Alyss redirected her imagination to the border battles. She sensed something: Redd watching her. With her scepter, Alyss tried to shoo away her aunt’s sight, to block it-once, twice, she tried, but Redd remained there, in her imagination’s eye, staring.
“One of the forest bases has been hit!” Bibwit called. “Our Snark Mountain post is outnumbered!” Alyss began to exert herself with greater effort, moving her scepter left, right, up and down, conducting
an orchestra of defensive cocoons, automatic cannons, low-drifting energy clouds that exploded with
Glass Eye-piercing lightning, and every form of weaponry she’d ever seen in Wonderland and on
Earth…
Clashing with Onu and Scabbler warriors in a quadrant of the Chessboard Desert, the white knight and his pawns were nearly surrounded, losing bodies and ammo fast, when an energy cloud unexpectedly dropped in front of them. Lightning bolts flashed out of it, struck dead enough warriors to create an opening, and as the knight and pawns fought their way to relative safety, unmanned bayonets formed in the air to aid their escape…
At a forest military base, Maldoids and Gnobi were driving the white rook and a hand of card soldiers into a dry-goods storehouse. The Maldoids’ kill-quills lodged into the storehouse’s front wall, the
warriors yanked hard on the coils extending from the quills’ butt ends, and down came the wall. The Wonderlanders let loose with all the firepower they had, but the Gnobi rolled a death-ball into the storehouse. The rook and card soldiers had no defense against the melon-sized weapon. If they moved, it would sense them, and the holes on every gwormmy-length of its surface would spray out crystal buckshot with such speed and force that they’d be killed. Too bad then that a Three Card breathed a little too heavily. The death-ball fired off its rounds. The rook closed his eyes, expecting death, but the projectiles altered course, flying toward the Maldoids and Gnobi as if preferring the heat and breath of Boarderland bodies…
Haze was emanating from the Heart Crystal, fogging Alyss’ vision. She tried to fan it away. Then she sniffed and realized: smoke. The blue caterpillar was at her side, toking on his hookah and basking in the crystal’s glow as if to tan himself.
“Extraordinary,” Bibwit gasped. “Unprecedented. A caterpillar showing itself now?”
“You will lose unless you court loss,” Blue said to Alyss. “Courting loss, though you still will not win, you may prevent victory.”
“What?!”
But Blue said no more, swallowed by a thick puff of hookah smoke. Projected on the smoke as on a screen, she saw Hatter unspooling luminescent thread for King Arch, who was sewing a web that held herself, Genevieve, and Theodora-three generations of Heart queens struggling fruitlessly to free themselves. Then Arch dissolved and Hatter was sewing the web, except that his intricate maneuverings
of needle and thread produced holes, gaps that enabled Alyss, her mother, and grandmother to step clear of their bonds, morph into white butterflies, and flit away.
“What’s it mean?” Bibwit asked when the images were gone, the hookah smoke drifting loosely toward the ceiling.
If he doesn’t know, how am I supposed to-
Voices screeched from the speakers on the control desk and Bibwit consulted its viewing screens. “She’s set the doggerels loose,” he said
But Alyss’ attention had been drawn to the palace gate where Dodge, impatient to engage The Cat, was leaving his men, venturing out alone into Wondertropolis toward the demarcation barrier.
No, Dodge, no.
The doggerels were galloping into the densest part of the Everlasting Forest, disappearing from view. “They’ll soon be gnashing at the guardsmen around the palace.”
Which just proves that even a tutor as learned as Bibwit could, at the worst possible times, not have a clue.
The Glass Eyes had been programmed and were massed on the Boarderland side of the demarcation barrier, their ranks extending nearly the length of Outerwilderbeastia, when Redd came trundling up, riding high in her three-wheeled vehicle. Arch, Vollrath, and The Cat were onboard, seated beneath her. Alistaire and Siren marched behind with the tribes.
“Alistaire, Siren, divide the tribes between you and spread out behind the cannons,” Redd said. “Wait for my signal.”
The Cat hissed.
Amused, Redd asked, “You want to risk the one life you have left in battle?” The feline assassin hissed again.
“I approve your lack of caution, Cat,” Redd petted, then spun toward Vollrath. “And how about you, Mr. Tutor? Don’t you want to bloody yourself in combat?”
“My weapon is my intellect, Your Imperial Viciousness, the library my front line.”
“How convenient for you.” She turned her attention back to The Cat, Alistaire, and Siren. “Each of you take seven tribes.”
The assassins hustled off to confer with the tribal leaders and Vollrath excused himself to oversee the loading of orb cannons. Redd, watching the preparations of her army from the vantage of her
three-wheeler, took hold of Arch’s arm in the manner of a lady enjoying the sights during a carriage ride with her beau.
“Cheer up, Archy. After I’m again looking dainty in my crown, life will be as it used to be-you, me, the entire queendom as our playground. Put on a happy face or else. Things could be worse for you. You could be dead.”
“Things could be worse for me,” Arch repeated, his happy face looking a lot like his glum face. Vollrath returned to the three-wheeler. “All is ready, Your Imperial Viciousness.”
“Then let’s not dillydally.” Redd hoisted her scepter aloft, its heart raised toward the heavens. She held it there a moment before, in a single, swift motion, she swung it down and-
The Glass Eyes charged, stampeding toward the barrier as if to sacrifice themselves in its deadly sound waves, to let their inert bodies act as shields for the rest to get through. But just before they reached the barrier, Redd conjured gobs of thick putty in the pylon vents that maintained the impassable energy mesh. The demarcation barrier went offline. With blades drawn, with crystal shooters and AD52s firing, Glass Eyes stormed into Queen Alyss’ domain, overwhelming decks of card soldiers.
Redd again lifted her scepter to the sky. She brought it down fast and sure, and hundreds of cannons burst into action. Orb generators blazed out over the front line to explode deeper within Wonderland, killing the support decks lying in wait.
On Redd’s third signal, the Boarderland tribes attacked. Her Imperial Viciousness, still on her
three-wheeler with Arch, followed behind her advancing forces with a caravan of attendants that she’d poached from Boarderland’s former king. What pleasure to see The Cat raking claws across the chests of Seven and Eight Cards! To see her favorite feline beast swat dead two pairs of soldiers with a single blow! What delight to watch Siren force enemy platoons to their knees with her screams, Alistaire going around to the soldiers, beginning autopsies on each but finishing none!
Feeling supreme, Redd focused her imagination on her niece, laughing aloud when Alyss tried to push off her sight, to cloak it in darkness.
“Bring me a pack of doggerels,” she said.
Arch winced. “Redd, can’t you leave me something to lord myself over?” “But Archy, I’ve always liked watching your little pets exercise.”
Doggerels of war were half the size of spirit-danes but twice as fast, canine in aspect but with claws and teeth rivaling The Cat’s. Redd heard them before she saw them, their usual chant whenever they sensed adventure: “To kill and to maim, that is our aim. Doggerels of war are we, best not to be our enemy.”