Chapter 21

  The walk from the Roberts house and yard out into the fields was one of the most nerve-wracking things I'd ever done. Even with Sparkle, Penny, and D.T. beside me. We had no idea…I had no idea what I was leading my friends into. Only that this was my responsibility, and they had chosen to walk beside me.

  I felt profoundly lucky to have found such friends.

  "Here," I said, stopping as we reached what I thought was the center of the first field beyond the house. The sun was setting, casting long shadows and painting the sky in shades of red, yellow and orange to the west, and deepening shades of blue and black to the east. "We need to stop here."

  Sparkle nodded. "I feel it too. Something's going to happen here."

  "What do you feel?" D.T. asked. "Come on, clue in the vanilla mortal, please."

  "It's like," I thought about it for a moment. "It's like the air before a thunderstorm. I can feel something building."

  "Now that you mention it," D.T. said, "the hair on the back of my neck is standing up."

  "You should listen to that instinct," Penny said, then shivered from the tip of her nose to the ends of her bushy twin tails, her fur bristling and settling. "There is a great deal of energy in the air here. But it doesn't feel unnatural." She lifted her head and sniffed the air. "I smell…growing things, fresh-mowed grass and fresh-cut wood…and under it, distantly, rot and ruin."

  "Aye," a voice rumbled behind us, resonating strangely. "There are strange and dangerous things between the rows this eve."

  Sparkle made a startled sound and Penny yelped.

  All four of us swung around, and I caught a glimpse of the shock on Penny's face. I wondered how long it had been since anything had sneaked up on her so completely. I thought that D.T. started turning after the rest of us.

  There, where we'd passed only a minute or three before, stood one of George Roberts' scarecrows. It was built on a vaguely humanoid frame of wood, complete with hands made of fallen twigs and sticks. Its clothes - a pair of worn denim overalls and a ragged-looking flannel shirt - were filled out and bulked up by straw and dried hay, and its head was a carved pumpkin…a classic Jack O'Lantern.

  "What the actual hell?" D.T. asked, one hand resting on her TASER.

  The mouth curved into a slightly wider smile as the scarecrow's empty eyes fell on me. "Art thou Caitlyn of Clan Reid, Guardian of Oakwood Hall?" Its mouth opened and closed, moving in time with the formation of the words, but with the hollow way they echoed from within the pumpkin, I was certain it wasn't the mouth forming them.

  "I am," I said quietly, realizing that I'd instinctively drawn in the power to cast a spell. Ken would undoubtedly consider that a good sign.

  "Huh?" D.T. asked.

  The scarecrow let out a long, relieved-sounding sigh. "At last." It gestured widely with both arms.

  I glanced around and saw the others doing the same…and realized that we were now standing within a ring made of the other twelve scarecrows that had gone missing. With the exception of the one talking to us, the thirteenth, they all had featureless 'heads' made of stuffed burlap sacks.

  I wondered what had inspired George to make this last one more detailed.

  My attention returned to their spokes…spokesbeing? Spokescrow? Oh bollocks, this was not the time to get distracted.

  The lead scarecrow was just bowing deeply to me. "I greet thee, Guardian. I am of this land, and I welcome thee and thine. I regret borrowing the landowner's constructs without warning, but they have been of invaluable use to me, protecting him and his family from a threat. And I know not how to communicate with a normal mortal."

  Not a spokesman then, I realized. A singular entity driving all of the scarecrows. "Thank you for your welcome," I said politely. "I'm sure Mr. Roberts won't object to the loan if it's in defense of his family."

  "What?" D.T. asked. "Caley, are you talking to that thing?"

  "You can't hear it?" I asked.

  She shook her head at the same time the scarecrow rumbled, "I can speak with thee, Guardian, because thou hast magic, and with thy fae companions, for they and I are not so different. Unfortunately, thy shire reeve is neither magus nor fae, and so I cannot speak with her."

  Shire reeve? My brain ran down the reference in moments, and I almost started laughing. But how to explain modern policing to a spirit of the land? Best to just let it go. Now was not the time to try to explain either what police were, or that D.T. didn't answer to me. "Sparkle, can you…would you translate for D.T., please?"

