"There are fires," said Conrad, and, indeed, there were, many little campfires gleaming in the dark on the hillside between the mounded castle and the hills.

"The Horde?" the demon asked. "Waiting there for us?"

"I think it unlikely," said Duncan. "The Horde would have no need of fires."

"More than likely," Conrad said, "it is Snoopy and his gang."

Duncan said to Scratch, "There's no need for you to stay. We placed no price upon the freeing of you. We have no claim upon you. If there's somewhere you want to go…"

"You mean you do not want me?"

"It's not that," said Duncan. "Should you want to stay with us, you're welcome."

"I thought, perhaps, the hermit. He is not happy with me. Although I cannot understand…"

"He's only dramatizing," said Conrad. "Showing off a little. He'll get over it."

"I have nowhere else to go," said Scratch. "I have no other friends. I can, mayhaps, be of some small service to you. I can fetch and carry."

"Stay, then," said Duncan. "Our company becomes more diverse as we proceed upon the journey. We can make room for a demon."

The ground beneath his feet, Duncan realized, no longer had the even smoothness of a lawn. It was rough and humpy, covered by wild grasses and low-growing ground cover that rasped, as he moved, against his boots. Somewhere, off in the distance, an owl was hooting, and in the hills above the castle mound a wolf howled mournfully.

The moonlight was bright, the moon a night or two from fullness, and to the south he caught a glimpse of the river, shining like a mirror.

Saved again, he thought, jerked out of the jaws of disaster by the most unlikely of events, the castle's enchantment broken by the death of the last of those who had held it together. Cuthbert had committed suicide, whether intentionally or in a fit of insanity, there was no way of knowing. But it had been suicide. He had hurled himself from the balcony to the floor below.

Diane moved close to him and he put an arm about her, held her tightly. She leaned her head upon his shoulder.

"I am sorry," he said. "Sorry that it happened this way."

"I should have known," she said. "I should have realized that one day Cuthbert would be gone and the castle gone with him. I guess I did know, way back in my mind, but I didn't allow myself to even think of it."

He stood, holding her closely, trying to give her the little comfort that he could, looking out beyond the canted standing stones to the fires that blazed along the slope.

"There must be a lot of them out there," he said. "Snoopy told us he'd collect an army."

"Duncan," asked Diane, "have you seen Hubert anywhere?"

"No, I haven't. He must be around. He was out there just a while ago with Daniel and Beauty."

She shook her head against his shoulder. "I don't think so. I think I've lost him, too. He was one with the castle. He'd been here so long."

"As soon as it is light," said Duncan, "we'll look for him. He may wander in before the night is over."

"There's someone coming," Conrad said.

"I don't see anyone."

"Just the other side of the standing stones. Snoopy, more than likely. I think we should go out to meet them. They won't want to pass beyond the stones. They know something's happened, but they can't know quite what."

"There's no danger now," said Diane.

"They'd not know that," Conrad said.

Conrad started down the slope and the rest of them followed. They passed between the standing stones and now it could be seen that a band of half a dozen little figures stood there waiting for them.

One of them stepped forward, and Snoopy's voice spoke to them in a scolding tone. "I warned you," he said. "Why can't you pay attention? I warned you to shun the castle mound."

25

Snoopy knelt on the ground beside the fire and swept an area clear of litter with his hand.

"Watch closely," he said. "I'll draw a map to show you the situation."

Duncan, standing to one side, bent over to stare at the smooth place on the ground, remembering how the goblin had drawn a map for them that first day they'd met in the chapel of the church.

Snoopy picked up a stick, stabbed a hole into the ground. "We are here," he said. He drew a ragged line along the map's northern edge. "There are the hills," he said. To the south he drew a snaky line. "That's the river." To the west he made a sweeping line, running south, then turning west and looping to the north.

"The fen," said Conrad.

Snoopy bobbed his head. "The fen."

He ran the stick along the line that represented the hills, curved it east, made a tight loop, and continued south of the snaky line that was the river.

"The Horde," he said, "is stretched out along that line. They have us hedged in north and east and south. Mostly hairless ones, with some of the other Horde members mixed in. They have us backed against the fen."

"Any chance of breaking through?" asked Conrad,

Snoopy shrugged. "We haven't tried. Anytime we want to, we can. We can filter out, a few here, a few there. They won't even try to stop us. We're not the ones they want. It is you they want. They lost you here; they know you couldn't have gotten out of this pocket. Perhaps they think you may be hiding in the mound. If that's the case, they tell themselves, the time will come when you must move out. They know you'll have to surface sometime and then they'll have you. And you can't filter out as we can."

"You mean," said Duncan, "that they've just been sitting there and you've been just sitting here?"

"Not entirely," said Snoopy. "Not us just sitting here, I mean. We've got dozens of magics set out for them, foolish little traps that will not really hold them, but that can hamper and confuse them, slow up any progress they might make. Some of the traps are mean as sin. They know they're there and don't want to tangle with them until they have to. If they start to move anywhere along their line, we'll know."

"You're sticking out your necks for us," said Duncan. "We had not intended that you should help us, of course. We were glad of the help you gave us. But we never expected this."

"As I told you," Snoopy said, "we can back off anytime we want to. There's no overwhelming danger for us. You're the ones who are in danger."

"How many of your people do you have here?"

"A few hundred. Maybe a thousand."

"I wouldn't have dreamed you could get together that many. You told us the Little Folk have small love of humans."

"I also told you, if you recall, that we have less love of the Horde. Once the word got started that here was a small band of humans marching into the face of the Horde, the news ran on all sides like wildfire. Day after day our people came flocking in, singly and in little bands. I will not try to deceive you. My people will not fight to the death for you. Actually they have but little stomach for fighting. They've never been a warrior people. But they'll do what they can."

"For which," said Duncan, "they have our gratitude."

"If you'd only pay attention to what we tell you," said Snoopy, testily, "you would be better off. I told you, specifically, to stay away from the castle mound. Don't go near it, I told you. From what you've told me, it was only by incredible human luck that you won free of it." He shook his head. "I do not understand this human capacity for luck. Our people never have that kind of luck."

"We had but little choice," Conrad pointed out. "If we'd not sought refuge in the castle, we'd have been massacred."

"If you could have gotten across the river…"

"There was no possibility of that," said Duncan. "The Horde contingent would have run us down. They were re-forming even as we ran."

"From what we found on the field of battle," Snoopy said, "you wreaked a deal of damage on them."