Chapter Twelve
Uutresk Unhinged
Hank had sent Sheila and Bobby off together in one direction, while he had gone off alone in another to search for Uni. Sheila had wanted to join Donnova, but he'd argued that Donnova was capable enough on her own and that she and Bobby could cover another area together. Truthfully, he still wanted to keep Sheila and Donnova apart as much as possible. He felt there was something not quite right about the night's events, but, once again, it was only a feeling. He couldn't piece it all together in a way that satisfied his suspicion. He regretted now that he hadn't taken Diana's advice in the first place and gone right past this place.
He looked around, hoping not to alarm those around him. He did not dare make eye contact with those he knew were watching him. He tried to act casual and not like someone trying desperately to find someone. He wondered if he should have woken Oldbano from the beginning, but he'd wanted to get out and start looking immediately.
He'd told everyone to do their best not to disturb anyone there, reminding them of the nature of the place. If one of them found Uni, they were to calmly walk to the rest to call off the search quietly. Of course, Donnova had run off before he could give her that instruction, not that she would have listened anyway.
He was doing it again, he realized — thinking of her as if she was a viper among them. She helped Sheila with Diana, didn't she? And she was out helping look for Uni now.
Still. . . . When Diana had gone out alone, she was under some kind of enchantment. She hadn't known what she was doing. But why didn't Sheila and Donnova wake everyone? It must have been Donnova's idea, he reasoned. Sheila would've handled it differently on her own. But then, he remembered how she'd gone off alone to help Kareena. He had wanted to get Sheila's story about what happened earlier, but finding Uni was the priority.
Where was she? If she were in trouble, she could teleport herself away, couldn't she? She would cry out. Even in the noise of the sanctuary's inhabitants, he felt he should be able to distinguish Uni's cry.
But he couldn't keep Uni in his thoughts. He realized that, though he was looking for her in all directions, he might easily have looked right over her without realizing it. His thoughts were with Sheila. The prisoner below had obviously enchanted Sheila, and Donnova as well. Had they seen the same person? Who had they seen? Hank dared to wonder if it had been himself. He hated the rush, however small, that he felt at the thought of Donnova's having anything like a passionate regard for him, but he couldn't deny it. He even wondered if maybe he was trying so hard to hate her because he was ashamed that there was a part of him that was excited by her.
No, that wasn't it. No. She was attractive enough, but not his type. He wondered what her type may be. There was no telling.
A scrape in the darkness to his left drew his attention, but he saw only a wooden crate between two buildings. Hoof against wood? he wondered. He watched it for a moment. He had almost turned away when again he heard a scrape he could imagine came from within.
"Uni?"
Slowly, he stepped over to it, lifted its lid, and peered into the darkness.
Then he was dropping the lid and his bow to cover his ears. His insides vibrated. He fell to his knees. His eyes watered. He fought to breathe against the pressure on his chest. His mind begged it to stop.
And then it did, as abruptly as it'd begun. It left such a dreadful silence in its wake that he couldn't bring himself to move and, for a moment, he believed he'd gone deaf. But, no, he heard his own labored breathing.
Donnova!
Then . . . chaos. The initial shock over, a maddened craze ensued in the wake of the ear-piercing scream.
He grabbed his bow and sprang up, heading for the stable. Everyone was crying and screaming and running in all directions — some running to hide, some running mindlessly into the night. Bodies colliding, bodies falling, savage fighting breaking out around him, Hank fought his way through. There was no room to bring up the bow; it was difficult enough keeping a grip upon it in the swarm of frightened and confused people.
Someone grabbed his hair from behind. Another hand gripped his shoulder and pulled him backward. Someone had his free arm. Another pulled at his bow. He felt claws at his back. Something wrapped around his knee. He was going down. He looked up to see something running straight for him, looking him right in the eye. The creature jumped at him, but was suddenly snatched out of the air and flung away.
It was Bitsnout! The orc extended his only arm, and Hank grabbed the large green hand and was effortlessly pulled to his feet — those behind him having released him and fled. Hank shouted his thanks as the orc moved on, but he could not hear even his own voice in the bedlam. And then the orc was lost in the crowd as he went about — Hank hoped not futilely — trying to separate everyone.
Hank went on as best he could. He was nearly at the stable now. He saw Diana and Presto and Eric. Diana and Eric were holding ground at the stable while Presto tried to make something happen with his hat. It didn't look like he was having any luck. A spark and a puff of smoke was all that came from it. It was a wonder he was able to try at all. But then, that corner of Uutresk was fairly open. For whatever reason, it seemed no one wanted to linger there.
And then he saw Sheila uncloak — Bobby, too — as she had held him tightly against herself. He locked eyes with Sheila, almost smiled in relief that she was safe, but the fear and urgency in her expression alarmed him. He could see her shouting something at him, but he couldn't hear. She tried again, this time pointing across to the dividing wall — the barrier that separated the merely disfunctional from the violently insane.
