Effie opened her eyes. She had finally found the Barrow Witch.
29
Effie blew out a breath to steady her nerve. She ran a hand along Jack Canonbie’s cane, gazing as she did across an open field at an ancient hillfort made of three concentric rings. The largest and lowest sprawled as wide as Edinburgh Castle and ran as long as three New Town city blocks. Each ring had been hewn from an existing hill by men and women long forgotten, perhaps even from the days of the Sidhe Bhreige. They were overgrown and undulating, yet their form remained visible to the naked eye.
The hillfort bustled with Unseily. Bogills stood sentry in camps along the host’s flanks. They were dressed for war. Leather jerkins covered their hairy chests. A few sported wooden bucklers, and some even heavier rounded shields. They carried a mismatched assortment of rough-hewn clubs, fine broadswords, and short spears.
Trows and wulvers roamed here and there, the former in their way of almost dancing, and the latter prowling as if ready for the hunt. Spriggans, the troll-like imps Effie had encountered at Caldwell House, rode their tusked pigs as goblins scurried through the shadowed grass. Other creatures unknown to her filled out the host in a mass of sharp ears, fangs, and tusks.
The grunting snorts and clang of metal made Effie wonder why the host still kept their auras hidden. The clamor would be heard for near a mile distant. But she did not have to wonder for long. She realized the obscuring was not to hide where the host gathered, as much as what gathered within it.
Atop the hillfort, a pack of beasts emerged into sight. “Oversized goats,” she said, remembering the impression the crows and sparrows had sent. Blinking, she strained her eyes. She had faced down giants, but never had she witnessed such an intimidating foe. The beasts stood twice the height of a man and half again as broad. Large, clawed feet supported legs as thick as trees. Like the bogills, coarse hair coated their limbs in a pelt. Only theirs was white, more suited for blending against a snowy field than a Scottish bog. Their faces were scrunched and rounded, their arms long and dangly, capped by paws that would smother her face.
“Thurs, they are called,” said Rose. She stood next to Effie with her arms folded beneath her chest. “I have heard tale of them from the huldrefolk in Norway.” She nodded to another creature a few spans away from the beasts. “Och, and there I spy an ogress from the Bordeaux region, if the cut of her tunic be any indication.”
“France and Norway,” said Effie. She took in the ogress, who stood almost as tall and stout as the thurs, only with considerably less hair. Wisps sprouted from her broad pate. The flesh beneath held a greenish tint. “The continent has come to join the Barrow Witch.”
“Nay,” replied Freiherr Jörg. The gnome tugged at his high collar and smoothed his beard. He stood on the other side of Effie. “The barrow witch has no such strength to bespell them all. Not yet. These be fiends of foul blood, too few to stand against their own courts in their own lands.”
The Unseily host did not look few to Effie. She could count a hundred of them for each finger and still need another hand—perhaps a pair—to tally them all. But she held her tongue. Her friends did not need to be told the disposition of their foe. They could see it for themselves. They stood around her at the edge of a crofter’s field. Where the crofter or his family had gone, none could say. But by the disrepair of the squat stone cottage, Effie guessed the place long abandoned.
Gaelyph hissed. “They have a pair of redcaps among them. I can sense their foul blood even with their auras obscured.” The warden’s hands flexed and curled into fists.
Clomping boots drew Effie’s attention. Sergeant McGrady had returned. At the mention of redcaps, his face soured, mustache drooping as his cheeks puckered.
“Lieutenant Walford sends his regards,” he said. He gave a curt nod to Effie before turning his attention back to the hillfort. “The men are in position, but the advantage is not in our favor. Word has been sent that several airships are landed on the far side of the encampment. We are outnumbered, outgunned, and will be assaulting from the lower ground.” He clapped his hands together and rubbed them against the cold. “This is not to mention what the barrow witch might do to spread her madness among the men.”
“You are right,” said Effie. She turned to him and leaned on her cane. “If we could wait for the duke to arrive, we would.”
“The Unseily can sense us, each and every one,” said Rose. “That they do not come tells us they are preparing to invade Elphame.”
“Or that they do not consider us a threat,” said the sergeant.
“We will break through and delay them,” said Gaelyph. The warden’s sword scraped free of its scabbard. He judged the light. The sun was hidden behind a bank of dark clouds, but a few rays painted a golden hue to the sky. Still, the day had turned cold and promised a freezing night.
Freiherr Jörg drew himself rigid. “Allow the Order of Freiwald to lead the charge. It would give us great honor.”
It was not the first time the wizened gnome had made the request, but the Order’s talents in Fey Craft were needed far more than the accuracy of the bell-shaped blunderbusses they carried. Effie was about to remind the elder fey as much when the echo of rifle reports rattled across the fields. The assault had begun.
Effie thought first of Conall. The man, lacking a place among professional soldiers and fey, had volunteered to act as a runner for the lieutenant. She couldn’t deny him his willingness to fight, but her chest pulled tight all the same. She would rather he had fled to Hawick, or even to Edinburgh, than to be far from her sight on a field of battle.
She couldn’t spy the lieutenant’s position from where she stood, but she could hear it. He had taken his some fifty men and spread them in a copse of pine and birch opposite a part of the hillfort he judged the soldiers could easily scale. The crackle and pop of their opening volley waned. It was replaced by shouts of command and a chorus of bellowed war cries.
The rifle fire had ripped through a group of bogills, felling perhaps a dozen. The Unseily nearest the assault frenzied. Sharp, high-pitched cries came from the trows. The wulvers howled and raced as a pack down the slopes of the hillfort. The remaining bogills lumbered after them, barking at one another and screaming curses in a hodgepodge of continental languages.
“There! They are linking,” said Rose. She pointed atop the hillfort. Three grindylows had appeared. They stood studying the lieutenant’s woodland cover.
Effie marveled at her friend. It reminded her once again how much skill in Fey Craft she had yet to master. Opening her senses, she allowed Rose to join with her. She ignored the frigid sensation and weaved what she imagined was a tangle of vines. Yet no sooner had Rose pushed the vines toward the grindylows than Effie felt the familiar weeds and thorns of the Unseily. Effie ripped and tore at them, starting to pant from the effort.
Rose was smarter. She burned. Tiny flames flickered around her in a defensive swarm, setting to light the Barrow Witch’s attack. Effie cursed herself a fool and mimicked the flames. Born of Fey Craft, the flames and burning weeds produced no smoke and left no smoldering remains. Both simply vanished from thought, as if they’d never been.
Sergeant McGrady hollered. He gave no reaction to the struggle of Fey Craft. He could neither see nor sense it. But he had spied the trows and wulvers who surged across the field toward them. A few bogills joined them, their bucklers and basket-hilted broadswords waving wildly as they charged.