Lethal Red Riding Hood (Dark Goddess Chronicles Book 1)

by Leonard Wilson

  Evert had also brought word of what had been happening up at the cathedral site, so they’d left their younger girls to coordinate relief efforts from the castle while she set out for the Wolf’s Tooth and Darby ventured into the Crimson Forest to bring home Minda.

  As always, discerning the full truth of what happened remained a guessing game. She’d grown up believing—like most anyone, probably—that being put in charge of something endowed one with a magical insight of the workings and goings on within one’s jurisdiction. For her, at least, it hadn’t worked out that way. Someone had neglected to inform Seriena when Violet had been anointed lady protector of the shire, because she’d been left bluffing her way through from the very first moment.

  Each day dawned as a brand-new dice game, and each new decision felt as if it had to be made more on gut instinct than wise counsel. Looking down upon the countless acres of scorched earth spread out below her, Violet couldn’t help but feel that gut instinct was failing her. Had she brought this mess upon them by trusting in a confidence woman?

  But, no. That way lay madness. Reliable witnesses had placed Sir Riordan at the site of the first fire when Keely had been with Ulric, and then placed him again at the farm where the inferno began. That the man was an arsonist was a variable they’d had no way to foresee. She would have to cling to the comfort that Seriena had not forsaken them entirely, and had sent rains to douse the inferno before it could take any more from them than it had. Perhaps she’d known this was what they’d needed, to let it go this far and snap them out of their complacency.

  Down on the dirty brown line wandering between two patches of ash, she could make out a procession of red and black that could only be the bulk of the Inquisition’s force returning to the cathedral site. Best not to dally, then. The longer this went according to their plan instead of hers, the harder it would be to get it all sorted. Violet turned her horse back to face up the winding road, and motioned for the half-dozen men she’d brought with her to move out.

  A knight of the Inquisition stood to meet them as they crested the final rise to the construction site, flanked by his squire and a couple of Violet’s own men who seemed to have been conscripted by the Inquisition. She could feel her teeth grind at the realization, but she attempted to school her expression.

  “Countess Haywood,” the knight greeted her—not antagonistically, but far from deferentially—as she slid off her horse. “I’m going to have to…” He trailed off, suddenly aware she had a wheel lock pistol leveled between his eyes from five feet away.

  “Yes,” Violet said evenly. “You will. This is the second time you people have tried to wage an undeclared war on me and mine. To my eternal shame, I let you get away with it once.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Bread Crumb

  Nolan held up a hand in warning, and the small expedition following him shuffled to a halt. He turned his head this way and that, listening intently and peering into the damp, arboreal gloom.

  Doryne now led the ponies that she and Minda had ridden into the forest—one carrying the bound, blindfolded, and gagged Shoshona, the other burdened with the dead inquisitrix. The crypt might have been the perfect place to leave the latter to her final rest, but Minda and her gun had been solidly linked to that island by witnesses from the Inquisition, so they dared not risk it.

  Though nothing could be seen moving through the dark forest, at last as Nolan listened, he could make out a sound in the far distance that might have been someone laughing hysterically. It was a chilling sort of laugh, generally reserved for madmen, or at least for men flirting with the prospect of madness. The best thing that could be said for the sound was that—if the echoes in the hills could be trusted—it lay somewhere behind them, and it didn’t seem to be drawing any closer.

  Taking the sound as a reminder that they weren’t alone in the forest, Nolan used the pause in their progress to unsling his arquebus and load it, now that the downpour had passed. Then he nodded and they moved on again to the sounds of leaves rustling underfoot and raindrops still pattering off the trees.

  Perhaps Nolan should have let Doryne take point. He was no great woodsman, and she’d certainly passed more hours in the forest than he had. Something about not taking point himself didn’t feel right, though. No matter how he’d wound up nominally in charge of this lot, he was no more a leader than he was a woodsman. What he was was a guardsman, and in his experience, standing behind one’s charges was not generally the most effective way to get between them and danger.

