mages’ hands.

Some levitated the cartridges gently into place. Some apported them—apportation worked a lot like the Fetching Gift, except that any mage who had learned the spell could do it. As a rule, it was meant for short distances, but in this case the spell had enough range. It didn’t take long for the mages to start dropping cartridges in choice places; what did take some care was placing the cartridges far enough away from each other for maximum damage. While they were placing the cartridges, Kordas kept an eye on the Forest; it may have appeared to have “healed” almost instantly from the damage it had taken—but from the uncoordinated way in which the trees in the spot were thrashing, it hadn’t actually recovered. Meanwhile, Delia’s face was completely expressionless, her eyes narrowed in concentration.

“We’re hurting them!” Kordas yelled, and a few guards cheered at that, while one audibly asked, “Them? Just how many forests are here?” Kordas shot him a baleful eye, then turned back to business. He knew his levitation skills were not all that good, but—maybe my aim is good enough. And although he didn’t have a bow on him, he did have his Spitter and a pouch full of projectiles and cartridges. If it can take down one source of rage and hate, it can take down another. He grinned to himself for a moment, kissed his Spitter, loaded it, sighted on the trigger point of the planted canister nearest him, and carefully squeezed the trigger, at the same time that Delia aimed and fired her crossbow.

POOM-POOM!

Two canisters going off side by side made a much bigger hole in the thing than he would have expected, and the trees went wild. Delia was triply faster at reloading than he was, but once he’d reloaded, another two cartridges went up with an equally satisfying result.

Three more, and the Forest abruptly pulled back from the wall, and he dared to hope.

But then it did something he hadn’t expected. Staying at a distance from the wall, the thing split into two, and began to encircle them. It’s smart enough to know not to cluster up when an explosive is in play. And to keep a part of itself out of our apparent range.

“Fuck!” Jonaton swore. He grabbed the knife off his belt and cut off his fancy gown at the knee, tossed the bottom aside, and made a sprint to the right.

“Some of you follow Jonaton!” Kordas barked. “Sai, you, you, and you—” He pointed at three of the guards. “Support Delia! The rest with me!”

He sprinted to his left, followed by guards and mages, and the ever-present Rose. He left a trio of one mage and two guards at intervals along the wall until he ended up at the back of the Vale and met with Jonaton.

The Forest had already beaten them there. The Vale was completely encircled too.

The POOMs of cartridges going off echoed back and forth around the Vale, as the Valdemarans who were not part of the guard either sought shelter or came to the foot of the wall to offer any help they could. Someone brought up casks of the Tayledras’s hard brandy to the foot of the wall, and before Kordas could shout at him not to be daft, he called up “Lad! This’ll burn!”

Dear gods, it will! The Tayledras had introduced them all at the Midwinter celebration to a game that consisted of snatching nuts with your bare hand out of a bowl of burning brandy, and he knew from that, as well as drinking it, that the stuff was potent—and flammable! He gestured to the people below to bring casks up—and this time, there was no finessing about. The trees had closed in to direct contact with the maze wall, and beat upon it. Footing on the parapets became slippery while the trees beat upon the structure, and it was increasingly unnerving when they began their disorienting screams again, and the pounding upon the walls took on rhythms. Can’t say I like that, Kordas thought. This thing hasn’t even breached the wall and it’s beating us up. Out of mood, off balance, distracting noises, frightened, and we aren’t even sure what kind of fight we can ultimately put up. After a prompt, Rose smashed in the top of a cask, and splashed the contents over every part of the Forest she could reach.

“Baron Kordas, I believe they should be on fire,” Rose said, with a hint of humor.

“Right you are, Rose,” Kordas replied. “You read my mind.” He grounded his magic, thrust out his hand, gathered power from the ley-line below, and lit off a fireball.

The result was gratifying; with a whoompf, the brandy ignited, and the trees caught fire, thrashing in agony.

But once again, the feeling of triumph was short-lived, because the damned things began lobbing chunks of snow and mud at the flames, putting them out.

If they’re fighting fire, they aren’t fighting us. “More brandy! Bring torches!” he ordered. “They can’t keep putting it out!”

Then the sky split open; a jagged lance of lightning arced down out of the clouds to a point outside the wall to his right and a peal of thunder that shook him to his core left him half blind and breathless. The weather mages were at work, somehow managing to generate lightning out of the blizzard clouds pushed back by their snow-clearing. Within seconds he saw smoke roiling up from the other side of the wall. Try being resistant against that, Forest. Nothing comes away unharmed from lightning!

But would all of this be enough?

They were merely humans, and every time a human did anything, but especially magic, there was a cost in energy and endurance. Battling the sound, shaking, emotional assaults, and simple fear tired people out even faster. This thing seemingly had no such limits—or at least, it was so huge that its limits were far past those of simple human beings. They were also depending on a finite supply of Poomer cartridges, brandy, and other weapons that were going to run out. Their enemy, the Forest, was a weapon, and now it split into six equidistant sections against the maze wall’s perimeter and shuffled side to side.

Someone apported a cartridge into a nest of trees right below him. He detonated it, but this time the hole filled in faster than it had before. He saw then that the trees were grouped more closely together than they had been, forming tight clumps that joined their canopy together, resisting the blast. They were hurt, but now it was mainly upper-level leaves that blew apart.

Another pair of lightning bolts arced down, and thunder rattled even the “stone” of the wall.

We’re not winning. We’re barely holding our own. And if this thing starts to think . . .

“Kordas, we are losing people on top of the wall,” Rose said, shouting into his thunder-deafened ears. “Where there are no mages, the trees are snatching people right from the top.”

The sounds of anguished screams came from the right and left.

“Get that brandy to everyone!” he ordered. “Let’s burn this damned thing to the ground!”

He said that . . . but behind his façade was pure despair. Because out on the edges of the clumps he saw new trees—growing.

And something horrific occurred to him.

What if the thing underground here, the thing that had made the wall he was standing on and was growing a manor for him, was akin to the Forest?

What if the Forest could feed off it?

Bleak despair delivered a punch to his gut, and he clung to the wall for a moment as his knees grew weak. For a moment, blackness closed in around him, and he could not see a way out of it.

A steadying hand on his shoulder recalled him to himself, and he looked up into Isla’s eyes.

Like her sister, she was pale and trembling, but her voice was steady. “Tell me what you need, my love.”

Maybe I can’t save us all . . . but maybe I can save the future. “Gather up everyone who doesn’t actually want to be fighting, all of the children, and as much of the livestock as you can. Get them down the ramps, and get them all underground,” he said hoarsely. “Then seal all the entrances. With luck, if the wall fails, you’ll be safe there, and all our spare food will be down there with you. I need you down there with them. One, you’re a mage, and two, if I’m lost, those that survive will need a leader.”

She didn’t protest, she didn’t argue, and she didn’t complain. Instead, she took his head in both her hands, kissed him fiercely, and flew down the stairs, trailed by Ivy and Daisy, shouting at the people huddled in confusion away from the wall. Whatever she said, they started following her.

He turned his attention back to the enemy. He had put his people in the best hands he knew.

It was his job now to give them as much time as he could. The rest was up to chance and fate.

That damned pig.