“We must slow the enemy and gather the Guard!” I shouted to them.
“Aye-aye, General!” Bluenose shouted. “The tapestry, sir!”
“The tapestry!” I shouted. “Come on!”
One of the humans standing guard during the night walked by in a cross hallway as we zipped toward him. I shouted at him—but like bigguns always do, he didn’t notice. Shouting pixies, howling gremlins, death and doom hurtling down the hallways of the Castle—and the big stupid human doesn’t evennotice.
Sometimes it’s like we have to hit you people with a rock just to get you to realize we’re standing there.
We darted down the hallways toward the Great Hall, where workers had hung tapestries everywhere while they repaired a hole in the ceiling. The tapestries were of terrible quality, as they were simply blank canvas, and I felt that such artisanry was not tothe standards of my lord, but for the purposes of the Guard, quantity was a quality all its own.
By then two dozen of the Guard had responded to my whistle, and as we soared into the hall, almost everyone was ready. I gave swift orders. The Guard split into teams of four, each seizing one of the large canvas tapestries, a weight that our wings could just barely manage, and my team led the way as we labored back toward the enemy.
We caught them at the bottom of the stairs from the top floor.
“Za-Lord’s Guard!” I shouted. “Follow me!”
Down we swept toward the foe, and as we did, we changed grip on the rolled tapestry, let it unfurl—and then dropped it like a massive net upon the gremlins. Down fell the blank tapestry, clunky and flapping, and dropped over a dozen of the enemy.
The other teams dove down as well, canvas falling everywhere, and Scar Eye howled his rage as his troops were bogged down.
“Blades!” I shouted.
Swords sprang from sheaths and spears whirled to couch as a double dozen of my folk shouted their defiance at the enemy.
“Dive!” I screamed, and led the way down toward the foe.
Gremlins are naturally wicked just as my own folk are naturally curious. They’re tough, clever, vicious, practical—and relentless. Their armored hide makes them very tough to kill. Dark cousins of breeds like the cobbler gnomes, they shared those folks’ cleverness with their hands but continuously turned their talents to mischief and destruction. Crude but sharp and effective blades appeared among them, and the foe began to cut their way free of the tapestries.
We met them with our svartalf-made faemetal blades as theystruggled to free themselves, and their pig iron could not withstand us. The foe outnumbered us three to one—but their three were stuck under big dumb tapestries and our one just started stabbing them right through the cloth.
We couldn’t get them all—they were too tough to die fast enough. But we cut the numbers down to something like only two-to-one, just as Scar Eye emerged from beneath the corner of a tapestry and smashed Redcullen out of the air with his mortal hatchet, sending the Guardsman to a broken heap on the floor.
I screamed and threw myself at Scar Eye. He got the hatchet up in time to stop me from changing his name to No-Eyes, but I marked his cheek for him and drew blood from one of his forearms, and if two of his no-good cheating buddies hadn’t gotten in the way, I might have finished him before he could recover his balance.
Then two more gremlins joined the first pair, and I was pressed too closely to fly and fighting for my life as gremlin weapons, made of the Bane, hammered at me, their sickly cold aura making my flesh recoil even when my armor stopped the blows, weakening my limbs and making them shake.
For a moment, things looked very bad. Then Bluenose was there, a sprite whose head came most of the way up my shoulder, his spear darting, and bought me a breath. I used it for all it was worth—whipped the flapping ear off one gremlin with my blade, kicked another in its gangly neck, and seized a third by its inordinately long and pointed nose and threw it to the ground, where Bluenose ran his spear through it. Then we turned together and went to the aid of the nearest member of the Guard who was embattled.
“Wait!” I shouted. “Where is Scar Eye and the boom?”
“What?” asked Bluenose, as if we were not standing in a fight with ancient foes.
“The boom!” I shouted. “It’s going to boom the Castle!”
Bluenose blinked once. Then he said, “But not the pizza!”
A gremlin blindsided Bluenose and tackled him to the ground, sending Bluenose’s spear flying.
“Loo-Tender!” I shouted, and tossed my sword.
Bluenose seized my weapon out of the air, drove it into the gremlin’s thigh, and twisted. The creature screamed and rolled away and Bluenose came to his feet fighting.
The battle was desperate. My people were fighting hard, but the odds against them were rising as more gremlins emerged from their temporary prisons. I didn’t have time to explain everything to everyone. Right now, Scar Eye and the boom were somewhere I couldn’t see, planning to do something bad. I had to stop them.
“Fight them, Loo-Tender!” I shouted. “Their leader fled! I’m after him!”
“Take him, sir!” Bluenose shouted, shattering a Bane-made sword with my blade. He cut down his foe, laughed heartily, and began to sing, and all the Guard nearby began to join him.
