The Waking Dream was abuzz with the tell-tale sounds of spook on spook combat.

Ramazan of clan Carcani struck like a thunderbolt, but Shaban saw it coming and dodged away from the leaf-shaped speartip buzzing with agony. Thanks to the old man's good instincts, the angry gnoll holding the weapon managed only a glancing blow. Sparks of varied trauma flew from Shaban's wards, carried away by currents of aimless thought and fleeting emotion.

In the background, a black bird of prey punched through the ground claws first and snatched a wriggling ghost from the earth. It was a Scout in the shape of a mole. A clever diversion on Ramazan's part, though Ajla might disagree. With a scream of rage, she rent the ghost asunder and scattered the pieces to the four winds.

Oak advanced close to the ground at breakneck speed, hiding his approach behind Shaban's dreamform. Jumping like an ambushing lynx, he flew right over the retreating badger and struck with Kaarina's Horror.

The black stinger extending from his right shoulder blade hit Ramazan square in the chest. Pliers, ripping out his teeth. Rats gnawing at the broken bones of his mutilated fingers. The echoes of trauma traveled along the stinger and splashed uselessly against Oak's wards.

An expression of utter surprise flared on the Carcani spook's face. Ramazan tried to flee, but the branches of Oak's shadow gripped the gnoll tight and held him close. No. I am no mere shadow. Those branches sprouted from him. His roots, trunk, and bark. His branches. I am the Gallows Tree. A great oak standing alone on top of a hill, hanged corpses swinging in the wet autumn wind.

"Curse you, mongrel!" Ramazan roared.

Oak squeezed the struggling gnoll, gnarled wood groaning. Cold drizzle dripped from his leaves and flowed down his bark. He reared Kaarina's Horror back and brought it down on the same spot as before. The stinger sank deep. Ramazan's wards broke and the unending despair wrapped inside Oak's weapon shattered his mind.

That was the thing about the art of theurgy. No matter how crafty you were, one mistake could be the end of you.

A stream of ghosts flowed from the ruined consciousness in Oak's grip and he gulped down all he could snatch. The Waking Dream carried away the ragged leftovers. Everything tied to Ramazan's wards had shattered beyond repair under the weight of Oak's will, but he still grabbed a decent haul.

+ 7 Ghosts

Never gets old.

"Good show, foreigner. Good show indeed," Shaban said. "I thank you for the swift assist."

Oak waved the old man off with one of his thick branches. The body of a teenage boy hung from the branch. Crows had dined on the corpses' bare feet, leaving nothing but rotting bone behind. "Just doing what I'm paid for, nothing more, nothing less."

"Well, I appreciate your work all the same," Shaban replied and looked up with a twinkle in his eye.

Ajla landed next to them with a huff. "Fucking Ramazan. I wanted to sink my claws into him and all I got was his bloody Scout."

"The man got you good, Ajla." Shaban grinned. "Give him his props, will you?"

It was not easy to gauge Ajla's expressions since the spook's dreamform was a giant bird of prey, but Oak got the feeling she wasn't interested in giving Ramazan his due.

"Fuck!" Ajla shouted and flapped her wings, rising back into the air. She shot off, vanishing from Oak's sight to glide above the compound. He approved. There was no reason to get sloppy just because Ramazan was dead.

"So. What's her problem?" Oak whispered and glanced up at the black sky.

"Nothing major. She just wanted Ramzan's ghosts, that's all."

"Ah."

The rest of their trap clearing effort went by without a hitch. Sokol and Petrit unraveled most of the memory traps Ramazan had activated under Shaban's watchful eyes. Oak got to practice his craft on a few traps the brothers had missed and he listened to Shaban's feedback with care.

"No, no. Not like that. Separate the threads firmly. You can't leave any give to them if you want the best result."

For all of his faults, Oak was not a prideful man. When someone who knew what they were doing opened their mouth, his ears pricked up. He had been that way from a wee lad and saw no reason to change his ways.

Carefully unraveling the traps was good practice and the most sensible solution, even though Oak had slain the Carcani's only remaining spook. Heh. Two for two. Smashing the traps apart would have caused a huge racket and sent ripples traveling across the Waking Dream.

Here be monsters. No noise, no trouble. We might be in the shallows, but there is no reason to draw attention to ourselves.

In the waters of the Unreal Sea, you were always an unwanted guest. A mouse scurrying inside the walls. Forgetting that meant you might run into the house-cat by accident. Oak would never forget. He had gotten too close to a leviathan twice in Ma'aseh Merkavah and he had no intentions to repeat those incidents.

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I like my consciousness as it is. Intact.

Once Sokol unraveled the last trap and Shaban did a quick sweep of the area, it was time to return to the real world. There wasn't anything further they could do from the Waking Dream. All the dwellings on the property had powerful wards tied to anchors inside those same dwellings, out of their reach.

Now that the Carcanis faced five spooks with none of their own to call on, there was no chance anyone would willingly leave the safety of the wards. Doing so while Ramazan still lived would have been extremely risky. Doing it after his death was suicidal, at best.

Oak called back his Scout and ended his dive.

