On the downside, important places also tended to serve as magnets for important people, who might then be on-hand to witness her glorious entrance in the guise of a drowned mongrel, but there would be no helping that now. Perhaps if she made the telling of her narrow escape from the fire harrowing enough, she would be forgiven.
Perhaps she should add in a bit about being chased by bandits, or a crazed would-be lover, or even a demon menacing her from out of the flames. Or a demon-possessed bandit king whose unspeakable advances she’d spurned? Might be a bit over-the-top, but tempting. She’d have to think on it.
In the mean time, the steps themselves provided their own concerns, though nothing so ominous as the threat of being seen looking like this. First, there were a lot of them. This climb would be no fun, even if it would be somewhat easier and considerably more dignified than returning the way she’d come. Second, there were the stone skulls.
More scarecrows, Sabina decided, but that didn’t stop them feeling macabre, and in some ways more menacing than actual bone. Sabina knew a bit about art, and there was nothing abstract about these representations. These had all been carved by artists who knew intimately well what a human skull looked like, and who had cared enough to painstakingly work that likeness into solid stone. That was miles different from someone deciding to do a quick bit of grave robbing and leave a trophy behind in the middle of a field. This had taken genuine dedication—a devotion to the subject matter.
Sabina took several rests along the climb, sitting on a step and trying not to think too much about the skulls. At least her exertions had started to warm her a bit. Then she came within sight of the top of the stairs, and her heart sank as her nightmares became flesh.
“You there,” the man above her called, “who are you?” He leveled a crossbow at her, but that somehow seemed less important than the livery he was wearing. It meant he would be attached to someone’s court, and stories of how she’d arrived would start circling through it. Perhaps if she gave a false name? She should have taken time to think of one.
“There’s about twenty, best I can tell,” Minda said quietly as Ulric, Nolan, and Keely arrived to settle into the cover of rock and brush overlooking the bridge from the island. “Maybe half knights, half blackhoods.”
Nolan squinted at the line of riders moving along the trail through the trees on the far shore. “There’s a local leading them. Isn’t that Evert Fisher?”
“Yeah.” Minda nodded. “He was out here yesterday, too, leading some strangers around. Said they were nobles looking for a lost sister, but between this and, well…they must have been Inquisition, too. What do they want out here?”
“Evert wouldn’t throw in with the Inquisition,” Nolan scowled. “Not after…”
“Willingly,” Ulric cut him off. “Not willingly. The Fishers are a decent family, but that definitely means he’s a man with something to lose. I’m sure he’s there as the lesser of evils. If this turns into a battle, don’t waste a shot on him.”
“If this turns into a battle, we die,” Nolan said.
“True,” Ulric answered dispassionately. Without Doryne—who they’d left with Elissa and the prisoner back at the mausoleum—they could muster a total of three marksmen with as many rifles and one crossbow between them, facing an organized and disciplined force of mounted zealots. Given the amount of time it took to reload a musket, even with an advantage of surprise and then trying to bottle the enemy up at the bridge, he couldn’t imagine a scenario where they wouldn’t wind up overrun by a dozen bloodthirsty killers who were all better-armed and better-trained than any of them for close-quarters fighting. Even adding Doryne’s crossbow into the equation wouldn’t make much impact on the cold, hard math.
“Then we don’t let this turn into a battle,” Keely said.
“How much farther?” Maritine demanded impatiently.
“About two hours, Sister,” Evert answered, cool but respectful.
Maritine peered up at the open sky above the lake to their right. “I’d say we’ve got about three hours until the sun’s directly overhead,” she said, though in truth she couldn’t see the sun at all. “If I haven’t seen the witch by then, we’ll break both your ankles and leave you where we are.”
“I dunno about no witch, Sister,” Evert said plaintively. “You asked for the one-eyed wolf, and that’s where I’m taking you.”
