Elissa shrieked as Keely suddenly leapt as if from out of nowhere, vaulting into the saddle behind Elissa, her silvery hair and tattered red scarecrow’s cloak billowing behind her. No sooner had Keely landed than the horse veered sharply off its path. Picking up speed, it disappeared from view to the side of the gate, carrying the fake witch and the still-shrieking ingenue with it.
Behind them, Ulric tucked the voluminous traveling cloak that had been hiding Keely’s costume under his arm, and he turned to disappear into the crowd before Shoshona could fight her way through the gate. Shoshona shouted orders for someone to bring her her horse, shouted orders for her subordinates to rally to her on the street in front of the castle, and stood seething at the unavoidable delay as she watched her quarry riding away.
“You!” Shoshona stabbed a finger at an inquisitrix. “Ride to the Wolf’s Tooth and let the High Inquisitrix know that the witch has her sacrifice and we’re giving chase down the road toward Axminster. The rest of you,” she added as she swung up into the saddle, “we’re giving chase.”
“That old stone circle on the hill south of Axminster!” Nolan shouted. “She’s headed for the stone circle!”
“There’s a stone circle near Axminster?” Kavan asked.
Nolan threw up his hands with a “search me” expression on his face as he quietly withdrew around the corner of the stable.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Taking a Stand
As it approached the edge of town, the horse bearing Keely and Elissa cut between buildings, and Keely hopped off almost before Elissa had reined it to a stop in front of Baldassare and the horse he was leading. While Elissa dismounted, Keely switched out cloaks with Baldassare, trading him the tattered red one for his serviceable traveling cloak.
Baldassare tossed Elissa a similarly serviceable cloak to slip into, then unslung the hastily assembled straw dummy in another of Sabina’s pink dresses from the horse he’d brought. He draped the dummy across the saddle of the other horse, then mounted behind it. The dummy wouldn’t pass for a woman for any more than an eye-blink of inspection, but then neither would Baldassare.
Hopefully the horse would be going fast enough that if he kept low in the saddle, all that anyone would really see would be the billowing red cape and the billowing pink skirts, and they’d fill in the details appropriately if the Inquisition stopped to question them.
Elissa was no slouch as an equestrienne but had been willing not to argue when Baldassare assured them he was the best rider they had available. Keely had shut down any arguments before they got started, anyway. Too much of the con had already rested on Elissa’s shoulders, and too much pressure in playing her role, without also knowing she’d have to transition right into this sort of chase.
Baldassare gave a gallant salute. “I’ll meet you behind the inn once I’m clear to double back,” he told Elissa. Then he spurred the horse away, leaving Keely and Elissa to go the other direction around the buildings leading the horse he’d brought for Elissa.
Keely tied back her hair to make sure it remained hidden under the hood, and they arrived back onto the street, merging with the stream of refugees just in time to see the first riders of the Inquisition go thundering past.
“He’ll be all right, won’t he?” Elissa asked, watching them go.
“At this point,” Keely said, “I give him much better odds than I give me. Go see if you can find Hero, Conrad, and Addie, and get out of here. Oh, and Jenny…?”
“Yes?” Elissa asked. Still leading the horse, she planned to actually mount up once they passed the castle. Even with the walking stick, traveling afoot was currently a slow and painful process, but she didn’t want to risk drawing attention yet by giving herself the high profile of a rider.
“I told you you had the makings of a great liar.” Keely grinned. “No telling how many lives you just saved. Of course, nothing else is going to go wrong from here on in, but just in case: It’s been an honor.”
“Bloody Scarlet!”
Time was growing short. The shadows had begun to lengthen. Silence hung heavy over the deserted town and pastures and orchards, disturbed by little more than the creaking of forgotten shutters and an occasional nervous snort from the few horses left in the castle stable. Dark clouds had begun to roll in on rising winds, muting the sun.