  "Of course, Caley!" Sparkle zipped over and landed on D.T.'s right shoulder and began murmuring in her ear. D.T.'s eyes widened and she nodded a little.

  I looked back to the scarecrow and smiled. "Problem solved. Now, you said you were protecting…the landowner and his family. From what?"

  "A horror," the scarecrow rumbled. "I know not their origin, but they have been attempting to harm the family for weeks. I would humbly ask thy aid in making safe the landowner and his family. In return, I will see to it that the land's harvest is bountiful this season, and protect the landowner's livestock from illness and harm for a year and a day."

  I tipped my head. "Of course we'll help," I said carefully, "but…please take no offense, but why would you go to such lengths?"

  The scarecrow sighed deeply. "Long and long have I been of this land. Long have I watched without aught to speak with, and with naught to remember me. I would fain connect with the world again. Things are waking up. Change is in the air, in the water, in the earth. I feel curiosity for the first time in so long I barely recognize the feeling. And I have remembered that I have a responsibility to the land, and to those who live upon it."

  I considered that for a moment, then nodded. "All right. How can we help?"

  "The horrors come at night," the scarecrow said, then nodded toward the far edge of the field, "from the woods beyond the land. Though I can drive them off, I cannot do them serious harm, nor can I pursue them beyond the boundaries of the land, yet always they return the following night. I beg of thee, help me destroy them, and prevent them from returning."

  "I suddenly feel very unprepared for this," D.T. murmured.

  I was getting a bit worried myself. "We'll do the best we can," I said.

  "I have faith in thee, Guardian," the scarecrow intoned. "Thy ancestors were mighty, and I can feel the power in thee and thy companions. Even thy reeve has strength in her that I can feel, though it is not magic."

  "What are these horrors?" I asked, feeling myself blushing a little. "Can you tell us anything about them?"

  "Rat-like they are," the scarecrow said, "but large. Large as thy dusk fox companion. And unnatural. Like normal living creatures they are not."

  "That might explain the whiffs of rot and ruin I've been getting," Penny observed.

  The sun had set by then, and we all heard clearly the strange rustling that was beginning at the edge of the fields.

  Stolen story; please report.

  "If thou will deal with the horrors," the scarecrow said, "I will protect house and family."

  "Like I said, we'll do our best," I said quietly.

  It nodded and began walking slowly back toward George's house. As it went, the other scarecrows spread out to form a long line at the edge of the field nearest the house.

  We stood in the growing twilight, watching the last fading colors of sunset.

  "So," D.T. said suddenly, "What about the ROUSes?"

  I smiled in spite of myself. "Rodents of unusual size? I don't think they exist."

  The rustling at the edge of the woods came clearly to us again. "I hope I didn't just jinx us," I said.

  We were left now in a dim twilight, so Sparkle lifted off from D.T.'s shoulder and hovered above us and began shedding her gentle purple radiance, driving back the deepening shadows. Penny stayed close by my side, her tails lashing in growing agitation.

  "Something is coming," Penny said.

  "My TASER has one shot, and I have one reload for it," D.T. said, momentary levity gone. "But frankly, it takes too long to swap cartridges if there's multiple…things. Which leaves me with my ASP." She pulled out and, with a flick of her wrist, extended the collapsible metal baton. "I don't feel good about this."

  I looked her up and down. "You said you did some fencing…"

  "Yeah, épée and saber," she said. "But it was competition stuff, not actual fighting."

  I nodded. "I get that." I looked her up and down again, and considered what might be facing shortly. "How do you feel about Medieval weapons?"

  She shrugged. "I have nothing against them. What're you thinking?"

  I looked around. "I need a log." Over by the house, I saw an open-sided shed stacked high with cut firewood, and pointed to it. "Could you grab two of those?"

  "Sure." D.T. jogged over and returned carrying two of the logs. "They're heavy enough," she joked, "but swinging them will be a pain in the ass."

  I pointed to the ground. "Put them down, and I'll see what I can do about that."

  "Quicker would be better," Penny said, her ears perking this way and that. "They come."