“Then you’d best be praying to Seriena you’re taking us to the right wolf, hadn’t you?” Maritine said. “It’s down to where every hour wasted could be a life wasted. One of those lives might as well be yours.”
It had galled Maritine more than she could say to stop for a few hours of shelter at the castle while the storm and the fire fought outside. At least there’d been a chapel of sorts to pray at for the goddess to smooth their passage, and it had done an effective job of sheltering them from the witch until the storm broke.
Starting from the castle after the rains, too, had indeed been much better than if they’d been trapped atop the peak the whole time. That hadn’t made it easier to sleep while they waited, nor lessened the urgent weight of her divine mission. Seriena had anointed her personally to see this business through, and Maritine would not be able to rest until she had.
Without warning, a shot rang out from across the lake they’d been riding beside. The horses started, and all heads instinctively turned to try to pinpoint the attack, but no second shot followed, and no one showed signs of having been injured. Evert seemed largely unconcerned as well, and Maritine quickly regained her composure.
“Hunter,” she announced authoritatively, and beckoned the line of riders to move forward again.
Ahead and to the right, an aging bridge extended out across the lake to an island, and Maritine couldn’t help keeping half an eye out that direction in search of the owner of the gun. She was still about fifty yards from it when that half an eye caught sight of a flurry of movement among the trees. Maritine reined up her horse for a better look, and the movement resolved itself to glimpses of someone hurrying down the slope in the direction of the bridge. In a few more seconds, it came clear as a woman clutching a hunting rifle in one hand. Maritine instantly began sizing the woman up as a potential threat.
By tradition, the Inquisition seldom resorted to any sort of long-range weaponry. Demons and witches lacked the usual arrangement of internal organs—or at least lacked a reliance on them—which left them notoriously resistant to arrows and gunpowder, and mortals seldom raised arms against the Inquisition in any numbers.
So the Inquisition specialized at fighting in close quarters, and supplemented their strength with archers and musketeers conscripted from among the faithful when necessary. If by some insanity this woman did take a shot at them, she’d have no prayer of reloading before they rode her down. Still, a gun was a gun, and it would only be prudent to not sit waiting patiently right in front of the thing for it to go off, so Maritine watched the woman approach with alert caution.
For now, the woman showed no sign of noticing them, her attention entirely focused on the ground in front of her as she descended the hill at full speed. Then as the ground leveled and she neared the bridge, she paused, raised her rifle, and took careful aim—not toward them, but directly across the bridge.
Then something small and white came darting out from the end of the bridge. The cat started to take a left turn, saw them, skidded into a complete one-eighty as its back legs scrabbled for purchase in the dirt, then took off back past the bridge as quickly as it could run. The crack of the hunting rifle sounded, and a cloud of dust flew up directly behind the departing cat.
“Witch!” Maritine screamed at the top of her lungs. She held back only long enough to bark orders to the riders directly behind her. “You two find out what happened!” She pointed to where Minda stood at the far side of the bridge, then spurred her horse on, trusting that the rest of her entourage would follow.
Evert was forced to dive off the path simply to avoid getting tram
pled. By the time he pulled himself to his feet, limping a little from having struck his knee on a tree root, all that remained of the procession he’d come with were the knight and the inquisitrix that Maritine had singled out.
“What happened here?” the remaining inquisitrix demanded, heading across the bridge.
“Are you all right, Lady Minda?” Evert called.
Minda nodded darkly. “Doryne’s a squirrel, but I’m all right. I thought I was next, but the witch suddenly turned and ran. She must have seen you lot coming.”
“You’re the Earl’s daughter?” the inquisitrix asked, and Minda nodded again. “You’d best get out of these woods. You can burn a witch, you can behead a witch, but the musket ball would have been wasted even if you’d hit her.”
“I need to find my friend the squirrel first,” Minda said grimly. “I’ll be safe here with you on the tail of the witch, won’t I?”
“Probably,” the inquisitrix conceded. “It’s on you, though. She’s a clever one. Come on,” she beckoned to the knight and to Evert.
