by Jim C. Hines
“Yog … is a finger?”
Blue kicked her in the shin. “Stupid Heroes. Stupid outlaws. Stupid redcaps.”
Beneath his obvious anger and disgust, Inga heard something more. Pain and longing. “We thought you might have been a prisoner of those outlaws. You weren’t, were you? The redcap bodies we found. Did Yog tell you to betray them, and to help the outlaws deliver their poison to Brightlodge?”
“Maybe.” Blue looked away. “Not telling.”
“You helped to kill your fellow redcaps,” said Tipple.
“Maybe,” he said, more quietly than before. His eyes were glassy. He blinked and swiped a filthy hand over his face. Could a redcap actually be feeling guilt over betraying his own kind?
If so, that guilt vanished the instant he spotted their destination. Rook and Leech had dragged three more kegs to the edge of town, where they were dumping the contents into the sewers that flowed into the falls.
Blue’s eyes went round. “Fish will be drunk on ale that’s sunk!”
From the angry shouts of the crowd, the Heroes might as well have been tossing babies over a cliff.
“They say it’s the start of a prohibition!” cried one man. “We won’t stand for it, do you hear?”
“Wendleglass can have my ale when he pries it out of my cold, dead belly,” said another.
“Real Heroes wouldn’t march into my establishment and steal my kegs without as much as a how-do-you-do!”
Inga shoved through the crowd, set her own keg on the ground, and raised her voice. “The ale is poison!”
“But it’s cheap poison!”
“Not to mention it tastes like sewage,” added Tipple.
“Cheap poisoned sewage!”
“My brother had a pint of the stuff last night, and he was just fine when he left. Mostly fine. Not dead, at any rate.”
“And how is he this morning?” asked Leech.
“Now look here, just because a man takes mysteriously ill after a good, honest night’s drinking doesn’t mean—”
“Enough,” shouted Inga. They were like stubborn children. Tell them they couldn’t have a treat and they grew more determined than ever to gobble it down the instant you looked away. “Listen here. Anyone so much as touches these kegs, I’ll toss you in after them, got it?”
Rook smashed the butt of his crossbow into another keg, hard enough to crack the wood. Tipple lifted the keg and hurled the whole thing into the sewer. The crowd roared in response.
“Stand aside!” The crowd split to open a path for a pair of Brightlodge guardsmen. They were sweating and out of breath, and one had blood on his spear and uniform.
Inga’s gut tightened. “What’s wrong?”
“You’re to return to Wendleglass Hall immediately!” said one.
Rook folded his arms.
“That is … I meant to say, Young King Wendleglass has asked that all Heroes join him at the hall,” the guard amended. “If you don’t mind.”
The other shifted his weapon to point at Blue. “Redcaps have invaded Brightlodge.”
Poor King Wendleglass had been in a panic. Inga and the other Heroes had smiled and nodded reassuringly until they could get him out of the way and get down to the business of planning their defences, planning which was complicated by interruptions and criticism from the king’s dead father.
Even now, Old King Wendleglass wandered the streets of Brightlodge while Heroes searched for the intruders in groups of two and three. Inga could hear him shouting, “Redcaps at our walls! Redcaps in our streets! Redcaps in our privies! Brightlodge was never invaded by redcaps when I was king!”
There were reports of redcaps popping up all over Brightlodge. Inga had been partnered with Jeremiah Tipple, but they hadn’t gone far when Tipple paled, clutched his stomach, and raced to the nearest privy.
Inga pounded on the door. “Will you hurry it up in there? We’re supposed to be protecting people.”
The only answer was an inarticulate shout. Tipple sounded like a cow in labour. Inga winced to imagine what was drawing such sounds from the man.
Blue crouched close to Inga, hiding behind her bulk as the townspeople alternately fled into their homes and came back out to see what was happening. He appeared to be enjoying the panic and occasional screams.
“Do you need me to fetch Leech?” Inga called to Tipple. He and Rook were working several streets over.
Something slammed against the outhouse walls from the inside, hard enough to make the entire structure jump several inches. The wooden planks creaked.
