The crimson witch

between the Thob sword and the angry dragon, not a particularly pleasant or healthful position.
        There was a screeching and a fluttering, and the three alighted on the trail, eyes blazing with an impossible black hue that was fractured with yellow as the flames reflected in the pitch orbs. They hurried forward, screeching angrily and waving their clawed hands about. Jake raised the sword as they came in under the canopy of trees and signaled Kaliglia to make his move…
        The dragon could be surprisingly quiet when he wanted to be. He moved out of the forest onto the trail behind the manbats, and they appeared not to have heard a thing.
        Jake backed toward the fire and the cliff, hoping to gain time until Kaliglia was in position to move.
        The manbats came on, cluttering…
        Hissing…
        Yellowed fangs wet with saliva, almost glowing in the firelight…
        Then Kaliglia moved. He swung his huge head around, mouth open, and collided with the three manbats, knocking the trio off their feet. His jaws closed over one of the creatures, and his square, blunt, vegetarian's teeth crushed the frail body. He spat it out and repeated the maneuver on a second of the demons,
        But the third was up and running toward Jake. It flapped wings, leaped into the air and came down at him, claws extended. He thrust the Thob sword above his head and speared the thing through one of its legs. It yelped, pulled back, and flapped in a circle, dropped again like one of the stones out of the net. He didn't have time to bring up the sword again, and it sprawled him onto the ground, rolled over and beyond him, into the fire. It screamed, rushed back out…
        And Kaliglia settled his jaws onto its squirming form, crushing it and spitting it back into the fire.
        Then there was silence. All twelve of the enemy were dead.

Chapter Thirteen: LELAR'S CASTLE
        
        After they had dragged the bodies of the manbats into the brush and concealed them from sight of later patrols, Jake and Kaliglia decided, being exuberant from the success of their fight and quite some distance from the unreal land of sleep, to go on in the darkness and reach the Castle Lelar before morning, hiding out nearby so that when further squads of manbats were sent to search for them, they would not so easily be discovered. The king would hardly expect them to have survived the first attack, let alone survived it and marched all night to the castle. So they set forth, Jake upon the giant's back, lumbering along the main trail in the darkest hours of the morning.
        The castle was magnificent. They moved off the trail into the edge of the woods and stared at it for a time, taking in the tremendous walls that thrust two hundred feet into the dawn. The walls were of polished green-black stone and seemed not to be chipped, cracked, or weathered in any way, smooth and flawless. The strange rock picked up the yellows and oranges of the morning and reflected them as yellows and greens, shimmering like the wet hide of some alien beast. The windows were long and narrow and barred with extensions of the wall, as if the windows had been whittled from the wall with the bars left in by the careful whittler. Blue light, psi-light, played behind the bars in many of the rooms. The people of the castle woke early, it appeared. The drawbridge was down, a great expanse of gray-brown wood held on brass chains.
        Horse-drawn carts driven by well-dressed servants left from the gate and moved down the drawbridge and up the dusty road toward the nearest store to purchase food and cooking wood. The gate was manned by four guards in dapper green and blue uniforms reminiscent of the outfit of a matador, tight and shiny, rich yet somehow simple.
        To the right of the castle was the great stone tower that served as an aviary for the manbats. There was a low chattering from its dark portals. A few manbats swept in and out as the minutes ticked past, zooming toward the thick walls, breaking with controlled flaps of their wings, and settling through the round, uncovered windows that punctuated the walls all around and at all heights.
        “Nothing to do but sleep,” Jake said. “When darkness comes, we can go in the castle. But we have to wait till then.”
        “I'm tired anyway,” Kaliglia agreed.
        Sleep came swiftly…
        
        When they woke, the sun had set and they were hungry. But