The Orphan Army (24 page)

“Mook, for mountains torn down and valleys cracked open, smash them
now, now, now
!”

Evangelyne pointed to a pair of Stingers who raced toward her from either side of the crippled red ship. Huge beasts whose mouths trailed saliva and whose eyes burned with red flame. They separated to pass on either side of a pile of mossy rocks, but then the rocks
reached out for them.

Milo cried out as the pile of rocks rose from the ground, leaping up and colliding to form, piece by piece, a towering figure that was, in shape only, human. Arms made from schist and granite spread wide; fists made of marble and iron ore swung through the darkening air. One fist struck a Stinger full on the face, and the sound of breaking bone rose even higher than the screams of the burning Stinger. The other hand caught the throat of the other scorpion dog and lifted it into the air.

“Mook!” cried a voice that was dusty and hard, and Milo realized that this thing, this boy of stone, had called out its own name. “
Mook!
” it shouted again, and with a grunt of titanic effort, hurled a Stinger across the clearing directly at the Huntsman.

That should have been the end of the Huntsman. Two hundred pounds of muscle and insect armor, tail slashing the air as it flew toward its target, should have smashed him down and dead. However, the Huntsman, with a sound like a man annoyed at a buzzing gnat, bashed it out of the air with the burned stump of his left arm. The Stinger twisted and fell badly to lie quivering.

I'm going nuts,
he thought.
This isn't happening, so I'm really going nuts.

“Now, Iskiel!” called the girl. “For a billion hearts stilled, turn theirs to ash.”

And a huge salamander dropped from a tree onto the Huntsman. It was enormous—bigger than an iguana, with smooth gray-green skin through which intense red fire blazed, revealing the inferno
inside
the creature.

A fire salamander! Milo had read about one in an old book of fantasy stories. Yet here it was, real and hissing like a snake as it landed on the Huntsman's back. It instantly coiled its long tail around the alien's throat and dug into his flesh with the claws on four slender feet. The Huntsman dropped his whip and gagged as he dug his fingers in to find purchase.

Then, to confuse things even more, the girl raised her hands and called out in some strange language that Milo had never heard. It didn't sound like human speech, but rather the mingled calls of a dozen different birds.

There was a responding call from the woods. From everywhere in the woods. High-pitched cries that struck Milo's ears like ice picks, and then the whole clearing was filled with movement. Milo reeled as thousands upon thousands of small black shapes came pouring out of the trees to create whirlwinds of sound and movement.

Bats.

Thousands of them.

Tens of thousands of them.

They covered a half dozen of the Stingers, burying them under flapping leathery wings, tearing at them with needle-sharp teeth.

Not just bats.

Vampire
bats.

A voice spoke to Milo. The witch, speaking not in dreams or while floating as a spirit, but here and now in the physical world. An impossible voice speaking to him in an impossible moment.

Now is your chance, child of the sun
, she commanded.
Run for your life.

“W-what?” he stammered, rooted to the ground with shock.

Run while you can. The Orphan Army cannot win this fight.

All around him these creatures were locked in deadly combat with the Stingers and the Huntsman.

“Looks like they're doing okay to me,” said Milo. His comment caused the girl to glance at him, and Milo realized that only he heard the witch speaking.

That's 'cause I'm going nuts,
he told himself.

“Mook!” cried the rock boy as he smashed and smashed.

“Die!” bellowed the tree spirit as he crushed and tore.

The salamander hissed and the little sprite shattered the air with fiery explosions while Evangelyne urged them on.

Then, as fast as the attack happened, it fell apart.

The Huntsman secured his grip at last, and with a grunt of effort, he tore the salamander's tail from around his neck. He raised it up and then slammed it down against the ground. Once, twice, until the creature simply exploded. The resulting fireball and concussion knocked the Huntsman back a dozen paces, but the towering mutant did not go down. He leaned into the shock wave and endured it, grinning at it as if proving to the world that nothing could defeat him.

From the woods came responding howls of at least a dozen more Stingers.

The shocktroopers drew pulse pistols and began firing at the swarms of bats, and immediately the air was filled with the stink of burning fur. Hundreds of bodies fell like cinders, and the others scattered into the trees.

Milo dug into his satchel for another grenade, but he didn't know what to do with it. Everyone was too close.

That's the wrong magic, boy,
whispered the voice.
There is a time to fight—and bless the shadows in your heart for wanting to—but there is also a time to run.

Four Stingers erupted from the woods and hurtled toward Evangelyne.

“No!” yelled Milo, running to put himself between them and the girl. He dug out a grenade, twisted the arming cap, snugged it into the pouch of his slingshot, raised it, fired, sending the bomb over the heads of the Stingers. It exploded as it fell behind them, and the blast tore two of the monsters to rags.

The other two, undaunted, came on, teeth bared, barbed tails raised.

Run!
implored the witch.

Milo held his ground between them and the girl as he fumbled for another grenade. He knew without doubt that he now stood well within the blast radius.

“What are you doing, boy?” growled the girl.

“Stop calling me ‘boy'—and
run
!” he yelled to the girl. “I'll hold them here.”