What he saw made his stomach lurch. There were arms and tentacles and faces and horns, all sticking out through the wall. Thunderous beating could be heard coming from the other side. They had to hurry. But hurry and do what? They were overwhelmed already!
He reached the others — just in time, he thought, as Presto began waving his hand above his hat again, bringing a glow.
"Maybe I could—" Presto began.
Hank stopped his hand. "Better not."
"Right," said Presto dejectedly.
Hank turned to Eric, who was helping Diana keep the people at bay. "We need a wall!"
Eric nodded, understanding. "I'll try!" He held the shield out toward the crowd and a spreading translucence began separating them. Diana ran along the shield wall, using her javelin to push stragglers to their own side. "I don't know how long this'll hold, so make it snappy," said Eric.
"We still have to find Uni!" Bobby hoarsely shouted to everyone.
"There she is!" Presto suddenly yelled.
Everyone turned. Hank had expected Uni, but it was Donnova running out of the stable. And close behind her was something else.
A tall, naked man ran toward her and wrapped his arms around her. Blood was pouring out of his ears and down his face from his eyes. Donnova dropped her sword and pulled at the arms that held her.
"My ears! You will pay for what you've done! I'll kill you! I'll rip you apaaart!" he roared.
"Hank! Shoot him!" Donnova coughed and wheezed against the arms wrapped around her. "Shoot him!"
Hank hesitated, but then brought up his bow and summoned an arrow. He didn't have a clear shot. He kept the arrowhead trained on the naked man, but he couldn't risk hitting Donnova as they struggled.
Why wasn't he firing? The incompetent fool!
Donnova could hardly breathe. The vampire's preternatural strength could break her in half at any moment. What was Oberkind waiting for? Was he so weakened by the loss of blood? If only Hank would fire! The magical bow redefined precision, she knew, yet he hesitated. Maybe he was hoping she'd be crushed first, she thought.
She looked around, her mind racing, and then her eyes caught sight of the boy and his club, and an idea sprang into her mind. If the Ranger would not act. . . .
"He killed Uni!" she yelled, searching her brain for the little Barbarian's name.
His eyes went wide and his mouth fell open. "What!"
Her hands and arms were going numb from the vampire's grip. His name! What the hells is his—? Bobby! "She's dead, Bobby!"
"Uni? Nooo!"
Sheila had said her little brother was hot-headed, and now Donnova saw that fire within him as he ran forward with his club raised.
"Bobby! Wait!" Hank yelled.
As she'd hoped, none of them were quick enough to stop him. He brought the club down with a force Donnova hadn't thought possible of the child. She and Oberkind went down. All around were the sounds of cracking, crumbling, crashing, neighing. She was almost able to pull free enough to grab her sword, but the vampire had her pinned face-down on the ground.
But then she felt him release her. Gulping in air, she shot an aching arm out for her sword and wrapped stiff fingers around its hilt. She twisted up to face the vampire. He stood over her, lips drawn back to reveal fangs covered in his own blood — blood that still ran from his ruined ears, dripped from his eyes and nose.
He raised a foot, aiming it right at her face. In another second, she'd be dead, and there was no way for her to stop him.
She cringed and heard the impact, the sickening crunch. But it wasn't she who had been hit. She opened her eyes. Oberkind was nowhere to be seen. A horse jumped over her, causing her to flinch.
She hurried to her feet, looking around. The stable wasn't much more than a jagged woodpile. The fence around the corral was down. And there was a sizable hole where part of the southeast wall had fallen.
And the horses. . . . She watched as they took turns trampling Oberkind to a bloody pulp. Oberkind, stomped to death by his own horses, his flesh and bones strewn underfoot. Donnova watched the vengeful scene play out in front of her with a respect she'd never before felt for these lower beasts.
Well, dead vampires tell no tales.
Then there was a sound like an explosion far behind her. As she'd feared, the dividing wall had fallen. She noticed also the many fires that had sprung up in the chaos. All the more light by which to see the murderous horde rushing their way.
"Hank!" Sheila yelled.
Hank was struggling to keep a crying, screaming Bobby from running into the collapsed stable. It was taking all his strength to keep a grip on him. He had managed to get his club away from him; Presto had it now — he had needed something to keep his hands occupied. But Hank didn't need to look up now at Sheila's urgent warning to know that the separating wall of Uutresk had just given way. He'd heard it. It was a sound he was likely never to forget.
"What can we do?" Diana said.
"I can't hold this!" Eric yelled. Hank whipped his head around, and indeed the energy of his shield was phasing out in places. Now Eric cried out as it gave completely, and he was pushed back by the mass of people as their mania renewed and the new danger. He staggered backwards until he tripped and fell to the ground.
"Get to the horses!"