“Tipple?”
The door exploded from its hinges. Inga instinctively yanked Bulwark up. Flying shards of wood thumped off the shield. A body tumbled into the dirt. Tipple stomped out after it, one hand holding his trousers up, the other balled into a fist. Blood dripped from parallel scratches on his face. “The pipsqueak was hiding in the roof like a damn spider,” he roared. “Waited for me to sit down and settle in, then pounced on my blooming head.”
The creature was unlike any redcap Inga had ever seen. It appeared to be female and was superficially similar to Blue. Pups from the same litter, as old Lottie Dragonbreath used to say. But the skin lacked the sickly pallor of a redcap, and while she did have a hat pulled tightly over her head, it appeared to be a damp nightcap, the laces tied tight beneath the chin. The hat was the deep green colour of decaying swamp muck. A single nail through the forehead held it in place.
The creature—the greencap—jumped to her feet and pounced at Inga, who bent her knees and braced herself. The greencap bounced off Bulwark and went sprawling.
Before the greencap could recover, Tipple seized her by the back of her nightgown, hefted her into the air, and threw her headfirst into the outhouse. She smashed through the back wall, hit the ground, and didn’t get back up.
The outhouse swayed, and for a moment Inga thought it might survive the abuse that had been heaped upon it. Then, with a series of loud cracks and bangs, it collapsed into a heap of broken boards. A foul-smelling cloud of dust spread outward from the wreckage. Blue pinched his nose in disgust.
“Where do these things get their caps?” Tipple rubbed his head with one hand. “Is there some deranged hatter running around selling red hats and iron nails to new-formed redcaps?”
“Her cap was green,” Inga pointed out.
Tipple shrugged. “Maybe this one wasn’t ripe yet.”
“She smelled ripe enough to me.”
“Ha!” He snorted and wiped his nose. “That’s a good one, Ingadinga.” He reached out as if to hug her.
Inga swiftly interposed Bulwark between them. The man had just been in a privy brawl, and he had the stink to prove it. She tugged Blue around the collapsed privy to examine the fallen greencap. “How many more of you are roaming the streets of Brightlodge?”
“Not one of us.” Blue crept towards the greencap and nudged her with his toe. “She’s broken.”
“Tipple has that effect on people,” Inga agreed.
Another redcap—greencap—galloped past, riding a pig like a steed and stabbing a pitchfork at anyone who came too close. Inga hoped it wasn’t the same pig she had helped catch the day before. That poor animal had been through enough.
She turned her attention back to the greencap who had attacked Tipple. “Do you know what happened to her, Blue?”
Blue glanced down. “Big, pickle-smelling human threw her through a privy.”
Inga scanned the street and adjusted her shield. “You said she wasn’t one of you. What is she?”
Before Blue could answer, she heard Leech shouting from one street over, calling for backup.
Inga ran towards the sound, dragging Blue behind. They found Rook trying to get a clear shot at a greencap inside a barbershop. A group of four angry townspeople crowded around Rook.
“Leave her alone,” yelled a heavyset boy, swinging an iron skillet at Rook’s head. “That’s my granny!”
Rook easily dodged the blow. The boy staggered b
ack, though nobody had struck him that Inga could see. Leech stood in the background, draining the strength from Rook’s attackers.
“We don’t have time for this nonsense.” Inga bulled her way to Rook’s side and slammed Bulwark down in front of her. The old face on the shield came to life, and a trio of spectral shields spread out in a half circle. With a flash of light, the shields shot forth, knocking the townspeople to the ground.
A middle-aged man started to get back to his feet. Inga tugged her sword free. “Stay there. Otherwise I’ll just have to knock you down again. Now what’s all of this fussing about?”
Another greencap jumped down from the roof of the barbershop. Inga waited for it to approach, then calmly clubbed it on the side of the head with the flat of her blade. Rook raised his crossbow to shoot down the other.
“Please,” said the man. “She don’t mean no harm.”
Inga looked at the unconscious greencap, a short man with a boyish face. He could have been handsome if not for the blood covering much of his clothes and the twisted snarl on his face. Her stomach knotted.
