Page 52 of Stardust Child

“It shouldn’t be necessary,” Remin said again, reassuring, and lifted a hand. “Gen! If you please.”

“Be careful, Your Grace,” Ophele said quickly, and his gloved fingers squeezed hers before he left.

It was very exciting. Ophele offered a smile to Genon as the herbman climbed onto the workshop stoop beside her, dressed in rugged leather armor that left him mobile enough to use the medical tools in the pack on his back. She had complete faith that Remin would never endanger her, so she only watched breathlessly as Remin spoke to Sir Jinmin before the gates, the two men towering head and shoulders over everyone else.

“All right, m’lady?” Genon asked.

“Yes, I’m fine,” she said, craning her neck. “Will we actually see a devil, do you think?”

“I certainly hope not,” he said, with his grimacing smile. “The faster they get out there, the less likely it is.”

Ophele was surprised to realize she was disappointed by this. She had been quietly campaigning to be allowed to see the few corpses of the devils collected every morning, either stranglers that had come over the palisade or ghouls too stupid to get out of the sunlight, but so far Remin had refused.

There was no doubt that devils were nearby. She had never heard them so close before, snarling and slavering, howling wolves both northeast and northwest. From her work, she knew that the devils were attracted to men and men’s things: lights, buildings, livestock, as if they could smell the domestication on a cow. Maybe they even hated man-things. She was half-convinced they weren’t from this world at all, being so entirely outside the natural order. They had never been observed to eat or drink, and so far as anyone knew, they did not even breed like normal beasts. There were no juveniles, and there were no anatomical differences to indicate male or female.

It meant they would certainly seek out the caravan as a man-thing, and beside the great beacon of Tresingale, they would shortly be swarming it.

“Shields!” Remin’s bellow carried all the way back to her, and all the men ranged outward from the gate lifted them, readying themselves.They were arrayed in multiple lines, circling outward from the gate, a deep defensive perimeter wherein a devil that smashed through one line of defenders would fall straight onto the spears of the next.

Clapping their helmets onto their heads, Remin and Sir Jinmin pushed open the gates.

She couldn’t see. Ophele clutched her skirt in her fingertips, straining on tiptoe as the ring of torchlight widened onto the darkness beyond the gates, the silhouettes of armored men moving rapidly out on either side of their commanders. Abandoning propriety, she scrambled up onto a nearby hogshead barrel. When Genon’s hand caught her arm, she thought he was going to make her get down, but he was only bracing her.

“Can you see the caravan, m’lady?”

“Yes. It’s coming up the hill, that must be Sir Huber with the horses,” she said. Her heart went out to the terrified draft animals, helpless in their harnesses as the sounds of the devils rose around them. That wolf howl sounded so very close.

“Any damage to the caravan?” The surgeon sounded relieved.

“Not that I can see…oh, but that poor horse!” she exclaimed. “One of them has a gash on his back, the poor thing…”

And while she wouldn’t call the caravandamaged,it certainly showed signs of wear. She had seen the construct before it departed: a long, narrow wagon covered completely in thin sheets of metal,justsufficient to accommodate eight men. She couldn’t imagine sleeping in such a thing, so hot, airless, with the devils shrieking and savaging the sides all night. The bare thought made her shiver.

Outside the gate, she could see the soldiers arranging themselves in the same defensive lines they had made inside, and she clapped a hand over her mouth as one man suddenly lifted his spear to jab at something in the dark, followed by his fellows on either side of him. Three men instantly moved to fill the gap in the line, then moved back again when whatever it was, was dead. A few spaces down, three more men repeated the maneuver.

It was an impressive sight, and reassuring; they were so brisk and disciplined about it.

“They’re killing devils,” she reported, her eyes wide as she absorbed every detail for future contemplation. “I can’t see the devils though…”

The words had hardly left her mouth when there was a burst of shouting and suddenly a dozen men were down at once. A huge dark shape exploded into the ring of torchlight, so fast that at first Ophele couldn’t tell what had happened.

“Re-form, re-form!” Someone was shouting, and the men hustled to fill the gap even as the dark shape charged forward, head thrown back as it howled fit to freeze the blood. A wolf demon. That was a wolf demon. Ophele had seen plenty of sketches by now, that shifting, spikey black shape, its fur bristling and almost smoking. But those sketches had not conveyed the way that black mane dissolved into the air, nor that glow of poisonous green within the smoke—

Stars, it washuge!Those many layers of defense were collapsing on it, slamming their shields into its sides to slow it down rather than trying to intercept its charge.

“It’s a wolf,” she said, feeling a hand clutching her wrist, preparatory to hauling her down. “No, I think they have it, but there are more things beh—oh!”

Her other hand clapped over her mouth as the wolf demon’s head was suddenly separated from its shoulders.

“What, what?” Genon demanded urgently.

“It’s dead,” she said, her eyes enormous. The wave of blood as it was decapitated was black, splashing out thicker than water, something she had never seen, never imagined. It made her feel a little sick. But she was not a child to be sheltered from such realities, she told herself sternly. And in any case, she only had the barest glimpse of that huge, smoky body falling before the soldiers rushed in, hiding it from her sight.

“They’re all right,” she added belatedly. She could see more fighting, but it looked organized to her. It was tempting to think the wolf demon was the initial assault, intended to open gaps in the defense for other devils to exploit, but after many interviews, Ophele thought that was giving the beasts too much credit. Devils were cunning in the way wolves were cunning, but they were not intelligent.

It was over before the devils had time to test the defenses. The caravan rolled through the gate in a tremendous clatter and the rows of defenders withdrew in such perfect, organized unison that Ophele boggled, watching the rear lines turn one after another, with Sir Jinmin’smassive shape bringing up the rear. As the gates creaked closed, she only wished she had gotten a better look at that wolf.

It occurred to her that the Duchess of Andelin should probably not be standing on a hogshead when she greeted the returning heroes. She lingered just long enough to see Remin, alive and uninjured, and then let Genon help her down, brushing out her skirts anxiously.

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