  At least he actually did know the way to Caer Cacamwri, even without a well-worn trail. The trees had been marked after the disaster of the last visit from the Inquisition. He’d been out to the old hill fort a few times since then.

  Still, he had no memory of the macabre sight that greeted them at the top of a rocky ascent. Half a dozen human skulls hung there with vines laced through the eye sockets, swaying in the breeze like an undertaker’s wind chimes. When Nolan first saw them, he recoiled with such a start that he nearly slid back down the ascent onto the giantess coming up behind him, but Evadne caught him with a steadying hand.

  “More scarecrows?” Evadne sighed, wrinkling her nose.

  “I wouldn’t think it’s crows they’re meant to scare,” Baldassare said. “The forest folk made it clear we’re not welcome here.”

  Nolan snorted in a manner that he hoped conveyed disdain as he ducked around the skulls and forged on. From somewhere not quite so distant, the insane laughter echoed through the forest again.

  They’d all managed to lose their horses one way or another. Two or three of the animals had broken their legs in the rugged terrain. At least a couple had been torn apart by wolves. The balance had simply run off. With luck, most of that last group would have returned the way they’d come, and could be rounded up once this business in the forest had been handled, but for now, Maritine and her companions forged on afoot toward where she had to have faith she would find the one-eyed wolf.

  In all, she’d managed to regroup with eight of her companions—five knights and three priestesses—who’d been fit to carry on into the forest. Despite the rain and the mud and the blood and the cold and all their tragic losses, not one of the eight had intimated for a moment that they should turn back.

  Any among them who might have possessed wavering faith had already been weeded out by the attack of the savages, now either dead or fled when their trust in Seriena faltered, so Maritine’s resolute nine trudged ever deeper into the dark heart of the forest with grim determination.

  We nine, she mused. Yes. It was right. Nine was an auspicious, holy number. Yet again, Seriena had sent a sign that she was on the right path—a path to glorious victory in her name, and to…well, a little girl?

  Draped casually over a tree that had fallen across the path, the freckled little redhead lay on her stomach, using a stick to prod at the pages of a book that lay on an oilskin on the ground in front of her, next to a wicker basket. A striking red cloak hung across the girl’s shoulders.

  “Oh,” she said, glancing up to Maritine and her companions. “Hi. I thought you should see this.”

  “See…what, girl?” Maritine asked suspiciously. She laid a hand on the hilt of her favorite short sword as she advanced, bells of alarm ringing in her head. Adopting a guise of innocence was, after all, a favorite tactic among witches.

  “The book you wanted,” the girl said, casually discarding the stick and swinging around to bring herself up on the log in a sitting position.

  “That,” Maritine asked with a cocked eyebrow, “is the Grimm Truth?”

  “Sure,” the girl answered. “I guess that’s what you call it. I call it ‘Fiendish Plague Upon Creation Number Five Hundred and Seventy-Three’, but I know that’s a bit…wordy.”

  Maritine edged forward and crouched, her eyes flicking back and forth between the girl and the book as if trying to decide which one was a powder keg about to go off, but the book just lay there and the girl’s
posture remained relaxed and unconcerned. Tentatively, Maritine reached out and picked the book up off the ground. Nothing went boom.

  Marginally reassured, she took a step back and held the thing up for examination. She closed the book, studying the cover and the spine. “Hidden Truths and Perilous Predictions,” it read, “from the pen of Miraculata Antonia Grimm.” Maritine had pictured something a little more grand or a little more ominous—perhaps both—but the book did appear quite aged. She glanced back at the girl, who sat idly kicking her feet.

  “You don’t get to keep it,” the girl said. “I just want you to know I have it, so you can stop looking for it.”

  Maritine peered around her into the dark forest for any sign that the confident little witch had accomplices lurking in the trees. In her mind’s eye, a scenario quickly played out of herself simply taking the book, the girl transforming into a hideous wolf thing, and a horde of tattooed savages leaping from the trees.