It was Donnova. She was literally dragging Eric back to his feet.
Sheila suddenly wrenched Bobby from Hank's arms and was dragging him with her. "Hank, let's go!" Bobby was still screaming Uni's name. "I'm sorry, Bobby! She's gone! We gotta go!" she told him.
"No, Sheila, no! I won't leave her!" Bobby cried as he was moved along.
Hank looked around. There had to be something they could do to help. They couldn't just leave.
Then something caught his eye. Was that Oldbano? It was! And Uellen was atop his head, hanging on for dear life. She was just a spec at this distance, but he saw her tiny head turn his direction. Dread froze his heart.
No . . . don't do it.
And then the little, wingless fairie dragon did the one thing he'd prayed she wouldn't.
She jumped.
She jumped from head to head in the tumultuous crowd, trying to make her way to him. She'd done it without thinking, without looking back.
You can't make it! Please go back! Oh God!
"Hank, come on!" Donnova shouted.
His mind was racing, but he could think of nothing to do to help her, to help any of them. Anything they tried would probably make everything worse.
"Come on! Let's go!" she shouted again.
Then she was pulling him. He looked at her, and beyond her he saw Eric, Presto, Diana, Sheila and Bobby all on horses that were stamping and whinnying in agitation. From atop their mounts, Diana and Eric protected the others as well as they could.
"Wait! We have to help them!" he cried, trying to pull away.
"We can't help them!"
"But—"
"They're coming! We have to go now!"
"Hank, please!" Sheila cried desperately.
He looked to Sheila, and then to Bobby clinging to her from behind with his face buried in her cloak.
There were two horses left. Donnova was heading toward one.
A crazed woman suddenly ran up and grabbed Donnova from behind as she was mounting her horse and pulled her back down to the ground. Donnova didn't hesitate to draw her sword and cut the defenseless woman down.
It was that that decided him. Upon seeing this, he realized that staying might actually cause more deaths than there would already be. Still hating himself for abandoning all of Uutresk to their fate, he ran and jumped onto the last horse's back. What choice did they have? He looked back one more time at the chaotic scene, but this time did not see Uellen or Oldbano or Bitsnout anywhere. What chance did any of them have?
Ahead of him, the others were jumping the rubble, through the ruined wall and out into the night. He could only follow.
They were still going at a steady gallop, but not riding as hard as they had been at first. Hank looked behind them to see only the moonlit plain, same as the last time he'd looked behind them a moment ago. He could no longer see even the rising smoke in the air from the fires set alight inside Uutresk. They had been riding for a while. The danger was surely well behind them.
Uellen. Oldbano. Bitsnout. Had they survived? Were they still fighting for their lives back there? Had there really been nothing they could have done? Their hosts had extended welcoming hospitality to them all, and what had they given them in return? Destruction. Death.
"There's water!"
Donnova's shout brought Hank from his haunting thoughts. He looked over at her.
"Back through there." She pointed. "Reflected moonlight. A pond. The horses should drink."
They all came to a stop and gratefully dismounted and stretched themselves. Hank was walking toward the horse that carried Sheila and Bobby, but Donnova moved in front of him and helped them down herself. He couldn't help but feel she'd done it intentionally.
"Are you all right?" she asked Sheila.
Sheila rubbed her hands together. "Yeah. Just a bit sore."
Donnova placed a hand on her arm and smiled warmly. "Rest."
Sheila nodded and sat next to her brother who sat, weeping, with his head in his hands.
Donnova turned to Eric. "Stay with them." To Presto she said, "We need saddles." Presto nodded, sat on the ground, removed his hat and rubbed at his neck. "Hank, Diana, and I can see to the horses." She looked to Diana, who nodded and stepped toward the one nearest her.
"No," said Hank. "Donnova and I can manage alone. You've been through enough for one night, Diana."
He saw a flash of protest in Diana's eyes, but she nodded and went to kneel beside Sheila and Bobby.
He looked at Donnova and saw in her eyes that his underlying message had not gone unnoticed.
The trip to the pond was silent, but that silence ended upon reaching it.
"You didn't have to kill her," he said.
"Her?"
"That woman. She was afraid. She only wanted to escape that place."
"The one who pulled me from my horse," she said, as though remembering last week's episode of some television show. "You can't fault me that, surely."
"What about Oldbano and Uellen? What if those people destroyed the entire city? We owed them our protection! We shouldn't have left!"
Her expression turned cold, icy even, in the moonlight. "Why should you care about their fate?"
Hank didn't want to take the bait, and he knew it was just that, but curiosity fueled by indignation got the better of him.
"What's that suppose to mean?"
"Nothing. Forget it." She crouched at the edge of the water, cupped a handful, and put it to her lips.
"How am I supposed to forget that? Just tell me what you meant!"
She spat the water. "Very well. How can you claim to care about them, or anyone, when you allowed the greatest threat in the Realm to live?"