Given the timing, and given what had been going on the last time the weather went berserk, Keely couldn’t believe that was a coincidence. Even the skies above the Crimson Forest seemed—if not under Scarlet’s direct, conscious control—at least to answer to her moods. If Keely had had any doubts about the prediction that Scarlet would strike at sunset, they were dispelled now as she watched the storm build.
“Bloody Scarlet!” Keely shouted again from the tower battlements overlooking the forest. “I know you can hear me!” The trees of the forest seemed almost animate as they swayed back and forth together, their wind-tossed autumn leaves shimmering with color.
“You want a story?” Keely screamed against the wind. “I’ll tell you a story! Years ago, the Inquisition came chasing you and your sisters to my home. You didn’t care. You knew you could slaughter them. And I know you didn’t care about what happened to us. You laid the sins of the Inquisition on my friends and neighbors, and you murdered them as freely as you murdered the loathsome creatures who had come for you.
“Hardly anyone walked away that night, but I did, and now here I’ve led the Inquisition to your door chasing me. That whole book thing is nonsense. Rubbish. It was my lure to get them here. This was never about you and them. This is about you and me!”
“Really?” Ulric asked quietly beside her.
“Enough of it,” Keely said. “Now hush.”
“I tricked you good,” Keely started shouting again. “I’ve chased off all the toys you were going to play with, and I’m ready to settle scores! Don’t bother waiting for dark! I can see in the dark, too! Come on out and fight!”
“You really think she heard you?” Ulric asked as they descended the tower stairs together.
“You’re just full of questions today, aren’t you?” Keely said.
“Can’t help it. I get all question-y when I’m staring at probable, painful death.”
“There’s the spirit.” Keely grinned. “Too many people would already be looking at this as a certain painful death. I am buoyed by your optimism.
“You know, if I live through the night,” she added, “I’m going to have to hire a new maid. Seems like Jenny’s finally over her whole ‘sidekick’ phase, and you’ve seen how hopeless I am keeping track of my own clothes. Speaking of which, I’ll catch up with you. I need to go see if anyone left me proper clothes to wear for playing the feisty underdog in Scarlet’s story. Jenny said Scarlet didn’t believe in them, but that was just before Jenny gave her a bloody nose, so maybe that’s a seed of doubt I can exploit.
“Anyway, go’ss knows we’re already stuck cast as underdogs, and the only underdog who ever wins is the feisty one, so what’s to lose? And no way am I showing up to a showdown dressed as either her understudy or a pink princess.”
When Keely walked into the great hall to join the others, she was feeling more like herself—whoever that was. She’d found nothing serviceable to wear in her signature color of look-at-me red, but she had found a man’s tunic large enough for her to wear as a dress, and in a shade of red she could accept if not love. Cinched with a decent belt, it hardly looked second-hand at all.
Ulric, Nolan, Evadne, and Minda had all taken time to get cleaned up and dressed for the occasion as well. Ulric and Nolan each even wore a proper steel cuirass to protect their torsos.
“I had a hard time thinking what we could do to prepare for Scarlet herself,” Ulric admitted, “but we’ve got options to make her deadlings less deadly.”
He gestured at equipment he’d spread out for them on the high table. “This,” he said, pulling a small arrangement of leather and steel from out of the first pile, “is a gorget—a
n armored collar. It was meant to keep anyone from slitting your throat with a blade slipped between helm and breastplate, but it will give the deadlings a whole lot less real estate they can take advantage of. Find one that fits. Buckle it on. Anyone who dies tonight because they got throttled will have to answer to me for it.”
He walked down the length of the table, pointing out the different stacks of equipment. “Helms—open-faced, but trust me you don’t want to wind up fighting half blind—leather gauntlets…doublet…breeches…boots. If you can find a set that fits, wear it—unless you just like the feel of quarter-inch thorns biting into your skin.”