  In the desperate battle that ensued, she emerged victorious by Seriena’s grace, but many of her companions fell due to her miscalculation of overconfidence. In the end, there would be only three of them. Then, perhaps, only she herself would finally stagger out of the forest, clutching the book, if any more dangers lurked to waylay them as they went.

  She shook her head to clear the vision, glancing over her shoulders, left and right, studying the faces of her companions and putting names to them in order to ground herself, placing each in that narrative in place of the nebulous, faceless warriors who had died at her side on that first run-through. Maritine sighed, then squared her shoulder and steeled herself. Yes, she decided. This would work.

  She opened the book and began, leafing through it, carefully calculating how she would slam the book into the monster to buy herself enough time to draw her blessed blade. “I’m sorry,” she said at last, “but the book’s leaving with us, and so are you, on suspicion of…” Her voice trailed off. “What game are you playing, girl?”

  “What game am I playing?” the girl said with a scowl. “I told you the rules. You’re the one trying to…”

  Maritine discarded the book contemptuously in the mud. “This is nothing but the Exemplar Serinitas bound up in an old cover.” She drew her blade, pointing it accusingly at the girl. “What did you do with the original pages?”

  “The ex-whosa which?” The girl’s scowl deepened.

  “Oh, definitely a ‘witch’,” Maritine growled, the men and women flanking her taking the cue to draw their own blades, “who can’t even utter the name of a holy book.”

  The girl rolled her eyes, but didn’t stir from where she sat. “This is what I get for trying to play nice. I really, truly, honestly was going to let one of you leave the forest. But you’re saying this isn’t the book all the fuss is about?”

  “Of course not,” Maritine spat, stepping up to place her blade against the girl’s throat. “I won’t ask again. Where are the pages?”

  The girl sighed, eyes darkening, though if she gave the blade at her throat any thought, it didn’t show. “And here I thought they were being so sweet. Not that it would have made much difference in the end.” Finally, the girl seemed to notice the sword as a thin trickle of crimson blood ran down her neck. “Right,” she said, casting her eyes in the direction of the wicker basket that still lay on the ground. “In there.”

  “The pages?” Maritine asked.

  “No,” the girl replied in a tone of unconcerned sarcasm. “It’s goodies for my sick granny.”

  “You think this is a joke, girl?” Maritine snapped, letting the blade slide lightly across the girl’s throat, not deepening the wound, but allowing the blood to flow more freely.

  The girl blinked. “You don’t?”

  “Open it,” Maritine said, flicking the sword in the direction of the basket. “Slowly.”

  Not bothering about the blood trickling down her neck, the girl shrugged, and slid down off the fallen tree with the unhurried, deliberate sort of movements one might employ to avoid spooking a skittish animal.

  “Though when I say my granny’s sick,” she said, unlatching the basket and lifting the lid, “I don’t mean she’s bed-ridden.” The girl reached into the dark interior of the basket with one hand, and slowly withdrew a sun-bleached human skull. “Do you like him?” she asked, holding the skull up proudly for inspection. “I call this one Fenton.” She turned the skull slightly so that she could study it herself. “He just looks like a Fenton, don’t you think? I brought Bess and Irving, too. Would you like to meet them?”

  “Tie the little witch up,” Maritine snapped. “We’re taking her with…” They were the last words she ever spoke.

  Two priestesses and two knights—one of them a dwarf of all things—was all the manpower that the Inquisition had left behind at the cathedral site. Once Violet had reasserted her authority over everyone else on the Wolf’s Tooth, it completely broke their spell, and the outsiders found themselves surrounded by three times their number in armed men, backed by a barely restrained mob. The force that had blinded the locals to their present power over the inquisitors in their midst now worked to blind them to the perils of retribution from the rest of the Inquisition.

  When Violet had publicly shoved a gun in the face of a knight of the Inquisition, she’d been leaping from a cliff and trusting that the rest of Haywoodshire would leap with her. Now all that remained was the long, blind drop, and the best she could hope would be to find turbulent waters of civil unrest waiting to receive them, instead of the unyielding stone of the known world united against their one small county.

