Sliding South

The brown horse and her black-clad rider flowed over the landscape like wind let loose from an age-long prison. The horse's legs stretched forth and ate up the landscape, yet so smooth was her motion that she scarcely seemed to move.

Axis leaned forward over Pretty Brown Sal's neck, urging her forward. He had not been this happy in decades.

Behind him — somewhere — came his war band of some three thousand riders and trees, and somewhere behind them followed the column, but for this moment in time Axis did not care if they ever caught him.

He was free, riding across this bleakened landscape, running south, riding this magical, magical mount.

Pretty Brown Sal leaned her head forth even more eagerly, and surged forward. She, too, loved to run (fly), and her slim legs ate up the landscape.

Even more than usual.

From the first day that Axis had led the column south he'd discovered something unusual about the way Sal moved. It had at first disorientated him, almost frightened him, but then he'd learned to accept it and to enjoy the freedoms it gave him. Pretty Brown Sal was, as the sparrow had said, a gift of flight.

Pretty Brown Sal's legs literally flew. For every stride she took, almost half a league of landscape slid by. That was the unnerving sensation, for the passing landscape became an inchoate blur as it slid past with no recognisable features. On the first day, once Axis had got over his initial surprise, he'd found himself halting Sal every six or seven strides just so that he could orientate himself again.

Then, as the day had worn on, he'd learned to trust the mare, and learned to flow with her as she coursed over the land.

She was wondrous and magical, and Axis leaned forward even more, whooping and laughing as he urged her forward, forward, forward ...

But Pretty Brown Sal and her abilities were not the only reason for his high humour.

Axis had a purpose again, he had a usefulness, and he felt he could make a difference. He didn't care that he was not the hero of this particular battle, only that he had a purpose. Moreover, he had a purpose that encompassed what he adored beyond anything else: leading a war band over countryside against a vile enemy that was ravaging the land. He had a purpose, and it involved speed and battle and blood.

It felt like old times again.

From the column, Axis had selected some three thousand seasoned campaigners — including Zared, Herme and Theod, who refused to remain behind — to ride in his war band. With the three thousand men came a similar number of the trees who, as Axis led out his band for the first time, had simply lifted roots and moved out with them. Another four or five thousand trees roamed through the landscape for leagues to either side of Axis' war band, catching and destroying every creature they came across. As the Demonic hours came and went (without Raspu's hour of Pestilence at dusk, for Urbeth said that Gwendylyr had triumphed against him, and, at that, Theod had broken down and wept), the trees provided shelter, although this far north the Demonic influence was negligible.

Axis found he had no need for the trees' shelter, for Sal conveyed her own protection against the Demons' maddening probings. Axis was truly free at last to ride as far and as fast as he wished.

Each day they travelled further south. Although Axis tended to ride out alone, the war band was never far behind. Somehow Sal's abilities extended to the war band, for Axis only ever had to rein her in, and turn about, and there was the war band thundering towards him, whooping and screaming with an excitement — we're making a difference! we're taking action! — that matched Axis'. To either side of the band of horsemen ran the trees: gigantic beings waving branches far into the sky and singing their own war song. Every time Axis saw them his breath would catch in his throat.

Several times a day they'd meet groups, often many thousands' strong, of crazed creatures and humans.

And every time they met them, they would decimate them.

Horsemen and trees would wade in side by side, swords and pikes sweeping and plunging, branches and roots snapping and snarling, men screaming, trees shrieking, death dealing.

None of the Demon-controlled creatures survived.

Of them all, the men found it hardest to do death to the women and children among the hordes of crazed creatures, but death they did, for it was the only release possible for those whose minds and souls had been eaten and corrupted by the Demons.

And every time Axis drew breath, and called his war band to a halt, he looked about at the blood-soaked snow that surrounded them, and he smelled lilies.

Thousands upon thousands of lilies, and Axis hoped that somehow the dead had managed to find their way into the Infinite Field of Flowers.

At the end of each day Axis led his war band back to the column that trailed behind them, Urbeth patiently plodding at its head.

But, as Axis did not have far to look back for his war band when he rode ahead, so he and his band did not have to ride far to meet up with the column. Sal's magic, perhaps combined with Urbeth's, extended to them as well.

And so they moved south.

Fast.

Until the eastern peaks of the Icescarp Alps rose to meet them.

Axis reined Sal to a halt, the mare snorting nervously.

A birdwoman stood in the snow before them.

Crazed? Probably so, considering her appearance, but crazed in a manner Axis had not yet seen.

She was ... hideous. Before this moment Axis had not believed that any Icarii woman could make herself look hideous, but this birdwoman had gone to extraordinary lengths to make herself so.

Axis was not to know that she thought herself extraordinarily beautiful and alluring rather than repulsive.

Her hair had been teased by wind and ice into ragged spikes.

Her robe, possibly once gold, but Axis was not sure, was tattered and stained by whatever the wind had thrown at her.

Her wings were a frightful confusion of orange and red dye that had run in the wet conditions.

Masses of ill-placed jewellery hung from ears and neck and waist and streamers of what possibly had once been scarves fluttered from neck and arms.

Her face ... her face was painted in several shades of purple and blue and red, as streaked by the elements as were her wings.

And yet her eyes still sparkled with obvious joy, and her mouth pouted seductively.

She held out her hands. "Axis StarMan!" she cried. "Well met! Have you brought me my husband?"

Axis finally recognised the woman from the time he, Azhure and Caelum had been trapped in the tunnel below the Fortress Ranges.

"StarLaughter!" he said, and Sal instinctively backed away two paces.

Chapter 52

A Marital Reunion

"What?" WolfStar said. "I don't believe you!"

And yet he remembered what StarLaughter had said to him on the ice-edged glacier at the foot of Star Finger. We could love each other again.

Then, he'd thought she had simply been intending sarcasm, or perhaps was even a little mad.

Now he wondered if she was indeed mad, but also truthful. She could actually think that she and he ...?

WolfStar stared at Axis. They'd camped for the night within sight of the Icescarp Alps, and just as he and Zenith had eaten and begun to settle down for the night, Axis had ridden his pathetic brown mare into the camp, seized WolfStar by one wing, and dragged him to a relatively deserted spot beneath the ethereal trees.