The Banshee's Walk (28 page)

“Lamp oil?”

Evis nodded. “With soap mixed in, to make it stick.”

Mama slapped him on the back. “I likes the way you think, boy.”

I hustled Darla out of there, before they started hugging.

Later, Darla and I watched the sunrise.

As sunrises go, it lacked spectacle. The window was so thick we could barely see through it in the first place. And then there were the trees, which drank up the sun as it climbed.

But some light crept through nonetheless. First came the dawn, red and slow, and it gave way to day. There was no warmth in it. No bird song, either. Just a pale grey light that seemed reluctant and shone cold.

Darla was at my side, leaning against me. Her hair was mussed and her eyes were red, but she was the most beautiful woman in the world.

I told her so. She smiled and called me a liar.

And then the first siege engine broke from the trees, and men came shouting with it.

Horses galloped into the Lady’s charred and unkempt lawn. There were more shouts. I could make out movement, but not detail. There came crashings and the neighing of horses, and then the chop-chop-chopping of axes biting into trees.

Darla regarded it with a sleepy sort of detached curiosity.

“They’re clearing the trees so the catapults can fire.”

“You know the very words to melt a girl’s heart.”

“That’s me, all right. Charming to the last.”

“Is this the last, Markhat?”

I forced a smile. “Not a chance, Missy. All they’ve got are catapults. The Corpsemaster has worse than that in his pajama pockets, and you know it.”

“Maybe. But if it is, I love you, Markhat.”

Masonry shattered, down below. The horsemen were using ropes to topple the ward statues.

“This is the part where you tell me you love me too,” said Darla.

“You know I do.”

“I don’t know anything unless you tell me.”

“I bought you velvet gloves for Yule. If that isn’t love, I don‘t know what is.”

She turned to face me.

“I am not going to die without hearing the words, Markhat. Give me that.”

Hammers joined the axes as the catapult began to take shape. Footfalls sounded beyond my door, rushing from the stairs and down the hall towards us.

“I love you, Darla Tomas. Happy now? There is an invading army forming up on the lawn, you know. They have a catapult. Did I mention they have a catapult?”

She smiled. “So we’ve established that I love you, and you love me. Agreed?”

“No arguments here.” Knocks fell on my door. Mama bellowed my name.

Darla didn’t let go when I made to turn away.

“When men type people and women type people fall in love, they often start setting certain dates.”

Mama, bless her heart, gave the door a shove and barged on in, bellowing and stomping.

“Boy! Wake up, damned if they ain’t about to start flingin’ rocks—”

Darla skipped away from me, a hint of triumph on her face. Mama blushed and shut up.

“It’s all right, Mama. We were just about to get dressed.”

Mama gobbled something apologetic and backed away. I grabbed a shirt and hastily donned it, while Darla glided to the fancy bathroom and closed the door.

“You said something about rocks and the flinging thereof.”

“They’s pushin’ machines out of the woods. Three so far. Men an’ horses everywhere.”

I sat and pulled on boots.

“We knew this was coming, Mama. And you know who’s on our side.”

Mama snorted. “The one we ain’t naming ain’t on nobody’s side but his own.”

I found Toadsticker hiding under the couch and yanked him free. The Corpsemaster’s dainty dagger went in my right boot, where I planned for it to stay.

“What’s going on downstairs?”

“Them painters is paintin’. The rest of the lot is runnin’ around with swords they don’t know how to swing. The Lady has took to her wand-wavin’ room. Her man is stompin’ around givin’ orders and getting’ mad when nobody pays him no mind.”

I had a good idea who was foremost in paying Marlo no mind.

“Evis and crew?”

Mama cackled. “Boy, I got to say, that Evis is a likeable feller, if you can get past that face. He’s made up a batch of sticky lamp oil and if he’s as good at throwin’ as he thinks he is we might just set them cat-a-pults on fire before they get them built.”

“Victor and Sara?”

“Who?

“The other two halfdead.”

“Ain’t seen hide nor hair of them. Reckon they’re about, though, getting’ ready to spread some vampire nasty when the doors go down.”

Darla emerged from my bathroom. Her hair was combed, her clothes were fresh and the red was gone from her eyes.