  Had the Inquisition really been singling them out all these years, or had they sown the seeds of desperate resentment far and wide throughout the kingdoms? Go’ss, she hoped it was the latter. First, though, she had to make sure they lived long enough to find out.

  She’d talked this all out with Darby. The earl had been no less incensed than she that the Inquisition had begun to scale up its bullying once again, and they’d agreed that this time they would not wait around for it to get lethal. But she was the family politician, while he was the family soldier.

  That’s why she’d set out for the cathedral site with the handful of men they’d judged would be enough to overpower the token guard the Inquisition had left behind on the Wolf’s Tooth, but not so large a force as to be instantly spotted as aggressive, while he took the larger force into the forest after their daughter and the bulk of the Inquisition’s local manpower.

  They had not counted on the Inquisition returning from the forest so quickly. From the look of things they might have made it out before he ever went in. No plan survives contact with the enemy. What she absolutely could not afford to do, though, was allow them to regain the cathedral site.

  Quite aside from the location’s strategic value as the most defensible point in the county, from there they would be able to hold the construction itself hostage, and make up any story they liked when Pontifine Augusta returned to find the Haywood family laying siege to whatever remained of her cathedral.

  This was going to be touch-and-go now, regardless of how she played it. Even adding together the guards she’d brought just now with the guards they’d left at the site before, the Inquisition would have them badly outnumbered and would certainly have them out-trained. She’d never pull it off without an ambush, and there’d be one chance to hit the Inquisition so fast and mercilessly that they wouldn’t have a chance to retaliate.

  Part of her quailed at the thought, but the main advantage of facing a group with zero tolerance was that you quickly found yourself in a position where nothing you did could make things go harder for you.

  “Things are about to get really ugly,” she said, addressing the gathered collection of guards, workers, and refugees. “Pretty much every man and woman of you has some memory of the treatment we can expect from the Inquisition, and has been waiting ever since they got here for the other shoe to drop. Well, we’re done waiting. This time, no one’s g
oing to pretend that their open threats and a few broken bones will be the end of it.

  “We all knew someone that the Inquisition put to death last time. Most of us loved someone the Inquisition put to death last time. Could you truly gaze into the Eyes of Seriena right now and convince yourself it won’t be you they’re coming for now? Can you look around you and convince yourself that everyone important to you will still be there to see next week if the Inquisition has its way? Can you look out there,” she asked, thrusting an accusing hand out at the blackened landscape, “and convince yourself that the Inquisition didn’t do that to us?”

  That last the crowd greeted with an angry chorus of dissent. Facts didn’t matter to any man, woman, or child within earshot. The moment any one of them had paused to wonder how the fire had started, his thoughts had rushed to the same inevitable conclusion as swiftly and surely as water running downhill.

  “The rest of the inquisitors are on their way back as I speak. They’ll be here before the bell tolls the next hour. But they still think we’re sheep. They think we don’t understand that they’ve declared war on us. They think we’re going to just roll over and let them keep kicking us until we die. But we will not. Never again!”

  Violet anchored herself against the giddy wave of feedback as her people allowed her to transform their fears into anger and determination. It came in the shouts and cries of a people suddenly drunk on the hope they needed desperately and hadn’t dared allow themselves to reach for before this moment. They were ready to do crazy, stupid things. She needed them ready to do crazy, stupid things.

  But she would have to remain the grown-up in the room and not get swept away in the tide of emotion. This would all go for naught if they didn’t make the most of the next half hour, preparing for the arrival of the Inquisition.

  Slowly, the cheers subsided until only the slow, measured clapping of a single pair of hands remained, drawing her eyes upward to a slender, dark-haired priestess robed in blood-red who was nonchalantly ascending a pile of stone blocks with easy grace. “Well said, child,” the woman said with a small smile. “Not that I ever have doubts, personally, but if I did have any, they would most certainly have been laid to rest after that.”