  "Right," I murmured, concentrating on what I wanted to do and focusing my attention on the logs as D.T. placed them at my feet. I drew in energy, murmured the words of my spell, and released it into the two logs.

  They quickly drew together and melted, reshaping and changing color. A moment later, a war hammer lay on the ground at my feet. The shaft was a little over three feet long with a thicker, knurled grip long enough for two hands at one end. The head was squared off on one side, and had a sharp, tapered spike on the other. The material had changed from wood to steel. It didn't have a lot of extra detail or flair, but it was solid.

  Where the grip and head met the shaft, the edges had a slightly melted, softened look, though they were quite solid. But what should have been multiple pieces assembled together were instead one fused shape.

  I blew out a breath, then drew in a fresh one, feeling a bit drained but not terribly so. I'd be good to go for a while yet, and I'd transfigured larger things repeatedly under Ken's tutelage. It was mainly the wood-to-steel change that had been a strain, but the extra mass of two logs had helped. "Not my best work, maybe, but it'll get the job done."

  D.T. bent and picked the hammer up, testing its weight and giving it a couple of test swings. "That's really cool," she breathed. "Yeah, I can work with this. How long will it last? And what's the proper way of using it?"

  I smiled. "That's the best part…it'll just last. It's what Ken calls 'perfect transfiguration.' Nothing about that is still wood, and it won't just change back on its own. As for using it…traditionally it was for armored targets. Blunt side to knock them down, spiked side to…" I trailed off, figuring the rest should be obvious.

  She nodded. "Got it. Just so you know, I'm totally keeping this," D.T. said, and hefted the war hammer onto her shoulder. "All right, bring it."

  Penny began pacing restlessly. "I hear them. I smell them. But I don't see them. Sparkle?"

  The field we stood in lay fallow, covered in short grasses. The one between us and the woods was full of corn stalks, which we couldn't see over or through. "You're our eyes, Sparkle," I said.

  Above our heads, Sparkle huffed. "It's like watching fish swimming in water. I see ripples in the corn stalks, but I can't see anything in them. But they're getting closer fast."

  Almost as soon as she said it, things started emerging from the corn. They stopped at the edge of the field and stared at us, shifting restlessly.

  They were absolutely hideous, but I could see why the spirit inhabiting the scarecrows had called them rat-like. Their posture was low-slung, keeping their bellies close to the ground, with their legs folded up tight to their bodies. They had long snouts and whiskers on either side of their pointed noses, and their eyes glowed redly in Sparkle's dim light. Their hides were leathery, lumpy and mottled in shades of brown and gray.

  They seemed…ill made, for lack of a better term. They ranged in size from that of a domestic cat, up to roughly Penny's size, but their dimensions were uneven in a way that defied definition. Many of their legs, I saw, appeared to have more than one knee-joint, and were of odd numbers. Most had at least four - though one was moving on three, two to the rear and one in the center under its head - but some had five, or six, or seven. On one, I thought I counted nine legs.

  Their heads were misshapen, resembling a rat's, but bulging and narrowing in unsettling ways. Mouths opened and closed, revealing two or more jagged rows of razor-sharp teeth within. Thin, whip-like tails lashed in obvious agitation.

  D.T. brought her new hammer down off her shoulder and gripped it tightly in both hands. "What the actual fuck are those?"

  I'd never heard her swear before. Nor had I ever heard that little quaver of fear in her voice. She always seemed so strong to me.

  "Sparkle? Penny?" I asked hopefully.

  "Nope," Sparkle said.

  "Sorry," Penny said at almost the same time.

  "I hereby dub them Ratlings," I said, gathering power to me, "just for the sake of having something to call them."

  "Right, then," D.T. said. "Do we wait for them, or…?"

  The biggest ratling, in the center of the ragged formation, lifted its head and snarled. They came for us in an uneven wave, some moving faster than others.

  D.T. took a step forward and towards me, moving partly in front of me and sweeping her war hammer low to the ground in front of her. Her first swing smashed into the fastest of the ugly things - it practically exploded, spraying her hammer and the ground with some muddy brown fluid that must've passed for their blood - slamming it into two of its companions and literally sending them flying away from us.

