Shadow Spell (22 page)

And then, last, he brought Nin to life in his head. The girl who got away from Strood twice. The girl who got away from the Storm.

Thunder rolled across the sky, shaking the ground beneath his feet. Rain came down like knives, slashing the air. Lightning broke the sky, striking the earth right where he stood.

And when it went, he went with it.

Within moments the hillside was calm. The grass, flattened by the gale, stood up again. The trees ceased their thrashing and the sun came out. A squirrel bounced down the trunk of an elm and across the grass. It didn't get far because Skerridge had come over all peckish and felt he needed some fuel before he got going again.

As he munched, taking care not to eat the tail (which had a fur-to-meat ratio that made it not worth the effort), Skerridge watched the Storm race into the distance, heading for Hilfian. It was moving at high speed and, unlike Skerridge, could take a direct route. More than likely, it would beat him to Hilfian, even if he got lucky with the Raw.

He just hoped that would be fast enough.

‘Wha's that!' Jibbit pointed to something in the sky, something that looked like a puff of smoke, only bird-shaped.

‘Land Magic,' muttered Stanley. ‘Smoke ‘awks sent ter keep watch. It means they know we're comin'.' He was peering back through the tide of purple-eyed faces loping along behind him, crammed shoulder to shoulder. Some of them had a singed look and there were fewer than there had been an hour earlier.

‘Blimmin' Skerridge,' he muttered.

The bogeyman had been raiding them, using his fire-breath to polish off those tiger-men unlucky enough to be travelling on the outer edges of the army. But Strood had allowed for heavy losses from their journey through the Heart and from attacks by Skerridge, it was why he had made such a vast army. So even after all that, the horde was still big enough to crush Hilfian several times over.

Jibbit was riding on the tiger-men. The troop was so tightly packed that he could move from spot to spot on
the raft of furry bodies and keep an eye on Dunvice, who was commanding the first platoon while Stanley was off inspecting the others. He had a plan about hiding when they got to the fighting bit and so wanted plenty of notice before they arrived. He didn't want to be too close to the werewolf-Grimm though, because Dunvice was in a bad mood and that made her unpredictable. Jibbit didn't like unpredictable. Especially not when he was so close to the gr … gr … flat thing the horde was walking on.

Dunvice had been in a fierce temper ever since the waterfall. Jibbit didn't blame her. She had lost the skinkin and if the creature got to Ninevah Redstone before the army had a chance to take her alive, then Mr Strood would not be pleased and Dunvice's chance of a pleasant death wasn't worth a faerie's pledge. She had been Strood's favourite, but right now she could feel herself falling from grace with every minute the skinkin got closer to its prey.

Jibbit wondered what the skinkin was up to right now. The thing was taking the same route as the army and some of the tiger-men claimed to have seen it. One of them even claimed to have eaten it, but had died before Dunvice could question it to find out if it was telling the truth. The fact that the tiger-man had died unmentionably in a torn-up-from-the-inside-out kind of way, as if something had got bored and taken a shortcut out of its innards, hinted that perhaps it had indeed been telling the truth. Either way, the incident had not improved
Dunvice's temper one bit.

Ahead, trees rose in deep green and shadowy grey against the afternoon sunlight. The tiger-men covered the ground fast, racing on towards the woodland with Dunvice in the front row and Jibbit riding the tide like a natural-born surfer.

Light flicked into shadowy gloom as they entered the wood, but it didn't slow the tiger-men down as they leapt easily over dips and hollows and fallen branches. They were silent save for the steady hiss of their breath, and the shadows were filled with the scarlet glint of their eyes. As Jibbit's section drew close, he got ready and when the time was right, just as they were entering the wood, he leapt. For a moment he was in the air and then he felt bark scrape under his stony paws and grabbed.

Dangling from the branch while the platoon raced on below him, Jibbit was just getting a better grip when something said ‘Boo' ever so gently in his ear.

Jibbit hooted.

‘No need ter carry on,' said Skerridge indignantly. ‘I was only bein' friendly. Now shut it or I'll chew yer up and spit yer out.'

Jibbit glared at him. ‘I'm a stone,' he snapped, ‘yoo don't chew stones.'

Skerridge bared a row of six-inch-long, yellow, jagged teeth that looked like they could make gravel out of a mountain, and winked. ‘Wanna try?'

The whole of the first troop was under the trees by
now. Jibbit could hear Dunvice shouting orders to the army, telling them to gather inside the wood, so that the trees shielded them from any watching eyes.

Skerridge drew in a deep breath and a chill crept up Jibbit's spine. He knew about bogeymen.

‘Erm,' he asked apologetically, ‘doo yoo mind if I shouts a warning?'

For answer, Skerridge breathed out.

The woods ignited. Trees transformed into burning pillars and bushes spat fire. The tiger-men inside the wood didn't have time to scream, they were instant ash.

On the town-side edge of the wood, where she had been taking a careful look at the way ahead, Dunvice sprang for safety. She barely made it and had to roll on the ground to put her armour out.