To his right there was a sound like nails being pried from green lumber, and he turned to see three Stingers tearing at the tree spirit. For a moment Oakenayl fought back, his many hands punching and tearing, but then all life seemed to vanish from the living wood and the Stingers tore him to splinters.

“No!” Milo felt totally helpless.

Suddenly, a bolt of blue fire punched down from above and the rock boy—Mook—exploded, spraying everything with smoking chips of stone. Above them a drop-ship came spinning down from the darkened sky, and a moment later shocktroopers leaped from it, riding steel cables down to the ground.

“NO!” Milo yelled again.

The Stingers were nearly upon him.

There was nowhere left to run.

Run
, demanded the voice in his mind.

The Huntsman laughed and retrieved his whip.

Milo reached for the arming cap of another grenade. Better to go out in a blaze of glory, he realized, than let these monsters take him.

Maybe he'd see Shark and Barnaby and Lizabeth again.

Maybe Dad would be waiting for him on the other side. Not in some Bug collection, but on the other side of life. Somewhere else. Someplace where there was no invasion, no Swarm. No war. A place where Dad would be like he used to be. Happy. Playing his guitar. Singing old songs.

Maybe, Milo thought, if there were such a place, then all of his fear and doubt would be done with.

“I love you, Mom,” he said as he took hold of the cap.

Then someone shoved him and he was falling. The grenade, unarmed, rolled out of his reach, and he twisted on the ground to see someone leap over him.

It was the girl.

She jumped with incredible speed and grace and then dropped to the ground on the other side between Milo and the Stingers.

She landed on all fours.

Not on feet and hands.

She landed on four feet.

Four.

Four feet that ended in sharp black claws, and when she looked up at him, he did not see a girl.

Or a wolf. He understood that now.

Evangelyne was a
werewolf
.

A
werewolf.

His inner mind had been trying to tell him this since the first fight with the Stinger during the patrol. Maybe earlier. Barnaby's warnings of a
rougarou
had given fuel to the thought, but Milo's conscious mind had not wanted to hear it. Not wanted to accept it.

Werewolf.

Werewolf.

Werewolf?

Werewolves don't exist.

Neither do tree spirits or sprites, fire salamanders and boys made of rock,
he told himself.

Neither do witches that step from dreams into the waking world.

None of that is true. None of that exists.

Except when it does.

Milo staggered to his feet and backed away. From the Stingers, from the Huntsman, from the shocktroopers.

From the girl.

He retreated from all of it.

“No,” he breathed. He was panting like a winded horse.

But the moment said,
Yes.

The scorpion dogs slowed and stood wavering, uncertain and confused. Even the shocktroopers seemed stunned. They had all seen the transformation.

All of them had.

Only the Huntsman seemed to understand what was happening. He stood with his back to the rim of his damaged ship and slowly raised the seared stump of his left arm. Perhaps it was a salute, perhaps a challenge. However, the expression on his face showed a kind of eerie joy, as if seeing the werewolf revealed something wonderful to him. Or proved some important theory.

Milo thought he knew what it was. He had been inside that dark mind.

The Huntsman, the evil man who had become a monster,
believed
in magic, but like most people, he could not prove it existed. He had stolen the Heart of Darkness to try to find that proof.

Now, here, in front of him and all around him, was proof. Spirits and sprites. And a werewolf.

The Huntsman nodded to himself.

“The black jewel is mine,” he said, touching a pouch on one of the straps crossing over his massive chest. “And I will use it to hunt you all through forever. A billion-­billion worlds will open to the Swarm. This world will fall, and then the worlds of shadow will fall. Look upon your doom, daughter of the wolf, and despair.”

The werewolf wrinkled its muzzle and showed its teeth in brave defiance. Milo fumbled in his pouch for one more grenade.

At which point Milo did something that changed the world forever.

Not just his world. But
all
worlds.

Sometimes it isn't the action of presidents or kings; it isn't what soldiers or statesmen do that changes the course of history. Sometimes a single person, one who is not a hero in any conventional way, can do or say a thing that starts a chain reaction. This is how the universe turns.

Milo looked the monster in the eye and said, “No.”

T
he Huntsman ignored him.

So did everyone else.

Which was not surprising. Milo Silk was eleven years old. Sixty-seven pounds. Short and skinny and nobody's idea of a hero. Certainly not his own.

Not even at the moment when he became one.

“Yo, freakface!” he yelled, stepping closer to the master of the Stingers.

This time the Huntsman did look at him. It was a look of disinterest and annoyance. Like Milo—his life and everything he was—did not matter to this creature.

Milo held out the grenade.

The Huntsman looked at that, too. Everyone did, and for a moment the entire field of battle was silent. The werewolf turned and gaped at him, surprise written in its pale eyes. The sprite on her hummingbird mount hovered in the air, her body twisted sideways as she, too, stared.

“I won't let you,” said Milo in a voice that quavered and cracked. Shivers rippled along every limb; sweat beaded his face and ran down inside his clothes.

The only part of him that didn't tremble was the hand holding the grenade.