He stopped at the last pile at the end of the table and hefted a hatchet. “These are our weapons of choice,” he said. “Short and light for close quarters.” He held the hatchet out demonstratively. “Blade for severing vines.” He flipped it. “Solid, blunt back for shattering skulls. If you find you have a free hand when there are deadlings about, you’re doing this wrong. Have one in each hand at any time you can manage it, so you can use either one to free the other when it gets pinned. Expect to lose at least one hatchet during the fighting, so carry a third on your belt.
“Remember that the real danger of the deadlings lies in the swarm. From the sound of their baying, we’ve got to expect scores of them to be coming out of the forest. Five people isn’t much to fight off a swarm of these things. If even a couple of us go down, the rest won’t be good for much except to stand fighting back-to-back, and if it comes to that, we’ve already lost. Any time Scarlet herself isn’t an immediate concern, job one is making sure no one stays pinned by a deadling. They’re not cunning, so if we’re armored up and they can’t pin us, they can’t beat us.
“They should also have more limited mobility without something to grab and swing from, so we steer clear of the trees.
“Take a few practice swings with the hatchets once we get out where there’s something to practice on, just so you’ll have some feel for them, but don’t wear yourselves out. We can’t expect much recovery time before they come at us.
“That’s everything I’ve got. Zero for dealing with Scarlet herself. But I’m not backing down. I could list all sorts of selfless reasons I have to put this un-killable monster in her grave, but in the end, I’m doing this for me. She was in my dreams when I was trying to nap this afternoon, and I still don’t know if it was her or I was making her up. I’m never going to know—never going to have a rest worth anything again—as long as I know she’s out there. I’m facing her now, on my terms, to escape what will likely be a short life of constantly looking over my shoulder otherwise. So, Keely, please tell me you’ve got a real plan for dealing with Scarlet, and that you’re not just going to be making this one up as you go along.”
“I’ve always got a real plan,” Keely assured him. “Some of them are just more nebulous than others. So, Nolan says he can drive a cart in a pinch. They did leave us one, right? Lady Minda’s our best remaining equestrienne. Does anyone have experience with the castle artillery?”
Ulric and Nolan pointed in unison to Minda, who smirked in response. “Hey, I like it when things go boom,” she said.
“Perfect.” Keely nodded. “Now remember what I said about Scarlet’s cloak? It’s possible I got over-optimistic saying it had all her power, but still…”
Lightning was flickering across the black clouds mounting overhead by the time Keely and Ulric returned to the battlements. Thunder grumbled, and the wind that had been creaking shutters was now banging them vigorously.
“I really thought she’d take the bait,” Keely muttered. “Well, I hoped she’d take the bait. I can’t actually see in the dark without my cat eyes. Being stuck in one shape stinks.”
“On the plus side, I spend a lot less on clothes than you do,” Ulric said, scanning the rocky ground between them and the forest. “She’s hanging back for the sake of theater, though, not for tactical advantage. She’s not afraid of us, and she’ll come over these walls as easily as she dropped into that sinkhole. This castle’s just a nice big target for her, and taking it will be symbolic.
“When she comes, her deadling will swarm down the most convenient hedge, but otherwise it’ll be straight from the tree line and into the courtyard without bothering to go around to the gate. Even the keep’s not defensible, unless we lock ourselves in an interior room—and then we’re just waiting for Scarlet to batter down the door and come at us where we’re trapped.
“With the light failing, we can’t stand out in a meadow and wait for them. We won’t see them coming at us from all sides until they’re on top of us, and then they’ll just keep us pinned down again until Scarlet can finish us. Torches or bonfires could help there, but even if we could get them in place in time, they won’t stay lit. This is promising to be a storm like the one that doused the wildfire.”
“That’s an awfully long-winded way of saying I’m right,” Keely grinned.
Ulric chuckled. “Yes, there’s only one place where we can stand and fight Bloody Scarlet tonight. It’s clearly the least bad option, and we’ve got to lure her there so she’s reacting to us, not stalking us. I’ll keep watch from here for the last few minutes of light. You go help Nolan with the cart. Make sure everything is…wait.”
He pointed out across the meadow to where faint flickers of red light had begun to appear in the gloom like distant fireflies. “There. They’re on the move.”