  Sparkle rose higher into the air and began flinging brilliant sparks of purple energy from both hands into the growing crowd of the creatures behind the front line. Penny had vanished, but I heard her let out a hunting howl from somewhere in the rows of corn that the ratlings had emerged from, and pieces of one went flying into the air.

  I cupped my hands in front of me, gesturing to bring my spell together as energy began swirling between them. A moment later I thrust my hands away from me, and a half-dozen bolts of green-white energy shot away from them, arcing out around D.T. and then back in to slam into the rat-creatures, one dart per ratling, blasting them to pieces.

  "That's new!" D.T. observed, her hammer crushing another ratling flat.

  "I've been working on it with Ken," I said. "I was inspired by Sparkle."

  "That's so cool!" Sparkle enthused, then effortlessly reproduced what had taken me weeks of preparation and practice to get right. A dozen darts of purple light swirled away from her, raining down on the ratlings.

  "Sparkle," I asked, gathering energy again, "how many of these things are there?"

  "A lot!" she said.

  "Fabulous," D.T. said, swinging her hammer this way and that, alternately swatting the creatures away and smashing them in place.

  Then we were too busy to talk. D.T. stayed close to me, destroying any of the unnatural rat-things that got too close, while I sent barrage after barrage of green-white energy bolts into the horde. I began alternating that with small bolts of lightning, which arced from my target creature to the ones on either side of it. Sometimes I used ice, freezing some of them in place in glacial blocks - which D.T. then shattered with a swing of her war hammer, along with the ratling inside - or sending spikes of ice racing out low to the ground to impale anything in their path.

  Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, no more of the ratlings emerged from the rows of corn to attack us. The ground around us and between us and the cornfield was littered with dozens of bodies and parts of bodies. We remained close and tense until Penny emerged from the corn. She gave herself a shake and said, "All clear, as far as I can tell. Their scent tracks back to the woods."

  Finally admitting the exhaustion that had been growing in me, I doubled over, resting my hands on my knees and groaning. "I feel like I ran a marathon."

  D.T. lowered the gore-smeared head of her hammer to the ground and leaned on the shaft. "I," she proclaimed, sounding as weary as I felt, "am skipping arm day tomorrow."

  Sparkle swirled down and landed atop D.T.'s head, flopping down dramatically. "I need a snack!"

  D.T. smiled up at her. "Something disgustingly sweet, no doubt."

  "Yuh huh!" Sparkle agreed.

  I chuckled. "Penny, please track their scent back. There were too many of them for this to be over so easily. But be careful."

  Penny huffed. "You think there might be a den?"

  "I'm terrified of missing one if there is," I said.

  She nodded. "I shall look." Instead of turning away, she simply melted into the shadows and was gone.

  "D.T., you all in one piece?" I asked.

  "None of them even touched me," she said, straightening. "I think the real danger was their numbers…individually they weren't much."

  I pushed myself upright again, arching my back and stretching. I caught her watching and smiled to myself as I replied, "I agree. That was quite a workout."

  "You were the MVP," she said, turning to face me directly. "Those new spells of yours were really something."

  I thought she sounded pensive. "What is it?"

  She shook her head a little, then gave her hammer a two-handed shake. "Eww. Cleaning this is going to be disgusting."

  I held up a single finger. "Hold it out horizontally, please." As she did, I murmured the words of a spell I hadn't translated to BSL yet, and a little raincloud formed above the hammer. It began to rain, quite hard, onto the hammer, rinsing it clean.

  "You are amazing," D.T. said wonderingly, slowly turning the hammer in place to make sure it was well cleaned. After a minute I released the spell, dispersing the little rain cloud. When D.T. gave the hammer another shake, only clean water came away from it.

  "Thank you," she said, and hefted the thing onto her shoulder again.

  Penny emerged from the rows of corn again, looking dour. "There is indeed a burrow, just within the woods. Come."

  The Oakwood Hall Bestiary there as well.

  Dietary Changes.

  Kinnear Chronicles novel, trying to figure out the mechanics of marketing my Patreon, working on original material for it...all while working a full time job. I just need to slow down the pace a little. So at least for a few weeks, new chapters will only be going up here (and a week ahead on Patreon) on Sundays.