Flowers grew in clumps amongst the knee-high grass of the clearing, as though the black stones themselves were some sort of shrine or memorial and the flowers had been left by mourners.
Oliver paused at the edge of the road, hesitant to enter the clearing.
“What do you think will happen?” he asked without looking at Kitsune.
“I don’t know,” the fox-woman replied, her voice soft and, he thought, perhaps even a bit fearful. “But now we find out.”
The late afternoon sun still reached fingers of daylight into the clearing, but Oliver shivered as a chill breeze rustled the trees. With a nervous grin he stepped into the clearing, tall grass scritching against the legs of his blue jeans as he walked toward the ebony circle.
Oliver tried to peer between the stones, but there was only shadow there, as though night had already fallen within the circle. He could see that the grass grew in the gaps between the stones, and that heartened him a bit, though he did not know why. What would happen, he wondered, if he was unable to pass through, but Kitsune vanished? Would she be able to come back for him? Would she bother?
Thoughts of Collette steeled him.
Kitsune did not reach out for him, but she took a step past him and cocked her head, looking back curiously. Then she reached up and drew back her hood for the first time since they had come back through the Veil. Despite his fear, he caught his breath just to look at her. Her eyes were kind.
“You must try, Oliver. This will save us days.”
He nodded. Collette awaited. The Sandman was also waiting.
Oliver took another step.
As if startled by the motion, a flock of small birds cried out and took off from the tops of several trees at the edge of the clearing, branches waving at the suddenness of their departure.
Something had spooked them.
Oliver glanced at Kitsune and saw that she was sniffing at the air.
“No,” he whispered, jaw set tightly. “Not now.”
A terrible hiss filled the clearing, resounding off of the stones. Oliver turned, trying to find the source of the echoing sounds, but then he saw that Kitsune’s gaze was locked on a spot at the edge of the clearing-at the very same knot of trees that had blocked their view of the stone circle until the last moment.
A creature stood in the shade of those trees, a thing with antlers and green-feathered wings and long, vicious claws. Its features were thin and brutal and its eyes were bright as it stepped into the last of the sunlight and started toward them.
Oliver glanced around. There were others. Of course there were others. Six or seven of the antlered things, each of them terrifying to behold. They carried no weapons, but this troubled Oliver even more than if they had been armed. Their long fingers came to vicious points, and it was clear they needed no other weapon.
Back on the Orient Road, two other figures had appeared from the woods. One was an immense, hunchbacked hag with jaundiced, pustulent skin and a thick mess of gray and black hair. The hag stood at least eight feet high, and she carried a long butcher’s knife in each hand, ready to carve.
But she was far from the worst of them. For beside her came the thing responsible for the hissing in the air. It rose and fell, bobbing in the air, and its upper body swayed back and forth. The head was vaguely serpentine, but beneath that it was simply a mass of tentacles that coiled like snakes, turning in upon themselves. Its body was like a tower of vipers, the tentacles lashing out and then curling inward again. It moved across the dusty road without legs, the tentacles dragging and thrusting and dancing it forward.
“Oliver,” Kitsune whispered.
From the corner of his eye he saw her raise her hood again. Oliver put his hand on the pommel of his sword, holding his breath.
“You’ve gone far enough, I think,” the hag said.
“Black Annis,” Kitsune said, her eyes as cold as her tone. “This is none of your concern. Hunt me another day. We have an errand that will not wait.”
The hag crouched lower, the hump on her back more pronounced than ever, and took a step nearer. “ This errand will not wait.”
The tentacled thing roiled toward them, kicking up dust from the road. Oliver stared at it, hating his fear but unable to rise above it. Twisted as she was, the hag at least had human form. The other was unnatural, a nightmare churning forth from his fevered mind.
With a sound like the flap of a flag in high wind, one of the winged Hunters took flight at the edge of the clearing, throwing a dreadful shadow across the grass. The one that had been directly opposite it took flight as well.
“Kit?” Oliver whispered.
The fox-woman did not reply, only stared at Black Annis, then glanced around quickly at the others. He could practically hear her heart pounding, and he saw in her stance that she wanted nothing more than to bolt into the trees and run for her life.
Oliver knew then that they would die here. They stood no chance at all against so many Hunters. Kitsune could drag them across the Veil again, but could she grab him and step through before they attacked? He did not believe so. And from the look of her, she was so frightened that it had not even occurred to her.
I miss you, he thought, images of his sister, and of Julianna, rising in his mind. And he began slowly to draw his sword from its sheath.
He caught his breath. The Dustman, he thought. If he could summon the Dustman, at least they would not be alone. The numbers might still be too great, but…
And then Oliver realized that there was another alternative.
Leaving his blade sheathed, he reached into his pocket. His fingers pushed aside the feather from the little girl’s pillow and he grasped instead the single large seed that the gods of the Harvest had given him what seemed like so very long ago. Promises had been made that day, of help when he needed it.
He could not imagine ever needing it more.
Oliver dropped the seed to the ground. For good measure, he stepped on it, pressing it into the soil.
The ground began to tremble.
The antlered creatures began to close in, but several of them paused and glanced at one another, confused. The two in the air began to swoop downward.
“What have you done?” shrieked the hag.
The hissing of the other Hunter grew so loud it almost drowned out the rumbling of the earth and it darted across the road, propelled by a hundred thick tentacles.
Cornstalks shot up out of the road and wrapped around it, grabbing tentacles one by one and dragging it down. The thing struggled, at war with the cornstalks as they continued to burst up through the hard-packed soil.
Other things grew. Trees and plants came up amongst the grass, only sprouts and saplings one instant and fully grown the next. The Kornbocke himself was there, antlers raised. A low, snarling shape tore itself from a thick crop of cornstalks, and the Kornwolf bounded free.
The appletree man lumbered toward Oliver, taking up a defensive position beside him. Others quickly joined them; elegant women made of bark and thorns; stout little red-faced men who stank of rotting berries; and the king himself, Ahren Konigen, the corn husk man who had given Oliver the seed to begin with. Corn husks lay over the hollows where his eyes ought to be and formed the crown upon his head.
“As good as our word, Oliver Bascombe. These are dark days, and your fight is ours.”
The Hunters attacked.
The gods of the Harvest were silent but savage, and blood splattered the grass and the circle of black stones. Oliver drew his sword and raced to stand beside Konigen.
“My sister,” Oliver said as one of the antlered things circled above, looking for an angle of attack.
Konigen turned toward him.
“Go, and do what you must,” the harvest king said. “It seems to me our troubles are all connected under the surface, roots intertwined.”