NICK AND BEZEAL HUNG BACK BY THEIR PORTAL WITH Kara as the last of her soldiers spilled over onto the road and raced away. The portal closed behind them with an electric snap.
“That is a sight to behold,” Kara said, watching her soldiers loping up the street. Half invisible in the darkness and falling snow, her army looked like a sea of black glass shards, rippling away toward
the fortress of Scoville Manor. “Bezeal, you outdid yourself on the armor and weapons. The Dreamtreaders won’t know what hit them.”
Bezeal bowed slightly. “There are very few subjects I know so well . . . as weapons, destruction, and all things fell. Eagerly, I await
our foes’ death knell.”
“How long till we get in on the action?” Nick asked, his demeanor enflamed by Bezeal’s treatments. “I’m fair raring to go.”
Kara smiled at Nick’s new enthusiasm. “We will let the ground troops break through the Dreamtreaders’ defenses first. Then, we attack. And, remember, our main targets are Archer, Rigby, and Doc Scoville.”
“What about Kaylie?” Nick asked.
“She is a target as well,” Kara replied. “But I do not want her killed. I have plans for her.”
Bezeal’s pinprick eyes tripled in size. “What is this? You want the girl to survive? Nay, you cannot allow any enemy to thrive. We agreed there would be no Dreamtreader left alive.”
“I changed my mind, Bezeal,” Kara replied. “You did say your treatments would work on anyone. Kaylie’s strength is too valuable to squander.”
Bezeal’s only reply was a quiet hiss.
“Dooley, look at that fortress,” Nick said. “A fair bet they’re expecting us.”
“If they are, it’s your doing,” Kara hissed. “I don’t know how you did it, but it could only have been you. Now keep your mouth shut unless I speak to you first.”
Nick’s expression didn’t turn combative or angry. He nodded and said, “Yes, Mistress Kara.”
She looked far ahead. Her soldiers were nearing the fortress’ outer walls, their movement like a shadow tide approaching a shoreline. And your castle,Kara thought, will fall like a sand castle. This, I promise you.
With them in place, Kara closed her eyes and activated all fifteen hundred strings, the invisible mental tethers she’d established with each individual soldier. Through them, she could issue commands at the speed of thought, she could see through any one warrior’s eyes, and she could even enter the consciousness of a soldier and take possession of it. It felt a lot like some of the more advanced virtual reality games, not that Kara really knew what that was like. She despised all video games.
For the moment, Kara took full control of a warrior about six rows back from the very front line. She gasped at the rush of adrenaline. It was exhilarating to flat out sprint into battle with so many allies running along with her. Kara leaped over a fire hydrant and a hedge, pausing just long enough to look up at the fortress. “Pretty good, Archer,” she whispered. “Those walls look pretty solid. Pretty tall too. It’s a shame the walls won’t be good enough.”
Eyes locked on the base of the forward wall, Kara watched as the rows of soldiers ahead of her didn’t stop at the formidable walls. Like hundreds of frenzied ants, they found traction in even the slightest crevices between stones, and then clambered up. They didn’t even break stride.
Kara willed her warrior to do the same and exulted as she ran up the side of the castle. It was Kara’s last smile for quite some time.
Trumpets rang out overhead. Swarms of combatants issued forth from the high parapets. Kara skidded to a halt as a gigantic scarecrow simply dropped over the side and plummeted toward her. She yanked a laser-revolver from her breastplate and fired. For a breathless moment, the gun hummed and glowed with a rapidly increasing phosphorescent blue. Then it discharged a zigzagging bolt of destruction that instantly shredded half of the scarecrow’s body.
The rest of it slammed into Kara’s soldier body, dislodging her from the wall. She and the ruined scarecrow careened together and landed in a heap of other warriors. Somewhat disoriented, Kara shoved the broken scarecrow off and stood. It was just in time to see a strange, shriveled little man wearing a red cap. He grinned wickedly, revealing a set of crooked, yellow teeth.
Kara started to lift her weapon but was too slow. The dwarf cackled, spun around, and struck Kara’s soldier squarely on the noggin with a staff. Through the thread connecting her to the soldier, Kara felt the blow. It wasn’t pain as she expected but rather a rapidly increasing sense of numbness. She could still see through the soldier’s eyes, but she could not will it to move.
“Oh, well,” Kara muttered. “On to the next one.”
She took control over a warrior who was cresting the outer wall. This was one of the soldiers who carried the peculiar lance-weapon. A trio of what looked like walking marshmallows blocked her advance. They held out their arms, and all manner of fluffy white goo shot out. Kara used her lance to vault over the stream of nastiness. Then she dropped to a crouch, whirled the lance, and took the legs out from under the spongy enemies. They flounced onto their backs and wriggled like overturned turtles.