Once she spotted the flickers, Keely was able to make out small shadows of movement spidering across the open ground or scurrying along the hedgerows. First singly, then by the dozens they came pouring out of the forest. Then they came swarming like locusts, so thick she thought at first that the shadows of the trees themselves had begun to writhe as they lengthened by the moment.
Century upon century upon century of compulsively collected skulls spliced together with twisted black briers from the darkest heart of the forest clawed their way out of Scarlet’s domain, just in time to make themselves seen before the last light of the setting sun vanished behind them beyond the horizon.
“Oh, yeah.” Keely swallowed. “That’s theater.”
“Minda!” Ulric shouted down to the walls. “Light off whatever cannons you’ve managed to load and go!”
Keely and Ulric ducked back into the tower, grabbing the torch they’d left burning just inside, and hurried down the stairs. Outside, one by one, the forest-facing cannons of Castle Haywood began to roar. As thick as the deadlings were coming, the cannonballs were sure to crush a few skulls, but no one in the castle doubted the effort was mostly for show: a token roar of defiance, meeting theater with theater.
Minda arrived down at the stables at the same time as Keely and Ulric.
“Leave the rest,” Ulric snapped to Nolan, who was still loading barrels onto the back of the cart.
“It’s bad,” Keely said. “Worse than bad. Probably not too late to just run, though. Jane and her friends will double back when they realize they’re chasing geese, and handling this sort of thing is supposed to be their job.”
“Do you think they stand a chance?” Minda asked soberly.
“Not really,” Keely admitted.
“Whatever their job is supposed to be,” Nolan said, “the truth is they’re just bullies who don’t know what a real fight looks like. They’ll show up thinking they’ve got this covered, they’ll try a frontal assault, and they’ll die. That’s no loss, but the county will be. The whole thing will be swallowed up by the forest, just like Caer Cacamwri and Blackmoon Lake, and we’ll never get it back.”
“It’s my call, anyway,” Minda said, grabbing a lantern and mounting her horse. “I never said I’d defer to anyone when it came to fighting a monster from the forest; just in fighting the Inquisition. This is my land, my home. I wouldn’t let the Inquisition have it, I wouldn’t let the pontifine have it, and I’ll be damned if I’ll give it over to some nursery bogey without a fight. We stick to your plan, Keely. It will work. It has to work.”
Not waiting to allow time for an argument, she spurred her horse out the stable doors just as Evadne returned from lighting streetlamps.
“Odd,” Evadne said, turning to watch Minda go. “That sounded like the last thing Sabina said before she disappeared.”
The two remaining horses, hitched to the cart, grew increasingly nervous and restless as the baying of the deadlings approached. It became all Nolan could do to keep them under control as they left the stable and headed for the gate with everyone on board the cart.
The flickering oil lamps Evadne had lit on the street outside kept the darkness enough at bay for the horses to step surely, and would hopefully buy them a couple of seconds warning of approaching deadlings, but they still seemed woefully inadequate against the deepening night. The cart rattled on down the hill from the castle, nearly reaching the bottom before all at once the dreadful baying stopped.
“How anticlimactic,” Scarlet called. She stood in the open gateway off the castle, watching them from above. Around her swarmed more deadlings than the eye could count, their vines writhing together like a wall of tentacles. “I thought I’d been invited to a fight.”
“Of course you were!” Keely called back, standing up in the cart. “No one ever said it would be a fair fight!”
Somewhere in the darkness, Minda’s rifle cracked. The oil lamp nearest to Scarlet shattered. Flames rained down on the cobbles, then raced along the oil Evadne had spread while she was lighting the lamps, drawing Scarlet’s eye with them to the powder keg Evadne had left just to the side of the gate. Things started going boom. The horses drawing the cart took off without waiting for permission, and Keely would have been thrown from it if not for Ulric’s quick grab at her belt.
Lethal Red Riding Hood (Dark Goddess Chronicles Book 1) Page 47