“We’re engaged,” she said, without preamble.

Mama barked a laugh and slapped her knee. “And high time, I reckon.”

“Don’t look so terrified, darling. It happens all the time.”

“I don’t look terrified.”

“Last time I seen bug eyes like that, boy, they was in a toad a coach run over.” Mama grinned and bowed. When she straightened up, there was a dried owl in her hand. “Upon this joining, I confer my blessing.”

Something exploded out on the lawn. Tiny bits of sod pecked at the window.

“Downstairs, ladies. War starts early, in these parts.”

Darla took my arm. “Let’s get it done quickly, shall we, dear? We have rings to pick out.”

I’ve never hurried toward the sound of battle with such eagerness.

Downstairs was pandemonium.

Gardeners and stable boys and carpenters and cooks were charging from window to window and door to door, shouting and knocking holes in the plaster with their makeshift armor and tripping over each other everywhere the hall got narrow. Half a dozen dogs trotted happily behind them, not sure what game it was they were playing but determined to enjoy it anyway.

Marlo brought up the rear, bellowing and cursing and red-faced. He carried no weapon, but his hands were balled into white-knuckled fists, and I figured he was one shout away from grabbing the nearest of the staff and beating them until they listened.

I parked Darla at the foot of the stairs and charged into the fray, grabbing Marlo by his elbow.

“Let me show you an old trick my sergeant showed me.”

The mob reversed and was upon me, responding to a shout that troops were at the door. They weren’t, but I planted myself in the way, smiled a big wide smile, and laid out the first two males who got within arm’s reach of me.

That halted the charge. And like the Sarge used to say, a bloody nose never killed anyone.

“Shut up. All of you. Shut up and be still and listen, or you’ll get the same, and worse.”

One of the men I’d disciplined muttered something uncomplimentary. Marlo responded with a boot to his gut.

“You can’t see a damned thing out of any of these windows. And since they don’t open, they might as well not be there. So I want you, you, and you—” I pointed three worthies out at random, “—to find some tools and go to the top floor and take out a window on each wall. Got that? Just smash the damned things until they break. We can’t defend the House blind like this.”

“But the Lady—”

“I speak for the Lady,” snarled Marlo. “And this man speaks for me. He wasn’t asking, either. Get hammers, get upstairs, get moving.”

The trio conferred briefly about workrooms and hammers and then off they went.

Marlo’s face was the color of fresh cut beef.

“What else?”

“The rest of you barricade the doors. Start with the main doors, but don’t forget the side doors. Mr. Marlo, is there any furniture you want spared?”

“Hell no. Break it all to splinters if you have to. Just keep the doors from coming down.”

“You heard the man.”

A surly-eyed gardener in the rear of the pack perked up.

“What if they set the place afire? What do we do about that?”

“Slate doesn’t burn, Burns, and if you keep up with that sort of talk I’ll haul your whining ass up to the roof and throw you down myself.”

The man blanched. Marlo glared.

The floor shook as a mighty ironwood tree went down. The uppermost branches of it struck the House as it fell. There was a splintering and a rending, but the walls took the blow easily.

“The doors,” I said. “Heavy big stuff first. Nail it in place if you can. Smaller junk behind it. Go.”

They scattered, leaving Marlo and I alone.

“Thanks,” he said.

“Don’t mention it. Easier for me to do. They don’t know me, and I don’t have to live with them later.”

“If there is a later.”

“Been through worse. Still here to complain about it.”

Marlo snorted. Another tree fell out on the lawn. They’d soon have a clear field of fire, from anywhere they chose.

“The Lady?”

“Down in her room. Brewing up something, don’t know what, ain’t gonna ask.”

“Let’s hope it’s good. Seen Evis?”

“In the gallery. Dark in there.”

Buttercup came flying down the stairs. I say flying. It might have been a leap, might have been some unusual display of agility that only a creature as small as the banshee could execute. I never saw her do it again. But it looked as if she simply picked up her feet and came gliding down that stair.

Flying or not, Darla managed to grab her before she could pass. The tiny creature struggled for a moment, then buried her face in Darla’s hair and begin to whimper.

Darla looked at me and was about to say something, but then her eyes went wide and she whirled and put her back to me and tried to run.