She put a hand on Rook’s crossbow. The greencap hiding in the barbershop was as old as dirt, with wrinkled skin and a hunch so severe she resembled a walking horseshoe. To the boy, she asked, “What did you mean when you said that was your granny?”
The boy sat up, clutching his chest with both hands. “She came back from the pub last night saying she had a stomachache. When we woke up this morning, we found her like this. She was trying to eat our dog.”
“Broken, broken, broken,” said Blue.
“What about the other one?” asked Inga.
“Him?” The older of the humans—the boy’s father, perhaps—waved a hand. “That looks like our neighbour, Clump. You can go ahead and kill him. He’s a complete arse.”
The granny charged, waving a wooden cane about with both hands.
Inga sheathed her sword, caught the cane on her forearm, and yanked it away. The old greencap wobbled and fell.
“Stop it!” yelled the boy.
Inga crouched to look Blue in the eye. “What happened to these people?”
Blue shrugged and stared at the road.
“They say redcaps were once ordinary humans,” said Leech. “Rumour has it, if you drink the blood of a redcap and spend the night under the light of the full moon, you become one of them.”
“I thought it was if you mooned a redcap in the middle of the night,” said the man.
“The redcaps beneath the library,” said Leech. “They’d been drained of blood.”
“Someone’s transforming the people into these things.” Inga glanced at Blue. “This isn’t an invasion. How much did you know about this?”
Blue turned to flee. Two paces later, the rope went taut and he landed hard on his back, clawing at the noose.
Tipple stumbled up, one hand clutching his gut. “If Blue was trying to poison people, why’d he try to burn down the tavern?”
“Redcaps aren’t known for well-thought plans,” said Rook.
Across the road, a man screamed as a greencap chased him out of his home. The greencap was dressed in pyjamas and was swinging a broken, burning chair about his head.
Rook sighed, raised his crossbow, and shot the greencap in the hip.
Inga grabbed Blue’s rope and lifted. “What did you do to these people?”
“Hard to talk without air,” Leech pointed out.
She lowered the rope until Blue’s toes touched the road. He twitched and squirmed like a fish on a line. He had been tied up throughout the night and had never left the Heroes’ presence. “How did you do it, and how many people—”
“Can’t say!” Blue squealed. “Can’t say or Yog will flay and slay!”
Inga glanced at the boy. “You said your granny was at the pub,” she whispered. “Did Clump go to the pub last night too?”
The boy nodded. “He went most nights.”
“The ale,” said Rook.
“It wasn’t poison. It was something worse.” Inga spun back to Tipple. “How much of that stuff did you drink?”
“A pint, maybe?” He grimaced.
Leech studied Tipple, checking his pulse at the wrist, then standing on tiptoes to examine his eyes. “Drink this,” he said, handing over a small flask. “It’ll help heal whatever war’s ripping through your guts.”
“Thanks.” Tipple downed the contents in one gulp.
“An’ if it doesn’t work, at least I’ll get the chance to dissect you.”
“How are you feeling?” Inga asked, jumping in before Tipple could answer.
“Like I swallowed a balverine, and the bastard’s trying to dig his way out from the inside.” He looked down at the moaning greencaps. “Am I gonna wake up tomorrow morning and nail a bloody cap to my skull?”
Leech circled around, continuing to poke and prod Tipple’s body. “Tomorrow? I want to know why you haven’t changed already. I guess it could just be your greater mass, hey?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Tipple whirled, one hand going to his gut, the other balling into a fist.
“Blue, what’s happening to them?” Inga demanded. “Can it be cured?”
Blue touched a finger to his cap and held it out. Red blood smeared the skin. “Blood gets tainted, caps get painted.”
“People are dying, dammit!” Bulwark began to glow, responding to Inga’s anger. Throughout Brightlodge, families were watching their loved ones twist into monsters. In that moment, she could have killed Blue for his role in this.
Blue licked his lips. His whole body was trembling, and his eyes were moist. He had dug that old bone finger out of his shirt and was clutching it with both hands the way a frightened child might cling to a favourite doll. He even seemed to be whispering to it.