“Can you spare the huntsman, Sister?” Minda asked. “I could really use someone to watch the bridge and make sure my squirrel doesn’t try to leave the island.”
The knight and the inquisitrix exchanged glances, reaching a silent accord that it would be a blessing to be rid of the baggage so they could properly join the chase. “Very well.” The inquisitrix nodded. “But see he stays here with you, milady, until we return. He may still be needed if the witch evades us again.”
“So the witch turned Doryne into a squirrel?” Evert asked Minda incredulously as they stood alone on the bridge, watching the riders thunder away.
“Yes,” Minda said calmly, never taking her eyes off the riders. “And I suspect she’s about to turn you into a fish.”
“What?!” Evert asked, incredulity turning to alarm.
“What did they threaten you with?” Minda asked, ignoring the question.
“Broken bones.” Evert sighed. “They were ready to work their way through everyone sheltering on the Tooth last night, until someone told them where to find the one-eyed wolf.”
“The one-eyed wolf?” Minda cocked an eyebrow.
Evert shrugged. “Any one-eyed wolf. They don’t seem to know, either. But there’s an old rock back in the forest I think kinda looks like that if you squint at it right.”
“Grandpa always said it was a fox.” Minda nodded.
“Yeah.” Evert shrugged again. “I had to do something. My Elly was on the short list to be questioned.”
Minda winced and clapped a reassuring hand on the man’s shoulder. “You did good. Now in about a twenty-count, the trail should take our friends off into the trees. Then the witch will appear out of nowhere and turn you into a fish.”
“So you said,” Evert agreed with concern.
“As soon as that happens, run for all your worth to the castle, and tell my mother everything that’s happened, and that I said to hide you away until this blows over. Oh, except don’t tell her that bit about the squirrel. Doryne’s fine.”
Evert opened his mouth to start another question, but at that moment the last two riders disappeared into the forest, and Minda gave him a meaningful little shove. “Run!”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Witch Hunt
Escape would have been easy if it had been an option at all. No human on foot can keep up with a cat in full flight, and no horse can squeeze into all the little highways and hiding places open to a cat in the deep forest, but Keely had to leave her pursuers hope that she could be caught, and that became a very risky business. Multiple times she had to feign fatigue or confusion to let them close the gap, and then trust that real fatigue or confusion wouldn’t catch up with her once they did get close.
The horses and their riders were all creatures of the city or the open farmland, but this rocky forest wasn’t exactly Keely’s home turf, either. She was built to take advantage of it, but that didn’t give her an intimate knowledge of the terrain or its idiosyncrasies.
When the heat was on, she would cut across a loop in the trail, bounding over rocky outcroppings and tangled tree roots, but with so many riders able to spread out around her, one wrong turn could leave her pinned up against the shores of the lake. Swimming wouldn’t be a problem in and of itself, but swimming fast enough to get out of range of any rocks, knives, or similar unpleasantness was not going to happen.
Convincing Ulric to let her take this chance hadn’t been the easiest con she’d ever run. He’d tried to stare her down when she said she’d have no problem at all keeping ahead of the horses, but in the end, four things had forced him to accept her faked sincerity. Two of those things were the dead inquisitrix secreted in a stone sarcophagus in the mausoleum and the live inquisitrix tied up outside that stone sarcophagus. Anyone discovered on that island with the women would be instantly assumed responsible, with all the consequences that entailed.
The remaining two things that forced Ulric to throw the staring contest had been Minda and Elissa. He could no more allow either of them to come to harm than he could Keely, and this plan got them both out of harm’s way.
A throwing axe suddenly buried itself in a tree not three inches in front of Keely’s nose. It took all of her feline agility just to roll aside and slam into the haft instead of the edge of the blade left jutting out of the trunk. She rebounded, rolled, and scrambled away, losing some time, but remaining relatively unharmed. This, she decided with a sideways glance at the riders racing around the bend she was cutting across, was the time to stop playing coy and get out of the proverbial kitchen, because any more heat was certain to result in roast kitty cat.
