Hansel is standing quite still in the middle of the fray. He hasn’t picked up a branch, or one of the few dropped huntsman weapons. He doesn’t need to – the fight so far has managed to avoid him entirely. He stands in the middle of an untouched circle of calm, as the ugly, chaotic brawl rages all around him. Shadow fills the circle, with little dark tendrils spilling outside its radius, like roots, foraging for light to sap. Hansel, Gretel realises, is about to do something really cool.
‘Oh.’ Morning beams, watching Hansel as she easily brushes off Patience’s valiant attempts to haunt her. ‘He’s about to do something.’
Hansel takes in one great gulp of light, plunging the already shadowy crevasse almost entirely into darkness for a moment, and then he releases.
It isn’t like it was in the liberation of Nearby, when the whole of the ground turned into a churning sea. This time it’s much more focused. Great mounds of rock thrust upwards, underneath the feet of the huntsmen, some of them missing Darkwood creatures and villagers by mere inches. Huntsmen are thrown against the crevasse walls, or dozens of feet up into the air, only to plummet back down onto the hard ground again, with bone-breaking, consciousness-losing thuds. Hansel turns and glares at the approaching flying machine sailing into view above them. Shadows swiftly grow and thicken around it, in huge, dark tentacles. The flying machine slows and stutters, as if the shadows are physically holding it back. The birds around it scatter with startled squawks. Hansel grits his teeth. Gretel can see that he’s struggling. She tries to move towards him, but with one last rush of magical energy, he sends a boulder hurtling upwards towards the straining flying machine. The magical missile smacks into one of the machine’s wings, smashing it in two. The shadows dissipate, leaving the flying machine to make a very lopsided and undignified three-winged emergency landing in the forest beyond. Exhausted, Hansel sinks to his knees.
‘OK,’ Morning tells her army, or at least those of them who can still walk, ‘now.’
Morning and around half a dozen huntsmen start running straight towards Hansel’s collapsed form. In a sickening instant, Gretel realises what their attack was about. All of this – herding and trapping them in an enclosed space, provoking them to fight back – all of it was in order to identify and eliminate the most powerful witches in the Darkwood. And Morning is only a few strides away from making it happen.
Gretel starts running towards Hansel herself, branch aloft, but she’s too far; there are too many people between her position and where her brother sits crumpled and prone. She isn’t going to make it. She isn’t going to…
There is a great flap of black feathers ahead. Hex, in full raven form, lands heavily between Morning and Hansel, mighty wings outstretched, sharp beak open.
Morning and her posse stop suddenly. She stares at Hex, and then… she laughs. Head back, eyes bright, her merry, guileless laugh is so incongruous in the closed-in battlefield of the crevasse that it causes the others to stop fighting and watch what’s going on.
‘I’m sorry,’ she calls after a moment. ‘I imagine lots of you won’t get the joke. You’re either too young or you don’t know enough about Ashtrie to understand why it’s so funny you actually got one of the Glass Witch’s victims to protect the very same degenerate race that did this to him.’
Hex doesn’t change back, doesn’t respond. He stands firm in front of Hansel.
‘This lot must have done real sweet-talk number on you,’ Morning tells Hex. ‘Oh, I’d know the Glass Witch’s handiwork anywhere; any senior huntsman would.’ She addresses the crowd again. ‘What the Glass Witch did to Ashtrie is the whole reason we huntsmen had to intervene and save Myrsina from the witches in the first place,’ she tells them. ‘And you’d better believe that once we’ve worked out the best way to eliminate magicals through trial and error on you lot, we’ll be moving on to the real challenge of clearing out the eastern woods.’
Hex looks aghast. He changes back into mostly human form. ‘No! You mustn’t go east. If she catches you—’
‘Oh,’ interrupts Morning conversationally, ‘a nettle-shirt charm, is it?’ She nods at his remaining wing. ‘Doesn’t work very well, does it? Hey ho.’ She reaches forward and rips the scrap of nettle from around his neck.
Hex doesn’t get the chance to say anything else. He is instantly turned back into a raven – not a man-sized one any more, but a completely ordinary-looking raven.
‘Hex!’ Jack cries, locked in hand-to-shrub combat with a much larger man, and unable to get any closer to the raven.
Morning strides towards Hansel with her posse once more, shredding the dried nettle between her fingers. Hex has to flap out of the way to avoid being trodden underfoot. Gretel makes a lunge for one of the huntsmen, but is punched to the ground. She sees Daisy struggling with another huntsman, and both of her step-parents kneeling next to the bleeding Dwarf. Snow is sprinting towards them, a branch swinging above her head, but one of the huntsmen has already reached the helpless form of Hansel, a dagger unsheathed.
‘And now…’ says Morning.
Whatever the Head Huntsman was about to say is cut off by an almighty roar. It echoes along the canyon; too deep to be a wolf, or even an Ogre or Manticore.
Everybody stops, and stares. Leaping down the canyon at a ferocious speed is a little old lady, in silver armour about twice her size, and absolutely covered in axes and mechanical weaponry. The two bears flanking her are intimidating on their own, but her mount is what causes several of the huntsmen, including the one within a knife-slash of Hansel’s life, to step back with a gasp. She is riding a bear the size of a brick shed.
‘Tally ho!’ cries a familiar little male voice from somewhere near the giant bear’s head.
Amongst the tableau of fear, horror and the carnage of skirmish, Buttercup throws up her hands in glee.
‘Trevor’s OK!’
28
Secret Weapon
With the huntsmen suitably distracted by the immediate and significant threat of a colossal bear heading straight for them, Gretel manages to scrabble towards her brother and throw herself between him and the huntsman with the dagger. Gilde, barely visible underneath Snow’s oversized armour, tugs at Baby’s fur, bringing him to a stop in the middle of the frozen fray. Mamma and Papa spread out a little to flank her, keeping as many huntsmen as possible at close range to at least one bear. This doesn’t particularly embolden any of the villagers or Darkwood creatures, who are understandably just as anxious about the arrival of a family of very hungry-looking bears in their close proximity.
The whole canyon of combatants remains awkwardly still for a moment, watching the bears, mouths agog in worried confusion.
It’s Morning who breaks the stand-off. ‘Gilde Locke?’ she asks pleasantly. ‘Could it be? The old Bear Witch of the mountains, come out of hiding after all these years?’
Gilde peers at Morning imperiously – quite a feat, considering that she’s only visible from the nose up under Snow’s gorget.
‘Do I know you, missy?’
‘Oh, no. But I know you. I grew up in Slate. They say you were from round there too, before you walked into the mountains and never came back… except to steal food from us, of course.’