She slipped on a spot of beer, went down on one knee.

I had Toadsticker out and level with my waist before I got turned around. Marlo was hurled into the far wall with a thud and a curse. Something black and shapeless, like a shadow given substance, fluttered by me, making a sound somewhere between wings flapping and the pages of a book being fanned. I made a slice at it with Toadsticker, met some resistance, heard a high keening screech before I felt the blade yank free.

I followed with a leap, shoved Toadsticker in the biggest part of the boiling black mass. It shrieked again. Darla screamed and rolled, and the wad of shadows and I fell and rolled and struggled.

It was cold. I never saw a face or a claw or a body of any kind. Something pushed at me and tore at my clothes, though, and it tried desperately to wrench Toadsticker free. I got on top of it. I managed to get my knees around it and then Mama appeared with a bucket full of fire. She dumped it on the shadow thing with a scream and a kick.

Whatever it was, it would have made damned fine kindling. It shrieked and spasmed and then it burst into flames that quickly engulfed it.

If Marlo hadn’t yanked me to my feet, I’d have been burned myself.

I kept it pinned as long as I could, only withdrawing Toadsticker when the thing stopped struggling.

It didn’t burn long, after that. And it left nothing but a handful of ash behind.

“What the Hell was that?”

I sat on my ass and puffed. Darla and Buttercup joined me.

“It was after the banshee,” said Mama, stirring the remains with a boot. She spat in the ashes. “Bet it meant to pick her up and fly her out, owl-like.”

“The chimneys,” I puffed more air. “Light a fire. In all of them. Must have come down a chimney.”

Marlo barked orders. He had the presence of mind to order torches brought to us all. This time, his orders were heeded.

“Thanks, Mama. How’d you know it would burn?”

“I didn’t,” she replied. “It was that or a chamber-pot. Ain’t you glad I chose like I did?”

Evis came gliding up. He regarded the ashes and frowned.

“Sorcery.”

“Looks like.” I stood. “Make a circle. Darla, you and Buttercup in the middle. Might be more of those about, until we get some fires burning.”

We arranged ourselves. I felt Buttercup’s tiny hand on my back as she grabbed a handful of shirt and held on.

Upstairs came the sound of windows breaking. I cringed. “Better get a torch behind all those too,” I said. “If they can fly high enough to come down chimneys they can fly through windows.”

Marlo repeated what I’d just said. There were nods and then running feet.

Buttercup still whimpered. I wondered what she could see that we couldn’t, whether she knew what was being arrayed against us outside. If Hisvin had been telling the truth, Buttercup was a creation of something so ancient it predated all of Kingdom history—what, I wondered, would be sufficient to frighten a creature which had seen all the horrors it must surely have witnessed?

Mama broke the silence by beginning to sing.

It was a lullaby. I knew the tune, but not the words. My own mother had hummed it, over and over, as she mended the whole neighborhood’s shirts with the same century-old needle and threads she salvaged from the trash-heap of a grave clothes maker.

I guessed the song itself was as old as the language.

“Don’t you fret child

Don’t you cry,

Mama’s gonna make the black-birds fly.

And when those black-birds fly away,

Mama’s gonna make you a bed to lay…”

Buttercup stopped whimpering. Mama kept humming, probably because she either didn’t know any more of the song or she hadn’t come up with a rhyme yet.

We heard shouts, hammers beginning to fall inside, the scraping and shoving of heavy chests and tables and cases. Glass shattered, up above.

And then behind me, a tiny voice that was not Darla began to sing as Mama hummed.

The words weren’t clear. After an instant I realized they weren’t even Kingdom. But the voice, tiny and high as a bird’s—

“Darla? Is it?”

“She’s singing, Markhat. It’s her.”

Buttercup sang, her words still strange, but obviously sang in accompaniment to Mama’s hummed tune.

“Buttercup? Do you understand me?”

No response, except more song.

“She was raised, I knew it,” said Darla. “You didn’t always live in the trees, did you, honey?”

Buttercup stopped singing, but if she meant to reply she didn’t get the chance. Shouts sounded above, and blows, and then a second ball of black came soaring down the stairs, headed right for Buttercup.