Driven by a fear that she might truly have cut it too close to the edge this time, Keely called up the reserves she’d been saving and turned her run into a headlong sprint. She arrived back at the trail just ahead of the riders trying to cut her off, but the woman in the lead had seen it coming and was poised to swing off of the saddle in that moment.
Without hesitation, Sister Maritine threw herself at the ground, knowing full well she was in for some serious hurt. It very nearly paid off in full, less than a heartbeat away from landing on Keely with a force that would have crushed the little cat. As it was, she managed to grab Keely by the tail and hold on tight despite the beating the ground was giving her. Keely screeched in pain as they tumbled together, bouncing off of rocks and slamming into a tree.
A hand closed about her throat, attempting to lift her up and away, where she’d have nothing to claw at but the woman’s heavy leather glove, but Keely managed to snag Maritine’s collar with the claws of one forepaw and hung on for life while she scratched straight at the woman’s eyes with the claws of the other.
Maritine released Keely’s tail to protect her face, but Keely had been counting on that. The move freed up her hind claws to rake at Maritine’s throat. The sharp sting of the gouges on Maritine’s face and neck finally did what the concussive force of the ground couldn’t, and she released her grip just enough for Keely to wriggle free and kick away.
Even before Keely landed, a flash of silver at the corner of her eye prompted her to twist in midair. The spear still managed to graze her ribs—drawing blood and jolt of pain—before burying itself in the ground. She landed ungracefully, willed the pain and all questions of how bad the wound might be to the back of her mind, and sprang away in the direction she’d been headed originally.
Maritine was down—unhorsed, bruised, and wiping blood from her eyes—but the knight who’d tried to skewer Keely had released the spear without breaking his mount’s stride. Already they were racing around the next bend, trying to cut her off again. More riders came hot behind him, and far too many trailed along after for her to double back.
What she could do, though, now that she’d crossed the path, was veer left, away from the lake. As she did, the priestess right behind foolishly spurred her horse up the treacherous, rocky ground after Keely, and the animal went down sc
reaming for it.
“Don’t lose her!” Maritine screamed in a tone that, to Keely, almost made Shoshona’s fanatic ravings sound sane by comparison.
Keely bounded nimbly over the rocks and roots, angling her path generally upward away from the lake. Behind her, riders had begun to dismount, crashing through the fallen leaves, fanning out in an attempt to surround her. Farther out along the trail, she could hear horses galloping in either direction, pushing to get their riders further out to close the gap.
One way or another, this was all going to be decided in a matter of seconds. Keely’s feline body was a sprinter, and now that she’d pulled out all the stops, it would overload quickly. Her only chance was to evade the jaws of the trap, then disappear into the forest before that happened. She longed to dash up a tree and out of reach, but dared not with the pursuit so close. Leaping from tree-to-tree was the domain of squirrels, not felines, and even with these grand old trees it would be all too easy to find herself cornered in one.
“Don’t lose her!” Maritine screamed again. The voice of the woman herself was falling behind, and Keely dared to hope that the inquisitrix had seriously injured herself in the leap from horseback.
Keely crested a rise and looked in dismay down to her right, to where the trail had curled along the contour of the hill back toward her. Three riders had already come into sight that way. If the curve cut back too close to the original trail, they’d be closing in from the other side at any…
Too late, Keely began to swing her gaze back to the left, and the blind-side impact sent her spinning head-over-hind-paws through the air. She landed amid leaves, slick from the night’s rain, and skidded into a narrow gully where she lay dazed, staring up at the forest canopy.
“There!” one of her pursuers shouted from nearby as multiple sets of feet crashed through the fallen leaves. “The witch!”
Lethal Red Riding Hood (Dark Goddess Chronicles Book 1) Page 29