Hank tensed, his face went hot, and his heart began pounding in his chest. How did she know about that? Did everyone in the Realm know about it? But then the answer came to him.
"Sheila. . . ."
He had to calm himself, had to keep control and think. He couldn't let her use this against him! But no words would come. He wasn't prepared to have had this thrown at him. All he could think of right now was that he'd never hated Donnova more than in this moment.
She rose. "We're friends, she and I. We share our tales. One of which happened to be the one about the day Venger was at your mercy in the Dragons' Graveyard, where, at the crucial moment, you became weak."
"I didn't become weak! I—"
"Outnumbered, overpowered, restrained, even, and yet he still defeated you! And it was defeat! He was at your mercy, and he deserved none!"
Hank wanted to be angry, he wanted to protest, but couldn't. There was a part of him that agreed with her. He'd been wrestling with that part of himself ever since the first arrow flew to release Venger. She had him, and he hated it. All his hatred for Venger, and all his own self-hatred since, was turning itself on Donnova. He felt a heated rage begin to boil within himself, much like the murderous anger that had once set him on Venger's destruction.
She went on, "All the unspeakable atrocities, all the dread in the hearts and minds of the beings who inhabit this realm, and you let him live! I would do anything for the chance to make that choice!"
"You would have killed him?"
She looked at him as though insulted by such a question. "How could you not! How could you pass up a—"
"I just wanted to show him! I wanted him to know how it feels! I thought it would change—"
"Venger is not a child!" she said. With a sigh of frustration, she turned away from him, only to turn back again. "How could you presume to teach him a lesson in morality? He is an evil that serves a far greater evil. . . . And are you not evil for letting him continue?"
He killed her ten different ways in his mind.
She wasn't finished. "What of the dead and downtrodden left in his wake? What of the lands he and his armies have ravaged? What of Edonlea? How many lives has he devastated since your fateful decision? And how many of those would understand your reasons? How many could forgive you, Hank?"
"If I had killed him, I would have been no better than he was! Can't you understand that?"
He didn't know if he understood it anymore, if he ever really did. But he could think of no other defense against her verbal onslaught. He had been plagued with all these thoughts already. It was his private battle. Intensely private. She was speaking these things that he would have kept hidden. It was like she was ripping him apart and exposing the deepest, ugliest parts of him — those parts that he only recently felt that he'd come to terms with. His pain was like a wound not only reopened, but made worse than before.
His hands were shaking. He clenched them into fists.
"No better than he? You would have been a champion, Hank, remembered and revered through the ages! Instead, you are an accessory to evil, a servant of evil! You are Venger's accomplice!"
He hadn't known he was actually going to punch her until there was no stopping the fist aimed at her face. The next thing he knew, she was on the ground, staring up at him with fingers to her bloody lips. In this darkness, her blood looked black.
Hank was breathing hard, exhilarated. Hitting her felt so damned good! But he had been wrong to have done it. She had made him do it, he felt. But, no, only he could be responsible for his own actions.
He was so tired of walking that line between right and wrong.
He heard the others coming and considered how this might look to them. Damn it! But he found he really didn't care right now. Sheila was now kneeling at Donnova's side. Eric was standing between them, his shield favoring Donnova. Even Bobby had come; he was standing behind Eric. Diana was seeing to the horses, as though she wanted to be close, to be helpful, but didn't want to get involved. Presto had never come the full distance.
Hank didn't care about them right now. It wasn't finished; he had something left to say.
"I did it for us, for my friends! I wanted to set an example! I'm not evil! And I don't serve Venger! I hate Venger!"
No one said anything. Donnova got up, and then collected the other horses to lead away. Then she stopped and half turned to look at him again. "You'll be the death of us all," she said before she turned and began walking the horses back, Sheila at her side. They walked past Presto who whispered, "Donnova, we have saddles." Donnova nodded an acknowledgment and kept going.
Eric turned a sidelong glare at Hank. Hank didn't like the look. He had the feeling that Eric had just taken Donnova's side without so much as caring what their argument had been about — not that he would have told him. Then Eric turned away and followed Donnova and Sheila. Bobby followed Eric, and they were soon joined by Presto.
That's when it occurred to him that this was just what Donnova wanted. She had enticed him to violence just so his friends would see him lose control of himself. And he had fallen for it. He hit a woman who hadn't even hit first, and hadn't hit back. She was trying to turn his friends against him! But there was no proof. There never was.
Or perhaps it was merely a deflection, he thought. She hadn't liked his accusing her, so she accused him of something worse to throw him off.
"Hank? You OK?"
It was Diana. The only one who was willing to talk to him, the last one left standing by him. They knew and understood each other, he felt. He was glad to have her at his side now.
"Yeah. I'm OK. Thanks." And he meant those thanks, more than he was capable of expressing at the moment.