Jibbit's tree went up like a bomb. Fortunately for him, he was pretty much fireproof. Unfortunately for him, with the tree gone there was nothing to stop him from falling all the way down to the gr …

By the time Stanley got there it was all over. Skerridge was long gone, leaving the spreading fire to do his work for him. The beautiful wood was just so much ash. So was most of the platoon.

‘Why did ya stop?' he roared at Dunvice. ‘Why ‘ang about in a wood wiv a bogeyman on the warparf? Tha's anovver platoon gone! What wiv everyfin', we've ended up wiv less than ‘alf the troops left!'

Dunvice didn't have an answer. It had been a mistake, that was all. Her leather armour was blackened with smoke and ash and she had lost a lot of her hair. There were burns on her face and hands too and in the midst of all the raw flesh and dirt her eyes glowed like yellow suns. She snarled at him and it was so
animal
that Stanley backed off.

‘No wonder yer farver died o' fright,' he snapped irritably, ‘when yer was little more'n a blood-curdlin' glow in yer muvver's eyes.' Then he stomped away to get the remaining platoons in order.

Jibbit was hooting with panic. He had been hooting for so long he had run out of voice and his beak just made soundless gropings at the air. He was lying on his back, wings spread, staring desperately at the sky and shaking.

The reason he was staring at the sky was so as not to see what he was lying on. It was lumpy, covered in ash and stretched away from him in all directions with absolutely no hint of below. A tear leaked from Jibbit's eyes and his paws clawed at the air helplessly.

There was a sound to the left of him and he turned his head, sensing danger. Terror crept over him like a grey shadow, but it wasn't his personal terror, it was something external. He could feel its chill wash over his stony surface, like icy water that had never known the sun. He stopped hooting, because even hooting was not enough for a feeling this alone, this hopeless.

And then, out of the cinders of the wood, came the skinkin. It loped on, through the shadows that seemed to get darker where it passed, its eye-holes searching for its prey. Jibbit tensed as every bound brought it closer. Its paws touched him for a fleeting moment as it landed on his middle and leapt on again. And then it was gone, taking the fear and the shadows with it.

Jibbit lay still until someone said:

‘Oy, get yer knobbly bum over ‘ere an' get in line wiv the rest of ‘em.'

Jibbit squinted up at Stanley, the goblin-Grimm's bulk outlined against the sky like a mini-mountain, then flipflopped on to his front and considered his position. The gr … gr … ground was still there and it was bad. But other things, things with eye-holes full of death for example, were worse. As it turned out, ground was manageable. Besides, he needn't stay on it for long.

He spotted something and began to climb.

‘Galig's teef,' muttered Stanley. ‘Now I'm a blimmin' climbin' frame!'

Strood's army charged on. Rather than cross the charred bones of their companions, they were going to double back along the foot of the hills to the lower slopes where they could climb without too much difficulty, and come at the town from over the ridge. Riding on Stanley's helmet, Jibbit was still looking out for a place to hide, but nothing useful appeared. As he gazed desperately
around him, a shadow swept across the scene. Almost as one, the army looked up.

Storm clouds were racing high above their heads in a torrent of purple-grey, and deep inside the boiling mass, lightning flickered. A thunderclap broke right over them and its bone-shaking rumble made the tiger-men flinch and whine.

‘Gabriel Hounds!' yelled Stanley to Dunvice. Only the Quick needed to fear the Storm, but although the tiger-men had been fashioned from crowsmorte, they were Quick in their blood and knew instinctively that the Storm meant danger. The horde faltered, but hung together, eerie eyes gleaming in the half-light. The Storm was bothering them, but wasn't something they could attack and that made them angry.

‘Don't worry,' yelled Dunvice, her voice almost swallowed up in another crack of thunder, ‘it won't be a problem. The way I see it, tiger-men are like us Grimm. They may be part Quick, but they don't have souls and that's what the Storm is after. I'm more worried about the rain.'

Stanley had to agree. The tiger-men almost certainly wouldn't like rain. He looked up anxiously, but he needn't have worried. The Storm was already moving on, racing over the hill towards the town as if it had a purpose.

Taggit had told Nin to keep out of the battle by hiding in the cellar under the long bank of mud huts that served as a general store, where the other children and their mothers had already taken shelter. She argued vigorously, but in the end had to give in. Even so, instead of going straight there, she went to look for Seth first.

She knew she should tell Hen or Hilary, but they would have said no, so she just called out, ‘Going to find Seth, won't be long,' as she hurried past a distractedlooking Doctor Mel.

Nin wanted to talk to Seth because she felt embarrassed about not believing him even when he obviously thought he was right. It must have been pretty nasty, finding a body like that and thinking it was Jonas, so she wanted to make sure he was OK. She was also kind of curious about the present.

She found him in an upstairs room above the main hall. The stairs she had climbed to the narrow landing were really just a ladder of bound branches and the
room, one of two, was small and low-roofed with a door of closely woven twigs. In it was a rough table pushed against the wall, and a bench.