Kara was up and running in an instant. She scrambled out of a melee involving several of her obsidian knights and . . . what? Had she just seen armored frogs wielding light sabers?
Kara turned her attention to a rampart that seemed to switchback repeatedly down to an inner bailey. It looked as likely a spot as any to find one of the Dreamtreaders, so she bounded down the first ramp. She turned corner after corner, loping along without opposition until, near the bottom of the final rampart, she had to slide onto her back to avoid some kind of thorny branch that swept for her head.
No. It was a gigantic, bristling black spider. A soldier in spiked armor rode upon its back. His ominous red visor covered his eyes, and Kara was instantly reminded of the red-capped fellow who had knocked her previous soldier for a loop.
This time, Kara was ready. Her lance low and menacing, she charged the spider and made as if she were going to shove the lance into the creature’s fanged mouth. Instead, she jammed it into a crevice in the cobbled stone. Kara used her momentum to vault up out of the way of the charging creature and plant both of her booted feet into the chest of the spiked warrior.
The impact knocked Kara’s enemy clean from his saddle, but when he struck the ground, he shattered like a glass bulb. Kara landed in the shards and spun around to contend with the spider. Kara despised spiders, and this was enormous. It couldn’t be an accident. “This is Rigby’s doing,” she muttered through her knight’s mouth.
That was when Kara lost her sense of combat. The spider was wearing sunglasses. She almost laughed, but the creature began to rock on its hinged limbs. Back and forth, it swayed hypnotically. Without warning, it raised its huge abdomen. There was a face . . . a hideous, clownish face . . . staring back at her.
Kara screamed. That just startled her all the more because it was a deep man’s voice. By then, it was all over. Something shot forth from the spider’s jaws, and Kara’s soldier went completely numb.
“This is more difficult than I expected,” Kara said, back in her own skin once more. She didn’t turn to Nick and Bezeal. There was no need to show them how frazzled she’d become. “They have . . . decent defenses.”
“Any sign of the Dreamtreaders?” Nick asked.
“Not yet,” she replied. “They’re letting their minions be their first line of defense. I’m going back in.”
Once more, Kara closed her eyes and tugged on a thread leading to the consciousness of a different soldier. This one was already down in the courtyard where the battle was raging in full. Spiders and armored frogs dueled her obsidian knights in every crevice and corner. The little red-capped people were wreaking havoc by sneaking past soldiers already occupied with an opponent and then biting them.
Somehow, her soldiers were going down too quickly. Kara checked her mental inventory, rapidly counting the threads. In less than an hour, she had lost more than six hundred warriors. Something had to change.
Kara flashed back into her soldier in the courtyard and sped through the fighting. She kicked a red cap and sent him flying, and then used the momentum to roll underneath a reaching scarecrow. She charged down a corridor, saw the shadow of a lurking spider, knelt, and took aim with some kind of twin-barreled rifle. Kara heard the spider’s hiss as she pulled the trigger. The weapon discharged two glowing spheres, one green and one purple, that swirled around each other until they reached their target. Right in front of the creature’s hideous face, the spheres collided. There was a flash of brilliant white light, and, when Kara got her night vision back, nothing was left of the spider but a blotchy, quivering shadow.
“Ooh. I like this weapon,” Kara whispered, and then she continued through the passage.
She emerged in a very quiet section of the fortress that was open to the sky above. The snow was falling heavily now. Big, feathery flakes, whirling and swirling—the wind drove the flakes in a spiral around the base of the tower in the center of the yard. Beyond that, near the opposite wall, a stairway rose and disappeared into a very familiar building.
“There it is,” Kara hissed. “Rigby’s house.” She drew a second weapon, the revolver, and raced across the yard.
A deep growl came from her right. Kara turned and found three of her soldiers waiting, but something was wrong with them. They were meandering about, taking exaggerated steps, and stumbling often. They looked dizzy or worse, and, when Kara drew near to them, she saw each knight had his or her helm open. The look on their faces was nothing short of idiotic. Googly eyes, crooked smiles, lopsided eyebrows—the works.
“What do you think you are doing?” Kara demanded. She was half tempted to fire on them, but her thoughts flew from her mind at the sound of the growl. It was closer. In fact, it was directly behind her.
Kara was firing her weapon as she turned, but that wasn’t fast enough. She came face-to-face with the largest, furriest Siberian husky she’d ever seen. The thing licked her face, and the whole world turned . . . funny. Kara couldn’t think straight.
“What am I doing?” she asked, suddenly marveling at the snow. Some part of her mind registered she had a job to do, but there was really no reason to do anything serious, was there?