Pity dulled the edge of her rage. “Why is their blood tainted, Blue? What else was in that ale?”
“Don’t know. Have to go.” Blue tugged weakly at the rope.
“Enough.” Rook pointed his crossbow and pulled the trigger. A series of bolts ricocheted off the cobblestones between the redcap’s feet, making him squawk and dance away as far as the rope would allow.
“Don’t know!” Blue squealed. “Have to go! Have to go!”
Inga crouched to speak to him at eye level. “Is there a cure?”
“Moonwort bud,” he whispered. “Human blood. Mixed with sun and other mud.”
“Other mud?” asked Leech. “What does that mean?”
“Don’t know.” He watched Rook warily, moving closer to Inga as if using her as a shield. His eyes widened, and he tugged Inga’s sleeve. “Nimble Johanna knows.”
“Fat lot of good that does us,” said Tipple. “Nimble Johanna is fish food. Toasted fish food.”
Blue’s eyes narrowed, and he spoke in a whisper Inga had to strain to hear. “Johanna had a secret place. With secret door. Secret potions, and lots more.”
Hope made Inga’s heart pound harder. “If you help us cure my friend—and if you swear to leave Brightlodge in peace—we’ll let you go when all this is done. You’ll be free.”
Blue stared at her, barely breathing. “Free?”
“You have our word.” She glared at the others, daring them to argue. Rook shook his head, but said nothing. Tipple shrugged and took a drink from a bottle he’d been carrying somewhere on his person.
With his blood-smeared hand, Blue yanked the bone finger from around his neck. “Free.”
“I promise,” said Inga.
Arm shaking, Blue flung the bone away. “Follow me.”
CHAPTER 10
ROOK
Well done, Heroes!” Old King Wendleglass floated through the streets of Brightlodge, congratulating everyone he encountered. For the moment, those streets were empty save for Heroes and the occasional groaning greencap. Most of the people had retreated to their homes, hoping to find safety behind locked doors. As if safety was anything but an illusion, a luxury bought with the blood of men and women like
Rook and his companions.
“My kingdom is saved, thanks to you.” The old ghost spread his arms, and for a moment Rook thought he might try to hug them.
“Not yet,” said Rook. There couldn’t have been more than thirty greencaps running about town, and most of them had been cut down or locked up within hours. This had been nothing. A feint, or perhaps a test. The true threat was out there waiting.
He stepped past the ghost, heading purposefully towards the bridge out of town. He kept one eye on Blue and the other on Jeremiah Tipple. There was no telling what damage even a small dose of redcap blood might do to a man. Rook had never bought that whole “Anything that doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” philosophy. There were plenty of ways to break a man without killing him. Just look at the survivors from that hollow man attack in the Deadlands a few months back.
Tipple’s ability to imbibe inhuman amounts of alcohol and still function were legendary, and that healing potion might have helped, but there was always the chance he would succumb and change into one of those green-capped killers before they found Nimble Johanna’s cure. If it even existed.
The good thing about Rook’s crossbow was that it would allow him to put down both Blue and Tipple in short order if it came to that.
“Wait!” Young Wendleglass ran after them, flanked by his guards. “I was hoping you might, um … report back to the hall.” He stopped to catch his breath. “I’m told you were the ones … who discovered the cause of this plague. We need you … to share what you’ve learned.”
Son and dead father glanced at one another, but neither spoke. The ghost looked vaguely annoyed, and the young king just looked uncomfortable. Theirs was an odd relationship if ever there was one.
“We will,” said Inga. “Just as soon as we return.”
“Oh. You have another quest? I don’t remember anyone mentioning—”
“Jeremiah Tipple drank blood-tainted ale,” said Leech. “We’re hoping to cure him before we have to kill him.”
“I see.” Young King Wendleglass took two steps back, while his guards shifted nervously. The man had all the confidence and spine of a wet dishcloth. “Do you think it might be better—I mean, if you’d like, I could ask my men to, um, take him into custody?”