***

It took about ten heartbeats for the Carcanis to prove Oak wrong. He and Zef watched, flabbergasted, as a woman jumped from the second-story window of the Carcani manor, skirts billowing in the wind, and crashed into the ground. She ate dirt hard and rolled into a stop a few feet past her landing point.

Moaning in pain, the Carcani woman struggled upright and called out towards the window. The light shining from the room revealed a split lip and a mouth twisted with worry. A young boy, at most ten years of age, poked his head out and stared at the ground, a fearful look on his round face.

The woman lifted her hands, and the boy jumped from the warm glow of lamplight into darkness.

In a feat of athleticism that Oak would never have guessed the small woman was capable of, she caught the boy from the air and took off running towards the two piers extending to the lake from the shore. A single row-boat remained docked there, bouncing on the waves.

Finally. Someone with brains.

Thwish. Thunk.

A crossbow bolt shot out of the window the woman and her child had just jumped out of. It whizzed past the woman's shoulder and stuck into the dirt ahead of her, causing her to stumble and scream in fright. A male voice cursed loudly.

A bald man with a long mustache poked his head out of the window and screamed in rage, shaking his fist at the escaping woman and her child. Oak cheered her on in his thoughts. He doubted the woman or her son had anything to do with the attack on the nursery.

"Well, I thought I had seen everything, but that is a new low." Zef shook his head in contempt. "If we could, I would set every single building on fire. Smoke these rats out. Sadly, brick doesn't burn so good."

"Would've been convenient. But, nothing worth doing is ever easy, is it?" Oak asked.

Zef just snorted.

"Look at her go." Behar scratched his ear and wiped his finger on his brigandine. The man had joined them shortly after Oak had ended his dive.

A wild sprint and a hop later, the woman and her child reached the row-boat. She all but slammed her son down on the bench and yanked the oars into position. The only thing left standing between her and open water was the rope tying the boat to the pier.

In all of his twenty-seven years, Oak had never seen anyone untie a knot so quickly.

With speed possessed only by those who felt the cold of the grave at their backs, the woman rowed away from the shore. The watchful eyes of the entire warband followed her escape. Oak glanced at Halit, but the spellsinger made no attempt to stop the boat.

Empathy was a strange beast. There was a good chance the warriors would have killed her without a second thought if they ran into her during the coming assault, but now no one seemed unhappy she had escaped from their clutches. A few men even shouted words of encouragement.

We all have mothers. Sometimes it is as simple as that.

Another crossbow bolt whizzed out of the Carcani manor's second-story window. The bolt splashed into the lake, ten feet to the right of the row-boat and vanished under the waves. Oar moving like windmills, the woman rowed, shouting curses of her own at the man shooting bolts at her and her child.

"Whoever that is, he ain't too good with a bow," Behar said. "But, he is persistent."

"Good at wasting bolts, you mean," Zef grumbled. "He is shooting from a lighted room into darkness. The idiot can't see shit."

Geezer chuckled and wagged his tail. Am I hearing things? Did Geezer just chuckle? Oak forced himself not to look at the hellhound lying at his feet. Something very strange was going on with his dog, but luckily, it looked like no one else had noticed the uncharacteristic sound Geezer had just made.

First, I hear a man's scream when he howls and now this. What in the Hells is happening? Is he turning into a hyena?

Oak pulled out his giant meat cleaver. Holding a blade always calmed his nerves. "Dear brothers in arms, do not be so hasty in your judgement. We all have our negatives and positives." He flipped the weapon in the air and caught it by the handle. "At least our bowman has memorable qualities."

"He sure does," Zef replied. The veteran glanced at Halit. The Ensi walked past the frontline of their warband, right towards the gates of the compound. "Look. The big man wants to have a word with Endrit before we get started."

Halit stopped at the boundary of the property and raised his voice. "Endrit of clan Carcani! We must speak to one another!"

A shutter opened on the third floor of the manor and a clean shaven old man with remnants of wispy hair clinging to the top of his head came to the window. The Carcani patriarch had thick, strong eyebrows, a long nose, and a narrow face that excelled at scowling. "I hear you, Halit Dushaj. Bloody feckless coward that you are. You have brought death to my doorstep. We have nothing to say to each other."

"You can drop the act, Endrit. Yan got caught and confessed. We know everything." Halit lifted a hand and beckoned the Carcani patriarch. "The deaths of two infants rest on your conscience. Come down and face your fate like a man."

"Curse you and your lies, Halit! If you want me, come and get me!" Endrit screamed, spittle flying from his lips. The old man shouldered a crossbow and sent a bolt flying at Halit's face, cackling with vicious glee.

His aim was true.

The bolt stopped five feet from Halit's forehead and hung there in the air as if held up by an invisible hand. The Ensi waved and flung the bolt into the bushes. Endrit's face fell.

"Then you leave me with no choice in the matter!" Halit spread his hands wide and his voice boomed like a great horn, calling men to arms.

"Ferhati! Are your throats parched for vengeance?"

"AY!"

"Kashari! Do your hearts desire retribution?"

"AY!"

"Good. Warriors of Kesh. Bring me that old fucker's head!"

A roar of well over two hundred men answered the Ensi's call, and battle commenced.

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